The Politics of Self-Expression: the Urdu Middle-Class Milieu in Mid
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THE POLITICS OF SELF-EXPRESSION Middle-class political culture in interwar North India was haunted by fascistic resonances. Activists from various political camps believed in forms of Social-Darwinism, worshipped violence and war and focused their political action on public spectacles and paramilitary organization. This book argues that these features were part of a larger political culture – the politics of self-expression – that had lost sight of society as the normal space in which politics was to be conducted. Instead, there was an emphasis on the inner worlds of individuals who increasingly came to understand politics as an avenue to personal salvation. It proposes that this re-orientation of politics was the result of social transformations brought about by the coming of a consumer society. The politics of self-expression was fixated with matters related to political choices, the branding of clothes and bodies and the use of a political language that closely resembled advertising discourse. This study traces the socio-genesis of this new form of politics through a detailed analysis of material culture in the Urdu middle-class milieu. It examines how middle-class people arrived at their political opinions in consequence of how they structured their immediate spatial surroundings, and how they strove to define the experiences of their own bodies in a particularly middle-class way. The scope and arguments of this book make an innovative contribution to the historiography of modern South Asia. Markus Daechsel has studied history and political science at the University of Erlangen and the University of London. He is currently a lecturer of South Asian History at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests focus on the society, culture and politics of South Asian Muslims. ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY BOOKS The Royal Asiatic Society was founded in 1823 ‘for the investigation of subjects connected with, and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to, Asia’. Informed by these goals, the policy of the Society’s Editorial Board is to make available in appropriate formats the results of original research in the humanities and social sciences having to do with Asia, defined in the broadest geographical and cultural sense and up to the present day. THE MAN IN THE PANTHER’S THE HISTORY OF THE SKIN MOHAMMEDAN DYNASTIES Shota Rustaveli IN SPAIN Translated from the Georgian by Ahmed ibn Mohammed al-Makkari M. S. 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Waterhouse THE BRITISH OCCUPATION OF INDONESIA GRIEVANCE ADMINISTRATION 1945–1946 (VIKAYET) IN AN OTTOMAN Britain, the Netherlands PROVINCE and the Indonesian The Kaymakam of Rumelia’s ‘Record Revolution Book of Complaints’ of 1781–1783 Richard McMillan Michael Ursinus THE CHEITHAROL KUMPAPA: THE POLITICS OF THE COURT CHRONICLE OF SELF-EXPRESSION THE KINGS OF MANIPUR The Urdu middle-class milieu in Original text, translation and notes mid-twentieth-century Vol. 1. 33–1763 CE India and Pakistan Saroj Nalini Arambam Parratt Markus Daechsel ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY BOOKS: IBRAHIM PASHA OF EGYPT SERIES The Royal Asiatic Society’s Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt Fund, established in 2001 by Princess Fazilé Ibrahim, encourages the growth and development of Ottoman studies internationally by publishing Ottoman documents and manuscripts of historical importance from the classical period up to 1839, with transliteration, full or part translation and scholarly commentaries. GRIEVANCE ADMINISTRATION (VIKAYET) IN AN OTTOMAN PROVINCE The Kaymakam of Rumelia’s ‘Record Book of Complaints’ of 1781–1783 Michael Ursinus THE POLITICS OF SELF-EXPRESSION The Urdu middle-class milieu in mid-twentieth-century India and Pakistan Markus Daechsel First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2006 Markus Daechsel All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN10: 0–415–31214–0 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–203–48029–5 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–31214–1 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–48029–8 (ebk) FOR PAPI, MAMI, JUSTI AND AASHI CONTENTS Preface xi Note on transliteration xv Introduction 1 1 Politics against society 18 2 States of power 60 3 A class of bodies 93 4 Spaces of self-expression 128 5 The consumption of politics 162 Conclusion 205 Notes 211 Bibliography 236 Index 247 ix PREFACE This book is a very substantial revision – over large parts a complete rewrite – of my 2001 doctoral dissertation on middle-class political culture in Lahore. Not all empirical material presented in the dissertation has found a place in this book, and some new evidence – particularly about Hindu aspects of Urdu culture – has been added. The overall argument of my thesis has not been fundamentally changed, but it has been considerably tightened up and cleansed of unnecessary distractions. This book suggests that the political culture in the Urdu middle-class milieu of mid-twentieth-century South Asia had a distinct character that sets it apart both from a politics of material interests and nationalism as conventionally understood. This new orientation of politics, it is argued, was the product of complex processes of transformation that fit into the wider problematic of an emerging consumer society. My main aim has been to sketch the broad outline of this argument as clearly as possible in order to clear the ground for more detailed empirical studies in the future. The subject matter at hand is not one that can be ‘dealt with’ in a single definitive study or with reference to a definitive body of source material. All aspects of middle-class life – from the small acts of everyday life to literature, politics and the arts – are potentially of relevance. I expect to revisit several of these areas as part of my future research agenda, and would look forward to similar endeavours by other students of South Asian history. For the time being, all I wish to do is to get the ball rolling. This study has a clear political stance. I believe that the politics of self-expression has done considerable harm to the people of South Asia. This is in part a reflec- tion of the dire events that accompanied the writing of this book. Between 1997 and the present day we have witnessed the nuclearization of South Asia, the rise of Hindu nationalism, the pogrom of Gujarat, the transformation of sections of political Islam into a media-obsessed cult of terrorism and, last but by no means least, the consolidation of a new and pernicious form of Imperialism. This has given many aspects of political culture earlier in the twentieth century a terrible sense of foreboding. My German upbringing has also had an impact on my inter- pretation of events. I find it much more difficult than writers from the Anglo- Saxon world, or from South Asia itself, to shrug off the presence of fascistic xi PREFACE resonances as unimportant matters of the interwar zeitgeist. As this book offers a fairly ‘closed’ form of critique, it may be useful to emphasize that I do believe that there are better alternatives to self-expressionism. Any form of political action would fit the bill: that which takes concrete social matters seriously; that which places concerns for the community or society above those of the individ- ual and that which attempts to change the world for the better at that level. Many men and women are engaged in such activity – for instance, in leftwing grass-root mobilization, in trade unions, environmentalist campaigns and NGOs. Further away from my own political instincts, but no less relevant, are new and old forms of political Islam that keep their eyes firmly on a reordering of society and stay clear of the grandiloquence of the likes of al-Qacida. This book would not have been possible without the practical help and the intellectual input of a great number of people of whom I can only mention a small selection here. My first thanks go to my doctoral supervisor Francis Robinson, who left me the space I needed to develop my own arguments, but who nevertheless con- tributed with a number of gentle but important directives to the way my research was going. Special thanks also go to Avril Powell, who awakened my interest in South Asian history when teaching me as a graduate student and who has lent her invaluable support to my work ever since, and – rather belatedly – to Thomas Philipp who had a decisive influence on my academic development during my Magister years at the University of Erlangen, Germany.