SAMAJ - Latest Issue (Revues)

Shah Shuja’s ‘Hidden History’ and its Implications for the Historiography of Afghanistan

Introduction: Locating Shuja in the first Anglo-Afghan war and in the context of the Pashtun domination hypothesis

The first Anglo-Afghan war of 1839-1842 sets the stage for this examination of Shah Shuja, and the large volume of literature on the war itself requires attention before we can turn to the Afghan monarch who is most intimately associated with the catastrophic colonial failure in Pashtun dominated Afghanistan. The first Anglo-Afghan war is well documented yet poorly understood. It is well documented from the diplomatic and military perspectives, but questions still remain about what is generally viewed as the most consequential defeat suffered by colonial forces in the history of the British Empire.

Sir John William Kaye (1854) produced the first substantive treatment of the Afghan disaster and he located blame with the Governor General Lord Auckland and his circle of advisors. Subsequent authorities on the subject have in various ways exonerated Auckland (Norris 1967) an...

view article | [South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal]

Thinking beyond Secularism: The Catholic Church and Political Practice in Rural South India

This article re-opens the debate on secularism in India by looking at a religion and a region that has historically been marginal to this discourse, focusing on the way in which the Catholic Church has historically mediated the relationship between individuals and the state, among the fishing communities of South India. The Catholic Church’s dominant position among the fishing communities, its minority status within India, as well as theological and other shifts that have taken place within the global Church, lead it to articulate a secular, even radical politics as its primary mode of religious engagement. Radical clergy, many from fishing backgrounds, act as both organic and traditional intellectuals in the Gramscian sense, linking the traditional religious concerns of the Church to the secular interests of their parishioners. Likewise, villagers participate in Church-generated associations spaces to secure wider political goals. The paper concludes that certain forms of religious organisation in the public sphere might indeed be compatible with democracy, citizenship, and even secularism.

view article | [South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal]

The Political Theology of Violence in Contemporary India

What are we to make of the fact that most violence in India is rarely presented, or rarely presents itself, through visible actors, or through people taking responsibility for bombs, riots, arson and looting? Why is most violence represented by the police, by political parties and by those perpetrating the violence as a form of spontaneous combustion expressing seething anger, collective outrage and a deep sense of hurt? Why are bomb blasts, mob violence, arson and other atrocities happening without anyone claiming responsibility afterwards, without anyone providing justifications? Why are violent acts portrayed neither as homicides nor crimes but instantly metaphorized as expressions of collective emotions? In a country so saturated in political rhetoric it seems paradoxical that acts of violence have acquired their own semiotic register, a singular form of political 'communication'. What is the cultural logic of this portrayal of violence as quasi-natural events without actors?

I u...

view article | [South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal]

Bystander Tactics: Life on Turf in Karachi

This article posits an analytic of the bystander, as a supplement to studies of perpetrators and victims, in relation to political affiliation, mobilization and violence in Karachi. In particular, I use ethnographic findings to elucidate the tactics of anticipation used by Karachi residents of neighborhoods widely considered the turf of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). The examples of students’ and teachers’ reactions to a college rumble between rival groups, parents’ attempts to keep their sons from being recruited into party politics, and young people confident in their ability to navigate an economy of affiliation demonstrate a range of bystander tactics, in which subjection and subversion are aligned. Although metanarratives of democratization frequently elide the everyday activity of standing by, it constitutes a pervasive mode of participation in Karachi’s political landscape.

view article | [South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal]

The Making of a ‘Colony’ in Karachi and the Politics of Regularisation

Around half of Karachi’s population resides in localities that started life as unplanned settlements, which acquired different levels of security from eviction. This paper examines the relationship between demand-making by unplanned settlements and urban political process. It interprets the gradual transformation of a cluster originally on the geographic and social periphery of the city into a regularised colony through the lens of collective action. The diverse roles of migration, mobilisation, and collective identity which we find in individual stories and community histories, capture a range of processes and experiences within Karachi’s wide margin. The politics of regularisation thus offers a critical perspective on the dynamics of urban democracy.

view article | [South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal]

A Controversial Role Model for Pakistani Women

Al-Huda opened its first school of Islamic education in Islamabad in 1994. The institute branched out to Lahore and Karachi over the next few years and by now its network has grown to approximately 70 locations in urban areas all over Pakistan. More than 15,000 women have graduated with a diploma or certificate from one of Al-Huda’s courses while many more attend these lessons without enrolling formally. In addition, classes under the Al-Huda banner are carried out amongst Pakistani diaspora communities in North America, Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. The founder and leader of this movement is a woman called Dr. Farhat Hashmi. Her teachings form the core of study in Al-Huda classrooms and her lectures can attract audiences numbering in the thousands. Her message and fame are carried far and wide through audio cassettes and CDs, books and pamphlets, radio and television programs, and websites.

The curriculum at Al-Huda focuses on the texts of the Quran and Hadith, including tr...

view article | [South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal]

Tej City. Protests in Mumbai, 1988-2008

The paper aims at understanding the types, scope and contents of urban protests in Mumbai for the past twenty years. Firstly, it tries to define the nature of mass struggles within the city. Then it deals with the rather violent history of the city in the past twenty years. Thirdly, it describes the different types of urban protests and their evolution over time. Finally, it offers a typology of urban protests and discusses the changes occurring in the popular milieus. The class content of the ‘popular’ (which is not altogether dead) has been increasingly fragmented by a process of community-based assertion that led to protests led by groups representing small categories of the popular classes. In the period studied, workers’ struggles were lost while the more recent assertions of the rich who launched (near) urban protests were acknowledged and listened to. This segmentation helps to understand the limits and the ambiguousness of “civil society” rhetoric.

view article | [South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal]

Ravi Sundaram, Pirate Modernity: Delhi’s Media Urbanism

The field of urban studies is a growing one as Indian cities transform beyond recognition. In his book Pirate Modernity: Delhi’s Media Urbanism, Ravi Sundaram tries to capture this transformation, using a theoretical lens little explored in existing literature. To wit, Sundaram is interested in ‘the evaporation of the boundary between technology and urban life’ which has produced ‘a delirious disorientation of the senses’ (p. 7).The examples of such evaporation and of a newly technologized urban are many - apart from technology in the form of older infrastructures (roads, pipes, etc.), there is now also the ‘the dramatic live experience brought about by flickering film, television, advertizing and mobile screens’ (p. 5), electronically boosted soundscapes, endless publicity images, whizzing cars, and mangled bodies in road accidents, in what is a non-stop proliferation of technology-driven urban forms. Following Walter Benjamin and other theorists, Sundaram argues that in such speed...

view article | [South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal]

Urban Democracy: A South Asian Perspective

The ‘urban question’ has attracted increasing attention since the 1990s in the South Asian context because the issues at stake take on a particular urgency in the subcontinent for several reasons. A first, obvious reason is the increasing (and even strategic) importance of cities from a demographic, political and economic perspective. South Asia is home to 5 of the 10 largest cities—in fact, megacities—in the world. At the same time, with an urban population of 485 million, South Asia remains one of the least urbanized regions of the world (30% of its population live in cities). However, with an urban growth rate estimated at 2.7% per annum between 2000 and 2030, only second to Sub-Saharan Africa (Cohen, 2004), the urban population is bound to increase. Since 42.9% percent of this urban population lives in slums (with a proportion as high as 69% in Nepal and Bangladesh and 47% in Pakistan) (Mathur 2010:11, quoting the figures of the State of the Asian Cities Report 2010/2011), the c...

view article | [South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal]

Party Political Panthers: Hegemonic Tamil Politics and the Dalit Challenge

The Viduthalai Ciruthaigal Katchi (VCK, Liberation Panther Party) has successfully transformed from the largest Dalit movement in Tamil Nadu into a recognised political organisation. Social movement theorists like Gamson (1990) view political recognition and engagement as one of the main aims and successes of social mobilisation. Despite the obvious achievements of the VCK, however, activists and commentators express disappointment or disillusionment with its performance. The Panthers clearly reject the caste hierarchy, but they increasingly adopt hegemonic forms of politics which can undermine their aims. This paper, thus, engages with the questions of movement institutionalisation by tracing the political trajectory of the VCK and charting its resistance to and compliance with Dravidian hegemony. It argues that institutionalisation needs to be understood within particular socio-political contexts and notes how the hegemony of Dravidian politics partly explains the disjuncture between activist and political perceptions. It portrays how the dominant political parties have set the template for what it means to ‘do’ politics in Tamil Nadu which serves as both an opportunity and a constraint for potential challengers.

view article | [South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal]