From Folk Feminism to Fundamentalism: The Transformation of Punjabi Culture under Religious Pressure in Pakistan

Liberal Journal of Language & Literature Review Print ISSN: 3006-5887 Online ISSN: 3006-5895 996 Liberal Journal of Language & Literature Review T Liberal Journal of Language & Literature Review Print ISSN: 3006-5887 Online ISSN: 3006-5895 https://llrjournal.com/index.php/11 From Folk Feminism to Fundamentalism: The Transformation of Punjabi Culture under Religious Pressure in Pakistan Ms. Rabia Ikram Ph.D. Scholar, Gender Studies, University of the Punjab, M.Phil. (Philosophy, GCU, Lahore Email: [email protected] Ms. Satwant Kour* Lecturer of Punjabi, Kinnaird College for Women University, Ph.D. Scholar Punjabi, Lahore College for Women University Email: [email protected] Dr. Kalyan Singh Kalyan* Assistant Professor, Government College University, Lahore Email: kalyan.sing[email protected] Vol. 3 No. 4 (2025) Liberal Journal of Language & Literature Review Print ISSN: 3006-5887 Online ISSN: 3006-5895 997 Building upon anthropological perspectives which conceive of culture less as substance and more as daily-life practices that people use to confront challenges, in this paper we analyze the way a feministic pluralist tradition of Punjabi culture in Pakistan has been transformed into a moralized patriarchal one under the ideological onslaught by religious pressure groups like Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) and the Taliban. Utilising the framework of critical discourse analysis, in this study folk poetry, song covers, proverbs and media discursive practices and cultural celebrations were studied to discern changes in gendered subjectivities as shaped by religious nationalism and moral populism in Punjab. The findings indicate that the images of Heer or Jugni which once glorified women‘s expressive authority, have been actively replaced with those relating to modesty and obedience. Demonstrate through linguistic, symbolic and topical analysis that forms of culture have been moralized so that what used to be spaces of comedy, sensual delight and critique are now arm twists for ideological orthodoxy. Drawing on feminist cultural theory (Butler, 1990; Mohanty, 2003) and Bourdieu‘s notion of symbolic power, the study posits that religious moralization is a mechanism internal colonization that recasts femininity as a location of morality surveillance. But countercurrents of resistance persist in digital media, feminist art and communitydriven cultural revival, proving that the ideas behind folk feminism are still alive under the veneer of moral orthodoxy. This work adds to the field of postcolonial feminist scholarship by revealing how gender, religion, and language collude in regenerating cultural identity in contemporary Punjab. It provides critical reading about politics of representation, resistance and cultural memory practice within Pakistan. Keywords: Punjabi Culture, Folk Feminism, Religious Extremism, Symbolic Power, Gender And Cultural Identity. Introduction: Punjab as a region, and an ethos is historically known for folk traditions Sufi humanism and the ‗cohesion of life in a communal order‘. Indeed, among other things, Punjabi Pakistani popular culture has carried notions of inherent egalitarianism and femininity: women‘s gatherings like trinjan, folk songs like tappay and heroic qissas such as Heer Ranjha and Sassi Punnu developed into spaces where the sound of a woman‘s voice, their social agency and subject position was apparent (see ―Trinjan,‖ n.d.; Riphah & Riaz, 2024; Quddus,1992/2019 cited in IJHS, 2024). These homosocial practices functioned within a nexus of Sufi mysticism, work with the community and cultural festivity rather than inflexible patriarchal or religiousnationalist models. For thinking about the everyday, why was there no room in the folk idiom for unforgettable feminine metaphors – such as the story of ―Sassi‖ about crossing rivers and familial constraints, rejecting silence (Political Pandora, n.d.)? But during the past several decades, we observe a marked turn of events in the cultural and ideological environment of Punjab Pakistan. Religious pressure groups including the TLP and the TTP have emerged as major forces in reshaping morality, Abstract Liberal Journal of Language & Literature Review Print ISSN: 3006-5887 Online ISSN: 3006-5895 998 public life, gender relations and cultural expression. Their power transverses with state, media and the renegotiation of ―public culture‖ in Punjab. The result is that the entirely feminine and also plural folk dimensions of Punjabi culture are now being harshly suppressed by waves of religious fundamentalism, patriarchal moral policing, media censorship and the erasure of women‘s public roles as visible cultural producers. This type of transformation raises some very important questions: What was the language through which Feminist or Gender-egalitarian values were expressed in precolonial Punjabi culture? What social and intellectual forces enabled the triumph of religious orthodoxy? What does this do to the representation of women and their presence in culture? Finally, what does this cultural shift suggest about the broader contest between indigenous identity and religious nationalism in Pakistan? It is these dynamics that the present essay attempts to engage with by situating and materialising the transition from ‗folk feminism‘ to ‗fundamentalism‘ in Punjab, through its propositional conjecture: ―The rise of religious pressure groups including TLP and TTP pitted the folk feminist and Sufi humanist ethos of Punjabi culture into a patriarchal, oppressive social structure that criminalised women‘s cultural expression and freedom for public visibility‖. By situating these through a series of cultural texts – folk songs, qissas, Sufi poetry – alongside religious discourse, the paper traces an ideological and discursive trajectory. It argues that the marginalisation of women‘s voices in Punjabi culture is not accidental or simply a byproduct of religious conservativism, but the result of a paradigmatic reordering of cultural capital, symbolic authority and gender visibility within Punjab. Using feminist cultural theory, postcolonial perspectives and discourse analysis the paper exposes a process of 're-imagining' Punjabi culture as one that has jettisoned some of its pluralism and feminine presence under pressure to be remade in more narrow, moralised and positively male-centred terms. Finally, this study adds to the emerging literature on gender and culture as weapons of religious nationalism in Pakistan. It provides an instructive example in the Punjabi cultural field, demonstrating how indigenous traditions of feminist expressive life are placed at risk within contexts of religious and political hegemony. It thus highlights the need to retrieve the feminist heritage of Punjab and interfere in those ideologically constructed practices that mute women‘s voices under the banner of morality and religious identity. Scope of Study: The focus of this study is not only on the evolution of Punjabi cultural feminine codex into a contemporary Pakistani socio-political milieu, but also underlines how religious pressure groups like Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) and Tehreek-eTaliban Pakistan (TTP) have re-shaped culture forms, gender identities and moral narratives. The study is confined to the textual, linguistic and cultural analysis of Punjabi folklore literature, proverbs, songs as well as media images rather than any ethnographic or interview data. Punjab is the heart of Pakistan. It won‘t be wrong to call Punjab as the nucleus of cultures and linguistics, that often show association towards egalitarian symbolic feminine power. The research has encapsulated wide range of events such post-Islamization from 1977 till today, the era has seen dramatic Liberal Journal of Language & Literature Review Print ISSN: 3006-5887 Online ISSN: 3006-5895 999 shift of gender and culture with reference to state-society relations. In the research feminist cultural studies has been used with an aim to unravel ideological overhaul of Punjabi culture under religious populism with an eye on counter-narratives which are emerging to contest this remaking. Hypothesis: The rise of Religious pressure groups such as TLP & TTP have rapidly transformed the Punjabi culture from a culture of folk feminism and humanistic Sufism to a patriarchal society that again lends its hand in driving down the women cultural expressions and the public role quite on margins. Research Objectives: To investigate the feminist and egalitarian elements that are to be found in the Punjabi folk culture — specially in folklore, poetry, and oral traditions that reflected women‘s autonomy and social participation in the society. To inspect the socio-political and religious transformation that became the base of decline of pluralistic Punjabi cultural practices, rise of religious fundamentalism and political Islamization. To delve how religious pressure groups such as TLP and TTP have reshaped and transformed the gender norms, morality discourses, and artistic expression in Punjabi society. To assess the impact of religious orthodoxy on women‘s visibility, representation, and agency in Punjabi cultural production, including literature, performance, and media. To interpret the transformation from folk feminism to fundamentalism as a reflection of the broader conflict between indigenous cultural identity and religious nationalism in Pakistan Research Questions: How did traditional Punjabi folk culture express feminist or gender-equitable values before the rise of religious fundamentalism in Pakistan? What socio-political forces enabled the shift from a pluralistic, Sufi-influenced Punjabi culture to one dominated by religious orthodoxy In what ways have religious pressure groups, such as TLP and TTP, redefined gender norms, morality, and artistic expression within Punjabi society? How has this cultural and ideological transformation affected women‘s representation and participation in Punjabi cultural production (e.g., music, poetry, and media) What does the transformation from ―folk feminism‖ to ―fundamentalism‖ reveal about the broader struggle between indigenous identity and religious nationalism in Pakistan? Significance of the Study This is a major work of interest academically and socio-culturally, shedding light on an underexplored aspect of the cultural change in Pakistan, the erasure of Punjabi folk feminism in sharing space with religious extremism and moral populism. Through documenting the ways in which culturally specific gendered symbols, metaphors and stories undergo recoding during revolutions of ideology as well as language change, this work also intervenes in feminist cultural theory and post- Liberal Journal of Language & Literature Review Print ISSN: 3006-5887 Online ISSN: 3006-5895 1000 colonial discourses about identity formation. It also undermines the myth of Punabi culture‘s intrinisic patriarchal bias, and instead reveals history in which they have been saturated with effeminacy, sensuality and women-centredness; over-posting probs: as an earlier scholar had.‖ The findings provide important intervention into the politics of cultural production and religious nationalism coopting and moralizing art to sustain patriarchal power. This study contributes the conceptually structure understanding of declination of indigenous feminist trace in the context of postcolonial situation especially at the end of pluralism prevailing in Pakistan‘s sociopolitical milieu and has relevance for theorists, policy makers, cultural actors are working to revive such traditions. Methodology: Research Design This article is based on qualitative interpretive research, informed by feminist cultural analysis and critical discourse analysis (CDA). The idea is to question the concepts of Punjabi culture that is known for its many-layered folk feminism and Sufi humanism in the background of increasingly powerful religious fundamentalism and pressure groups such as Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The qualitative approach provides a means of investigating more profound levels of language, symbolism and ideology in cultural texts than is afforded by numerical analysis. The main one is about reading gender and moral representation historically so as to notice not just how, but when the switch was made from a more inclusive religious perspective to a conservative one. Theoretical Framework The following theoretical perspectives inform the study: Feminist Cultural Theory – in order to understand how patriarchy power relations are inscribed, maintained and reproduced in cultural stories. Postcolonial Feminism by Chandra Talpade Mohantyto situate the nexus of gender, culture, and religion with reference to a postcolonial state such as Pakistan Pierre Bourdieu‘s Theory of Cultural Capital – this concept is useful to see how religious actors capture symbolic and cultural power. Judith Butler‘s theory of Gender Performativity – in order to examine religious discourse that governs gendered behavior and embodiment Taken together, these theories contribute to Punjabi culture as the stage for ideological struggle in which traditional feminist principles are made palatable through religious conservatism. Data Sources This study relies exclusively on textual and documentary sources, both primary and secondary, to ensure analytical depth and contextual validity. Primary Sources Folk Literature and Oral Narratives: An analysis of the classic Punjabi folktales and poetic writings including Heer Ranjha, Sassi Punnu, Mirza Sahiba and Sohni Mahiwal will lead us to explore gender identities and ways in which its rendition reflects varied contours of feminine Liberal Journal of Language & Literature Review Print ISSN: 3006-5887 Online ISSN: 3006-5895 1001 assertion as well as resistance in the pre-fundamentalist culture. Sufi Poetry and Mystic Literature: ―Folk Feminism‖ will be grounded in the 15th and 16th centuries through the textual output of poets such as Bulleh Shah, Shah Hussain, Waris Shah, Mian Muhammad Bakhsh and others who have preached gender inclusivity, spiritual equality and humanism. Contemporary Cultural Texts: Looking at modern day Punjabi songs, TV content, and stage appearances (20002025), how is religious conservatism articulated in morality and gendered discourse, we will seek to discover. Religious Discourse of Pressure Groups: Official communication, social media, and public communication by leaders of TLP and TTP will be studied to investigate how ideology narratives that dictate morality, womanhood, cultural purity emerge. Secondary Sources Scholarly writings on Punjabi culture, Sufism, feminism, and religious nationalism in Pakistan. Media analyses and reports on censorship, women‘s visibility, and attacks on cultural expression Academic discussions on postcolonial identity, Islamization, and cultural hegemony Data Collection Procedures Data collection will follow a documentary and archival research approach: Collect written texts, lyrics, poetry, and public documents from print and digital archives, including translated anthologies and academic databases. Select representative samples from both pre-1980s folk traditions (reflecting pluralism) and post-2000s cultural production (reflecting religious influence). Use purposive sampling to ensure that selected texts meaningfully represent contrasting ideological eras. Data Analysis Methods The study applies Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as its primary analytical method, complemented by comparative textual analysis. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) Drawing on Fairclough's three-dimensional model, the analysis is advanced as follows: Textual Level Analyze word choice, metaphors, and visuals for women, love, and moralistic behavior in folk and modern texts Discursive Practice Level Links: Examine the ways in which religious stories construct new moral codes and interpret what it means to be female in Punjab. Level of Social Practice: Relate these changes to larger sociopolitical trends, such as Islamization, gender prescriptions, and cultural nationalism. Liberal Journal of Language & Literature Review Print ISSN: 3006-5887 Online ISSN: 3006-5895 1002 Comparative Textual Analysis Folk and Sufi texts will be juxtaposed with religious and cultural texts of today in order to track: Changes in how women are depicted (from being central, influential figures to moralized or invisible characters). Cultural values (humanism to moral orthodoxy). Pluralistic and female symbolism depleting from Punjabi art forms The aim taken in this analysis is to demonstrate how religious discourse functions by letting feminist cultural heritage recede to the background and filling the symbolic power gap as a moral authority. Literature Review A Book on Feminist and Egalitarian Features of Traditional Folk Punjabi Culture Such brimming with flirtatious back and fro, such liquid reserve Traditional and Modern Punjabi folk culture Born of the soil and Sufi humanism remains the fine feminine, egalitarian ethos down the ages Intangible customs like trinjan (female collective of spinning, singing) were cultural pockets where women had their expression through voices of feelings and desires also making resistance against patriarchal authority [(Political Pandora, n.d.); (Riphah & Riaz 2024)]. While the qissas (Heer Ranjha, Sassi Punnu, Mirza Sahiban) highlight the rebel and female protagonist who goes against family and societal norms for love and freedom. Zubair, Zaheer & Muzammil (2024) rightly note that these narratives, though are in some cases indeed tragic stories but they present women as agents of sense-moral and emotion not just helpless victims. While critiquing of male power has been encoded along with resistance in Punjabi proverbs, Nasir, Hussain & Hussain (2024) noted. Nasir and Ghalib Hussain (2024) also underscore the punjabi wedding songs lok geet as a site of ethnography of everyday forms of women‘s common sense resistance. These are songs that temper conformity and rebellion, ones where women (and all of society) can work out their frustrations in accepted performative rituals. Sanjarani et al. (2024) and Noor & Riaz (2024) revealed that in the Sufi tradition of Punjabi and Urdu poetry, women's spirituality is gendered—women are interpreted to long for divine, defeminizing emotion into spiritual power. Awan‘s, (2017) the ―feminine metaphor‖ in Punjabi poetics again confirms an argument concerning early Punjabi literature favouring tenderness, sensuousness and exposure to feelings-qualities culture-gendered feminine but when spiritually examined through a Sufi lens elevated to high regard. These works emphasize that folk culture in Punjab had always been a symbolic economy in which there was a place for women. Women‘s creativity— in songs, verses, and communal rituals—was wrapped into a set of harmonious community norms inspired by nature and humanistic spirituality rather than moral orthodoxy. Cultural Shock: Sociopolitical/Religious sources of??cultural??transition While the feminist fervour of Punjabi folk culture‚ loosened by 20th century transformations of Pakistan‘s social, political and ideological edifices. The Islamisation drive of General Zia-ul-Haq (1977–1988) had a significant impact in this direction, with the result that secularism was pushed back and indigenous (regional), and pluralist cultural forms from within Pakistan diminished (also see Chaudhry 2022; Rafi, 2019). Not only Punjabi culture, previously considered a threat Liberal Journal of Language & Literature Review Print ISSN: 3006-5887 Online ISSN: 3006-5895 1003 are brought to the brink as Urdu centered nationalism treated them and at the time of state identity recast on the lines of monolithic Islamic ideology (Mahmood & Ali, 2021). They show that traditionalist (patriarchal) readings of religion and culture play an influential role in securing girls‘ access to education; they thereby reinforce systemic inequalities, which reflect broader social dynamics. Equally, Salahuddin, Ahmed and Nasim (2023) argue that efforts at women‘s empowerment are limited by deeply rooted socio-religious hierarchies which uphold morality and respectability in conservative terms. Saeed‘s (2011) classic ethnographic account Forgotten Faces: Daring Women of the Pakistani Folk Theater shows how there was a time, when women performers who were stars in the Punjabi stage, were ostracized to social peripheries under moralist glare. There is more cultural policing since the advent of populist religious movements. Researchers note how the nature of protection afforded to artists and their art has been taken over by: ―contemporary religious mobilization, which amounts to policing art in Pakistan‘s public sphere‖ (Khurshid & Tabassum & Zulfiqar, 2023). Seeking through this ideological well, women‘s presence in the cultural realm has been reduced collectively as Islamism further prescribes public morality and gender conduct (Mahmood & Ali, 2021; Raza, 2020). Religious Interest Groups and the Transformation of Gender and Culture Religious groups like Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have developed an unparalled web of societal religious influence in last few decades. Their discourse revolves around moral cleansing, blasphemy politics and patriarchal domination of public spaces (Yusuf, 2023). And although we know very little about their cultural impact in Punjab from the scholarly material, studies of similar Islamist movements teach us about how religious populism realigns gender relationships and the aesthetics of public space. Aziz, Ali and Khan (2021) demonstrate how patriarchal codes such as Pashtun wali entangle with religion to carry forward male dominance—a pattern reflected in Punjab‘s religious moralism. Studies on religious ideology in Pakistan educational and media discourses (Khalid & Rehman, 2022; Bukhari & Azam, 2025), reveal that moral conservatism has been naturalized via the cultural apparatus. Safdar & Siddique (2024) look at Punjabi stage dramas to explore how humour and irony reproduce misogyny, body shaming and gender policing as part of the larger social process of normalizing sexist attitudes. Also, Mir (2018) and Nasir et al. (2024) expose a phenomenon of linguistic misogyny in Punjabi proverbs whereby mundane vernacular reiterates patriarchal norms that match with the `religiously sanctioned' control of women. Combined, these studies substantiate that pressure groups—such as TLP and TTP— are not independent entities but rather are the product of long-term religious resocialization that reconciles cultural morality with political Islam. They are not limited to the domain of politics but stretch across symbolic realms of what counts as ―honorable,‖ ―authentic‖ or even ―moral‖ culture. Impact on Women‘s Representation, Agency and Cultural Production The net result of these changes has been the silencing of women in Punjabi cultural production. Zubair et al. (2024) point out that there have been growing trends to objectifying women in men modern re-framing of Punjabi folklore stories tantamount to the silencing of their voices. Safdar and Siddique (2024) describe analogous patterns in popular cultural theater, in which female performers are belittled as Liberal Journal of Language & Literature Review Print ISSN: 3006-5887 Online ISSN: 3006-5895 1004 objects of derision instead of as valued contributors to culture. Mahmood and Ali (2021) and Afreen, Tehseem, & Laila (2024) find that gender representation in Pakistani culture is still an indication of social power relationship, where male-centered norms dominate cultural production hence denying women the space to shape themselves as subjects. A scoping review conducted by Aslam et al. (2022) in BMC Women‘s Health found that gender discrimination is widely prevalent under all sectors of Pakistan, which is perpetuated through cultural, religious and legal narratives. In the Punjabi folk tradition, women‘s voices which were enhanced as part of a collective identity have been muted by moral policing and censor (Saeed 2011). Performers, writers and singers are subjected to institutional as well as informal constraints created by the religiously charged restrictions against female visibility and performance (Safdar & Siddique, 2024). And thus, progressively rather than suddenly, we see the gradual displacement of pluralist/confessional Punjabi culture by its obscurantist opposite with the latter‘s puritanical turn. Indigenous Identity, Religious Nationalism, and the Transformation of Culture The transition from folk humanism to religious nationalism in Punjab mirrors greater postcolonial identity battles. Felt unnoticed during the state-sponsored neglect of Punjabi language and Sufi pluralism, cultural dominance shifted from communityheld property to that of the clerics and political elites (Chaudhry, 2022; Noor & Riaz, 2024). This displacement, according to Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital, is a transfer of symbolic power: religious elites now have the say in defining cultural authority. Research on language politics suggested that Punjabi has been purposefully repressed in order to promote Urdu, leading to what Ahmad (2021) refers to as ―linguistic selfestrangement‖, a situation where the Punjabis have moved away from their roots. Writing in the medium of essay collections such as Language, Faith and Power (2023), this linguistic marginalization is tied to moral homogenization in which women's voices and variability across space from regional accents is treated with suspicion, as Non-Muslim. Using a feminist lens, we can also see the double colonization that people from postcolonial societies face as now explained by Chandra Mohanty (2003) under the term ―postcolonial feminism‖ women in postcolonial contexts continue to be colonized at ideological and patriarchal levels. Folk feminism and its subsequent transformation to fundamentalism, in Punjab reflects this double subjugation where the local religion of nationalism intersects with femininity to efface gurgling native feminine identities. Summary of Gaps and Theoretical Contributions Although there is an increasing literature on gender, culture and Islamisation in Pakistan, it has left a vacuum both theoretically and empirically as far as how the disorganization component of Punjab? cultural feminism is being transformed under the impact of religious pressure groups. There are, however, all too few studies of the intersectional dynamics that connect the two in other words, how religious populism systematically transforms gendered cultural identities. Current scholarship has a tendency to excavate cultural artifacts as if they are of a world apart from the social and political realm in which they are re-appropriated. Folklore, of course, is not a form to begin with; it‘s content has often been passive Liberal Journal of Language & Literature Review Print ISSN: 3006-5887 Online ISSN: 3006-5895 1011 — an unfinished dialogue, that, between silenced and speaking, between folk feminism and fundamentalism. Ethical Considerations The relatively low level of ethical risk associated with the study is due to not collecting any respondent data other than publicly available texts and documents. The research will not, however, discriminate in any way among these religious materials but will treat all of them with academic impartiality and cultural respect. the interpretations would be prevented from being influenced by individual or doctrinal determinations, and turned exclusively toward the discourse, and the representation of it in its social and cultural context." References Afreen, S., Tehseem, T., & Laila, U. (2024). 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