Anticolonialism, Nationalism, and State Formation: the Rise of Pakistan
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ANTICOLONIALISM, NATIONALISM, AND STATE FORMATION: THE RISE OF PAKISTAN KASIM ALI TIRMIZEY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA September 2018 © Kasim Ali Tirmizey, 2018 Abstract There is ongoing popular and scholarly debate about the rise of Pakistan as a nation-state. Much of this literature frames the emergence either in cultural terms as a territorial expression of transhistorical Muslim nationhood, or in a liberal framing as the outcome of the political mobilization of the Muslim community against Hindu domination. This dissertation makes a corrective by examining the constitutive role of radical anticolonialism in the rise of Pakistan, with a focus on the province of Punjab in British India from 1880 to 1947. I argue that the formation of the Pakistani nation-state entailed the condensation of multiple political struggles over rescaling empire. Muslim nationalism reified struggles over land, food, women’s bodies, and access to the colonial state as ethnic struggles between Muslims and Hindus, thus codifying class, caste and religion in essentialist terms. Despite popular energies of agrarian classes against Hindu Bania (moneylender caste) were redirected into radical anticolonialism by the Ghadar Party in the 1910s, the demand for Pakistan subsequently shifted the scale of anti-Bania antagonisms among agrarian classes onto claims for a Muslim national space. The materialization of a Muslim national space (Pakistan) and Hindu national space (India) cannot be understood in the absence of the repression of radical anticolonial movements such as the Ghadar Party, the Kirti Kisan Party, and communist organizing. When Muslim landlords foresaw that independence was inevitable and joined the Pakistan movement, those formerly associated with the Unionist Party projected their pro-landlord and pro-imperialist politics within a framework of Muslim nationalism defined by the Muslim League. The false character of decolonization in British India amounted to a passive revolution which restored and modernized imperial rule by reorganizing social hierarchies, structures of domination, and scales. This dissertation ii denaturalizes the scale of the nation by arguing how it is not some pre-given or transhistorical entity, but its emergence in the case of Pakistan was the outcome of the balance of forces between radical anticolonial initiatives and their repression and absorption into a restored imperial order. Passive revolution entails rescaling processes that reconfigure the vertical relationship among household, village, nation, and empire. iii Dedication To the kisan and mazdur of Pakistan and India. To those who struggle for liberation. iv Preface That there is one author and date printed on the first page of this dissertation points to a single author and end point. But, the reality is that the development and people involved in making this text possible are multiple. One narrative I can tell is that very early on I was fascinated by the stories my father would often repeat about our family’s journey from our ancestral home in eastern Punjab, in contemporary India, to various parts of western Punjab, in contemporary Pakistan, during the summer and fall of 1947. My father’s stories were quite critical of the formation of Pakistan. I would only learn later that this was not a unanimous position among my family members. I remember hearing a great-aunt, who was a teenager at the moment of partition and independence, recount the gruesome violence that women experienced, those being vital details that my father never told me. But, I was equally shocked to hear her defense about those events: Pakistan was necessary, even if blood needed to be spilled. Another starting point could be through my involvement in community radio in Montreal. While I was part of the South Asian community news collective there was a debate on naming the show. One member, Jaggi Singh, suggested the name of Ghadar Radio. This was a reference to the Ghadar Party, which was a radical anticolonial movement founded in 1913 by Punjabi diaspora living along the west coast of the United States and Canada. The Party connected the national liberation struggle in the Indian subcontinent with struggles against racist immigration systems in North America. The Ghadar Party showed how the struggle against imperialism could take on multiple nodal points that reached beyond the contours of British India. I wasn’t fully able then to appreciate the name of Ghadar Radio, nor was it able to capture the consensus of our v collective. Till today, the Ghadar Party continues to be a source of inspiration to a section of the South Asian diaspora in North America. Ghadar is a testament to a long history of anticolonial and antiracist organizing by the South Asian diaspora in North America. Its history should be remembered and reclaimed. This dissertation is a small attempt at recuperating some of those histories of anticolonial resistance. An important impetus of this dissertation has been my time with the committed and generous peasants, workers, and organizers with the Pakistan Kisan Mazdoor Tareek and Roots for Equity that do the slow work of political education. My time traveling around villages across Sindh, Punjab, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with these organizations was important to learn about the realities and struggles of working people. It was there that I felt that reclaiming the histories of past struggles could contribute to contemporary struggles. This was impossible without the friendship of Wali Haider, Azra Sayeed, and the rest of the staff at Roots for Equity. It is through long conversations over biryani and chai with Wali that I was first convinced by a historical materialist analysis for understanding social realities in Pakistan and beyond. I thank other people in Pakistan for making a temporary home for me there: Ali Raza, Bilal Tanweer, Asad Farooq, Waqas Butt, and Syed Azeem. I also thank the staff at the Punjab Archives, Pakistan Documentation Center in Islamabad, and the South Asian Resource and Research Centre, who always provided a hospitable cup of chai. Rizwan Mughal and his family opened their doors to me while in Islamabad. Others who I have met in transnational encounters who have been important to the development of this dissertation include, Ammar Ali Jan, Sara Kazmi, and Hashim Bin Rashid. I also want to thank the organizers and participants at the Commemorating Ghadar conference at the Lahore University of Management Sciences in December 2014. Another transnational friend and fellow ghadari has been Radha D’Souza. vi I need to give the highest gratitude to my dissertation supervisor, Stefan Kipfer, whose insights about theory and political practice have been generative for this work. My appreciation for Frantz Fanon and Antonio Gramsci was born through reading their texts in light of Stefan’s own writings, which alerted me to their historicism and geographical sensitivity. If there is anything worthy in this dissertation, it is thanks to Stefan’s meticulous reading, commenting, and rereading of these pages. I thank him immensely for his hospitality and generosity in accompanying me on this journey. I also want to thank the other members of my dissertation committee. Janam Mukherjee for being a dedicated reader and good consul. I always found it difficult to find my bearings in this interdisciplinary work, Janam has helped me to find the tools to be a part-time historian and for navigating the field of South Asian Studies. I also appreciate Anna Zalik’s good spirit, committed energy, and insights. Anna was an important point of departure in my readings on anticolonialism and critical social theory through her course on Development Studies. I want to thank Raju Das for creating a space to think about Marxist theory. His dedicated organizing of the Critical Geography Reading Group has been an important space to reflect on Marx and Marxism. Aziz Choudry has been a friend who first suggested that I study at York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies. I am forever grateful for his friendship, continuous guidance, and humour. Majed Akhtar, Waqas Butt, and Kyle Gibson gave feedback and helped in copy-editing some earlier chapter drafts. vii Multiple friends and colleagues at York University have seen me through this project: Aaron Saad, Tania Hernandez, Sonja Killoran-McKibben, Ayyaz Mallick, Julie Chamberlain, Kyle Gibson, Michael Classens, Qamar Zaidi, Caren Weisbart, Mburucuya Marcela Rrtiz Imlach, Murat Ucoglu, Bikrum Gill, Zahir Kolia, and Salmaan Abdul Hamid Khan. I am also grateful to Nadia Hasan for alerting me to the writings of key Pakistani feminists. I also want to dedicate this work to Zabia Afzal, a friend and colleague, who I got to know as a doctoral student and had accompanied some of the conversations that revolved around this dissertation. Her fiery, committed, and caring spirit inspired me. She was a committed community organizer and scholar-activist and showed immense promise. She left us too early. This research was only possible through institutional support. The staff at the Faculty of Environmental Studies made behind the scenes aspects of the doctoral program possible, and Alicia Filipowich at the York Centre for Asian Research created a welcoming space from where to work on campus. I also acknowledge the support I received in the form of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Canada Graduate Scholarship (2011-2014), SSHRC Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement (2014), and an Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) grant (2015-2016). I don’t know how to express my appreciation to my parents – Abu and Ami – as this dissertation would never have been possible without them. Their patience and love has kept me going during this project. I trace my appreciation for critical thought to my father, who first shared his love for Muslim activists or anticolonial militants like Abu Dhar al-Ghifari, Malcolm X, and Ali Shariati when I was still twelve years old.