Bar Region
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The Bar Region, or the Bars (Bāṛ),[1] is an area in Punjab, now part of the Punjab Province of Pakistan. This area consists of agricultural land that was cleared in the nineteenth century for the 'new' canal irrigation system developed by the British.[2] The soil of the Bar Region is fertile, and the plains have been created by the stream deposits driven by the many rivers flowing from the Himalayas.
The area stretches from the Sutlej to the Chenab river and down to the junction of two rivers Jhelum and Chenab. The word 'Bāṛ' in Punjabi language refers to a threshold, an outer space, an area away from the human settlement, a barrier between populated area and wild forest, a natural jungle. So the area between two rivers that formed a natural barrier between two different settlements was called bar. All the 'Bar Regions' had and still have almost the same or similar culture and language or dialect with slight variations.[2]
The 'Bar' is further divided into six regions:
- The Sandal Bar (the area between the Ravi and Chenab rivers).[2] The great Punjabi folk tales or epic love stories like those of Heer Ranjha and Mirza Sahiban happened in the Sandal Bar. Sandal Bar also was home to Dulla Bhatti who rebelled and fought against the centralised scheme of agricultural revenue collection (Lagaan) of Mughal emperor Akbar[2]
- Kirana Bar (the area between the western side of Chenab River and the eastern side of Jhelum rivers)[2]
- Neeli Bar (the area between the Ravi and Sutlej rivers)[2]
- Ganji Bar (the area between the Sutlej and dry river bed of the Hakra also called the Ravi River). Ganji Bar was also home to Rai Ahmad Khan Kharal (1785–1857), a Punjabi freedom activist and folk hero, who fought against the British Raj in the Indian Rebellion of 1857.[2]
- The Kirana Bar (The area of Kirana Bar between the Jhelum and Chenab rivers includes parts of Gujrat district, the entire district of Mandi Bahauddin, and the tehsils of Kot Momin, Bhalwal, and Bhera in Sargodha district.)
Most of the Bar now forms part of the modern districts of Faisalabad, Jhang, Toba Tek Singh, Okara, Vehari, Khanewal, Pakpattan, Sargodha, Chiniot, Hafizabad, Nankana Sahib, Bahawalnagar, Mandi Bahauddin, and Sahiwal. The indigenous people of these districts have a similar culture and speak the Jatki dialect of Punjabi with sub-dialects of Shahpuri and Jhangvi.[3]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Grierson, George A. (1916). Linguistic Survey of India. Vol. IX Indo-Aryan family. Central group, Part 1, Specimens of western Hindi and Pañjābī. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. p. 607.
- ^ a b c d e f g Punjab Notes: Bar: forgotten glory of Punjab Dawn (newspaper), Published 13 June 2014, Retrieved 3 September 2020
- ^ Geo-political history of Punjab region The Nation (newspaper), Published 29 September 2015, Retrieved 3 September 2020
