The State of Islam , livre ebook

The State of Islam
THE STATE OF ISLAM
Culture and Cold War Politics in Pakistan
Saadia Toor
 
 
First published 2011 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Saadia Toor 2011
The right of Saadia Toor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN     978 0 7453 2991 8     Hardback ISBN     978 0 7453 2990 1     Paperback ePub ISBN 978 1 7837 1175 8 Mobi ISBN 978 1 7837 1176 5
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To Ammi and Abba
 
 
 
Contents
Acknowledgments   1    Introduction       Indian Muslims and the Politics of Representation       Muslim Nationalism in the Political Arena       A “Maimed, Mutilated and Moth-eaten Pakistan”       Communism and Muslim Nationalism   2    Consolidating the Nation-State: East Bengal and the Politics of National Culture       The Contradictions of Independence       The Trouble with East Bengal       “Muslim” Urdu versus “Hindu” Bangla       The State of the Muslim League       Producing the Law-and-Order Society       “One Unit” and the Politics of Parity   3    Post-Partition Literary Politics: The Progressives versus the Nationalists       The Progressive Writers Association       The New “National Question”       The Progressives Throw Down the Gauntlet       The Discourse of Loyalty       Literature, Partition and “Nation-building”       The Iron Hand in the Velvet Glove   4    Ayub Khan’s Decade of Development and its Cultural Vicissitudes       The Rise of the “Establishment Writer”       Cold War Literary Trends       Managing Islam       The Anti-Ayub Movement       Anti-Communist Propaganda and the Attack on “Islamic Socialism”       The Nation of Islam?       The Problematics of Pakistani Culture   5    From Bhutto’s Authoritarian Populism to Zia’s Military Theocracy       Cozying up to the Gulf States       Culture and Ideology Under Bhutto       A Right-wing Movement and a Coup       “ Pakistan ka matlab kya? Phaansi, ko r e, General Zia! ”       Restoring the status quo ante       The Nizam-i Mustafa       Challenges to the Regime       Culture and Ideology Under Zia       Islam and the Military   6    The Long Shadow of Zia: Women, Minorities and the Nation-State       Women and/as Property       Erasing the Non-Muslim “Other”   Epilogue The Neoliberal Security State       “ Jithe vekho faujañ ee faujañ ”       The State of Progressive Politics   Notes References Index
 
 
 
Acknowledgments

This book is the product of a long and rewarding journey. Along the way I have accrued debts of gratitude to several wonderful people.
This book started life as a PhD dissertation in the field of Development Sociology at Cornell University. I owe a lot to the members of my dissertation committee—Shelley Feldman, Phil McMichael and Biodun Jeyifo—for their patience and intellectual generosity. A big thank you to Phil McMichael in particular for all his help in the years since I left Cornell.
Staff members at the National Archives in Islamabad and the Punjab Public Library in Lahore went above and beyond the call of duty to help me in my research. A very special thanks is due to Ahmed Salim for giving me access to historical material I could not have found elsewhere, and to his sister for graciously hosting me for several weeks while I pored over it.
At CUNY, the course releases I received through the PSC-CUNY Women’s Studies Fellowship Program, the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, the Center for the Humanities, and the Faculty Fellowship Publications Program freed up valuable time from teaching to think, research and write. Two of the chapters in this book benefited enormously from being shared with colleagues in the CUNY Faculty Fellowship Publications Program, and in the seminars on “Capitalism and Catastrophe” and “Aftermaths” at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, and the Center for the Humanities respectively.
I have been fortunate to have had warm and supportive colleagues in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work and in the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at the College of Staten Island.
I am grateful for the generous help extended by Kamran Asdar Ali, David Gilmartin, David Lelyveld, David Ludden, Tayyab Mahmud, Vijay Prashad, Shahnaz Rouse and Neil Smith over the years. A very special thanks is due to Tariq Ali for reading the original book proposal and giving me valuable feedback, and to Ayesha Siddiqa for taking me under her wing and introducing me to her (now my) editor at Pluto Press, Roger van Zwanenberg.
I am indebted to Roger for seeing a book in the prospectus I had originally submitted, and for giving me the opportunity to publish with Pluto Press. The editorial and production team at Pluto has my gratitude for their hard work, patience, professionalism and good humour throughout the process of transforming the manuscript into a book.
In Ithaca, Philadelphia, Urbana-Champaign and beyond, I have been lucky enough to have the comradeship of many wonderful people: Humera Afridi, Snigdha Ali, Cindy Caron, Zahid Chaudhary, Sasha Constanza-Chock, Sandra Comstock, Iftikhar Dadi, Tulsi Dharmarajan, Indranil Dutta, Jude Fernando, Priya Gopal, Amy Guptill, Khalid Hadeed, Tanya Heurich, Farhana Ibrahim, Shakti Jaisingh, Shuchi Kapila, Sunaina Maira, Sheetal Majithia, Sarah McKibben, Monika Mehta, Sujata Moorti, Peter Morey, Carol Jinhi Park, Mindy Peden, Raj Patel, Ra Ravishankar, Cabeiri Robinson, Simona Sawhney, Magid Shihade, Dina Siddiqi, Ramkumar Sridharan, Ajantha Subramanian, Shivali Tukdeo, Meg Wesling, Chi-ming Yang, Usha Zacharias and Anna Zalik.
In New York City, I found an amazing community of people whose emotional and political support has been invaluable for me: Zohra Ahmed, Amna Akbar, Anthony Alessandrini, Aniruddha Das, Kazembe Balagun, Padmini Biswas, Tahir Butt, Miabi Chatterji, Ruchi Chaturvedi, Robindra Deb, Blair Ellis, Jayanth Eranki, Kouross Esmaili, Arvind Grover, Anjali Kamat, Sangeeta Kamat, Ronak Kapadia, Leili Kashani, Surabhi Kukke, Deepa Kumar, Jinee Lokaneeta, Aleyamma Mathew, Biju Mathew, Amanda Meade, Sangay Mishra, Tejasvi Nagaraja, Prachi Patankar, Radhika Piramal, Andy Pollock, Sekhar Ramakrishnan, Prerana Reddy, Sabina Sawhney, Ragini Shah, Silky Shah, Svati Shah, Ashley Smith, Amita Swadhin, Sue Susman, Max Uhlenbeck, Saba Waheed and Michael Washburn.
Ayaz Ahmed, Nikhil Aziz, Kate Bedford, Yukiko Hanawa, Karen Miller, Lisa Jeane Moore, Sarah Schulman and Jeanne Theoharris have provided friendship, love and support above and beyond the call of duty.
A very special thanks to Manan Ahmed, Shehla Arif, Abira Ashfaq, Sofia Checa, Saqib Khan, Zahra Malkani, Rakshi Saleem, Sahar Shafqat and Adaner Usmani of Action for a Progressive Pakistan for being such wonderful comrades in struggle. Without the community they have helped create, these past few years would have been bleak indeed.
My work with the Mazdoor Kissan Party gave me more political insight and a deeper sense of the history of the Left in Pakistan than any book I could have read. I learnt a great deal about what it means to live a life of unflinching activism from Ghulam Nabi Kalloo in the short time I knew him before his death and remain in awe of his indefatigable energy and commitment to the cause of working people. Latif Chaudhry, Parveen Kalloo, Kamoka and Bai Siddique in Faisalabad, and Amir Butt, Syed Azeem and Taimur Rahman in Lahore were my second family for two eventful years. I am also grateful for the chance to have gotten to know the wonderful Abdullah Malik before he died; memories of summer mornings spent in political discussion on his veranda remain among my most cherished.
Amanullah Kariapper and Qalandar Memon fill me with hope for the future of the Left in Pakistan, and inspire me with their energy and commitment.
Urvashi Butalia, Uma Chakravarti, Mary John, Tejaswini Niranjana and Paromita Vohra have been exemplars of trans-border feminist solidarity, and their love and intellectual support has been enormously sustaining over the years.
I would have been well and truly lost without the keen wit, sharp politics and genuine warmth of Firdaus Arshad, Neelam Hussain, Nighat Said Khan, Lala Rukh and Azra Sayeed. Rubina Saigol (Ruby) and Farzana Shameem (Farzee), in particular, have always been there with unconditional love and entertainment.
My extended family on both my father’s and mother’s side has given me so much love and joy over the years that I cannot even begin to thank them. I wish my Dadi could have lived to see this book in print; I know that she would have been extremely proud. I also know that my Nani is eagerly awaiting it, mostly because it means that I will finally have time to cook myself a decent meal.
I am grateful to have old friends like Tahira Jaffer, Tayyaba Jaffer, Maryam (Mimi) Khan, Amina Munir, Saira Saif and Amna Yaqin whose love has sustained me through many difficult times.
My gratitude towards Raza Mir and Farah Hasan for their warm hearts and generous spirits is unbounded; their home has been a treasu