Popular in Social Sciences

Books

City Time: On Being Sentenced to Rikers Island

Independent Scholar David A. Campbell

Culture and Society

The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place

New York University Harvey Moltoch

Economics

Gender and Economics

University of California Santa Barbara Shelly Lundberg

American Politics

Keeping the Republic

Boston College Marc Landy

Banks and Policy Organisations

Greening the financial sector

European Investment Bank Matteo Ferrazzi

British Politics

Entrepreneurial thinking: the politics and practice of policy impact

University of Sheffield Matthew Flinders

Culture and Society

Carceral Entrapments: Views from the Prison/Street Interface in India

Indian Institute of Technology Delhi Mahuya Bandyopadhya

Colonial Infrastructure and the Politics of Partition of Punjab

View more insights in Social Sciences - Anthropology

View more figures from American University

View the page of Mubbashir Rizvi

Read the Study

Mubbashir Rizvi discusses the role of colonial infrastructure and technological change in shaping the climate for mass violence in Punjab during Partition.

Image courtesy of interviewee. April 9, 2024

Generating Workspace

Export as PDF

This video video discusses the evolving scholarship surrounding the partition of India and Pakistan, focusing on the narratives it has generated in fiction and social sciences over the last 30 years. Initially, literary responses to the partition highlighted individual experiences, while later social scientific literature emphasized its broader socio-political impacts, such as nationalism and authoritarianism.

The speaker reflects on the personal and historical context of partition, specifically in Punjab, illustrating how differing experiences of displacement, loss, and identity varied greatly across regions. They explore how the partition acted as a disjuncture between individual histories and national narratives.

The discussion also addresses the socio-economic transformations that arose from land reforms and privatization processes in post-partition Pakistan, particularly in the context of a major land rights movement in the early 2000s. This video video movement arose in response to the Pakistani military's attempts to monetize sharecropping arrangements, leading to community resistance.

The speaker highlights the need to re-examine how colonial infrastructures, such as irrigation and land settlement policies, reshaped relationships among communities and affected identities across religious and ethnic lines. They aim to investigate the implications of land laws and bureaucratic practices on community dynamics and economic behavior, looking at the intersections of race, religion, and class in shaping post-partition identities.

Ultimately, the conversation emphasizes the complexity of partition's legacy and the diverse experiences of its aftermath, advocating for a nuanced understanding that accounts for regional variations and the socio-economic transformations that continue to influence contemporary identities in Punjab.

Language:

Export as PDF

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

00:00.295 --> 00:03.105
This is a topic that has been, in

00:03.815 --> 00:06.185
scholarship in media, and now film

00:06.325 --> 00:08.865
and narrative in popular culture, particularly

00:08.865 --> 00:10.065
for the last 30 years.

00:10.365 --> 00:12.145
Um, I would say that, you know,

00:12.145 --> 00:15.585
the partition has been a subject of, inquiry

00:15.845 --> 00:18.705
and, a lot more in terms of narratives

00:18.765 --> 00:20.625
and stories and short fictions.

00:20.625 --> 00:23.585
Right after the partition, we had lots of,

00:24.475 --> 00:27.425
short story writers, lots of,

00:27.935 --> 00:29.665
discussions in fiction.

00:30.295 --> 00:32.585
It's only from, I would say 1970s

00:32.605 --> 00:34.465
or eighties onwards that we are seeing a lot

00:34.465 --> 00:39.105
of social scientists and historians, discussing

00:39.105 --> 00:41.025
and engaging the topic of partition.

00:41.565 --> 00:45.385
So one of the things that I also look at is how the

00:46.345 --> 00:49.705
questions change from the 1980s onwards.

00:49.725 --> 00:50.785
And much of the,

00:51.345 --> 00:55.025
questioning in fiction writing has had been a lot more kind

00:55.025 --> 00:58.865
of this individual personalized relationships and rupture.

00:59.405 --> 01:01.225
Um, whereas a lot

01:01.225 --> 01:03.865
of the social scientific literature has been focusing a lot

01:03.885 --> 01:07.385
on the after effects of partition, whether on gendered forms

01:07.405 --> 01:10.865
of nationalisms, the rise of authoritarianism, militarism.

01:11.035 --> 01:14.025
There is this kind of juxtaposition between oral history

01:14.125 --> 01:16.505
and kind of national history,

01:16.505 --> 01:18.065
that are written in con

01:18.085 --> 01:21.625
and the partition becomes the way of the disjuncture

01:21.625 --> 01:23.385
between the people's history

01:23.485 --> 01:25.145
and the kind of national trajectory.

01:25.845 --> 01:28.745
So that has been one of the kind of re

01:28.745 --> 01:31.065
ways in which I have come to understand.

01:31.125 --> 01:34.145
But one of the things that I was always thinking

01:34.145 --> 01:37.865
through was the vastness of this event

01:38.245 --> 01:41.625
and how it took place, had very kind of specific

01:42.185 --> 01:43.225
regional,

01:43.225 --> 01:45.065
how it played out in a very different context

01:45.205 --> 01:46.545
in regional ways.

01:46.745 --> 01:49.585
Particularly when I think about my own family's experience,

01:49.585 --> 01:54.065
there's certainly is a kind of loss of belonging,

01:54.415 --> 01:58.265
kind of sense of exile, the loss of ancestral homes

01:58.485 --> 02:01.705
and graveyards of my family being from up.

02:02.445 --> 02:05.225
But there still is majority of my father's family

02:05.285 --> 02:06.985
and my maternal family is still in India,

02:07.045 --> 02:09.905
and we wind up going to Pakistan, whereas the case,

02:10.125 --> 02:13.185
and where the site where I did a lot of my research

02:13.285 --> 02:16.745
for my field work, which was a earlier work in central

02:17.045 --> 02:20.385
Punjab, the, the scale of transformation,

02:20.425 --> 02:21.545
I mean, it was a genocide.

02:21.605 --> 02:24.105
It was a genocidal form of violence with absolute

02:25.765 --> 02:26.885
transferal population.

02:27.425 --> 02:30.925
So you have, districts like in Amri Reserve

02:30.955 --> 02:35.085
that has about a 50% population of Muslims in 1941

02:35.425 --> 02:37.765
and almost 0% in 1951.

02:38.195 --> 02:42.445
Same thing happens in Montgomery in, okra Sahi places

02:42.445 --> 02:45.565
where I did field work, where you go from having something

02:45.565 --> 02:50.365
like 33 to 40% of population of Hindu with sq to almost one

02:50.425 --> 02:53.005
or 0% in 1951.

02:53.345 --> 02:57.485
So that scale requires, I thought, a different,

02:58.345 --> 03:01.255
rubric to understand how partition unfolded

03:01.795 --> 03:05.655
and why the violence takes place at the scale it does,

03:05.775 --> 03:10.295
particularly in the Punjab, but not all over the Punjab.

03:10.295 --> 03:11.615
So that's one thing I want started

03:11.615 --> 03:12.735
paying a lot of attention to.

03:13.155 --> 03:17.695
Um, the site of absolute, this genocidal scale

03:17.735 --> 03:19.295
of violence and absolute transfer

03:19.295 --> 03:22.495
of population is very much in the central heartland

03:22.495 --> 03:26.255
of Punjab and in, in what I consider the canal colonies.

03:26.755 --> 03:29.615
And as you go further and further south towards sin,

03:30.435 --> 03:34.375
or when you go towards, you don't have the immediate

03:34.895 --> 03:38.495
transfer of population, that you have in August

03:38.955 --> 03:43.255
and September of 1947, but it's a more protracted

03:43.955 --> 03:46.415
and, and you still have communities

03:46.415 --> 03:49.135
that are still living in southern Punjab and sin.

03:49.595 --> 03:52.735
So partition unfolds differently in different regions.

03:52.795 --> 03:56.135
And I wanted to look at the kind of, the story

03:56.135 --> 03:57.375
behind that monograph.

03:57.395 --> 04:00.655
My actual research, my book is all based on a land rights

04:01.015 --> 04:03.935
movement, one of the largest land rights movement that took,

04:03.995 --> 04:05.295
that emerged in

04:06.175 --> 04:09.535
Pakistan in Punjab in the early two thousands.

04:09.915 --> 04:13.295
And that was to resist the Pakistani militaries attempt

04:13.515 --> 04:18.095
to privatize and monetize, sharecropping for,

04:18.355 --> 04:21.655
for, military associated farms that were

04:22.205 --> 04:24.655
managed under a sharecropping system from the

04:24.655 --> 04:25.735
British colonial times.

04:26.155 --> 04:27.895
So it was a bit of a neoliberal move,

04:27.915 --> 04:31.175
but under a general ma as a form of reform

04:31.915 --> 04:35.015
to monetize what had been a sharecropping relationship

04:35.015 --> 04:38.255
with its peasant farmers, the tenant farmers were alarmed

04:38.255 --> 04:41.175
because under sharecropping they would have permanent land

04:41.175 --> 04:42.855
use rights as tenant farmers.

04:42.965 --> 04:44.975
They could be evicted at the end of the lease,

04:45.235 --> 04:47.615
and they wanted some assurances and guarantees.

04:48.275 --> 04:51.975
The military basically replied, who are you to ask us?

04:52.275 --> 04:54.495
You know, it was a very unilateral kind of,

04:55.155 --> 04:57.615
and that led to this,

04:58.825 --> 05:00.795
very militant kind of peasant movement.

05:01.135 --> 05:02.635
And one thing that fascinated

05:02.635 --> 05:05.235
and something that explore in my book, the ethics of,

05:05.235 --> 05:08.035
staying, is

05:08.575 --> 05:10.875
why is it the Pakistani military

05:11.065 --> 05:14.755
that can dismiss elected governments that can launch,

05:15.045 --> 05:18.835
coups is struggling to justify,

05:19.555 --> 05:20.875
repressive measures and violence

05:21.335 --> 05:23.755
to suppress this movement at that particular time.

05:24.255 --> 05:27.475
So the movement, so the book tracks the rise

05:28.015 --> 05:30.195
and, the successes

05:30.195 --> 05:33.795
and losses of this movement from the year 2000 to 2014,

05:35.505 --> 05:37.435
that brought me back to the story

05:37.575 --> 05:39.075
of something about this region

05:39.335 --> 05:41.675
and the relationship between the state and the peasantry,

05:42.495 --> 05:47.315
and how this region is seen as a,

05:47.825 --> 05:51.555
kind of exceptional in the way it was,

05:51.785 --> 05:55.795
settled in the late 19th, early 20th century as part

05:55.795 --> 05:59.525
of the canal irrigation canal colonization projects.

06:00.105 --> 06:03.165
So the, the, the people who are kind

06:03.165 --> 06:06.885
of reside in this region, the peasants are seen as a kind

06:06.885 --> 06:11.195
of modern peasantry, people who have a kind

06:11.195 --> 06:13.275
of a closer relationship with state bureaucracy.

06:13.705 --> 06:16.915
Many of them had been particularly chosen

06:17.375 --> 06:21.395
or had settled here parti, specifically for,

06:22.295 --> 06:26.225
with ideas of being more productive farmers.

06:26.925 --> 06:29.425
Uh, so it creates a different type

06:29.425 --> 06:30.745
of relationship in the state

06:30.925 --> 06:34.105
and, this re this regional population.

06:34.765 --> 06:37.185
The other thing that emerged to me is also the fact

06:37.185 --> 06:39.625
that many of the people who reside in these farms

06:39.725 --> 06:42.585
or in this region are actually themselves

06:43.445 --> 06:45.385
dis were displaced in 1947.

06:45.485 --> 06:47.905
So many of the people who reside in these villages came

06:48.245 --> 06:51.025
and there was almost this absolute transfer of populations

06:51.035 --> 06:53.665
where Sikhs and Hindus who resided in these farms,

06:54.125 --> 06:58.065
almost all left for, Tiana Amri,

06:58.135 --> 06:59.225
Eastern Punjab,

06:59.565 --> 07:02.705
and many of the people who came from Amri, Luana ur,

07:03.135 --> 07:04.585
wind up taking their place.

07:05.445 --> 07:07.065
So that backstory

07:07.725 --> 07:11.505
and the kind of role of this kind of regional modernity

07:12.365 --> 07:16.265
and the intensity of, of the kind of violence that was in,

07:16.325 --> 07:19.745
that impacted this region that was, experienced in,

07:19.745 --> 07:23.265
in these farms, made me start thinking about the role of

07:23.875 --> 07:28.625
canal irrigation, modes of modern kind of experimentation

07:28.775 --> 07:31.145
with, village settlements

07:31.845 --> 07:36.545
and the role they had in intensifying certain kinds

07:36.545 --> 07:38.425
of rivalries or relationships

07:38.605 --> 07:40.585
or transforming the ideas of custom

07:41.495 --> 07:45.065
that may have played a major role at the time of partition.

07:46.285 --> 07:50.025
The topic of partition has been studied mostly at a kind

07:50.025 --> 07:53.745
of much more national or sub continental level, of course.

07:53.965 --> 07:58.465
So the, the literature that has been kind of looking at it

07:58.465 --> 08:02.185
as a kind of larger story of the backdrop to partition is

08:02.185 --> 08:04.225
of course, the history of

08:05.365 --> 08:09.025
modern reformist movements, the rise of kind of,

08:09.855 --> 08:11.185
popular politics.

08:11.605 --> 08:16.065
It kind of ranges from elite competition among reformers

08:16.445 --> 08:20.545
of different, from starting from 18 19th century within

08:20.655 --> 08:22.465
both the kind of Indian Congress party

08:22.765 --> 08:24.785
or the Congress party in 1885,

08:25.325 --> 08:30.105
and within kind of Muslim community as like reform movements

08:30.165 --> 08:33.785
for Indian Muslims, particularly from 18 19th century.

08:33.925 --> 08:37.225
So say. So there is that kind of trajectory

08:37.325 --> 08:40.145
of a certain kind of elite attempts to reform

08:40.165 --> 08:43.465
and participate and kind of craft on modern kind

08:43.465 --> 08:44.705
of populist politics.

08:45.285 --> 08:47.265
And then you have another set of literature

08:47.265 --> 08:49.785
that's much more attentive to populism

08:49.965 --> 08:54.185
and looking at the rise of, ideas around nation

08:54.795 --> 08:59.045
imagination of community, the rise of what it means

08:59.045 --> 09:02.885
to be an Indian, and also the questions around how

09:02.985 --> 09:04.325
and who gets to define that,

09:04.825 --> 09:08.245
and the role of the minority question that emerges

09:08.425 --> 09:13.245
as we start moving towards a very kind of, kind

09:13.245 --> 09:16.045
of a, you know, as a kind of rise of monolithic ideas

09:16.065 --> 09:18.285
of nationalism emerge, the exclusions

09:18.285 --> 09:19.645
that are coming in the debates

09:19.645 --> 09:22.645
and coming up with different minority communities,

09:22.645 --> 09:24.285
particularly Muslim nationalism.

09:24.745 --> 09:28.325
So I'm, I'm giving a very broad overview to a very,

09:28.585 --> 09:32.925
you know, lot vast literature, particularly,

09:32.925 --> 09:36.605
that is in very contested from like elite politics

09:36.605 --> 09:37.685
to sub studies.

09:38.345 --> 09:43.085
But then you also have, certainly many,

09:43.365 --> 09:46.725
scholars who are looking and specifically studying ality

09:46.945 --> 09:49.005
and kind of regional experiences of

09:49.005 --> 09:53.365
what the partition meant in sin, what it means in Punjab.

09:53.905 --> 09:58.125
But I often the, the kind of, partition

09:58.635 --> 10:00.965
gets left out as a kind of grand event

10:01.185 --> 10:03.285
and how that is being experienced differently.

10:03.665 --> 10:05.445
And one thing that I wanted to like pay attention

10:05.545 --> 10:09.445
to is why is it that the,

10:09.955 --> 10:14.605
some specific districts of Punjab experienced this kind

10:14.605 --> 10:18.725
of intense genocidal violence, whereas other parts

10:18.745 --> 10:20.325
of even within Punjab

10:20.345 --> 10:22.845
and other regions have a very different,

10:22.845 --> 10:25.165
certainly there's a lot of violence in Bengal,

10:25.625 --> 10:28.245
in West Bengal, but the dynamics are slightly

10:28.245 --> 10:29.565
different in certain ways.

10:29.745 --> 10:32.645
Uh, so I wanted to kinda explore the specificity of that

10:32.945 --> 10:35.765
and what partition looks like regionally and the

10:35.765 --> 10:38.445
after effects that are being felt slightly differently

10:38.445 --> 10:42.565
because there is a kind of greater movement of reconnecting

10:42.745 --> 10:47.165
and kind of, in both Pakistan and India pajab

10:47.515 --> 10:49.685
because of the larger diasporas

10:49.785 --> 10:54.765
and also a way of a way of rethinking,

10:55.065 --> 10:56.205
the kind of experience

10:56.225 --> 11:00.165
and the loss of a shared, maybe ecumenical history

11:00.435 --> 11:03.645
that had emerged, you know, over the long dur

11:03.865 --> 11:04.885
of, of that region.

11:05.425 --> 11:08.125
So I'm kind of exploring that question a little bit.

11:08.145 --> 11:09.805
And this is a very small article.

11:10.505 --> 11:14.525
So I think it's kind of my beginning, into

11:15.045 --> 11:19.205
a question of a mode of racialization that happens with,

11:19.905 --> 11:22.645
certain kind of economic

11:23.445 --> 11:28.025
and, transformation that I kind of call infrastructural

11:28.895 --> 11:32.625
from land settlement records that change the relationship

11:32.625 --> 11:35.065
between community, where you're trying

11:35.065 --> 11:37.665
to create property as a alienable entity

11:37.685 --> 11:41.625
and dis embedding it from the kind of interdependencies,

11:41.975 --> 11:43.745
something that can be alienable

11:44.095 --> 11:47.785
that changes the relationship of let's say the kind of,

11:48.965 --> 11:52.705
the record keeper, for example, you know, the Ari who is a

11:52.705 --> 11:54.965
Village kind of bureaucrat, right?

11:55.495 --> 11:58.845
Their relationship was very directly connected

11:58.845 --> 12:01.765
to the panaya, the village community that was kind

12:01.765 --> 12:04.685
of semi-autonomous, or was ki self-governing.

12:05.105 --> 12:07.965
Now the Ari reports to the district officer.

12:08.065 --> 12:12.765
So there's a centralization of the village way

12:12.765 --> 12:15.965
of life that goes much deeper

12:16.665 --> 12:18.005
in canal colonies

12:18.005 --> 12:21.245
because these villages are being settled under the auspices

12:21.245 --> 12:22.965
of British infrastructural projects.

12:23.785 --> 12:25.405
So it's more absolute that way.

12:26.205 --> 12:28.365
I think there's this kind of a slow erosion

12:28.945 --> 12:33.405
or a transformation on what it means to be,

12:33.985 --> 12:38.885
Sikh, Hindu Muslim, in a very kind

12:38.885 --> 12:42.325
of subtle way, with the economic transformations

12:42.325 --> 12:46.925
that are brought into place from 1850 onwards, right?

12:46.925 --> 12:49.205
This is something that hasn't been paid attention to.

12:49.865 --> 12:51.805
And one of the things that I'm contributing

12:51.865 --> 12:54.325
to is building off a work of people,

12:54.445 --> 12:58.285
scholars like David Gilmar, who emphasizes,

12:58.285 --> 13:01.245
particularly in Punjab, that there is this kind

13:01.245 --> 13:04.165
of dual nature ways in which land

13:04.305 --> 13:08.405
and, kind of new property regime is being established.

13:08.985 --> 13:11.485
The land for the first time is becomes alienable,

13:11.905 --> 13:14.485
and it could be governed through governments of paper,

13:14.795 --> 13:16.045
kind of becomes bureaucrat.

13:16.045 --> 13:18.645
It's not based on local moral economy,

13:18.785 --> 13:21.525
but it's becoming, so you have a certain kind

13:21.525 --> 13:24.365
of revenue system that's becoming more and more fixed.

13:24.515 --> 13:27.085
It's not nimble, it's non-negotiable.

13:27.545 --> 13:30.285
It cannot be changed based on vagaries of weather

13:30.745 --> 13:31.805
or a plague.

13:32.275 --> 13:35.205
It's very, very fixed in particular ways, right?

13:35.625 --> 13:39.525
So you have that and the people who are, so he describes

13:39.525 --> 13:43.685
that part, but along with that as a form of the kind

13:43.685 --> 13:44.685
of British style

13:44.785 --> 13:47.965
of colonial rule is the preservation of custom.

13:48.625 --> 13:52.445
So you have a form of land settlement that's happening,

13:52.505 --> 13:56.685
and you also have a very intense ethnographic studies of

13:56.715 --> 13:58.645
what it makes Punjab Punjab, right?

13:58.705 --> 14:00.885
And so you have this kind of ethnographic state

14:01.305 --> 14:05.405
that's going in and doing these kind of customary books

14:05.505 --> 14:09.885
and compendium of how to think and administer

14:10.625 --> 14:14.325
and settle local conflicts based around customary laws.

14:15.175 --> 14:17.285
Those two things are kind of already been kind

14:17.285 --> 14:19.685
of discussed in much of literature,

14:19.985 --> 14:23.045
but what I'm trying to get at is this is a mode

14:23.045 --> 14:24.845
of racialization,

14:25.025 --> 14:28.845
or a mode of transformation on what it means

14:29.145 --> 14:30.725
to be an experience.

14:31.345 --> 14:34.325
Um, certain forms of,

14:35.395 --> 14:38.485
customary identities, which are both bar,

14:38.945 --> 14:42.365
but also at a much larger macro level,

14:42.785 --> 14:45.125
become also identified with religion

14:45.125 --> 14:49.085
because your religion is also be used as a juridical,

14:49.605 --> 14:53.685
category in terms of how customs are discussed,

14:53.685 --> 14:54.685
particularly, right?

14:55.025 --> 14:57.685
And within the kind of village economies,

14:57.685 --> 15:00.645
there is this idea, particularly in the canal colonies,

15:00.645 --> 15:03.605
because they are actually being settled,

15:03.655 --> 15:05.445
based on these assumptions

15:05.445 --> 15:08.325
that have been collected based on customary law.

15:08.625 --> 15:09.725
So you have almost,

15:09.745 --> 15:13.325
and this will describe almost, is that this large, vast area

15:13.385 --> 15:17.565
of central Punjab that goes all the way from let's say above

15:18.435 --> 15:23.405
laur Saba, all the way down to like, millions

15:23.405 --> 15:26.525
of, it's almost like a lab for this kind

15:26.525 --> 15:30.445
of ethnographic settlement of specific jobs

15:30.705 --> 15:34.685
and specific, RIE specific Sikh communities

15:34.705 --> 15:36.245
and how they're going to be.

15:36.265 --> 15:40.925
And there's, interesting, maps that are built on

15:40.985 --> 15:42.245
how these villages are going

15:42.245 --> 15:43.965
to be settled in particular kinds of ways.

15:45.105 --> 15:47.525
Uh, so I think that work has already been done,

15:47.625 --> 15:52.045
but what the impact has on the ways in which these

15:52.045 --> 15:56.365
communities see themselves as pop communities of interest

15:58.055 --> 16:00.915
and, how the kind

16:00.915 --> 16:04.195
of displacement economic shocks are being experienced.

16:04.495 --> 16:08.755
And so you have, because for the first time land

16:08.975 --> 16:13.155
and a kind of new cash-based economy, is becoming

16:14.235 --> 16:17.875
possible, and economies of of scale are increasing in terms

16:17.875 --> 16:21.475
of where surpluses can be invested in, you are beginning

16:21.475 --> 16:24.915
to have intense, rise of debt

16:26.655 --> 16:29.605
among certain peasant communities, often Muslim

16:29.825 --> 16:32.245
and Sikh communities who are seen as the peasantry.

16:32.905 --> 16:36.805
And a lot of times it's being blamed on customary,

16:37.365 --> 16:39.365
practices like marriage and dowry

16:39.785 --> 16:43.805
and, these modes of profligacy as it's called, right?

16:43.865 --> 16:47.685
In that sense, what gets lost is that it's actually

16:48.385 --> 16:51.965
the revenue system that has changed land revenue

16:52.105 --> 16:54.365
and land has become alienable in kinds of ways.

16:54.825 --> 16:58.285
And so a lot of that blame is also resentments are growing

16:58.285 --> 17:01.855
towards the bunya class, which is seen as more

17:01.855 --> 17:05.375
of a Hindu merchant trader money lending community.

17:05.795 --> 17:07.335
So the money lenders,

17:07.515 --> 17:10.255
and their status within the village economy changes

17:10.655 --> 17:14.535
dramatically as the village economies change after 1850s,

17:15.005 --> 17:19.175
because before there is a kind of codependency of surplus

17:19.235 --> 17:23.535
and green and a lot of the la lending is based on in,

17:23.715 --> 17:27.615
in kind, not as much in cash.

17:28.675 --> 17:32.775
Now land is becoming of speculative, possibility.

17:33.955 --> 17:35.575
And so the British come in

17:35.575 --> 17:40.175
and la to solve this problem by doing a land alienation act

17:40.175 --> 17:45.055
that bans Hindu banya communities from being able

17:45.055 --> 17:48.575
to purchase rural land in 1900, which kind

17:48.575 --> 17:51.045
of goes back into this intensification

17:51.985 --> 17:54.485
of these racialized categories.

17:54.485 --> 17:58.165
Rather than looking at the material politics of

17:59.525 --> 18:00.695
land as a resource

18:01.075 --> 18:05.935
or redistribution, something that had a patchwork of,

18:06.995 --> 18:09.255
interdependent, rights over land

18:09.255 --> 18:11.815
that has become exclusive right, of individual owners

18:12.995 --> 18:15.445
that has made the con that those are the conditions

18:15.445 --> 18:18.485
of possibility that are creating these buying

18:18.705 --> 18:20.365
and different, separate interested

18:20.515 --> 18:21.845
parties in that sense, right?

18:21.905 --> 18:25.125
So at a kind of a rudimentary local level, you have these

18:25.715 --> 18:29.325
communities that are becoming racialized, within their,

18:29.745 --> 18:31.725
subcategories of communities.

18:31.825 --> 18:33.565
Uh, so mostly Sikh

18:33.705 --> 18:37.005
and Muslims are seen as peasantry

18:37.005 --> 18:40.405
and rural Punjab in this region, where in eastern Punjab,

18:40.465 --> 18:43.845
for example, parts of what many Muslims were part

18:43.845 --> 18:47.245
of the urban economies of or are, for example,

18:47.825 --> 18:50.285
but in canal colonies, Muslims tended

18:50.285 --> 18:54.845
to be often in the rural, jot

18:54.985 --> 18:58.685
or, you know, like large landowners or, or pet.

18:58.785 --> 18:59.885
So what I'm looking forward

18:59.885 --> 19:02.285
to do is developing this argument further

19:02.665 --> 19:04.565
and to look at,

19:05.265 --> 19:08.205
and rethink the role of infrastructure

19:09.105 --> 19:14.045
as a medium of exchange that, the kind of technologies

19:14.315 --> 19:18.085
that did connect people in communities across,

19:18.085 --> 19:20.245
whether they are bureau bureaucratic technologies

19:20.345 --> 19:24.685
of file keeping that transform the record keeping

19:24.755 --> 19:27.845
that changes the way people experience their relationship

19:27.875 --> 19:29.845
with their, neighbors,

19:30.025 --> 19:34.725
but also their environment to the role of,

19:34.985 --> 19:39.645
the actual material infrastructures of canal irrigation,

19:40.625 --> 19:44.925
trains, you know, the very things

19:44.925 --> 19:49.605
that kind of create, create, new forms

19:49.705 --> 19:53.605
of development projects that put into place

19:54.555 --> 19:58.565
what has been collected in colonial ethnography

19:59.105 --> 20:02.765
and making that in, in practice, right?

20:02.865 --> 20:07.485
So it's this kind of la laboratory of, colonial,

20:07.755 --> 20:09.085
kind of ethno ethology.

20:09.235 --> 20:11.885
Obviously, as people live their lives,

20:12.025 --> 20:13.365
it gets much more complex,

20:14.065 --> 20:17.125
but there is this kind of question of administration

20:17.825 --> 20:20.725
and the ways in which people have to fit in certain kinds

20:20.725 --> 20:24.085
of slots and that define their interests

20:24.745 --> 20:26.045
in particular kinds of ways.

20:26.865 --> 20:30.445
And a lot of the kind of, policies that were used

20:30.465 --> 20:34.565
to address the problems of increasing debt, for example,

20:34.625 --> 20:37.605
at Mercy Sik and Muslim peasantry actually

20:38.125 --> 20:42.845
reinforce the ideas of, a kind of mode

20:42.845 --> 20:45.725
of racialization that is already under, under work.

20:46.025 --> 20:50.765
So what gets lost in that story, I feel like is ideas

20:50.825 --> 20:52.005
around communities

20:52.005 --> 20:55.285
and economic behavior that are being structured through

20:56.135 --> 20:57.515
modern infrastructures,

20:58.605 --> 21:00.445
colonial infrastructures in that sense, right?

21:00.705 --> 21:02.445
So I'm kind, I'm really interested,

21:02.465 --> 21:07.325
and there are, you know, works that are kind

21:07.325 --> 21:08.565
of leading me in this restriction

21:08.565 --> 21:12.445
because it's difficult to talk about race in context

21:12.615 --> 21:14.565
where we are not talking about the color line,

21:14.945 --> 21:18.325
but we are thinking about assumptions about communities

21:18.455 --> 21:21.005
based, or especially religious communities

21:21.005 --> 21:23.525
that are become ju categories

21:24.185 --> 21:26.485
and how they are interpreted in terms

21:26.485 --> 21:27.845
of their economic behavior.

21:29.385 --> 21:33.165
So one source of, a book that has been helpful is,

21:33.465 --> 21:38.285
Brenda Panda's book on, forgetting the, the property,

21:38.305 --> 21:41.085
but properties of, it's about race

21:41.105 --> 21:43.405
and property, racial capitalism or property.

21:43.825 --> 21:48.365
Um, there's another book by, Mariam Hol Davis on,

21:48.365 --> 21:51.045
markets of Civilization that looks at similar kind

21:51.045 --> 21:53.645
of processes of reform that happen in Algeria.

21:54.315 --> 21:57.325
What makes the question of Punjab more complicated is

21:57.325 --> 22:01.805
that you have, different

22:02.655 --> 22:05.645
modes of, your thinking through religious categories

22:05.705 --> 22:08.565
and also caste or brothery actually.

22:09.105 --> 22:12.005
Uh, so that becomes something that I'm kind of working

22:12.005 --> 22:13.005
through in that sense.

22:13.145 --> 22:17.325
But, but I hope, you know, if as time goes I'll be able

22:17.325 --> 22:18.325
to proceed,

22:18.385 --> 22:22.245
but one of the questions is to rethink, a lot

22:22.245 --> 22:24.925
of the questions of invention, of tradition, for example,

22:25.305 --> 22:27.965
on nationalism, has looked at print culture,

22:28.425 --> 22:31.365
has looked at kind of ideas around,

22:32.125 --> 22:33.485
representational politics,

22:33.905 --> 22:35.965
but the, what is the effects of

22:36.785 --> 22:40.725
transformation in landholding laws, the kind

22:40.725 --> 22:41.965
of material,

22:42.125 --> 22:45.325
bureaucratic ways on which people are fixed

22:45.345 --> 22:46.485
in space, in place.

22:47.225 --> 22:51.725
Uh, so that material history of even building of roads,

22:52.405 --> 22:54.165
villages, and canals

22:54.265 --> 22:58.885
and how they're also, are having this kind of,

22:58.985 --> 23:03.205
ripple effect or kind of, will be, something

23:03.205 --> 23:04.685
that I'm trying to explore more.

00:00 - This is a topic that has been, in scholarship in media, and now film and narrative in popular culture, particularly for the last 30 years. I would say that, you know, the partition has been a subject of, inquiry

00:15 - and, a lot more in terms of narratives and stories and short fictions. Right after the partition, we had lots of, short story writers, lots of, discussions in fiction. It's only from, I would say 1970s or eighties onwards that we are seeing a lot of social scientists and historians, discussing and engaging the topic of partition. So one of the things that I also look at is how the

00:46 - questions change from the 1980s onwards. And much of the, questioning in fiction writing has had been a lot more kind of this individual personalized relationships and rupture. whereas a lot of the social scientific literature has been focusing a lot on the after effects of partition, whether on gendered forms of nationalisms, the rise of authoritarianism, militarism. There is this kind of juxtaposition between oral history and kind of national history,

01:16 - that are written in con and the partition becomes the way of the disjuncture between the people's history and the kind of national trajectory. So that has been one of the kind of re ways in which I have come to understand. But one of the things that I was always thinking through was the vastness of this event and how it took place, had very kind of specific regional,

01:43 - how it played out in a very different context in regional ways. Particularly when I think about my own family's experience, there's certainly is a kind of loss of belonging, kind of sense of exile, the loss of ancestral homes and graveyards of my family being from up. But there still is majority of my father's family and my maternal family is still in India, and we wind up going to Pakistan, whereas the case, and where the site where I did a lot of my research

02:13 - for my field work, which was a earlier work in central Punjab, the, the scale of transformation, I mean, it was a genocide. It was a genocidal form of violence with absolute transferal population. So you have, districts like in Amri Reserve that has about a 50% population of Muslims in 1941 and almost 0% in 1951. Same thing happens in Montgomery in, okra Sahi places where I did field work, where you go from having something

02:45 - like 33 to 40% of population of Hindu with sq to almost one or 0% in 1951. So that scale requires, I thought, a different, rubric to understand how partition unfolded and why the violence takes place at the scale it does, particularly in the Punjab, but not all over the Punjab. So that's one thing I want started paying a lot of attention to. the site of absolute, this genocidal scale of violence and absolute transfer

03:19 - of population is very much in the central heartland of Punjab and in, in what I consider the canal colonies. And as you go further and further south towards sin, or when you go towards, you don't have the immediate transfer of population, that you have in August and September of 1947, but it's a more protracted and, and you still have communities that are still living in southern Punjab and sin. So partition unfolds differently in different regions. And I wanted to look at the kind of, the story

03:56 - behind that monograph. My actual research, my book is all based on a land rights movement, one of the largest land rights movement that took, that emerged in Pakistan in Punjab in the early two thousands. And that was to resist the Pakistani militaries attempt to privatize and monetize, sharecropping for, for, military associated farms that were managed under a sharecropping system from the British colonial times.

04:26 - So it was a bit of a neoliberal move, but under a general ma as a form of reform to monetize what had been a sharecropping relationship with its peasant farmers, the tenant farmers were alarmed because under sharecropping they would have permanent land use rights as tenant farmers. They could be evicted at the end of the lease, and they wanted some assurances and guarantees. The military basically replied, who are you to ask us? You know, it was a very unilateral kind of,

04:55 - and that led to this, very militant kind of peasant movement. And one thing that fascinated and something that explore in my book, the ethics of, staying, is why is it the Pakistani military that can dismiss elected governments that can launch, coups is struggling to justify, repressive measures and violence to suppress this movement at that particular time.

05:24 - So the movement, so the book tracks the rise and, the successes and losses of this movement from the year 2000 to 2014, that brought me back to the story of something about this region and the relationship between the state and the peasantry, and how this region is seen as a, kind of exceptional in the way it was, settled in the late 19th, early 20th century as part of the canal irrigation canal colonization projects.

06:00 - So the, the, the people who are kind of reside in this region, the peasants are seen as a kind of modern peasantry, people who have a kind of a closer relationship with state bureaucracy. Many of them had been particularly chosen or had settled here parti, specifically for, with ideas of being more productive farmers. so it creates a different type of relationship in the state and, this re this regional population.

06:34 - The other thing that emerged to me is also the fact that many of the people who reside in these farms or in this region are actually themselves dis were displaced in 1947. So many of the people who reside in these villages came and there was almost this absolute transfer of populations where Sikhs and Hindus who resided in these farms, almost all left for, Tiana Amri, Eastern Punjab, and many of the people who came from Amri, Luana ur,

07:03 - wind up taking their place. So that backstory and the kind of role of this kind of regional modernity and the intensity of, of the kind of violence that was in, that impacted this region that was, experienced in, in these farms, made me start thinking about the role of canal irrigation, modes of modern kind of experimentation with, village settlements and the role they had in intensifying certain kinds of rivalries or relationships

07:38 - or transforming the ideas of custom that may have played a major role at the time of partition. The topic of partition has been studied mostly at a kind of much more national or sub continental level, of course. So the, the literature that has been kind of looking at it as a kind of larger story of the backdrop to partition is of course, the history of modern reformist movements, the rise of kind of, popular politics. It kind of ranges from elite competition among reformers

08:16 - of different, from starting from 18 19th century within both the kind of Indian Congress party or the Congress party in 1885, and within kind of Muslim community as like reform movements for Indian Muslims, particularly from 18 19th century. So say. So there is that kind of trajectory of a certain kind of elite attempts to reform and participate and kind of craft on modern kind of populist politics. And then you have another set of literature

08:47 - that's much more attentive to populism and looking at the rise of, ideas around nation imagination of community, the rise of what it means to be an Indian, and also the questions around how and who gets to define that, and the role of the minority question that emerges as we start moving towards a very kind of, kind of a, you know, as a kind of rise of monolithic ideas of nationalism emerge, the exclusions that are coming in the debates

09:19 - and coming up with different minority communities, particularly Muslim nationalism. So I'm, I'm giving a very broad overview to a very, you know, lot vast literature, particularly, that is in very contested from like elite politics to sub studies. But then you also have, certainly many, scholars who are looking and specifically studying ality and kind of regional experiences of what the partition meant in sin, what it means in Punjab.

09:53 - But I often the, the kind of, partition gets left out as a kind of grand event and how that is being experienced differently. And one thing that I wanted to like pay attention to is why is it that the, some specific districts of Punjab experienced this kind of intense genocidal violence, whereas other parts of even within Punjab and other regions have a very different, certainly there's a lot of violence in Bengal,

10:25 - in West Bengal, but the dynamics are slightly different in certain ways. so I wanted to kinda explore the specificity of that and what partition looks like regionally and the after effects that are being felt slightly differently because there is a kind of greater movement of reconnecting and kind of, in both Pakistan and India pajab because of the larger diasporas and also a way of a way of rethinking, the kind of experience

10:56 - and the loss of a shared, maybe ecumenical history that had emerged, you know, over the long dur of, of that region. So I'm kind of exploring that question a little bit. And this is a very small article. So I think it's kind of my beginning, into a question of a mode of racialization that happens with, certain kind of economic and, transformation that I kind of call infrastructural from land settlement records that change the relationship

11:32 - between community, where you're trying to create property as a alienable entity and dis embedding it from the kind of interdependencies, something that can be alienable that changes the relationship of let's say the kind of, the record keeper, for example, you know, the Ari who is a Village kind of bureaucrat, right? Their relationship was very directly connected to the panaya, the village community that was kind of semi-autonomous, or was ki self-governing.

12:05 - Now the Ari reports to the district officer. So there's a centralization of the village way of life that goes much deeper in canal colonies because these villages are being settled under the auspices of British infrastructural projects. So it's more absolute that way. I think there's this kind of a slow erosion or a transformation on what it means to be, Sikh, Hindu Muslim, in a very kind

12:38 - of subtle way, with the economic transformations that are brought into place from 1850 onwards, right? This is something that hasn't been paid attention to. And one of the things that I'm contributing to is building off a work of people, scholars like David Gilmar, who emphasizes, particularly in Punjab, that there is this kind of dual nature ways in which land and, kind of new property regime is being established. The land for the first time is becomes alienable,

13:11 - and it could be governed through governments of paper, kind of becomes bureaucrat. It's not based on local moral economy, but it's becoming, so you have a certain kind of revenue system that's becoming more and more fixed. It's not nimble, it's non-negotiable. It cannot be changed based on vagaries of weather or a plague. It's very, very fixed in particular ways, right? So you have that and the people who are, so he describes

13:39 - that part, but along with that as a form of the kind of British style of colonial rule is the preservation of custom. So you have a form of land settlement that's happening, and you also have a very intense ethnographic studies of what it makes Punjab Punjab, right? And so you have this kind of ethnographic state that's going in and doing these kind of customary books and compendium of how to think and administer and settle local conflicts based around customary laws.

14:15 - Those two things are kind of already been kind of discussed in much of literature, but what I'm trying to get at is this is a mode of racialization, or a mode of transformation on what it means to be an experience. certain forms of, customary identities, which are both bar, but also at a much larger macro level, become also identified with religion

14:45 - because your religion is also be used as a juridical, category in terms of how customs are discussed, particularly, right? And within the kind of village economies, there is this idea, particularly in the canal colonies, because they are actually being settled, based on these assumptions that have been collected based on customary law. So you have almost, and this will describe almost, is that this large, vast area

15:13 - of central Punjab that goes all the way from let's say above laur Saba, all the way down to like, millions of, it's almost like a lab for this kind of ethnographic settlement of specific jobs and specific, RIE specific Sikh communities and how they're going to be. And there's, interesting, maps that are built on how these villages are going to be settled in particular kinds of ways. so I think that work has already been done,

15:47 - but what the impact has on the ways in which these communities see themselves as pop communities of interest and, how the kind of displacement economic shocks are being experienced. And so you have, because for the first time land and a kind of new cash-based economy, is becoming possible, and economies of of scale are increasing in terms of where surpluses can be invested in, you are beginning to have intense, rise of debt among certain peasant communities, often Muslim

16:29 - and Sikh communities who are seen as the peasantry. And a lot of times it's being blamed on customary, practices like marriage and dowry and, these modes of profligacy as it's called, right? In that sense, what gets lost is that it's actually the revenue system that has changed land revenue and land has become alienable in kinds of ways. And so a lot of that blame is also resentments are growing towards the bunya class, which is seen as more of a Hindu merchant trader money lending community.

17:05 - So the money lenders, and their status within the village economy changes dramatically as the village economies change after 1850s, because before there is a kind of codependency of surplus and green and a lot of the la lending is based on in, in kind, not as much in cash. Now land is becoming of speculative, possibility. And so the British come in and la to solve this problem by doing a land alienation act that bans Hindu banya communities from being able

17:45 - to purchase rural land in 1900, which kind of goes back into this intensification of these racialized categories. Rather than looking at the material politics of land as a resource or redistribution, something that had a patchwork of, interdependent, rights over land that has become exclusive right, of individual owners that has made the con that those are the conditions of possibility that are creating these buying

18:18 - and different, separate interested parties in that sense, right? So at a kind of a rudimentary local level, you have these communities that are becoming racialized, within their, subcategories of communities. so mostly Sikh and Muslims are seen as peasantry and rural Punjab in this region, where in eastern Punjab, for example, parts of what many Muslims were part of the urban economies of or are, for example,

18:47 - but in canal colonies, Muslims tended to be often in the rural, jot or, you know, like large landowners or, or pet. So what I'm looking forward to do is developing this argument further and to look at, and rethink the role of infrastructure as a medium of exchange that, the kind of technologies that did connect people in communities across, whether they are bureau bureaucratic technologies

19:20 - of file keeping that transform the record keeping that changes the way people experience their relationship with their, neighbors, but also their environment to the role of, the actual material infrastructures of canal irrigation, trains, you know, the very things that kind of create, create, new forms of development projects that put into place what has been collected in colonial ethnography and making that in, in practice, right?

20:02 - So it's this kind of la laboratory of, colonial, kind of ethno ethology. Obviously, as people live their lives, it gets much more complex, but there is this kind of question of administration and the ways in which people have to fit in certain kinds of slots and that define their interests in particular kinds of ways. And a lot of the kind of, policies that were used to address the problems of increasing debt, for example,

20:34 - at Mercy Sik and Muslim peasantry actually reinforce the ideas of, a kind of mode of racialization that is already under, under work. So what gets lost in that story, I feel like is ideas around communities and economic behavior that are being structured through modern infrastructures, colonial infrastructures in that sense, right? So I'm kind, I'm really interested, and there are, you know, works that are kind

21:07 - of leading me in this restriction because it's difficult to talk about race in context where we are not talking about the color line, but we are thinking about assumptions about communities based, or especially religious communities that are become ju categories and how they are interpreted in terms of their economic behavior. So one source of, a book that has been helpful is, Brenda Panda's book on, forgetting the, the property,

21:38 - but properties of, it's about race and property, racial capitalism or property. there's another book by, Mariam Hol Davis on, markets of Civilization that looks at similar kind of processes of reform that happen in Algeria. What makes the question of Punjab more complicated is that you have, different modes of, your thinking through religious categories and also caste or brothery actually. so that becomes something that I'm kind of working

22:12 - through in that sense. But, but I hope, you know, if as time goes I'll be able to proceed, but one of the questions is to rethink, a lot of the questions of invention, of tradition, for example, on nationalism, has looked at print culture, has looked at kind of ideas around, representational politics, but the, what is the effects of transformation in landholding laws, the kind

22:40 - of material, bureaucratic ways on which people are fixed in space, in place. so that material history of even building of roads, villages, and canals and how they're also, are having this kind of, ripple effect or kind of, will be, something that I'm trying to explore more.

Faculti AI can make mistakes