This paper explores the feminist poetics of progressive Punjabi poetry, focusing specifically on Amrita Pritam and Nasreen Anjum Bhatti. Through a close reading of their poems, “Ajj aakhan Waris Shah nu” and “Nil Narayan Nilkan,” I will argue that these post-colonial poets deployed the contestatory genre of Hir to critique the multiple patriarchies of nation, region and community. Their radical re-working of Hir’s voice attempts to de-centre male authorial privilege in the Punjabi literary formation, constituting the vernacular as a potent site for engaging with tradition under modernity. Together, their poems offer a historiographical and literary reconstruction of cultural identity to place women as active subjects and narrators of history.