IDEAS Book Talk Series: Showcasing Contemporary Scholarship on Pakistan
The IDEAS Book Talk Series (the ‘SERIES’) is a collaborative initiative of the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives (IDEAS) and Bazm-e-Aalam, moderated by Dr. Maryam S. Khan, Research Fellow at IDEAS.
Bazm-e-Aalam is an initiative dedicated to fostering interfaith and intercultural harmony, and promoting Pakistan-India dialogue, with the objective of building bridges and strengthening ties among people through cultural events, academic exchange and policy engagement.
The SERIES represents the shared vision of IDEAS and Bazm-e-Aalam to showcase and generate public conversations and discourses on recent and contemporary scholarly books on Pakistan in the humanities and social sciences. Apart from mainstream scholarship in English, the SERIES is committed to principles of diversity and inclusivity in providing a platform to writers, authors, and translators from marginalized groups and regions from across Pakistan. The SERIES is likewise committed to engaging its speakers on themes of marginality and religious-cultural assimilation, and to facilitating dialogue on interfaith and intercultural harmony, where possible.
Below is a list of the book talks, along with brief descriptions and links to their recordings:
Dr Yasser Kureshi | Seeking Supremacy: The Pursuit of Judicial Power in Pakistan
The emergence of the judiciary as an assertive and confrontational center of power has been the most consequential new feature of Pakistan’s political system. This book maps out the evolution of the relationship between the judiciary and military in Pakistan, explaining why Pakistan’s high courts shifted from loyal deference to the military to open competition, and confrontation, with military and civilian institutions. Yasser Kureshi demonstrates that a shift in the audiences shaping judicial preferences explains the emergence of the judiciary as an assertive power center. As the judiciary gradually embraced less deferential institutional preferences, a shift in judicial preferences took place and the judiciary sought to play a more expansive and authoritative political role. Using this audience-based approach, Kureshi roots the judiciary in its political, social and institutional context, and develops a generalizable framework that can explain variation and change in judicial-military relations around the world.
Dr Ali Qasmi | Qaum, Mulk, Sultanat: Citizenship & National Belonging in Pakistan
After the trauma of mass violence and massive population movements around the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, both new nation-states faced the enormous challenge of creating new national narratives, symbols, and histories, as well as a new framework for their political life. While leadership in India claimed the anti-colonial movement, Gandhi, and a civilizational legacy in the subcontinent, the new political elite in Pakistan were faced with a more complex task: to carve out a separate and distinct Muslim history and political tradition from a millennium-long history of cultural and religious interaction, mixing, and coexistence.
Drawing on a rich archive of diverse sources, Ali Qasmi traces the complex development of ideas of citizenship and national belonging in the postcolonial Muslim state, offering a nuanced and sweeping history of the country’s formative period. Qasmi paints a rich picture of the long, arduous, and often conflict-ridden process of writing a democratic constitution of Pakistan, while simultaneously narrating the invention of a range of new rituals of state—such as the exact color of the flag, the precise date of birth of the national poet of Pakistan, and the observation of Eid as a “national festival”—providing an illuminating analysis of the practices of being Pakistani, and a new portrait of Muslim history in the subcontinent.
Professor Mohammad Waseem | Political Conflict in Pakistan
This book addresses multiple clashes: between the high culture as a mission to transform the society, and the low culture of the land and the people; between those committed to the establishment’s institutional-constitutional framework and those seeking to dismantle the ‘colonial’ state; between the corrupt and those seeking to hold them to account; between the political class and the middle class; and between civil and military power. The author exposes how the ruling elite centralized power through militarization and judicialization of politics, that rendered the federal system into an empty shell and thus grossly alienated the provinces. The 18th Amendment only partially sought to set things right. The author discusses all this in the contexts of education and media as breeders of conflict, the difficulties of establishing an anti-terrorist regime, and the state’s pragmatic attempts at conflict resolution by seeking to keep the potential outsiders inside. This is a wide-ranging account of a country of contestations.
Mr. Ayaz Achakzai | My Life & Times: An Autobiography
My Life and Times is an autobiography of legendary Pashtun nationalist leader Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai (1907-73), commonly known as Khan Shaheed. It was originally written in Pashto, translated in English by his son Muhammad Khan Achakzai (ex Governor of Balochistan), and grandson Ayaz Achakzai. Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai wrote the bulk of his autobiography while he was in prison during the Ayub Khan regime (1958 – 1968). It is a very candid first person account of his life and not just a political memoir.
The book explores & critically reviews the dynamics of Pashtun nationalism in the Indian Subcontinent, the other side of the Freedom Movement and All India Muslim League, British Imperialism in the Indian Subcontinent, the politics of Indian National Congress, Pakistan beyond inception and the continuity of colonial legacy. It also outlines the story of overturning the 1956 Constitution of Pakistan, implementation of One Unit Scheme, General Ayub’s martial law and Samad Khan’s 14 years of imprisonment, and finally the fall of Dhaka.
Politically, it is the only self-written autobiography from Balochistan of a major Pashtun figure that has been translated into English.
Dr. Tariq Rahman | Pakistan’s Wars: An Alternative History
This book studies the wars Pakistan has fought over the years with India as well as other non-state actors. Focusing on the first Kashmir war (1947–48), the wars of 1965 and 1971, and the 1999 Kargil war, it analyses the elite decision-making, which leads to these conflicts and tries to understand how Pakistan got involved in the first place. The author applies the ‘gambling model’ to provide insights into the dysfunctional world view, risk-taking behaviour, and other behavioural patterns of the decision makers, which precipitate these wars and highlight their effects on India–Pakistan relations for the future. The book also brings to the fore the experience of widows, children, common soldiers, displaced civilians, and villagers living near borders, in the form of interviews, to understand the subaltern perspective. A nuanced and accessible military history of Pakistan, this book will be indispensable to scholars and researchers of military history, defence and strategic studies, international relations, political studies, war and conflict studies, and South Asian studies.
Anam Zakaria | 1971: A People’s History
The year 1971 exists everywhere in Bangladesh-on its roads, in sculptures, in its museums and oral history projects, in its curriculum, in people’s homes and their stories, and in political discourse. It marks the birth of the nation, its liberation. More than 1000 miles away, in Pakistan too, 1971 marks a watershed moment, its memories sitting uncomfortably in public imagination. It is remembered as the ‘Fall of Dacca’, the dismemberment of Pakistan or the third Indo-Pak war. In India, 1971 represents something else-the story of humanitarian intervention, of triumph and valour that paved the way for India’s rise as a military power, the beginning of its journey to becoming a regional superpower.
Navigating the widely varied terrain that is 1971 across Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, Anam Zakaria sifts through three distinct state narratives, and studies the institutionalization of the memory of the year and its events. Through a personal journey, she juxtaposes state narratives with people’s history on the ground, bringing forth the nuanced experiences of those who lived through the war. Using intergenerational interviews, textbook analyses, visits to schools and travels to museums and sites commemorating 1971, Zakaria explores the ways in which the year is remembered and forgotten across countries, generations and communities.
