Academy of the Punjab in North America (APNA)

The Academy of the Punjab in North America (APNA) is a diaspora organisation for Punjabi language, literature and culture. It is not a Sikh body. At a conference in Lahore on 2 March 2002, its member Manzur Ejaz described it as strictly non-religious and non-political, with members and chapters in 22 countries, and said it had been established 12 years earlier, which points to about 1990. No source we opened gives a founding year.

People: Dawn (2 December 2024), in a column on his book, describes Safir H. Rammah as a founding member and coordinator of APNA, and says he created the APNA web portal in 2000 and built it into the largest online repository of books on the history, culture and language of Punjab. Rammah is living, and Dawn gives this as the book's own description of him. APNA's report of its 2002 Harvard conference names Rajwinder Singh of the Boston chapter as host and Rammah as conducting the day's programme.

What it does

• Its website carries articles, columns, poetry, stories and lessons in Shahmukhi (the Persian-Arabic script used in Pakistan) and Gurmukhi, with English and Urdu as well.
• It publishes Sanjh, a quarterly Punjabi magazine issued simultaneously in Gurmukhi from Ludhiana and in Shahmukhi from Lahore. It was released at Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana in August 2007, with Dr M. S. Kang, the vice-chancellor, presiding. APNA's report names Dr J. S. Dhiman as editor and Safir Rammah as managing editor.
• 2 March 2002: its Pakistan chapter holds its first conference at Al-Hamra Hall, Lahore, with a seminar on the future of Punjabi.
• 20 April 2002: its seventh annual conference at Harvard, hosted by the Boston chapter, on the theme Punjab: Prospects for the Future. The conference passed a resolution calling for Punjabi to be the medium of education in West Punjab's schools and decided to draw in young diaspora Punjabis.

Why it matters here: the scholar Pritam Singh, writing in the Journal of Punjab Studies in 2012, names APNA among the pan-Punjabi organisations that play a key role in building common cultural ties between Punjabis across the India-Pakistan border. Its two-script publishing keeps the literature of both halves of the partitioned Punjab in one place.