Nagged by childhood memories of a Delhi overrun by Punjabi refugees in 1947 and burdened by a grandfather’s anti-Partition legacy, Rajmohan Gandhi sets out to write an all-inclusive history of undivided Punjab, the kind of which he claims has not been written since a work by Latif in 1899. The intention is to go beyond the well-documented Sikh story of Punjab and bring Punjabi Muslims and Hindus within his sweep, all the while bowing to the famed Punjabi spirit imbued with commonalities of language and culture. The construct is commendable, if somewhat forced: after all, no serious Sikh history could have been of the Sikhs alone, given Punjab’s quilted patchwork of Sikhism, Islam and Hinduism. Punjabiyat, along with Sufi and Bhakti influences, is deeply integrated into Sikh history. Also, it would have to be a very post-colonial audience to whom the commonalities in today’s two Punjabs have to be explained. When he writes that “most Pakistanis today do not know that towns like Lahore, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad and Multan in Pakistani Punjab had significant Hindu and Sikh populations before 1947”, and that most Indians are unaware that a larger number of Muslims lived in Amritsar, Jallandhar and so on, he clearly has the great-grandchildren of Midnight in mind.