History Through Her Eyes

The Lost Heer by Harleen Singh reclaims the stories of Punjab's forgotten heroines, unearthing voices long buried beneath patriarchal pride, and rewriting colonial history through the eyes of its women—resilient, radical, and quietly revolutionary. Excerpts:

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In January 1937, Punjab had its first ever purdah polling booths installed in the old city of Lahore, for the benefit of the first-time female voters.

The passing of the Government of India Act 1935, two years ago, had granted 6 million Indian women the right to vote.

Women over the age of twenty-one, who were either literate or owned property, or whose husbands or sons qualified for other franchise requirements, were permitted to exercise their newly-acquired voting rights.

The 1937 elections for the newly formed Punjab Legislative Assembly were done on the basis of separate electorates, where a Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, or a Scheduled Caste voter voted for a candidate from their own specific group.

In addition to religion and caste-based electorates, there were also reserved seats for women candidates, and this made the voting process a bit complicated.

In the Punjab Legislative Assembly, four seats were reserved for women, representing four constituencies: Lahore City (General), Lahore (Rural), Lahore (Outer), and Amritsar.

In this weird intermixing of gender and religion-based electorates, Amritsar and Lahore City (General) were reserved for Sikh and Hindu candidates respectively, while the other two constituencies were reserved for Muslims.

In this way, two Muslim women and a Hindu and Sikh woman each were to be elected to the reserved women's seats in the Punjab Legislative Assembly.

The voting process itself wasn't straightforward.

Each female voter in Punjab, just like the male voter, could exercise only one vote.

But this was not the case in the four reserved women's constituencies.

In these four areas, women not only voted for the female candidate running in the reserved seat, but also voted for the male candidate running on the normal seats.

This resulted in the female voters in the reserved constituencies getting two votes.