Dr. Manzur Ijaz belonged to a rare category of intellectuals who did not simply write about their culture; they sought to reinterpret it, challenge prevailing assumptions about it, and redefine its place in the modern world. His contribution to Punjabi language and culture was, therefore, not merely literary but fundamentally intellectual. He devoted his life to answering a question that continues to confront Punjabis today: How can a people remain connected to their cultural roots while participating confidently in the modern world?

For Dr. Ijaz, the answer lay in language. He regarded language not as a tool of communication alone but as the principal medium through which a society understands itself. In his view, Punjabi was the historical archive of Punjab’s collective experience, carrying within it centuries of memory, wisdom, struggle and creativity. The marginalisation of Punjabi in Pakistan, therefore, was not simply a linguistic problem; it represented a deeper crisis of cultural self-awareness.

Born in 1947 in Chak 60, Burjwala in District Vehari in southern Punjab, into a family of peasants, Dr. Manzur Ijaz rose from humble rural beginnings to become one of the most influential Punjabi intellectuals of his generation. Despite the physical challenges posed by polio in childhood, he displayed remarkable resilience and determination throughout his life. His educational journey took him from his village school to Sahiwal College and later to the Punjab University, Lahore, where he studied philosophy and subsequently taught the subject.

From his student days, Dr. Ijaz was deeply involved in intellectual and social activism. As a founding member of the National Students Organisation (NSO), he championed progressive thought, academic freedom, and democratic values. His role in organising teachers and students reflected his lifelong commitment to social justice and collective welfare. Even at this early stage, he understood that cultural revival and social transformation were inseparable.

He repeatedly argued that Punjabis had become estranged from their own intellectual traditions because they had ceased to think seriously in their mother tongue. A society that borrows its categories of thought entirely from elsewhere, he believed, gradually loses confidence in its own ability to interpret reality. Consequently, the revival of Punjabi was not, for him, a matter of cultural sentiment but of intellectual empowerment.

This conviction distinguished him from many language activists. Dr. Ijaz did not advocate Punjabi merely because it was his mother tongue. He advocated it because he believed that every living language must become a vehicle for the production of knowledge. He challenged the tendency to celebrate Punjabi through folk festivals, music and poetry while neglecting its role in philosophy, history, economics, science and critical inquiry. His own scholarly work was a practical demonstration of this belief. Whether writing on philosophy, social history, political economy or literary criticism, he sought to expand the intellectual horizons of Punjabi and prove its capacity to engage with the most complex questions of modernity.

Perhaps his most significant

intellectual achievement was his reinterpretation of Punjab’s classical literary heritage. He rejected the conventional portrayal of Punjabi Sufi poets as mystical figures detached from worldly concerns. Through decades of research, he argued that Baba Farid, Shah Hussain, Bulleh Shah and Waris Shah were not simply spiritual teachers but profound social thinkers whose writings engaged directly with questions of power, inequality, freedom and human dignity.

His interpretation of Waris Shah remains particularly influential. Dr. Ijaz viewed Heer not primarily as a romantic epic but as a philosophical and social text. In his reading, Waris Shah exposed the oppressive structures of feudal authority, patriarchal control, caste hierarchy and religious dogmatism. The struggle of Heer and Ranjha symbolised a larger struggle between individual freedom and institutional power. By presenting Waris Shah in this way, Dr. Ijaz transformed him from a cultural icon into a major intellectual figure within the history of social thought.

This approach reflected a broader theme in his work: the belief that Punjabi culture contains within it a long tradition of humanism and resistance. He saw the intellectual heritage of Punjab as fundamentally pluralistic, sceptical of authoritarianism and sympathetic to the marginalised. The great Punjabi poets, in his view, challenged narrow religious orthodoxy, defended the dignity of ordinary people and celebrated the richness of human experience. Their significance lay not merely in their literary beauty but in the social vision they articulated.

His historical writings pursued a similar objective. In works such as Punjab Di Lok Tareekh, he shifted attention away from rulers and dynasties toward peasants, artisans, labourers and other ordinary people. Influenced by historical materialism yet never confined by ideological dogma, he sought to understand Punjab through the interaction of culture, economics and social power. He viewed culture neither as a passive reflection of material conditions nor as an isolated sphere of ideas. Rather, culture was a dynamic force that shaped human consciousness while itself being shaped by historical change.

This perspective also informed his advocacy of mother-tongue education. Dr. Ijaz regarded language as the foundation of intellectual development. He argued that education rooted in a child’s native language strengthens cognitive abilities, encourages creativity and fosters self-confidence. His defence of Punjabi education was, therefore, grounded not only in cultural rights but also in a broader philosophy of human development.

Despite his deep attachment to Punjab, Dr. Ijaz was neither a cultural romantic nor an ethnic nationalist. He consistently described himself as an internationalist and a humanist. His engagement with Punjabi culture emerged from a conviction that genuine universality grows out of particular cultural experiences rather than their abandonment. He admired Ghalib as much as Waris Shah, read global intellectual traditions alongside local ones, and believed that rootedness and openness were complementary rather than contradictory values.

Even after settling in the United States and earning a doctorate in economics from Howard University, his intellectual energies remained directed toward Punjab. Through APNA, Wichaar.com, numerous books, newspaper columns and hundreds of lectures, he continued to cultivate a global conversation about Punjabi language, history and culture. He transformed the diaspora into an important site of Punjabi intellectual production and ensured that Punjab’s cultural discourse remained connected to broader global debates.

One of Dr. Ijaz’s most enduring contributions was his role in establishing and nurturing Punjabi literary circles. He was among the pioneers who helped create the Punjabi Sangat, a forum that later evolved into the renowned literary gathering associated with Najm Hosain Syed. Through these initiatives, he brought together writers, poets, scholars, and young intellectuals to engage with Punjabi history, literature, and philosophy. These gatherings played a significant role in strengthening Punjabi literary consciousness in Pakistan.

Unlike many writers who confined themselves to poetry and fiction, Dr. Manzur Ijaz believed that a language could only flourish when it became a vehicle for the production of knowledge in all fields. He repeatedly argued that if Punjabis wanted future generations to learn and value their language, they had to create new intellectual resources in Punjabi. This conviction guided much of his scholarly work.

What ultimately made Dr. Manzur Ijaz a distinctive intellectual was his insistence that Punjabi culture should not be treated as a museum artifact or a source of nostalgic pride. He viewed it as a living intellectual tradition capable of engaging contemporary questions of democracy, secularism, social justice, gender equality and human freedom. Through his scholarship, he reclaimed Punjabi not merely as a language of memory but as a language of thought.

In this lies his most enduring legacy. He did not simply preserve Punjabi culture; he reinterpreted it, expanded it and restored confidence in its intellectual possibilities. Future generations will remember him not only as a writer and activist but as one of the foremost thinkers who demonstrated that the path to cultural renewal lies in transforming language into an instrument of knowledge, critical inquiry and human emancipation.

Published in Dawn, July 5th, 2026