Ayesha Jalal

The Convenience of Subservience: Women and the State of Pakistan

The relationship between women and the state in Pakistan has been both compelling and paradoxical. After nearly a decade of state-sponsored attempts at stifling women’s voices in the public arenas and pushing back the boundaries of their social visibility, Pakistan has become the first state in the Islamic world to have a woman prime minister. A state media which until yesterday poured scorn upon articulate and assertive women is today faithfully and respectfully projecting the voice and person of Benazir Bhutto. In so far as the role of women in Muslim societies has symbolic connotations, it is tempting to see Benazir Bhutto’s advent as something of a psychological ‘revolution’. A Western cartoonist hinted as much while portraying her in an impish mood asking a line of attendants veiled from head to toe: ‘How do you like your new outfits, Gentlemen?’1

Conjuring Pakistan: History as Official Imagining

Even before an anthropologist‧s tour de force underlined the power of imagination as creation in narrative constructions of the “nation,” memory, myth, and might had been triumphantly parading the realm of historical scholarship. The torch of objectivity did not have to go cold for the heat of subjectivity to captivate and command audiences through print and signs, visual or aural. It is simply that the cornmodification of the past by the marketplace and the expansive imaginings of power have combined to reduce the once revered craft of the historian to a battlefield where mired imaginings posture as interpretations in a contest in which there are no umpires, only partisans. So it is not necessary to claim objective ground when presumably no such domain exists or even to spin yarns about “authenticity” and “falsification.” But it is possible to make an analytical distinction between the past as invention and the past as inspiration without denying the role of creativity or power in either conception.

Alternative to Partition: Muslim Politics Between the Wars

When the British came to power in India, it was certainly not in the face of the organized resistance of Islam. Yet the British Raj came to its end among political and social convulsions in which Hindus and Muslims cut each others throats and large populations were shunted across the new frontiers of a sub-continent, now divided into two nations on the basis of religion. Events of such magnitude have encouraged historians to seek explanations of matching significance which may account for the growth of Muslim separatism. This article is concerned with the period of the nineteen-twenties and -thirties, before the onset of the end game when the communal quarrel burst out in deadly earnest. Explicit rival-ries between the communities tended to exist at two main levels, the level of organized politics at the top where Hindu and Muslim elites were rivals for influence with government and eventually for the control of government itself, and the level of mob violence in the streets. This article is concerned with organized politics at the top, although it does not deny the existence and importance of tensions at the base. Its main emphasis will be upon the provincial stage, in particular the Muslim majority province of the Punjab. In the period before 1919 the development of Muslim politics suggested that a specifically Muslim separatism orchestrated by the United Provinces had emerged upon the all-India stage. But the coming of the reforms reversed the situation of the preceding decades, and there was less incentive for Muslim politicians in the United Provinces to claim to be the spokesmen of Muslims in the nation.

Inheriting the Raj: Jinnah and the Governor-Generalship Issue

In 1947 the British partitioned India and transferred power to two separate Dominions. Partition, however, did not mean the division of India between two ‘successor’ states. ‘India’ inherited British Indias unitary centre, while ‘Pakistan’ consisted of areas with Muslim majorities which were merely seen as ‘contracting out’ of the ‘Union of India’. Congresss inheritance of the existing union centre gave it effective control over the joint assets of the two Dominions. The notion of a common Governor-General was, on the face of it, intended to safeguard Pakistans share in the division of assets. The Indian Independence Bill was drafted on the implicit assumption that Mountbatten would remain as Governor-General for both Dominions until the division of the Indian army had been completed. As common Governor-General, Mountbatten could supervise the reallocation of assets and at the same time encourage co-operation between the two Dominions. But the reallocation of assets could not take place until a new centre had been created for the ‘seceding’ areas. The implication was that if a Pakistan centre was not formed, the assets would not be divided, and a Governor-General with a common touch could guide the Muslim areas back into the ‘Union of India’. Mohammad Ali Jinnah clearly recognized what might happen if there was a common Governor-General for two Dominions, one of which was to be regarded as the ‘successor’ and the other as the ‘seceder’.

Endgames of empire : studies of Britain's Indian problem

The problem of freedom with unity The making of Indias Paper Federation, 1927-35 British policy and the Indian problem, 1936-40 The mystery of the Cripps mission Jinnah and the Pakistan demand Mountbatten, India, and the Commonwealth India in 1947: The limits of unity.

STRIKING A JUST BALANCE: MAULANA AZAD AS A THEORIST OF TRANS-NATIONAL JIHAD

This article probes the link between anti-colonial nationalist thought and a theory of jihad in early twentieth-century India. An emotive affinity to the ummah was never a barrier to Muslims identifying with patriotic sentiments in their own homelands. It was in the context of the aggressive expansion of European power and the ensuing erosion of Muslim sovereignty that the classical doctrine of jihad was refashioned to legitimize modern anti-colonial struggles. The focus of this essay is on the thought and politics of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. A major theoretician of Islamic law and ethics, Azad was the most prominent Muslim leader of the Indian National Congress in pre-independence India. He is best remembered in retrospectively constructed statist narratives as a “secular nationalist”, who served as education minister in Jawaharlal Nehrus post-independence cabinet. Yet during the decade of the First World War he was perhaps the most celebrated theorist of a trans-national jihad .

Secularists, subalterns and the stigma of 'communalism': Partition historiography revisited

Scholarship on the partition of India has produced more conflicting arguments than can be synthesised neatly to provide a definitive view of this watershed event in South Asian history. Apart from the very complex nature of the subject, its continuing role in fanning inter and intra-state tensions in contemporary South Asia has led historians to privilege the gloss of nationality rather more than the thrust of scholarship. The few intellectuals who have sought to transcend the limiting constraints of their nation-states are constantly reminded of their national origins in the critiques and counter-critiques that have characterised partition historiography. Even non-partisan scholarship rarely escapes being labelled ’made in India’ or ’made in Pakistan’. To be relatively immune from the politics and emotionalism that have so mired the debate on partition and its aftermath requires a none-too-easy negotiation of identities centred around the nation-state which the tortuous process of division left in its wake. ’

Review Article : Post-orientalist blues: Cultural fusions and confusions

* David Gilmartin, Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988. Strumming at the cultural chords of political nationalisms is the latest rage among scholars needing to cheer themselves out of the post-orientalist blues. Neo-orientalist melodies are not very different from studies of the ’other’ which bore the brunt of Edward Said’s ruthless critique. While assuming various tonalities, orientalism in its most recent incarnation takes the self-projections of the subjects seriously and uncritically. Odd references

State and Civil Society in Pakistan: Politics of Authority, Ideology, and Ethnicity@@@The Destruction of Pakistan's Democracy@@@Language and Politics in Pakistan

Problems of governance in Pakistan are rooted in a persistently unclear and antagonistic relationship among the forces of authority, ideology and ethnicity. Based on theoretical and empirical research this book focuses on significant themes such as the oligarchic state structure dominated by the military and bureaucracy, civil society, Islam and the formation of Muslim identity in British India, constitutional traditions and their subversion by coercive policies, politics of gender, ethnicity, and Muslim nationalism versus regional nationalisms as espoused by Sindhi nationalists and the Karachi-based Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM).

Book Reviews : AKBAR S. AHMED, Resistance and Control in Pakistan, Routledge, London, 1991, xx + 207 pp

When it has come to success nobody has succeeded like Akbar S. Ahmed. Brandishing his bureaucratic spade to strike anthropological gold. this veritable white knight of Pakistani officialdom and scholarship has won more laurels than is possible in a single lifetime. Ahmed’s list of publications is second to none. The latest product, however, is on ground he came to and conquered a decade ago. A paperback edition of Religion and Politics in Muslim Society (Cambridge, 1983) without any updates, its only novelty is an elegant foreword by Francis Robinson and a catchy new title. Those