Punjabi Culture Day At PU Today Is Small, Mega Event Due In Winter

LAHORE: Students at Punjab University are marking Punjabi Culture Day on Wednesday with dhol, tappay and phulkari, but the organisers have stressed that this is a small departmental celebration and not the large, campus-wide festival that circulates every year in old Facebook and TikTok videos.

The event is being held by the administration of the Institute of Education and Research (IER) at the university’s Lahore campus. In a clarification posted on Tuesday, the organisers said it was a modest cultural gathering meant to celebrate and promote Punjabi culture and traditions.

The larger Punjabi Culture Day, they said, would be organised separately by the Punjab Council, a student body, and was expected “soon”, usually in winter. No date has been announced.

The IER programme promises Punjabi tappay, the beat of the dhol, cultural walks, traditional dress and desi food. “From the charm of our phulkari to the rhythm of our dhol, every tradition tells a story of love, hospitality and pride,” the invitation said, under the slogan “Sadi Mitti, Sada Maan, Sadi Pehchaan, Punjab!” (Our soil, our pride, our identity).

The clarification appears aimed at managing expectations after old clips of crowded celebrations were shared again online, raising the prospect of large turnouts from other departments and outside the university.

Cultural days organised by provincial and ethnic student councils are a fixture of campus life at Pakistan’s oldest university, founded in 1882, and draw large crowds of students in regional dress. They have also at times been flashpoints. In 2017, 18 people were injured when a Pashtun Culture Day ceremony was attacked, and in 2023 Hindu students were hurt in an attack on a Holi gathering, which an Islamist student group denied carrying out.

Punjab’s provincial government has officially marked Punjab Culture Day on March 14 since 2020, and the university’s own departments have held events in support of the day, part of a wider effort to reconnect young people with the province’s language, music and crafts.