Similar to the Hindu Nationalists of the BJP Party (the Governement untill late 2004) in India, also Pakistan's production of a national past  required significant processes of forgetting-in this case, of regional value and regional history-offers some ways to think about territory, history, and ethnic belonging.

The early years of Pakistan's existence were marked by a profound concern on the part of state policy planners for the construction of an overarching national identity, a national past which would transcend the "merely" and narrowly regional. That thensolution would be a focus on producing the people within the straightjacket of an Islamic nation divested of its rich and composite subcontinental heritage rather than a focused effort to emphasize this historical richness as the national points to a very interesting disjuncture between territory and belonging. The new, national past sought to produce affect located in a deterritorialized idea of an Islamic nation, an Islamic ummah, yet acknowledging its subcontinental and non-Arab genealogical provenance through the privileging of the grandeur of the recent South Asian Islamic past, much of which was in fact located outside of Pakistan and inside north India. Urdu "culture" thus became the synecdoche for the larger imaginative leap of anchoring the entire historical narrative, which every citizen already knows must culminate in the Two Nations Theory and the creation of Pakistan, in the land which was left behind. The emergence of efforts to reinscribe regional value on that national past by drawing upon regional literatures and regional heroes-whatever their religion-thus represents a return to a profoundly Westphalian model of sovereignty.

International relations theorist John G. Ruggie has remarked in a  essay on territoriality on the remarkable similarity between the transition in spatial orientation characteristic of the visual arts as well as of political space in the transition from the medieval to the early modem era. This transition. Ruggie notes. can be best understood as the emergence of the single-point perspective. No longer would the visual arts represent their subjects through "different sides and angles"-and no longer would political territory retain characteristics of undefined. indeterminate boundaries. ("Social Epistemes" in John Gerard Ruggie. "Territoriality and Beyond: Problernatizing Modernity in International Relations," International Organization 47 ,1993: 157-60.) In Ruggie' s terms. we can see how the Pakistani state offered a program of national history which diverged from that of the single-point territorial perspective through aligning its cultural center with lands in Arabia and left behind in India.

What remains unanswered here. however. are the larger implications of these lessons for the linkages between cultural patrimony and polity. While on the one hand, the emergence of regional emphases against a backdrop of national erasure can be understood as a sort of counter-consciousness. a move for recognition. the picture becomes much more complicated if we place this national story in comparative context.

If, for example, we compare the resurgence of regional histories and emphases on regional cultures in Pakistan with those of the states of the fonner Soviet Union, we find that in the first case the state aggressively offered a national history dismissive of the regional, yet in the second, the state aggressively courted the idea of 'national states' constitutive of the larger federation. Or what, alternatively, should we make of the relative success of Indonesia's national language project in comparison with Pakistan's?

To find out about this, let us take as an example the era of Gebneral Bhutto, remembered as a great populist perhaps more for his slogans (Roti, kapraaur makan! "Food, clothing, shelter!") than his actual policies, instituted a number of policy changes that accelerated Pakistan's creeping Islamization.

Bhutto came to power in the wake of a national truncation, with East Bengal having seceded to form independent Bangladesh after the bloody 1971 war. The loss of East Bengal illustrated the inadequacy of the Two Nations Theory as Pakistan's national glue; more pronounced statements of Islamic piety emerged from the Bhutto regime in efforts to legimitize the basis of the truncation nation. It was Bhutto in 1973, for example, who acceded to Islamist demands for legislation to legally render followers of Ghulam Ahmed (known as 'Qadianis,' or 'Ahmedis') non-Muslims, punishable with death for offenses of blasphemy if, for example, caught with a Quran.

Bhutto's Education Policy (1972-80) was most noted for nationalizing the private schools, a policy to offer ''free and universal" access to education, a move intended to offer greater equality in educational opportunity, and establishing Urdu the national language with constitutional status. What is generally not known is that it was this Education Policy which decided to create a state-approved curriculum for religious studies in the schools, thus instituting the curricular concept of Islamiyat (something articulated in previous policy plans yet apparently not developed): "The study of Islamiyat will be compulsory for Muslim students up to Class X. Steps will be taken to ensure that the curricula and textbooks. ..do not contain anything repugnant to, or inconsistent with, the cultural and ethical values of Islam.

On the matter of the creation of "national literature," that presupposes the existence of both a nation as well as its literary expression, see Pollock, "Literary Cultures in History." Citation from Government of Pakistan, Report of the Commission on National Education, January-August 1959, 220. This Writers' Guild was in fact the state-instituted replacement for what had been the Progressive Writers' Association. Information about the formation of the Writers' Guild was provided by Pateh Mohammad Malik, Chairman of the National Language Authority, in an interview on October 15, 2002. Also worth noting is that the Progressive Writers' Association had long links in the subcontinent, much predating Partition, and many of Urdu-Hindi' s most esteemed writers were members of this organization. It was forcibly dissolved in Pakistan in 1954, during the Ayub regime, under American anti-socialist pressure (pakistan was a US ally through both the CENTO and SEATO pacts). See Sibte Hasan, The Battle of Ideas in Pakistan, Karachi: Pakistan Publishing House, 1986,218.

The Islamiyat curriculum was apparently finalized in 1973-4, and available for use thereafter in Ministry of Education Government of Pakistan, The Education Policy, 1972-1980 (Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, 1972. ( See also: Ministry of Education (Curriculum Wing) Government of Pakistan, Development of Education in Pakistan, 1973, Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Education ,Curriculum Wing, Examination Reforms and Research Sector, 1975,49.)

This same education policy called for the innovative use of electronic media as non-formal extensions of the education system:

...a massive distribution of radio and television sets will be undertaken.. .separate radio and television channels will be established for broadcasting educational programmes to schools and adult literacy centres. On these channels, substantial time will be allocated to the recitation and translation of the Holy Quran so as to saturate the air with the message of God and further forge the bond of national cohesion among the Muslims in different parts of the country. (The Governemcnt of Pakistan The Education Policy,1972-1980, p. 129.)

That the electronic media were conceptualized not as an opportunity to educate Pakistani citizens about the cultural diversity and historical heritage of the country-in the wake of having lost half of itself-appears dramatic against the choice of programming interests. (Regional transmission stations for television and radio would allocate a few hours per week for regional language programming, but these programs were not broadcast nationally and were of limited duration). More interestingly, the phrase "ideology of Pakistan" appears on the very first page of the New Education Policy 1972-80, as the first objective of the state's education policy: "Ensuring the preservation, promotion and practice of the basic ideology of Pakistan and making it a code of individual and national life.

 This is the first occurrence of the phrase in curriculum planning documents, at least to the best of my knowledge, and clearly identifies as a Bhutto-era shift what is generally attributed to Zia. Two years later, in the Cuniculum Wing's report, a new subhead for "Ideological Studies" emerges as the curricula framework for studying national history:
 
 

Ideological Studies

On several occasions, the Government of Pakistan has rightly emphasised the need for including a compulsory paper on "Islam and Pakistan" in the educational curricula right upto the degree stage for the purpose of ideological orientation of the youth.. ..We have proposed that 30 per cent of the reading material to be provided for the study of Urdu and English must consist of themes on (i) Pakistan Government as reflected through the speeches of Quaid-e-Azam and other stalwarts of the movement, (ii) Islam as the ideological base of Pakistan, and (ill) the lessons of Muslim History, it being understood that the material on these themes will be an advancement over what may have been taught...Moreover. all books should have an introductory note on the Muslim contribution to the branch of knowledge with which the book deals in order to inculcate pride in our cultural heritage. This imperceptible way of ideoloAica1 orientation, is belived [sic], will be much more effective than the direct method....
 

This policy anticipates the Zia's regime's "Pakistan Studies" innovation in full: it clearly delineates national history as the culmination of some Islamic telos, against which anything not fully compatible with that natTative could be discarded. Against the backdrop of these developments in curriculum policy planning, General Zia's education policy would mark a change in degree but not in kind.

In addition to instituting mandatory charity contributions (zakat, or Islamic tithing, one of the five pillars of the faith), creating Islamic shariat courts, and implementing the Hudood Ordinances as part of a broad series of steps to make the Pakistani state practice a stricter form of Islam, General Zia's plans for educating his citizens revolved around ways to purify their religious practice. Finding that the effort to spread Urdu-endowed as the sole bearer of Islam in Pakistan rather than any of the regional languages-more thoroughly throughout the country as a bona fide national language had not been achieved, he created the Muqtadira Qaumi Zaban, or National Language Authority. The 1979 National Education Policy, devised after a large conference in 1978, contained nine top-level "aims," four of which emphasized Islam's role in literally producing the people:

a) To foster in the hearts and minds of the people of Pakistan in general and the students in particular a deep and abiding loyalty to Islam and Pakistan and a living consciousness of their spiritual ideological identity thereby strengthening unity of the outlook of the people of Pakistan on the basis of justice and fairplay.

b) To create awareness in every student that he, as member of the Pakistani nation is also a part of the universal Muslim Ummah and that it is expected of him to make a contribution towards the welfare of fellow Muslims inhabiting the globe on the one hand and to help spread the message of Islam throughout the world on the other.

c) To produce citizens who are fully conversant with the Pakistan Movement, its ideological foundations, history and culture so that they feel proud of their heritage and display firm faith in the future of the country as an Islamic State.

d) To develop and inculcate in accordance with the Quran and Sunnah' the character, conduct and motivation expected of a true Muslim.(Ministry of Education Government of Pakistan, Development of Education in Pakistan ,1978-80, Country Report for the 38th Session of International Conference on Education. Geneva, 10-19 November 1981 ,Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Education, 1981,p. 13-14.)

The new dispensation requirements created "Pakistan Studies" as a separate subject area for the required courseload, which already included "Islamiyat," for students of all ages.( Ibid., 23-8; for primary classes, see 23; for middle classes see 24; for secondary school requirements, see 24A-28.)

This new subject thus built on a set of ideas already contained in earlier policy plans, ideas about the necessity for this new nation to know a particular representation of its history (that which had led to its creation) and therefore appreciate the struggles that had led to its independence.

Thus we can better understand how more recent presentations of national history have evolved. The ideological requirements resulted in a revised presentation of
Pakistan's past that begins explicitly with "Ideology of Pakistan." To make national history correspond to the "Ideology of Pakistan," now extremely narrowly defined, the previous separate subjects of history and geography were eliminated, with only some of their curriculum covered in the new subject of "Pakistan Studies":

.. .Muslim heroes and discussions of the superiority of Islamic principles replaced the subjects of history and geography. All history that concerned Pre-Islamic events of the territory, which is now Pakistan, such as Mohen Jo Daro and Texila [sic], the old Hindu and Buddhist empires, etc, was eliminated from textbooks. (Ahmed Salim, "Historical Falsehoods and Inaccuracies," in The Subtle Subversion: the state of curricula and textbooks in Pakistan, ed. A.H. Nayyar and Ahmed Salim (Islamabad: Sustainable Development Policy Institute, 2002, 69.)

A quick glance, for example, at the A-One Textbook of Pakistan Studies, in its second edition in 1991, provides a clear picture of the problem of history under erasure. This is a text approved for "Pakistan Studies" for BA, BSc, BCom, BE, MBBS, and CCS degree students, so it is intended to comprise part of the education of some of the country's best educated. The national past is broached as follows: ''The nation along with its ideology was already there for centuries but the country came into existence afterwards. Hence Pakistan's geography is a result of its ideology. (Mirza Muhammad Y ousaf, A-One Textbook of Pakistan Studies, Lahore: A-One Publisher, 1991,2.)

This statement then flows immediately into an explanation of the Two Nations Theory, which requires a telescoping backward to a focus on the ''Evolution of Partition Idea" and an outline format summary of various phases under the British, leading up to Partition. hnmediately after this material, all presented in Chapter One, we come to "the Arab conquest of Sind, by Muhammad bin Qasim in 711" [sic] which "gave the Muslims a foothold on the subcontinent."so There is a mention of "Pre-Islamic Civilization," for three and a half pages, and it covers Soan culture, the Indus Valley, Aryan civilization, Gandharan Culture, Buddhism, and Ashoka, before coming to the Arab conquest of Sindh.51

For our concerns, the most important dimension of forging the national past through the lens of the "Ideology of Pakistan" is that the history of Pakistan's regions must be ignored, altered, or refuted when they contradict the national logic. If Iameel Ialibi was able to muse in 1964 about whether Pakistan was the "natural result of the past's historical flow:' after reworking the national past, the state-produced representation of that historical flow was cast such that the only obvious outcome could be an Islamic Pakistan. This reworking required emphasizing an amorphous history of Islam in the Pak-Hind subcontinent, where the glory of the Delhi Sultanate receives heavy attention, the Mughals are a prominent focus, but Ranjeet Singh is an embaITassment and must be cast as an oppressor. Projecting national heroes through the "Ideology of Pakistan" box requires Islamic reformists like Shaikh Ahmed Sirhindi, Shah Walliullah, Sir Syed, and the Ali brothers of Khilafat fame-but Raja Poros and Raja Rasalu of Punjab's earlier history are either mentioned in passing or not at all. Unable to so (Ibid., 17. 51 Ibid.. 35-7.) avoid mention of the many Sufis whose devotional poetry forms the various canons of regional language literatures, and whose graves, or dargahs, are sites of pilgrimage for millions of Pakistanis whose religious practices remain 'heterodox; they receive mention in a laundry list of some four pages. Hopelessly repetitive chapters present the development of the Two Nations Theory over and over again; the Pakistan Movement as told here is a chronicle of actions by the Muslim League, the results of the Cabinet Mission Plan, Congress' treachery in withdrawing its support for the proposal, and Partition. Thus, in a brief exposition on ''The Role of the Muslims of NWFP, Baluchistan, Sind, Punjab" one learns that:

It can be said that all the Muslims aU over the sub-continent took an active part in the struggle for Pakistan, an independent homeland for the muslims of the subcontinent.

But on the close study and scrutiny of the struggle, it is an affirmed observation that the Muslims of those regions in which they had been living as minorities, were more active as compared to their fellow breathren in the Muslims-majority provinces...It is a universaUy acclaimed fact that the Muslims of the subcontinent who were in minorities in the regions, waged a persistent struggle for the Pakistan.

So not only have the requirements of the national past eliminated deep knowledge of pre Islamic civilizations in the territory comprising contemporary Pakistan, but as importantly, the legitimate political debates among Muslims of the Indian subcontinent in the run-up to Partition are similarly erased. It is a truism among observers of Pakistani national history that figures such as Maulana Azad, an opponent of Partition, a friend to Gandhi and a towering figure in the Indian National Congress, cannot find a home in representations of Muslim history from the Pakistani perspective. What is more troubling is that the very heroes of so many of Pakistan's territorial pasts cannot be recognized either. (Ibid., 153-4.)

Two examples illustrate this problem: the politics of Partition amongst the Muslims of NWFP and Punjab. The national past cannot contain the unruly history of NWFP: a province which only in the last month before Partition voted in favor of accession to Pakistan. and in which half the eligible voters did not participate. (See  243-4 of Chapter 9, "The Triumph of the Muslim League, 1947" in Stephen Rittenberg, Ethnicity, Nationalism. and the Pakhtuns: the Independence Movement in India's North-West Frontier Province,Durhan: Carolina Academic Press, 1988, 217-48.)

One of the most important figures of 20th century Pukhtun politics, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, is eliminated from the subject matter of Pakistan Studies precisely because explaining that his party favored an independent Pukhtunistan rather than subordination to Pakistan or India suggests that Muslims of the Indian subcontinent were not fully in agreement about the fonnation of Pakistan. So Pakistani national history must ignore his party, the Khudai Khidmatgars. and instead explain that the Pathans "are devout muslims...noted for religious inclinations and are universally acclaimed the freedom-loving people besides being noble and upright... .they were treacherously made to fall prey to the supremacy of the sikhs and the Hindus. (Yousaf, A-One Textbook o/Pakistan Studies, 158.)

In this regard we should also bear in mind that Pukhtun nationalism remained a back-burner issue throughout Pakistan's existence; one way to interpret the rise of the Taliban would be to see Pakistan's support for the nearly exclusively Pukhtun movement as a hedge against crossborder demands for a Pukhtunistan. Accusing Ghaffar Khan, popularly known as the "Frontier Gandhi" of being duped by non-Muslims delegitimates the sophisticated political debate about primacy of ethnicity, territory, and sovereignty that he represented. In perhaps the most egregious example of erasure, a new official history of the NWFP's contribution to the Pakistan Movement, part of the "Golden Jubilee" fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Lahore Resolution, does not even feature this man in the extensive tazkirah brief biographies) of important Pukhtun figures which comprises two-thirds of the volume. See Muhammad Shafi'a Sabir, Tehrik-e-Pakistan Men Subah-e-Sarhad lea Hissah ("NWFP's Part in the Pakistan Movement") (peshawar: University Book Depot, 1990). Despite its omissions, this is an important book for its calls to recognize some 185 notable Pukhtuns, including ten women, and their contributions to the creation of Pakistan.

Perhaps as revealing is the fact that even according to the most extensive bibliographic database available, of the four biographies published on Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in the past two decades, three were from India.

Of these four commemorative volumes, three are Indian. See Midrarullah Midrar Naqshbandi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan: siyasat aur 'aqa'id (Mardan: Idarah-yi Isha'at Midrarul'ulum, 1995), Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, "Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan: a centennial tribute." (New Delhi, 1995), Girdhari La} Purl, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a true servant of humanity (New Delhi: Congress Centenary (1985) Celebration Committee, AICC(I), 1985), N. Radhakrishnan, Khan Abdul GhajJar Khan: the apostle of nonviolence (New Delhi: Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, 1998).

Like NWFP, Punjab faces the same dilemma: how can the national past be reconciled with a regional political history that includes the Unionist Party and public support coming very late for the Muslim League's demand for Partition? The Muslim League's efforts to gain power in Punjab-the territory which it had already claimed as the substantial part of the imagined Pakistan-pitted it against a strong multireligious Unionist Party which did not favor Partition. As historian Ian Talbot puts it, "Such opponents as the Unionist Party Prime Minister Khizr Hayat Tiwana were denounced as 'infidels' and 'traitors' to Islam. (Yousaf, A-One Textbook of Pakistan Studies, 170.)

Again, legitimate and extremely serious political differences about the dispensation for the region cannot figure in the national version of Pakistani history, and are instead portrayed as follows: "...Sir Khizar Hayat Tiwana, who in collusion with the congress and the British, managed to cripple the activities of the All India Muslim League. They invented all kinds of measure and contrivances to foil the muslims aspirations and their desires for a separate homeland.See Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modem History (Lahore: Vanguard Books Pvt. Ltd., (by arrangement with C. Hurst & Co., London), 1999), 12.

Thus with the focus solely on a very restricted interpretation of the "Islamic" dimensions of the nation, combined with the intellectual inheritance of British tripartite era schemas of subcontinental history deriving from British versions of the subcontinent's past, the idea of a "Punjabi" history or a "Sindhi" history or their contributions to the nation were deemed literally too provincial to merit mention. In this sense, we can see that intellectual Jameel Jalibi's earlier plea for the creation of a national culture was partially successful:

Ab yahim hameii is biit kii aitaraj kama cahiye lee 1947 se pehle pakistan leoi qaum nahin thi hameii ise ek qaum baniina hai. 1947 se pehle piikistan leoi mulk nahfii thii hameii ise ek mulk banana haL Yehr masla hamara sab se ahem aur bunyiidi masla hai. Ab aise men yeh sawal uThana leeh piikistan'i kalcar kya hai ek aisi bilt hai jis lee filhal leoi mani nahfii hai. Hamiirli masla sir! yeh hai leeh qaumi sateh par pakistani qaum maujiid nahfii hai hameii ise ilaqai qaumfyat ki sateh se bu/and uThiikar ek qaum baniina hai.

Now, we should recognize the fact that prior to 1947, Pakistan was not a nation-we must make it one. Before 1947 Pakistan was not a country-we must make it one. It is this that is our most important and fundamental problem. In this light, the question of "what is Pakistani culture?" is meaningless. Our only problem is this: that on a national level no Pakistani nation exists; we must elevate it above the level of local nationalism and make a nation. (Jalibi, Pakistani Kalcar, 71. See also Jalibi, Pakistan: The Identity of Culture. 46.)

Yet in so doing, the state program for making Pakistan a nation with a coherent national culture managed to denude itself of the level of the local. It did not, however, manage to wholly erase local nationalisms and local attachments. In fact, it is in response to this homogenizing tendency-somehow inherent in the nation-fonn itself-that in part two, we come to the emergence of new regionally-focused historical revisions.

Beginning in the mid-1980s, parallel to the rising popularity of the BJP in India (who did the same from an opposite point of view), a series of serious books offering new, regional perspectives on Pakistan’s past began to appear. Some of these works reclaim wholesale the pre-Islamic history of the region, some take a longue duree approach to their regional-ethnic history-thus necessitating the inclusion of religions, beliefs, and poetry excised from official state narratives-while still others reexamine the Pakistan Movement from the perspectives of Punjab, Sindh, or NWFP. A brief listing of the works considered here illustrates this emerging climate of historical revisionism:

Ahsan, The Indus Saga and the Making of Pakistan (1996)
Amjad, Tiirix-e-Piikistiin: Qadfm Daur (“History of Pakistan: The Ancient Era”;1989)
Awan, Tehn’c-e-iiziidi men Panjiib kii Kirdiir (“Punjab’s Role in the Freedom Movement”; 1993)
Chauhdry, Tehn7c-e-Piikistiin Men Panjiib kii Kirdiir (“Punjab’s Role in the Pakistan Movement”; 1996)
Leghari, Jidd-o-Jahd-e-iiziidi men Sindh kii Kirdiir (“Sindh’s Role in the Independence Struggle”; 1992) this does not contain pre-British history.
Leghari, Tehrik-e-iiziidi men Sindh kii Kirdiir, 2Vols. (“Sindh’s Role in the Freedom Movement”; 1992) this contains additional historical material on Sindh.
Malik, F. Punjabi Identity (1989) Malik, Tiirix-e-Panjiib: Qadfm Daur ta Jang-e-iiziidi 1857 (“History of Punjab: The Ancient Era to the War of Independence, 1857”; 1990)
Nanak, Kaliim-e-Niinak (“The Writings of Nanak”; 2001[d.1539]) Qureshi, Tiirix-e-Maxzan-e-Panjiib (“History of the Treasures of Punjab”; 1996[1828])
Manzoor, The Pakistan Problem: Historical Backwardness of Punjab and Consolidation of Pakistan (1993)
Ramey, Punjab lea Muqaddamah (1985)
Sabir,Tiirix-e-Subah-e-Sarhad (“History of NWFP”;1986) contains ‘ancient times’
Sabir, Tehrik-e-Piikistiin Men Subah-e-Sarhad kii Hissa (“NWFP’s Part in the Pakistan Movement”; 1990)
Zulfiqar, Jidd-o-Jahd-e-iiziidi men Panjiib kii Kirdiir (“Punjab’s Role in theIndependence Struggle”; 1996)

See also “A history of Sialkot’s role in the Pakistan Movement, and a history of Sindh and the Red Shirts, but due to limitations of time they will not be considered here. See Abu Salman Shahjahanpuri, Khutut, tehrik-i Reshmi Rumal aur Sindh: tarikh-i azadi-i vatan ki aile azimushan tahrik (Lahore: Fiction House, 1997), Khvajah Muhammad. Tufail, Tahrik-i Pakistan men Siyalkot lea kirdar (Siyalkot: Idarah-yi Matbu’at-i Tahrik-i Pakistan, 1987).

I should also add that the works considered here are only thoe which have appeared in Urdu and English; the discussion might be even more expansive should scholars map similar terrain in Sindhi, Punjabi, Pashto, or Balochi. The language-based limitation is solely due to my own restricted skills. However, I would imagine that if (for example) five books about Sindh’s past and Sindh’s role in the Pakistan Movement were published in Urdu as a means of disseminating Sindh’s importance beyond the linguistic public sphere of Sindhi, there are surely many more such works in the Sindhi language. I thus take this methodology as an acceptable proxy for a very important phenomenon.

Perhaps the emergence of these revisionist histories represents a delayed effect from a conference on Pakistan’s history that took place in 1972, and at which a regional critique to the dominant strand of national history was first articulated. According to Professor Fateh Mohammad Malik, it was this conference, held at Qaid-e-Azam University, at which history professors like Dr.Qadees Fatima Yusuf criticized the historiography of the Pakistan movement as being “dominated by Urdu-wallahs” such as Professor I.H. Qureshi, Professor Malik believes the phenomenon of new histories such as “Sindh’s Role in the Pakistan Movement” and “The Freedom Struggle and Punjab’s Role” dates to this conference. That virtually all such revisionist historiographies appeared much following the Bhutto as well as the Zia years suggests that the combination of a long incubation period plus an overt repression of “separatist” writings during the latter’s rule inhibited the appearance of such work.  Of the texts listed above, several are animated by a project of reclaiming the long history of civilization in the lands that comprise contemporary Pakistan. While this may sound Westphalian rather than radical (a subject to which we will return later), in fact it requires a complete jettisoning of the received “Ideology of Pakistan.” Instead of envisioning, as did Choudhry Rahmat AIi, an always-already Pakistan projected backwards, one extant in “Geological Times,” the revisionist histories interested in making the past more inclusive are fully prepared to discuss the region’s changes over time. Yahya Amjad’s TiiTix-e-Piikistiin, for example, is unlike any other book on Pakistan’s history I have ever examined: he presents a scientific approach to history, explaining the emergence of prehistoric animals like mammoths (“mamath hathr’) and trilobytes (“kIRii” or “bug”), to the evolution of human life, the emergence of tribes, the Indus Valley, the Rig Veda, the Buddhist and Jain religions-all fully under the umbrella of Pakistani history.6S The presentation differs considerably from earlier histories such as those by K.A1i, where the ancient Hindu past was sort of prefixed to the emergence of real history; in this case, we have 626 pages covering nothing but the pre-Islamic history of the region.

Two works in particular have received extensive media coverage such that we could call them historical “interventions” in the public sphere of debate:
Muhammad Hanif Ramey’s Punjab ka Muqaddamah and Aitzaz Ahsan’s The Indus Saga and the Making of Pakistan.66 Two other books, though less prominent, similarly reestablish Punjab as within a long historical continuum; they are Tiir’ix-e-Panjiib: Qadfm Daur and The Pakistan Problem.  Ramey’s book, was written and published in Urdu by the press of the largest newspaper group in Pakistan, distributed widely.  Similarly, The Indus Saga by Aitzaz Ahsan has undergone eight reprintings (hardcover and paperback combined), a translation into Urdu (as Sindh Sagar) and has been the object of much debate in Pakistan’s public sphere. Many Pakistanis do not agree with Ahsan-but nonetheless respect the book.

The revisionist pasts envisioned by these works clearly reject a politics of secessionism-but just as clearly, articulate a demand for Pakistan’s national past to include that of the territory which it occupies. As a result, Punjab’s territory features prominently as a key defining feature of the pasts they proffer. Ramey, for example, takes a genealogical view of Punjab’s special geography, connecting himself corporeally with the soil.

Ramey goes on further to explain that just as Punjab has five rivers, his mother has five sons-thus allegorizing Punjab as a mother.7o This sense of physical connection to the soil is what drives his search for a history of the land and the people of Punjab; with the focus literally on the physical territory, he claims for the long continuum of Punjabi history everything from the Indus Valley forward. In Ramey’s vision of Punjab’s past, even the Hindu god Shiva can be claimed:
Harappe ke mohron men bel ki tasvir leaN bar biir ki gai hai. Bel kii tiiluq Shiv]1 ke siith hameshii hi se joRii jiita rahii hai.

Yeh bhi in Ire IIPanjiibi” hone kii ek sabiit ha kyonlre bel kii ek tiiluq sadiyon se ahl-e-panjiib Ire siith ehalii iitii hai.
“The picture of an ox is drawn over and over again on the Harappan seals. The ox is always associated only with Shiva. This is a sort of proof of his “Punjabiness” because for centuries the association of the ox with the people of Punjab has continually been mad.”(Ramey, Punjab lea Muqaddamah, p. 41.  Harrapa is indeed within the boundaries oftoday’s Punjab, though Mohenjodaro is in upper Sindh.) This propensity appears similar to the distinction between “history” versus “heritage” offered by E.  Valentine Daniel with respect to Sinhala and Tamil communities in Sri Lanka, in which ‘The one is sharply defined and clearly instatiated, even if only in the imagination; the other is a vague, though rich, potentiality.” E. Valentine Daniel, Charred Lullabies:
Chapters in an Anthropography oj Violence, cd. Sherry B. Ortner, Nicholas B. Dirks, and GeoffEly, Princeton Studia in Culture / Power / History (1996), 27.

Similarly, Aitzaz Ahsan weaves a deeply detailed history around an entirely new historio-geographical concept: that of the “Indus” region and the “Indus” person. By this he intends the entire region of today’s Pakistan, along what he called the Gurdaspur Kathiawad Salient, a line demarcating the Indus cultural area from the Indian. In Ahsan’ s telling, the Indus region, unlike the nation-state of Pakistan. has always been a “nation” and has always had a history distinct from both India as well as from Arabia. His macroproject is to assert another kind of primordial nation to which Pakistanis, or Indus peoples. can lay claim without having to juggle the epistemological confusion of a national Islamic history contemptuous of the local histories of the present tenitorial state,Ahsan. Indw Saga, Preface (unnumbered).
For Ahsan. again as with Ramey. the civilizational continuum can incorporate diversity of religions, diversity of cultures and practices, all under an ethnic umbrella of the Indus. In a review of The Indus Saga, celebrated Pakistani historian Ahmad Hasan Dani notes that he had long been interested to write the story of Pakistan’s past from the perspective of its present territorywhat he refers to as the “history of the land,” the telling of which was his “life’s dream” but his entreaties to the Ministry of Culture were never accepted. See Ahmad Hasan Dani, “The Discovery of Pakistan,” review of Aitzaz Ahsan—The Indus Saga and the Making of Pakistan, Dawn Magazine, September 61996. Professor Dani’s work on the ancient history of Pakistan stands out as an exception, with his early work in the 1960s on the Indus Valley and the Kushans continued through his more recent work on the Northern Areas, Central Asia, and Taxila. Unfortunately, his contributions appear not to have found their way into the educational curricula. The last book by Professor Dani which I have been able to identify as an approved history textbook was his Volume One, “Pre-Muslim History” of A Short History of Pakistan, I.H. Qureshi, series ed., published in 1967.

Also of note is that Malik’s “Qadfm Daur’ takes a long civilizational approach to interpret Jling Punjab’s history, as does Manzoor in The Pakistan Problem. In one section of The Pakistan Problem, Manzoor goes against the grain of positing a Pakistani-nation-in situ in Islamic South Asia, and instead asserts that ninety-five percent of Punjabis must be the descendents of Indus civilization and Aryan invasions, leaving only five percent “pure” Muslim descendents from Arab or Mongol invasions (a matter of genealogy not often presented in such a straightf01ward manner in Pakistan). He calls for recognition of this past as the key to the future, thus providing the rationale for his inclusion of history as far back as the Indus Valley. (Manzoor, The Pakistan Problem, 202.)

While on the one hand, these historical projects of reclamation are overtly ones of essentialization within the ethnic rubric instead of the Islamic national rubric-for what else are we to make of the claim that Shiva was Punjabi, an ethnic category hardly in existence during the Indus Valley, let alone applicable to a deity?-on the other hand, these efforts at the same time open space for the idea of a nation as a composite project, a quality more pennissive of a liberal democratic agenda than that of the totalizing Islamic state. We can see this in the statements of their political agendas, which do not call for an invigoration of Punjabi consciousness in the name of secessionist agendas, but rather inthe name of building a Pakistan based on greater pluralism. In Ahsan’ swords, “..fundamentalist obscurantism displaced liberal modernism in this country. And thus the dire and pressing need to go back to our roots, to go back to our origins, and to trace our own steps from pre-history to the establishment of Pakistan.” To trace these steps from pre-history to the establishment of Pakistan, these authors advocate a program that has two key additional features: the establishment of a set of local historical figures, and an inversion of the received wisdom on Punjab’s past from a narrative of invasions and subjugation to one of resistance and pride.

Manzoor does not partake of the refutation of Punjab’s past as one of invasions and submission (in fact, he writes frequently about external invasions) but does advocate a reccntering of national consciousness onto Punjab (rather than Hindustan) and the development of Punjabi pride.

In a key chapter, “Tanx lea Tashaddiid,” Ramey explicitly asserts that Punjab has for long been maligned as a land of the vanquished, a land and a people who repeatedly failed to beat back invaders and have over time subordinated themselves to outsiders. For Ramey, this interpretation of Punjab’s past is false, and part of his argument-articulated partially through the resurrection of heroic figures-is to recast Punjab’s past as one of strength, bravery, and most of all, a noble warrior spirit of “resistance.” Ahsan echoes this sentiment in his chapter “Resistance, Opportunism, and Consumerism,” drawing upon the same set of historical figures that Ramey does (Raja Poros, Raja Rasalu, Dullah Bhatti, Ahmed Khan Kharel, and Bhagat Singh). See Ahsan, Indus Saga, 23, 124-ff, Ramey, Punjab ka Muqaddamah, 39-50.

For this effort, we need some regional tools: the Punjabi language and its literary heritage is a key means through which to assert a revised concept of national history.

Through the legends and poetry of the Punjabi language, this past of resistance can be reclaimed.  Ramey wants Punjabi people to be proud of their language, literature, folklore, songs, and all the heroes described in those forms; his view is that if Punjabis de-link themselves from association with the state as oppressor, Pakistan will be better able to unify itself. Ahsan thinks more internationally and wants Pakistanis. to be proud of their unique Indus heritage so they can face India without the burden of feeling like an illegitimate anti-India; if the Indus has always occupied a unique historical place of its own, Partition (in Ahsan’s view) was only a natural reaffirmation of that condition. Both see the solution to Pakistan’s problems as lying in the recovery of local cultural traditions and ideas, and making those a part of Pakistan’s heritage. This sentiment dovetails with those articulated by the writers discussed in the previous chapter, those like Fakhar Zaman and Syed Farani Kammi, who spoke of the development and awareness of Punjabi literature as central to ethnic consciousness. It is here that we come full circle to the way in which language, literature, history and nation are interwoven.

It is here, in literature, that they locate the core of the ethnic past which they want to bring to contemporary Pakistani consciousness. The tale of Raja Poros, ruler of an ancient kingdom on the banks of the Jhelum river, and known through the Greek chronicles of Arrian as having been defeated by Alexander the Great (Sikander-e-Azam), is here rewritten such that Poros emerges as the equal to Sikander, the sole reason Sikander did not push further into ‘_’Hind” after meeting Poros in battle.79 Poros’ presence and his status as a hero in the historical imagination of these writers is a notable departure, since he dates from a time before the coming of Islam (327 BCE). Raja Poros’ presence as a true Punjabi hero is pervasive in these works; to remove him from the category of the defeated and place him alongside Sikander is to elevate Punjab and its history alongside that of one of the best-known warriors of world history. It is no surprise, then, to find the tale of Raja Poros retold here with pride.

Ahsan comments with regret that today, millions of Pakistanis are named “Sikander” while none are named Poros, after the home-grown hero. Historical works (as opposed to the inspired literary retellings included in the previous chapter) that retell the story of Raja Poros and cast him as a strong resistant hero, are Ahsan, Indus Saga, 50-55, Dr. Muhammad Azam Chaudhry, Tahreek-e-Pakistan Men Punjab ka Kirdar (Karachi:
Royal Book Company, 1996), 15-6, Malik.  Tarix-e-Panjab, 22-23, Ramey, Punjab ka Muqaddamah, 16, 112-14.

A second major figure reinscribed as hero from the Punjabi perspective is Abdullah, or “Dullah” Bhatti of Pindi Bhattiyan. which apparently survives as a town even today, now between Lahore and Islamabad in Punjab. Dullah Bhatti is said to have resisted attempts by the Mughal state under Akbar to capture Pindi Bhattiyan. Dullah was ultimately executed by Akbar-thus a criminal from the perspective of the Mughals, yet a resistant hero in Punjabi ballads and the poetry written by his contemporary Shah Hussain.( For retellings of the story of DuIlah Bhatti as history (again, distinct from Najm Hosain Syed’s drama, Takht-e-Lahor), see Ahsan,/ndus Saga, 117-23, Malik, Punjabi Identity, 30-1, Ramey, Punjab lea Muqaddamah, 114-19.)

There are several other historical figures of Punjab, similarly restored to peaks of valor through these revisions; what is particularly important to note here is the way each author notes that “history is silent” about these figures, but Punjabi literary forms-existing outside the parameters of history and educational curricula-retains this cultural memory.
Aside from the inclusion of pre-Islamic history, or new interpretations that establish Dullah Bhatti as defender of Punjab rather than criminal in the eyes of the Mughal state, another dimension worth commenting upon is the inclusion of more than a brief derisive reference to the Sikh period in Punjab’s history. In yet another extremely interesting example of historical reclamation, Ahsan, Malik, and Manzoor all contain chapters on the Sikhs. Ramey reclaims Bhagat Singh-a Sikh who revolted against the British and was hanged-as a Punjabi hero. Ahsan groups the emergence of Sikhism in Punjab along with Sufism and Bhakti devotionalism, noting in particular that (in the cases of Sikhism and Sufism) “the two most energetic and lasting movements to fuse the two subcontinental civilizations into one [Le., Indus and India] were initiated, with passion and dynamism, in those very areas where the two cultures intermingled... (Ahsan, Indus Saga, 140.)

Such an interpretation, though primordialist in its own way as Ahsan clearly constructs a transepochal “Indus” person, is a far cry from the Two Nations Theory, in which matters of faith were said to underwrite incompatible nationalities even between neighbors. Sang e-Meel publishers chose to reprint, in 1996, the tazkirah of Punjabi history, Tam-e Maxzan-e-Panjiib, by Mufti Ghulam Sarwar Zahib Qureshi Lahorvi (1828), written some time presumably in the middle of the 19th century-during or immediately following the height of Ranjeet Singh’s rule in Punjab. This book, said in the introduction to be of even greater use today to understanding the history of Punjab, is an enonnously long list of short descriptions: of rivers, of cities, of towns, of rulers, and of religions. All the descriptions appear very matter-of-fact, without the veneer of the Ideology of Pakistan, and thus are inclusive of Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims alike. (Interestingly, in the same way this tazkirah lists different kinds of Hindus, it also lists different “kinds” of Muslims:
Sunni, Shia, “Tafzaniliya,” Sufi, and Firqa Wahabiya). It indeed suggests a slice of life in the Punjab of more than 150 years ago, when many different kinds of people lived side by side, and to describe that life required a full panorama.( See Mufti Ghulam Sarwar Zahib Qureshi, Tarix-e-Maxzan-e-Panjab, Lahore:
Dost Associates, 1996,574-6.)

If the Sikhs can become necessary to a full understanding of the history of the territory, Sikh literature in the Punjabi language’s Gurmukhi form, cannot be ignored: a one-thousand page volume, Kiiliim-e-Niinak (“Writings of Guru Nanak”) was published in Pakistan in 2002.83 This fascinating book is the product of painstaking transliteration of the Sikh scriptures, written in Gurmukhi script, into what is being called “Shahmukhi,” or Arabic-script Punjabi.  That this book exists at all marks a reversal from earlier decades, when attempts by the Punjabi Studies department of the University of Punjab to engage with Sikh studies or Sikh literature were deemed by the state to be anti-national and forbidden.  Having looked at the return of the non- and pre-Islamic pasts to regional ways of thinking about Pakistani history-history through the region, not the nation-we now come to the issue of the Pakistan Movement and its actors. To have played a part in the political agitations which resulted in the largest partition in human history, the largest mass migration of all time, and the creation of the first modem nation-state founded on the basis of religion, is to have changed the path of history itself, and new histories written in the 1990s want to carve space for their own regions in the stories of that struggle.  Perhaps nothing is as important as the Pakistan Movement to an understanding of today’s Pakistan-for it is both the beginning as well as end point for the national narrative.

Seeking Recognition

What is overwhelmingly evident with even a cursory look at the number of books rewriting the Pakistan Movement from the regional perspective the past ten years is a desire for recognition. Each one of these books opens with some sort of statement of anguish that the great contributions of their people, their region, their history, have been summarily overlooked.  Everyone of the writers expresses a palpable sense of injustice:
Panjab ek wasih 0 ariz mulk thii jo apne andar kai tehzibon ko samue hue hai. 1891 men is ki sarhadon men jammiiii aur kaSmir siimil thO. Iski sarhaden bhiirat ke magrab men ambiila divizhan se daryoe aTak tak aur SumOl janiib men bahawlpiir tak pheli hui thiii.  Hindiiston ko sone ki chiRyo kahO jato raha woh mahaz panjiib ki wiifar muqdar men paidawor ki badaulat thO.  Lekin haliit 0 wiiqa’iit ki sitam zarifi dekhiye keh darasi kutb men war awaqiit hamen yehi paRhiiya gayo keh panjiib ne jang-e-iiziidi [san] 1857 men bilkul hi hissa nahin liya aur na hi iiziidi tehrik-e-hind men koi ahem kardii ada kiyo. Yeh mahaz ta’sub ki binii par hai. Is kitiib men jang-e-iiziidi [san] 1857 se 1947 tak (90 siil) woh hiiliit 0 wiiqa’iit muxtasariin bayiin kie gaye hain jin se ek am qiiri yeh indiizo tagii sakegii keh ahl-e-panjiib ne tehrik-eOziidf men woh kOmiime injiim diejin ko tiir’ix-e-iilam kabhifariimos nahiii karegi.

Punjab was a vast and spacious country in which several cultures were mixed. In 1891 Jammu and Kashmir were contained within its borders. Its borders ran from Ambala Division in western India to the Attock river; and north-south it spread as far as Bhawalpur.  That India was called a Golden Bird was solely because of the abundance of Punjab’s production.
But look at the clever tyranny of the circumstances:
in the lesson books we are usually taught that in the war of independence of 1857, Punjab played no role whatsoever and neither did it take any important actions in the struggle for Indian independence. This is only on the basis of discrimination. In this book the circumstances and events from the war of independence (1857) to 1947 (90 years) are given in summary, from which an ordinary reader will be able to guess what resulted from the spectacular feats of the people of Punjab, whom the history of the world will never forget.( M.J. Awan. Tahreek-e-Attzdi Men Punjab lea Kirclar ,Islamabad: Modern Book Depot, 1993,5) The above introductory passage, from M.J. Awan’s Tehn’c-e-azQdi men Panjab kii Kirdiir, is representative of the genre. Every book opens with similar statements delimiting the importance of their region’s history:
“.. .subah-e-sarhad ki jigrafiyai aur siyasi ahmfyat aur is ki tarn: 0 saqiifat ko samajhne bagair pakistan ki siyiisi aur insiini tam ko samajhnii muIkil bailee niimumkin hai” (“Without understanding the geographical and political importance of NWFP and its culture and history, it is difficult, in fact impossible, to understand Pakistani political and human history”). Sabir, Tehrik-e-Pakistan Men Subah-e-Sarhad lea Hissah (“NWFP’s Part in the Pakistan Movement”), p.20.

And having established the importance of the region, how could each region have been so unjustly left out of national history:
Sindh lee log yeh du’a to learte rahe leeh is sarzamln ko bar-e-sagir men ‘Biib-ul-Islam’ ka xitiib milii huii hai. Is ne roz-e-awwal se firangfyon ke xiliif jidd-o-jahd k’i hai, yiini islam ka qilii ‘Pakistan’ hiisalleame men tan man aur dhan ki qurbiin’i dusron lee muqable men ;;yiidii de lear apnii sar buland rakha ha~ maflar iab tarix room ki flavi to in lee siith insaf nahiii kiva flava.
The people of Sindh kept claiming that the tide ‘Gateway of Islam’ in the subcontinent had been given to their nation. From the very first day they struggled against the foreigners, meaning that in order to obtain the fortress of Islam, ‘Pakistan, ‘ they sacrificed far more-body, mind, and wealth-in comparison with others, and held their heads high, but when history was aooortioned. iustice was not done to them. r emphasis added]

One historian of Punjab’s contributions to the Pakistan Movement states his region’s importance in the bluntest possible terms:
Panjab apne jigrafiyaT mahal waqa’ aur muslim aksariyatT siibah hone kT wajah se piikistlin iskim men “sang-e-buniyiid” kT hesiyat rakhtli thli kyoiike agar hindiIstlin men musalmlinoii ki abiidi muntaSyr hotT yanT kissT maxsiis iliiqe yii illiqon martakazna hotT to alaida mumiilik kii mutiilba nahifi kiyii jii saktii thii lekin cunkeh malriql aur magrebl illiqon men musalmlinon ki wlizih aksariyat thi is bina par piikistlin kii mutiilba kiyii gayii. Yah jaezah lenii yii indiiza laglinii muSlcil hai leeh piikistan iskim men Iwun sli hissa nisbitiin zyiida ahem tM tliham magrebT hissa harbT aur mashT tor par zyiida ahmiyat kii hiimil kahli jiitii hai. Ala ‘hizii’l-qiyas magreb men panjiib ek qabil-e-faxr muqiim par khaRa nazar iiyii hai. Agar panch daryiion kT sarzamTn maiyassr na hotT to jigrafiyai tor par piikistlin kii qayiim niimumkin tha. Panjab ki is ahmiyat lee bliwjiid tehrik-e-plikistlin aur panjab lee hawlile se abhi tak koi marbot tahqiqi kiim siimne nahTii iiyii.  Because of its geographical place of occurrence and its being a Muslim majority province, Punjab held the status of “Foundation Stone” in the Pakistan Scheme.  Had the Muslim population in India been scattered-meaning, were it not in a particular area or centralized areas-then the demand for a separate country could not have been made. But because the eastern and the western areas were obviously majority Muslim, the Pakistan demand was made on this basis. It would be difficult to assess or estimate which part was proportionately more important: nevertheless, it can be said that the western part bore greater importance in terms of war (harbi) and livelihood. In the same manner, within the west the Punjab stands before us as a place worthy of pride. If the motherland of the five rivers had not been obtained, then in terms of geography, it would have been impossible to establish Pakistan. Despite this importance of Punjab, to date no research pulling together the Pakistan Movement with reference to Punjab has appeared. (Dr. Abdul Jabbar Abid Legbari, Tehrik-e-Attzdi Men Sindh lea Kirclar, 2 vols., Hyderabad, pakistan): Rahbar United Publications, 1992, Vols.l,2.)

Each of these passages makes a similar case: that the idea of, the struggle for, and the actualization of Pakistan was manifestly impossible without the participation of Punjabis, Sindhis, and Sarhadis-yet having made those sacrifices, these groups found themselves and their experiences missing from the national presentation of that struggle. Indeed, these authors make a critically important point: how can the state present a national history that is truly national without including the contributions and sacrifices made by people of and in the regions that comprise Pakistan? Taking just one example from the perspective of Punjab, the standard story of the birth of Pakistan-with its normative of political action, opposition by the Indian National Congress, an almost-agreement to a federal scheme with the Cabinet Mission Plan, failure when the Congress refuses to agree, and then the birth of Pakistan as a grand achievement, a glorious moment ushering in freedom-fails to confront the extensive human tragedies which attended Partition. For Punjab, this meant physical bloodshed and violence on an unimaginable scale. In the words of one historian, “... along with the happiness of freedom came as well countless complications and battles. (Chaudhry, Tahreek-e-Pakistan Men Punjab Iw Kirdar, 9.)

How can the national past, with its telos of freedom realized on August 14, 1947, be reconciled with the regional past that cannot so easily forget the trauma incurred at that same moment?

The question is analytically related to that of including the history of the regions comprising the current state of Pakistan regardless of religion or ideological position on the merits of Partition. This is one of the most important intellectual debates facing Pakistan today because it hits the core dilemma of how the state seeks to represent itself, its past, and its cultural conditions for full citizenship. The new histories thus telling the story of the Pakistan Movement from the “margins” share a remarkable similarity in form. Most of these present first a series of short chapters covering either chronological episodes or particular subjects-like the Unionist Party, for example-within a larger chronological framework that culminates in the birth of Pakistan. In this way the new histories of the Pakistan Movement are just like any other narrative historiography we might encounter anywhere in the world: there is indeed a 88 “Panjab Ire lie 1947 kii sal jjzfidi lei xiiSi Ire siith siith be1umiir uljhaneii aUT saaul xiina jangi ke imkiiniit Ie kar iiya.” See Chapter Five, “panjlib aur qayAm-e-plildstln, 1947” in Ibid., 193-229.

Though these works differ from the state-created version of Pakistan’s past by offering different perspectives on that narrative, and different actors in the drama. Yet there is a second part to many of the revisionist histories, one that draws upon another kind of historiography which, I think, links these works inextricably into another kind of discourse about representation and recognition in a multiethnic polity.
The tazkirah, mentioned briefly earlier with respect to the reprint of Tiirix-e Maxzan-e-Panjiib, is a genre of history or literary history in Urdu inherited from Persian traditions. It is profoundly non-narrative and non-chronological: the fonn itself resembles a western encyclopedia, or anthology, though perhaps of more limited scope. The word derives from an Arabic root meaning “to mention, remember ( he Arabic trilateral root is thal-kaf-re) “Tazkirah” in Urdu is defined as “Memory, remembrance; any aid to the memory; a memorandum, note; a biographical memoir, biography. (See Platts, Dictionary of Urdu, 314.)

The tazkirah is thus a long list, a sort of written recitation. In its classic form, it represents the author’s vision of a literary canon, with poets’ names accompanied by brief descriptions of their muvre, perhaps inclusive of a few noteworthy lines of their poetry. For a highly approachable explanation of the tazkirah tradition in Urdu literature, see Chapter Five, “Tazkirahs” of Frances W. Pritchett, Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and its Critics (eScholarship online) (University of California Press, 1994; available from ark.cdlib.orglark:/13030/ftloooo326/.

The “real value” of this fonn, according to scholar of Urdu literature Frances Pritchett, “lay in the poetry it preserved and disseminated.( 92 Ibid.) If the tazkirah of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a form created expressly for semi-public gatherings for oral poetry recitation (the musha’ira), the “Panjab Ire lie 1947 kii sal jjzfidi lei xiiSi Ire siith siith be1umiir uljhaneii aUT saaul xiina jangi ke imkiiniit Ie kar iiya.” See Chapter Five, “panjlib aur qayAm-e-plildstln, 1947” in Ibid., 193-229.  tazkirah histories here-printed for public, literate consumption-represent an appropriate updating of the form, used not in the service of furthering great verse but to preserve and disseminate the exemplars of regional value. These histories are thus also anthologies of historical figures the authors want inserted in the public record, new entrants to the roster of public memory.

Precisely because the tazkirah form as it appears in these regional histories lacks the elements of plot so characteristic of narrative history (On narrative discourse and historical representation, see especially Chapters 1 and 2 of Hayden White, The Content o/the Form: Na”ative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987, 1-57.), but instead offers up representative figures from particular ethnic-regional groups as equal claimants for national commemoration, we might pause to think about the role of naming, representation, and recognition within the nation-form. What does it mean to represent the past in terms of heroic individuals, and to demand space in national history for new regional heroes?

The similarities between this debate and those of canon-formation from the “culture wars” in the United States during the 1980s seems apt It is a quest for ethnopolitical recognition above all, one that leads us into debates about equality and participation in the public sphere, equal treatment versus equal outcomes for groups in a polity, and above all, the relationship between the nation-state and its totalizing notion of “national identity” versus the possibilities of a more composite form. It is at this intersection of legal and cultural regimes that we can locate intense disruptions, complicated renegotiations of the national imagination.