Reading agrarian transformation through literature: moral economy, political economy, and caste in 1950s Punjab in Gurdial Singh's Marhi da Deeva

This article examines the socio-economic transformations of 1950s rural Punjab through Gurdial Singh's seminal novel Marhi da Deeva (1964). By putting moral economy framework in conversation with political economy, this essay reveals how the gradual transition from semi-feudal relations to capitalist tendencies had fundamentally reshaped the moral economy of rural Punjab. As market logic clashed with paternalistic bonds, caste-based oppression intensified rather than diminished. This analysis demonstrates how socially embedded novels provide essential insights into complex intersections of caste and class, psychological dimensions of dispossession, and the human costs of structural transformation, perspectives that are often marginalised in social sciences.