Towards Peoples’ Histories in Pakistan: (In)audible Voices, Forgotten Pasts

Description

After seventy-five years of independence, the history of Pakistan remains centered on the state, its ideology and the two-nation theory. Towards Peoples’ Histories in Pakistan seeks to shift that focus away from histories of an imagined nation, to the history of its peoples. Based on the premise that the historiographical tradition in Pakistan has ignored the existence of people who actually make history, this book brings together historians, anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists to shed light on the diverse histories of the people themselves. Assembling histories of events and peoples missing from grand narratives of national history, the essays in this collection incorporate a diversity of approaches to the past as it opens the possibilities of multiple histories, the archives through which they are registered, and the various temporalities in which they persist. The volume highlights and recuperates the entangled nature of history and memory within Pakistan’s social and cultural life. By critically examining both leftist and nationalist thought, Towards People’s Histories in Pakistan explores competing visions of what is meant by ‘the people’, and charts new ground in developing the promise of people’s histories both within Pakistan and beyond. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Dedication Contents Figures Acknowledgments Introduction Part One Recalling “Progressive” Histories 1 The Left and Its Legacies: The Long 1960s in Pakistan 2 South Asia’s Partitions and the Limiting of Progressive Possibilities in Pakistan 3 On Progressive Papers in Pakistan Part Two Nationalism’s Many Violences 4 1971: Pakistan’s Past and Knowing What Not to Narrate 5 Left Behind by the Nation: “Urdu Speakers” in Bangladesh 6 Invisible Borderlines Part Three Alternate Registers, Other Histories 7 Un-archiving Baloch History 8 Queer in the Way of History 9 Gatherings of Contemplation: Performing Other Histories in Pakistan’s Sufi Shrines 10 Beyond “Forgotten Histories”: Teesri Dhun (The Third Tune) as Collaborative Performance Research (Claire Pamment) Part Four Politics and “the People” 11 “Tulba, Mazdoor, aur Kissan” (Students, Laborers, and Peasants): The Revolution Made Easy 12 The People in Their Difference 13 Countering the Production of Cultural Hegemony: Reflections on Women’s Activism under Zia 14 Political Emotion and Bodily Politics: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and “the People” Contributors Index