LIVING HERITAGE IN TRANSITION: INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE AND CULTURAL CHANGE IN DISTRICT GUJRAT, PUNJAB

Abstract

Gujrat district of Punjab has a rich legacy of intangible culture in the form of oral tradition, folk performance, religion, social custom, craft, occupational knowledge, cuisine, and language. However, these cultural expressions are not a mere survival of ancient ways of life, rather they are dynamic practices that have often redefined their meaning, role, and mode of transmission through different political, social, economic and technological changes. By utilizing sources like local history, district document, scholarship on Gujrat district, and general literature on intangible culture, this essay will discuss the living culture of the district through the dynamic processes of continuity, transformation, and selection. It is suggested that the cultural expressions that are rooted in religion, family, kinship, language, and community life have shown a good amount of resistance, whereas craft, occupational knowledge, cuisine, and ceremony have negotiated between the traditional cultural expressions and new technologies. Others like certain oral traditions, recreational practices, knowledge about occupations, and aspects of vocabulary usage also become more exposed to risk due to the weakening of their traditional context for transmission from one generation to another. According to the article, the unique culture of Gujrat is not based on uniqueness of each and every element of tradition, but rather on the localization of wider traditions of Punjabi culture in the context of Gujrat. Thus, the example of the Gujrat case shows that the protection of living heritage implies not only the consideration of cultural products, but the people who embody them too.