Abstracts
Theme: Peace and People’s Rights
Panel: Linking our Past to the Future
Session: The Regional Voices
 Imagined Unity as Binary Opposition to Regional Diversity: A study of Punjab History as a “Silenced Space” in Pakistani Epistemic Milieu
Tahir Kamran*
Abstract
It is a well-known fact that the minority areas of United Provinces and Behar spearheaded the Pakistan movement particularly from 1930s onwards. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan initially voiced the separatism on the basis of religion in the wake of Urdu Hindi controversy in 1867. The cultural symbols that subsequently became the vehicles of the Pakistan movement were essentially located in the regions that remained out of the geographical contours of the Pakistani state. Urdu language in that case can be put forward as an evident example. It was enforced from the top, causing disintegration as an impending destiny in 1971. Nevertheless, lessons have not been learnt from that tragedy, which had not only political and economic, but also cultural antecedents.
This was not just confined to the promotion of a peculiar lingua franca at the expense of regional languages and dialects. The appropriation of the past and ascribing it entirely new meanings where by all the diverse histories were disdainfully discarded found ubiquity in the ideological dispensation obtaining in Pakistan. The plurality explicitly manifesting itself in the cultural and historical diversity was artificially forged into an imagined unity through intellectual coercion, deemed as a prerequisite for the autocratic and extra-political forces unleashed in Pakistan right from the very beginning.
In the proposed study, the focus would be zeroed in on the exclusion of Punjab History from the Pakistani epistemic milieu. Punjab has been re-imagined as a territory totally devoid of its autonomous status within the larger polity of Pakistan. Its cultural heritage and its own history needs, therefore, to be recovered from the mists of the forgotten past. The proposed paper would be a step towards retrieving the lost history of the land of the five rivers.
* Dr. Tahir Kamran is the Chairman, Department of History, Government College University (GCU), Lahore, Pakistan. He is the author of Idea of History through Ages and founder editor of The Historian, a bi-annual history journal of the Department of History at the GCU.
Language Policy, Language Death and Vitality in Pakistan
Tariq Rehman*
Abstract
The language of a people is the repository of their culture and worldview. When this language disappears the culture and, hence the identity, of that particular people also disappears. That is why the squeezing effect of globalization on the languages of the world is much to be regretted since it is killing languages very fast.
In Pakistan, the language policy has favored English in elitist interests and in order to strengthen the state through the appropriation of modernity. It has also favored Urdu mainly in order to save the state from the assumed centripetal forces of language-based ethnicity. This has either weakened the languages of the country or killed the minor ones.
This paper looks at the effects of these policies and determines the vitality of Pakistani languages with a view to recommending how they can be strengthened and saved from death and weakness.
* Tariq Rahman, Ph.D, is presently National Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and South Asian Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. He has M.A, M.Lit and Ph.D degrees from British universities. He has been a Fulbright Scholar and a guest speaker in several American universities. He has also been a Guest Professor at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. Dr. Rahman has published about 80 research papers and 9 books. One of his books, Language and Politics in Pakistan (1996) has been given two awards by the Government of Pakistan. His most recent book Language, Ideology and Power (2002) is on language teaching and he is increasingly writing on education in Pakistan. He is also a reviewer of books and contributes articles to the press. He has lectured and contributed seminar papers in Pakistan and abroad.
Evaluation of Issues and Prospects of Adjustment of Pakhtuns in the Power Structure of Pakistan
Razia Sultana*
Pakhtuns are the largest ethnic community in the North West Frontier province as well as in Balochistan. At times Baloch compete with them on the issue of their demographic strength, however, historically, the claim of Pakhtuns prevails. Politically and militarily, Pakhtuns have dominated their respective areas of concentration over the ages. Pakhtuns have spearheaded the power structure not only in parts of Pakistan but also across the North Western border in the South and South East of Afghanistan. Though after the demarcation of the Durand Line (1893), the ethnic strength of the Pakhtuns was divided between Afghanistan and Pakistan; the dominance of Pakhtuns sustained in the two border provinces of Pakistan.
Being part of the federation of Pakistan, Pakhtun nationalist leadership mostly struggled against the Center to secure provincial autonomy, which was taken by the federation as tantamount to secession. The nationalist movement championed the cause of Pakhtuns for quite sometime. Even now, though it has apparently disappeared, it resurfaces through projecting the claim of Pakhtuns in the Frontier province by changing its name to Pakhtunkhwa. This issue has no more remained exclusive to the Pakhtun nationalist movement. Other political groups are equally projecting and supporting it. Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) has recently adopted a resolution in the Provincial Assembly in support of changing the name of the province. This act of the MMA has further diluted the clout and following of the Pakhtun nationalist movement.
As nationalist issues prevail, Pakhtuns have accommodated themselves in the power structure of Pakistan and now possess the second largest share of power after Punjabis. However, inter-ethnic tensions emanate from the centralized power structure of the state, issues of provincial autonomy, naming of the province after Pakhtuns as Pakhtunkhwa, and also prejudice against other ethnic groups such as Punjabis reemerge from time to time. The paper will investigate the spirit of reevaluating Pakhtuns’ accommodation in the power structure of the country and also suggest some tangible solutions for the long pending issues.
* *Dr. Razia Sultana teaches History at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad. Her field of study is Afghan politics in the historical perspective. Most of her research work is also on the Afghan politics that is published in the national and international journals.
The Birth of Pakistan and the Re-birth of Regionalism
Syed Jaffar Ahmed*
The central assertion of the historiography of Pakistan movement as has been conceived and projected in Pakistan, has been that the Muslim nationalism had provided the impulse to the Pakistan idea. From this is deduced another argument suggesting that once the Muslim nationalist ideology was fostered, it automatically negated all other attributes and identities of its adherents. Regionalism, for one, was also annihilated by the more powerful religious sentiment. The argument, by extension, suggests that the post-independence regional movements were bent upon destroying the momentum created by independence. Regionalism, representing the fissiparous tendencies could be controlled only by a strong center and a powerful state-machinery. The argument also justifies the strong-arm tactics employed against the aspirants of the regional autonomy in the new country.
The above falls short of explaining the actual historical background of the freedom movement and also distorts the regional reality. The paper would attempt to argue that despite Muslim League’s reliance on a more generalized Muslim nationalist stance, which was necessitated to distinguish the Muslim constituency from the rest of the Indian communities, regionalism was in fact in-built in the Muslim nationalist discourse. Muslim nationalism not only asserted at the Muslim separation, but being ‘nationalist’ it had to define itself territorially. Once this was realized and got transmitted into the constitutional parlays, the force of territorial regionalism was recognized. Pakistan was to constitute the Muslim majority areas and not the Muslim Diaspora in the sub-continent. The paper will argue how and why the regional sentiments in the Muslim majority regions came to rally round, rather than removed by, the Muslim nationalist platform.
The post-independence regional movements were therefore not a new phenomenon. They did not come into being for the first time; they only resurfaced, and were reborn. Given the failure of the Pakistani state in addressing the causes that gave rise to regionalism, the trend continued to flourish ever since independence. So there has been a continuity in regionalism to be traced back from the pre-independence to post-independence period. It may continue in future if the causes responsible for its growth are not addressed.
* Syed Jaffar Ahmed teaches Government, Politics and History in the Pakistan Study Center, University of Karachi. He is author of numerous books and articles falling under the above disciplines.
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