The Complete History of Punjab — Every Argument, Every Assumption, in Plain English
A narrative history of Punjab from the making of the land itself to the present — written so that anyone can follow it, with every dispute shown as a dispute and every assumption named rather than assumed.
There are two kinds of book about Punjab. Scholarly ones that are honest but unreadable, and popular ones that are readable but leave out all the arguments and present one clean version of contested events. This is meant to be a third kind. Every argument is included, every hidden assumption is pointed at, and the whole thing is written at a reading level anyone can follow. That makes the books longer, not shorter: explaining something plainly takes more words than explaining it technically, and nothing is dropped for being complicated. Where the field genuinely disagrees — and on Punjab’s deep past it disagrees a great deal — both sides get their strongest case and the open questions are left open.
3 / 14 parts published · 49,249 words · August 2026 · by Lovepreet Singh
Contents
- 01The LandThe Land ItselfHow Punjab was built out of a slow crash between two continents, why five rivers ended up in one place, and the first people who ever walked on this ground.
- 02HarappaHarappaThe cities that were lost for three thousand years, the writing nobody can read, the civilisation that seems to have had no king, and the long argument about why it ended.
- 03The Vedic AgeThe Vedic Age and the Aryan QuestionA book of hymns that was never written down, a battle fought on the Ravi, and the first appearance of the four-fold order that became caste. Plus the longest and angriest argument in Indian history — invasion, migration, or nothing at all — with every side given its strongest case and no side chosen for you.
- 04AntiquityPersians, Alexander, MauryasAchaemenid satrapy, Alexander and Porus at the Jhelum, the army’s refusal at the Beas, Chandragupta, Ashoka and Taxila.
- 05Indo-GreeksIndo-Greeks to HunasMenander, the Sakas and Parthians, the Kushans and Kanishka, Gandhara art, the Guptas, Toramana and Mihirakula.
- 06Sultans & SufisSultans and SufisThe Hindu Shahis, Mahmud of Ghazni, Muhammad Ghori and Tarain, the Delhi Sultanate, Lahore and Multan, Timur in 1398, Baba Farid and the birth of written Punjabi.
- 07The First GurusGuru Nanak to Guru ArjanThe first five Gurus, the founding of Amritsar, the compilation of the Adi Granth, Babur and Akbar, and the martyrdom of Guru Arjan.
- 08The KhalsaGuru Hargobind to Guru Gobind SinghMiri-Piri and the turn to arms, Aurangzeb, the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur, the Khalsa in 1699, and the Guru Granth Sahib as eternal Guru.
- 09The MislsBanda Singh Bahadur to the MislsThe rising of 1710–16, the persecutions and the Ghallugharas, Nadir Shah, Ahmad Shah Abdali, and the twelve misls.
- 10The Sikh EmpireRanjit Singh and the FallThe Sikh Empire, the Lahore Durbar, the army, the succession collapse, the Anglo-Sikh Wars and annexation in 1849.
- 11Under the RajBritish PunjabCanal colonies, the remaking of the agrarian economy, the martial-races policy and army recruitment, land alienation, famine and revenue.
- 12GhadarGhadar to IndependenceGhadar, Jallianwala Bagh in 1919, Bhagat Singh, the Unionist Party, the Muslim League and the politics of the 1940s.
- 13PartitionPartition and Indian Punjab1947 and the Radcliffe Line, the Punjabi Suba movement, the 1966 reorganisation, the Green Revolution, the 1980s, 1984, the 1990s, water disputes and the present.
- 14The DiasporaPakistani Punjab and the DiasporaLahore, One Unit, Punjab’s dominance in Pakistan, 1971 and the present — plus the global Punjabi diaspora in the UK, Canada, the US and Australia.