Sarah Ansari

Sufi saints and state power : the pirs of Sind, 1843-1947

List of maps and illustrations Acknowledgements Abbreviations A note on spelling Introduction 1. Sind and its pirs up to 1843 2. Creating a system of political control after 1843 3. Challenge to the system: the pir pagaro and the 1890s Hur rebellion 4. Challenge to the system: the Khilafat movement 1919-1924 5. A more complex system of control: pirs and politics under the Raj, 1900-1947 6. The final challenge: the pir Pagaro again Epilogue Conclusion Glossary Bibliography.

From subjects to citizens : society and the everyday state in India and Pakistan, 1947-1970

This special issue of Modern Asian Studies explores the shift from colonial rule to independence in India and Pakistan, with the aim of unravelling the explicit meanings and relevance of ‘independence’ for the new citizens of India and Pakistan during the two decades after 1947. While the study of postcolonial South Asia has blossomed in recent years, this volume addresses a number of imbalances in this dynamic and highly popular field. Firstly, the histories of India and Pakistan after 1947 have come to be conceived separately, with many scholars assuming that the two states developed along divergent paths after independence. Thus, the dominant historical paradigm has been to examine either India or Pakistan in relative isolation from one another. While a handful of very recent books on the partition of the subcontinent have begun to study the two states simultaneously, very few of these new histories reach beyond the immediate concerns of partition. Of course, both countries developed out of much the same set of historical experiences. Viewing the two states in the same frame not only allows the contributors to this issue to explore common themes, it also facilitates an exploration of the powerful continuities between the pre- and post-independence periods.

Polygamy, Purdah and Political Representation: Engendering citizenship in 1950s Pakistan

Debates on Islam, citizenship and womens rights have been closely interconnected in Pakistan, from the time of the states creation in 1947 through to the present day. This article explores the extent to which during the 1950s campaigns to reform Muslim personal law (which received a boost thanks to the outcry against 1955 polygamous marriage of the then Prime Minister, Muhammad Ali Bogra) were linked with wider lobbying by female activists to secure for women their rights as Pakistani citizens alongside men. Through a close examination of the discussions that were conducted on the pages of English-language newspapers, such as Dawn and the Pakistan Times , it highlights in particular what female contributors thought about issues that were affecting the lives of women in Pakistan during its early, and often challenging, nation-building years.

Subjects or Citizens? India, Pakistan and the 1948 British Nationality Act

Independence in the case of British India occurred at relatively short notice in August 1947, but tying up the loose ends of empire stretched over years. Under these circumstances, the realignment of subjecthood and citizenship necessitated by decolonisation was protracted, and raised complex questions about identity in both the new states of India and Pakistan and the former imperial power itself. This article thus takes as its focus the drawn-out process of disengagement that followed formal independence in relation to one case study: the various ways in which Britain sought to square the working of its 1948 Nationality Act with Indian and Pakistani citizenship legislation that took shape in the 1950s. India and Pakistan faced the common challenge of establishing who now belonged within their new borders. Britain likewise was forced to recalibrate its ideas about nationality and think afresh about the rights of its subjects in view of the new sets of relationships that now linked colonies, old dominions and the ‘mother country’ within the Commonwealth. In practice, applying the 1948 Acts provisions in relation to India and Pakistan became infused with anxieties about ‘race’, which surfaced repeatedly as British officials in London, Delhi, Karachi and consulates around the world sought to manage its operation to suit British interests.

Everyday expectations of the state during Pakistan's early years: Letters to the Editor, Dawn (Karachi), 1950–1953

Accessing the day-to-day, albeit pressing, concerns of Pakistanis in the early 1950s can be difficult as a result of the relative paucity of relevant primary material. One set of sources, however, are the letters written to the editors of contemporary newspapers during this period, in which correspondents outlined their expectations of, made demands on, and aired their frustrations with, the everyday state in the years following independence and Pakistans creation. This paper draws on a sample of this correspondence on the letter pages of Dawn (Karachi) during 1950–1953 in order to explore the views of ordinary citizens as they grappled with problems of housing, transport, food rationing, water shortage, and corruption.

Political Legacies of Pre-1947 Sind

The year 1947 has exercised such a strong influence over the way in which the recent history of South Asia is often viewed that, by dividing British India from the post-independence period so effectively, it has helped to obscure understandings concerning political continuity and change in the region. The implicit assumption that partition led to the creation of a new state with a new political identity and new sets of political characteristics conceals the fact that Pakistan inherited much from the geographical regions which comprised its territory. In the case of Sind, trends, which were already present by the decade preceding partition, successfully crossed the ‘1947 divide’ and did much to shape subsequent political events. This chapter, therefore, sets out to look at the origins of two such trends which have shaped the Sindhi political landscape in the years since independence: firstly, the involvement of local religious leaders or pirs in Sindhi politics; and, secondly, the growing awareness of a more distinct Sindhi ‘identity’ and nationalism.

Special Issue: Textiles as Money on the Silk Road

In January 2013 we published our third special issue ‘Perfumery and Ritual in Asia’. As I wrote in the Introduction to that group of articles, the Journal’s broad remit, both in terms of historical period and geographical boundaries, affords us the privilege of exploring those elements of human activity that historically ‘bind’ or ‘separate’ different Asian cultures. By the beginning of 2013 we had already published two other special issues, one on a linguistic topic and the other on a politico/religious topic and so we felt it was appropriate to devote space to the exploration of ‘material’ culture, an equally powerful force in shaping a huge range of human interactions. Our fourth special issue ‘Textiles as Money on the Silk Road’ demonstrates just how broad the range of such human interactions can be. Of course, before accepting these articles for publication the Journal conducted its normal peer-review process. As part of this consultation, it is not unusual for us to approach up to three or four different scholars on the merits of an individual article, particularly when we are seeking to appraise research that engages with several academic disciplines. It is, however, unprecedented to consult, as we did in the case of this special issue, a historian, an art historian, an archaeologist, a linguist and an economist for just one set of articles! Indeed, this impressive list of academic ‘specialisms’ demonstrates the significance of the research brought together here. The articles that make up this special issue are broad in the sense of their impact and relevance to many fields of exploration but they are also focussed in so far as the collection has defined its parameters clearly and presents a wealth of in-depth research from new perspectives. We are so pleased that Dr Helen Wang and Professor Valerie Hansen chose to publish with us and we feel privileged to be part of its production. Many readers will be accessing this collection of papers through JSTOR and as a result of electronic searches. After much deliberation we decided to use the convention of given name first followed by family name for all authors, both Chinese and European. Our rationale is that this enables papers written by Chinese authors, to be easily accessible through indices and searches programmed to use western conventions. Readers will find however, that in the text of articles within this issue, Chinese authors are often referred to by their family name first, followed by their given name.

Pakistan's 1951 Census: State-Building in Post-Partition Sindh

ABSTRACT This article explores the carrying out of Pakistans first census in 1951 from the perspective of contemporary developments in the southern province of Sindh. Conducted against the backdrop of Partition-related migration to and from the province, this attempt at population enumeration proved to be a mammoth bureaucratic undertaking on the part of the recently-created Pakistani state. The challenges that this exercise posed at the provincial level shed light on processes of attempted nation-building as well as the centrality of population counting to the biopolitical management of citizenship during a key period of transition in mid twentieth-century Sindh.

At the crossroads? Exploring Sindh's recent past from a spatial perspective

This article explores Sindh, today a province in Pakistan, in terms of its spatial relationship with the various overlapping ‘worlds’ to which it has belonged in the recent past. Sindhs reputation under the British was as a sleepy backwater, located at a distance from centres of colonial power. But this simplistically static picture belies its relationship, for instance, with new communication and transportation links that connected it in different ways to places outside its immediate provincial boundaries, whether Indian, imperial or international. By the time of British Indias independence, Sindh (and its port city of Karachi in particular) constituted a major crossroads: and while in the second half of the twentieth century it became more of a hub than it had ever been in its history, equally never before had so many people made it their final destination and home. This article, thus, traces the interconnected processes that, both before and since 1947, have helped to position, and arguably redefine, Sindhs place in the world.

Police, corruption and provincial loyalties in 1950s Karachi, and the case of Sir Gilbert Grace

So-called ‘ethnic’ – or provincial – rivalries have been an endemic feature of Pakistani life since its earliest post-independence days. Muslims from different parts of British India might have been brought together by their support for the League’s Pakistan demand in the months leading up to independence, but it took very little time once Pakistan had been created for pre-existing distinctions to re-emerge. For all the rhetoric about becoming ‘Pakistanis’, the identities of its new citizens usually depended on, and were linked to, the provinces from whence they originally hailed, whether this was the Punjab, Bengal or places that had become India. One of the major divides was between those who migrated to Pakistan and those already living in what became the state in August 1947. This article, drawing on official records and contemporary newspaper reports, engages with the question of these rivalries in the context of the federal capital Karachi’s security apparatus in the decade that followed independence. In particular, it highlights the intense rivalry that developed between the Karachi Police and the Pakistan Special Police Establishment (set up in 1948), which eventually resulted in the ousting of Sir Gilbert Grace from his post as British Inspector General of Police in Karachi, in 1956 amid mutual accusations of police corruption and malpractice. While the vast majority of Karachi’s non-Muslim police officers had left for India by the beginning of the 1950s, a new power struggle quickly emerged in the federal capital between ‘refugee’ displaced officers on the one hand and officers from the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) on the other. In effect, this ‘provincial’ competition mirrored the wider manoeuvring for power and influence that was taking place as Pakistan’s newly established services sought to accommodate the different sets of interests that came together after 1947. The resulting power struggle can also tell us a great deal about the role of the police in the everyday lives of the ordinary citizens who had made Karachi their home, demonstrating just how far people relied on possessing the right social connections to protect their interests in the context of Pakistan’s early years.