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General Outline of the Main Area of Interest

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General Outline of the Main Area of Interest TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 2 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ................................................................................. 4 2.1 COLONIALISM, IMPERIALISM, POSTCOLONIALISM AND POST-COLONIALISM ............... 5 2.1.1 Colonialism and Imperialism ................................................................................. 6 2.1.2 Postcolonialism or Post-Colonialism? ................................................................. 11 2.2 WHAT CAN BE STUDIED AS POSTCOLONIAL AND HOW? ........................................... 16 2.2.1 Some Important Formulations and Concepts ......................................................... 23 2.3 A SHORT CONCLUSION .............................................................................................. 40 3. FROM THE RAJ TO ‘THE LAND OF THE PURE’: A VERY BRIEF HISTORICAL OUTLINE ..................................................................................................... 41 3.1 THE EAST INDIA COMPANY – THE PIONEER OF THE BRITISH CONQUEST OF INDIA ... 42 3.2 DIRECT BRITISH RULE AND ITS CHALLENGES ........................................................... 44 3.3 INDEPENDENCE AND PARTITION ................................................................................ 54 3.4 A SHORT NOTE ON THE NAME OF PAKISTAN ............................................................. 57 4. CRICKET AS A BODY CULTURE AND ITS PLACE WITHIN THE STUDY OF POSTCOLONIALISM .......................................................................................................... 57 4.1 SPORT AND POSTCOLONIALISM ................................................................................. 58 4.2 CRICKET AND BRITISH IMPERIALISM/COLONIALISM IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT 65 4.3 CRICKET AND COLONIAL RESISTANCE IN INDIA ........................................................ 75 4.4 CRICKET, PARTITION AND NATIONALISM .................................................................. 77 4.5 CRICKET, POSTCOLONIALISM AND THE RELATIONS BETWEEN PAKISTAN AND ITS FORMER METROPOLIS ........................................................................................................... 81 4.5.1 Cricket and the Pakistani Other ............................................................................... 88 5. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 93 6. APPENDIX ..................................................................................................................... 96 7. ENGLISH RÉSUMÉ ...................................................................................................... 99 8. CZECH RÉSUMÉ ........................................................................................................ 100 9. WORKS CITED AND CONSULTED ....................................................................... 101 1. Introduction Though already quite an experienced traveller, since I visited Pakistan in the summer of 2008, I have held the country in the greatest affection compared to other destinations of my journeys. Both the country‟s outstanding scenic beauty and its colourful society have got under my skin. As I had the chance to spend almost two months there I was able to catch various glimpses of Pakistani cultural and social life at various places throughout the country, mainly in its northern part. What caught my attention very soon after my arrival were some of the aspects of Pakistani social and cultural life that are obviously connected with the country‟s colonial past. It has become my ambition to link my own personal experience and love for the country and its people with the field of my study and some of the knowledge I have gained in the course of it, thus learning more about the region and the way its contemporary face and condition have been shaped. The connection is by all means not difficult to find thanks to Pakistan‟s colonial past. And hence the idea has emerged to explore the cultural impact of the colonial legacy on the society of today‟s Pakistan in my MA thesis. As soon as I started to think more seriously about the thesis it became clear that the topic must be narrowed down as the field of post(-)colonial studies encompasses a huge variety of issues. Pakistan emerged as an independent state in 1947. After almost ninety years under the British rule, the country has been established as a state of Muslims from the Indian subcontinent, separating itself from today‟s India, Bangladesh and Burma as a result of the Partition of India. The British rule over the Indian subcontinent officially started in 1858 when Queen Victoria, the then representative of the British Crown, took over the administration of the subcontinent from the British East India Company. The British influence over the area, however, began to spread already more than two hundred years earlier through the trading 2 activities of the East India Company. A treaty of friendship was negotiated between an English diplomat Sir Thomas Roe and the Mughal emperor Jahangir in 1615. After such a long time, it is natural that the British have left an indelible imprint on the society of the Indian subcontinent and hence also on the society of contemporary Pakistan whose cultural identities are rooted in the common history of the subcontinent. The English language, which is used as one of the official languages in Pakistan and the lingua franca of the country‟s elite and most government departments, is only the most obvious example. There are many other aspects of Pakistani cultural life that bear traces of the former British presence in the area. As I started to consider dealing with the importance and effects of some of these aspects on the Pakistani society and culture in my thesis, I tried to spot the feature that would be present throughout various social strata and important for the majority of the people. And I have found out that it is not just the English language that has had an immense effect on so many people of the region; even more people seemed to have appropriated yet another thing the British had brought – the game of cricket, for which the vast majority of Pakistanis have developed a real passion. In the field of post(-)colonial studies, not much has been written on the issue of sport as compared to other topics that have been dealt with. Nevertheless, sport can certainly be considered an undeniable part of different cultures; it can be seen as a form of expression and representation in the same way other features of human activities and behaviour that come under the heading of culture are. This fact has also contributed to my decision to choose cricket as one of the cardinal aspects of Pakistani culture and to demonstrate its importance as a colonial legacy. In my thesis, I will examine the nature of the link between (post-)colonialism and issues like sport with particular focus on cricket which may seem marginal at first glance but which, as I will try to justify, can have its special significance. My aim is to explore the various reasons for and implications of the appropriation of cricket by 3 the Pakistanis and the role the game has gained in contemporary Pakistan‟s society. I will elaborate on the importance of cricket in Pakistan as a feature of the complex (post-)colonial discourse. Hence I will draw attention to the perceptions and development of the game in the Indian subcontinent, to the cultural impact that the game has made on the society, and the ways in which the game works as a tool of redefining the mutual relationship of the former colony with its metropolis. My thesis is divided into three larger sections. The initial section is dedicated to the theoretical framework through which the main topic of my thesis is approached. It will provide an overview of concepts relevant to post(-)colonial analysis with respect to the argument of this work. The next part deals with a brief history of the Indian subcontinent under the influence of the British. On this historical background the story of cricket in colonial India and later in Pakistan, and the way it has been appropriated in the region will be illustrated in the last section. That section is devoted to cricket as a feature of the (post-) colonial discourse and makes use of the information provided in the first two parts of the thesis. 2. Theoretical Framework This section is meant as an introduction to the immensely complex fields of colonial and post(-)colonial theories. It will point to different academic approaches and disciplines that have shaped the body of contemporary post(-)colonial analysis and that have provided it with the necessary terms and concepts. It is designed for the reader to get an insight into the relevant fields and thus to present the necessary apparatus for grasping the mechanisms that have operated in the processes of framing the contemporary identities of post-colonial subjects. However, as the extent of postcolonial studies is extremely large, this thesis 4 obviously cannot aspire to provide an exhaustive image of the field with all the precursory theories and their consequent implications. Loomba in this respect claims that the term „post-colonialism‟ has become so heterogeneous and diffuse that it is impossible to describe satisfactorily what its study might entail. But this difficulty is partly due to the inter-disciplinary nature of postcolonial studies which may range from literary
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