Lahore University of Management Sciences

HIST 3214/POL 3116 – Violence and Nationalism in Post-Colonial States

of South Asia
Fall Semester 2016-17

Instructor Anushay Malik

Room No.
Office Hours TBA
Email anushay@lums.edu.pk
Telephone

COURSE BASICS
Credit Hours 4
Lecture(s) Nbr of Lec(s) Per 2 Duration 1hr 50mins
Week
Pre-requisites POL100 – Introduction to Political Science

COURSE DESCRIPTION
The Post colonial period in South Asia has been marred by different forms of conflict. Many of
these, while seeming to be disparate incidents, share some obvious similarities. Conflicts over
boundaries and newly formed borders are an example of this. The superimposition of the idea of a
collective nation onto a clearly demarcated territory has not proven to be a smooth process,
especially in contexts where there exist diverse ethnic groups with conflicting ideas of what the
nation should be. This is perhaps why, Hobsbawm points out, that ethno-nationalism is, in the
East, manifest in separatist demands, and in the rest of the world, can be seen in the rise of
xenophobic sentiments. However, this course is meant to specifically challenge this simple binary
of East and West, and the subsumption of all sub-national conflict under the rubric of “ethno-
nationalism.” The development of the conflicts that have plagued South Asian states since their
independence often have divergent explanations that have to be viewed historically to be
understood.
The course is concerned, throughout, with understanding conflict that challenged, or continues to
challenge, the identities and territories of South Asia’s post-colonial states. The demarcation of a
border could create new and confusing problems. On one level these problems involved the hurried
redefinition of “us” and “them” as Hindu/Muslim, Sunni/Shia, Buddhist/Tamil and so on. In
others, it produced a bewildered group of people who found themselves on the “wrong” side of such
divides– this was the case with the Biharis in Bangladesh after 1971 and the Calcutta based
seamen of Sylhet.

COURSE OBJECTIVES
 To familiarize students with some of the major conflicts that have plagued South Asian post-
colonial states.
 To introduce students to some of the theoretical literature on nationalism that has recently
been coming out of South Asia
 By the end of this course, students should be able to find underlying commonalities
between the different types of conflict they study and relate it to the Pakistani context.
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COURSE EVALUATION
Class Participation: 10 %
Mid-term Research Essay: 30 % (week 13)
Book Review: 15% (week 8)
Take-home Final Exam: 30%
Reading Presentation: 15% (From the beginning of week 4)

*More than 3 absences will result in a grade reduction.

COURSE STRUCTURE AND SCHEDULE

Select primary texts will also be provided in the form of in class handouts. Some of these are
indicated with asterisks (*) in the course outline.
Compulsory readings are underlined.

Session 1: Introduction
Young, Robert J.C. “What is the Postcolonial?” A Review of International English Literature, Vol. 40,
No. 1 (2009): 13-25.
Young, Robert J.C. “Postcolonialism from Bandung to the Tricontinental,” Historein, Vol. 5 (2005):
11-21.
Session 2: Nationalism and Conflict; a European Concept? - I
Hobsbawm, Eric. “Introduction” Nations and Nationalism since 1780: (CUP, 1990).
Hobsbawm, Eric and Kertzer, David J. Ethnicity and Nationalism in Europe Today, Anthropology
Today, 8, 1 (1992), 3-8.
Anderson, Benedict. “Ch. 7 The Last Wave”, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism (1983) pp. 113-140.
Session 3: Nationalism and Conflict; a European Concept? - II
Chatterjee, Partha. “Nationalism as a Problem in the History of Political Ideas.” Nationalist Thought
and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse. (Zed Books, 1986).
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Idea of Provincializing Europe.” Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial
Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, 2000)
Veer, Peter van der. “Introduction” Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain.
(Princeton, 2001).
Session 4: The Roots of Conflict in Ideas of the Nation
Tambiah, Stanley J. “The Wider Context” Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflict and Collective
Violence in South Asia.
Comaroff, John L. Ethnicity, “Nationalism and the Politics of Difference in an Age of Revolution.”
John L. Comaroff and Paul C. Stern. Perspectives on Nationalism and War (Gordon and Breach,
1995), pp. 243-271.
Session 5: Violence in the Post-Colonial State
Tambiah, Stanley “The Routinization and Ritualization of Violence.” Leveling Crowds, pp. 221-243
Adria Lawrence. “Triggering Nationalist Violence: Competition and Conflict in Uprisings against
Colonial Rule.” International Security (2010) 35: 2 pp. 88-122
Fanon, Frantz. “Concerning Violence” The Wretched of the Earth. pp. 35-106.
Young, Robert J.C. “The Subject of Violence” Postcolonialism: an Historical Introduction.
Session 6: Communal Conflict and Ideas of the Nation
Hansen, Thomas Blom. “Communal Identities at the Heart of the Nation”, The Saffron Wave:
Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India (OUP, 1999).
Varshney, Ashutosh “Competing National Imaginations”, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and
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Muslims in India (OUP, 2001), pp. 55-86
Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. (University of
California Press, 2000), pp. 79-101.
Session 7: The Case of Partition Violence
Pandey, Gyanendra. “Ch 2 The Three Partitions of 1947 and Ch 5 Folding the Local into the
National.” Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India (CUP, 2001), pp. 21-
44; 92-120.
Aiyar, Swarna. ‘August Anarchy: The Partition Massacres in Punjab 1947’ D.A.
Low and Howard Brasted (eds) Freedom, Trauma, Continuities: Northern India
and Independence (Delhi: Sage, 1998): 15-38.
Jalal, Ayesha. “Secularists, Subalterns and the Stigma of “Communalism” Partition
Historiography Revisited,” Modern Asian Studies 30: 3 (1996): 681-9.
*Excerpts from The Punjab Story (National Documentation Centre
Session 8: Partition and the New Minorities
Chatterji, Joya. “Staying on: partition and West Bengal’s Muslim minorities.” The Spoils of Partition:
Bengal and India, 1947-1967. (CUP, 2007).
Guhathakurta, Meghna. “Amidst the winds of change: the Hindu minority in Bangladesh.” South
Asian History and Culture, 3: 2 (2012), pp. 288-301.
Sinha-Kerkhoff, Kathinka. “Voices of Difference: Partition Memory and Memories of Muslims in
Jharkand, India.” Critical Asian Studies, 36: 1 (2004), 113-142.
Session 9: Disputed Borders and Conflicts over Work: The case of fishermen
Gupta, Charu and Sharma, Mukul. Blurred Borders: Coastal Conflicts between India and
Pakistan. Economic and Political Weekly, 39: 27 (2004), pp. 3005-3015.
Hossain, Ashfaque. “The Making and Unmaking of Assam-Bengal Borders and the Sylhet
Referendum.” Modern Asian Studies, 47: 1 (2013), pp. 250-287.
Shah, Mehtab Ali. “Ferment in Sindh: Mistreatment of Fishermen in Badin, Pakistan, and its
Implications.” Economic and Political Weekly, 40: 10 (2005), pp. 931-933.
Misra, Ashutosh. “The Sir Creek Boundary Dispute: A Victim of India-Pakistan Linkage Politics.”
IBRU Boundary and Security Bulletin, Winter 2000-2001.
*Newspaper excerpts from the Pakistani newspaper Dawn covering recent episodes of conflict with
regards to fishermen in Pakistan.
Session 10: Disputed Territory: the case of Kashmir
Bose, Sumantra. “Sovereignty in Dispute” Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace (Harvard,
2003).
Roy, Arundhati. “Azadi” Outlook Magazine, 01 Sep 2008
Ganguly, Sumit. “Explaining the Kashmir Insurgency: Political Mobilization and Institutional
Decay.” International Security, 21: 2 (1996).
Session 11: An Exclusionary Nationalism: The case of Pakistan
Jalal, Ayesha. “Conjuring Pakistan: History as Official Imagining.” International Journal of Middle
East Studies, 27, 1 (1995), 73-89.
Ali, Mubarak. Pakistan’s Search for Identity. Paul Brass and Achin Vanaik (eds.) Competing
Nationalisms in South Asia (Orient Longman, 2002), pp. 250-271.

Session 12: Religion and Militancy in Pakistan

Nasr, S.V.R. “Islam, the State and the Rise of Sectarian Militancy in Pakistan." Pakistan:
Nationalism without a Nation? (London: Zed Books, 2002) [can be read online on Google Books].
Hussain, Zahid. “Battling Militancy” In Lodhi (ed) Pakistan.
Gul, Imtiaz. The Most Dangerous Place (Penguin, 2011)
Session 13: Regional Conflict and Secessionist Movements: The case of Balochistan
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Khan, Adeel. “Renewed Ethnonationalist Insurgency in Balochistan, Pakistan.” Asian Survey, Vol.
XLIX, No. 6 (2009).
Jetly, Rajshree. “Resurgence of the Baluch Movement in Pakistan: Emerging Perspectives and
Challenges”, R Jetly (ed.) Pakistan in Regional and Global Politics, (Routledge, 2009), pp. 212-234.
*Asad Rehman [Interview Clip]
*Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). “Balochistan Giving the people a chance: Report of
an HRCP fact-finding mission.” June, 2013.
Session 14: East Pakistan and Bengali Nationalism
David Lewis. “Chapter 3” Bangladesh: Politics, Economy and Civil Society (CUP, 2011)
Dhanagare, D.N. Peasant Protest and Politics – the Tebhaga movement in Bengal (India), 1946-47,
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 3: 3, 360-378.
Bose, Neilesh. ‘Purba Pakistan Zindabad: Bengali Visions of Pakistan, 1940-1947.’ Modern Asian
Studies, (2013), pp. 1-36.
Hashmi, Taj ul-Islam. ‘The Struggle for a Peasant Utopia: the Tanka, Tebhaga and Pakistan
Movements, 1942-1947,’ Pakistan as a Peasant Utopia: The Communalization of Class Politics in
East Bengal, 1920-1947. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992).
Session 15: 1971 and the Formation of Bangladesh
Raghavan, Srinath. “Ch 1 and Ch 10” 1971 A Global History of the creation of Bangladesh
(Harvard, 2013)
Saikia, Yasmin. “Creating the History of 1971.” Women, War and the Making of Bangladesh:
Remembering 1971 (Duke University Press, 2011), pp. 45-133.
*USAID official dispatch – an eye witness account of March 26th 1971
*White Paper: Pakistan Government’s Official Perspective on March 26 th 1971
Session 16: Violence and 1971
Jahan, Rounaq. “Genocide in Bangladesh.” Samuel Totten and William S. Parsons (eds). Centuries
of Genocide: Essays and Eyewitness Accounts 4th edition (Routledge, 2013).
Gerlach Christian. “From rivalries between elites to a crisis of society: Mass violence and famine in
Bangladesh (East Pakistan), 1971-77.” Extremely Violent Societies: Mass Violence in the Twentieth
Century World (CUP, 2010).
Bose, Sarmila. ‘Anatomy of Violence: Analysis of Civil War in East Pakistan in 1971.’ Economic and
Political Weekly 40: 41 (2005), pp. 4463-4471.
*Excerpts from: Quaderi, Fazlul Quader and Breman, Jan (eds.) Bangladesh Genocide and World
Press (Dacca, 1972).
Session 17: Lineages of 1971
Dutta, Antara. “The repatriation of 1973 and the re-making of modern South Asia.” Contemporary
South Asia, Vol. 19, No. 1 (2011): 61-74.
Paulsen, Eric. “The Citizenship Status of the Urdu-Speakers/Biharis in Bangladesh.” Refugee
Survey Quarterly, 25: 3 (2006): 54.
Maniruzzaman, Talukder. “Bangladesh: An Unfinished Revolution?” The Journal of Asian Studies,
34: 4 (1975), pp. 891-911.
Session 18: Bangladesh and Border Disputes

Schendel, Willem van. Stateless in South Asia: The Making of the India-Bangladesh Enclaves. The
Journal of Asian Studies, 61: 1 (2002), pp. 115-147.

Panday, Pranab Jumar and Jamil, Ishtiaq. “Conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh:
An Unimplemented Accord and Continued Violence.” Asian Survey, 49: 6 (2009), pp. 1052-1070.

Session 19: The Formation of a Sri Lankan Identity

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Krishna, Sankaran. “Ch 2 Producing Sri Lanka from Ceylon and Ch 3 Essentially Tamil,”
Postcolonial Insecurities, pp. 31-102.
Kannangara, A.P. “The Riots of 1915 in Sri Lanka: A Study in the Roots of Communal Violence.”
Past & Present, No. 102 (1984): 130-165.
Session 20: Disputed Nationalism in Sri Lanka
DeVotta, Neil. “Control Democracy, Institutional Decay, and the Quest for Eelam: Explaining
Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka.” Pacific Affairs, 73: 1 (2000): 55-76.
Kearney, Robert N. “Language and the Rise of Tamil Separatism in Sri Lanka.” Asian Survey, 18: 5
(1978), 521-534.
Spencer, Jonathan. “Collective Violence and Everyday Practice in Sri Lanka”. Modern Asian
Studies, 24: 3 (1990), pp. 603-623.
Session 21: Circumscribing the Right to the Indian Nation.
Chatterjee, Partha. “Sovereign Violence and the Domain of the Political.” Thomas Blom Hansen and
Finn Stepputat (eds.) Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants and States in the Postcolonial World. pp.
82-102.
Khilnani, Sunil. “Who is an Indian?” The Idea of India. (Penguin, 2003)
Session 22: Conflicts and Rights to the Land – the Case of India.
Guha, Ramachandra. “Adivasis, Naxalites and Indian Democracy.” Economic and Political Weekly,
42, 32 (2007), pp. 3305-3312.
Banerjee, Sumantra. “Beyond Naxalbari”. EPW, 41: 29 (2006): 3159-3163.
Saikia, Arupjyoti. “State, peasants and land reclamation: The predicament of forest conservation in
Assam, 1850s-1980s.” Indian Economic and Social History Review, 45: 1 (2008), pp. 77-114.
Session 23: Locating the Roots of Hindu-Muslim Conflict in India
Hasan, Mushirul. “The Myth of Unity: Colonial and National Narratives.” David Ludden (ed.)
Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community and the Politics of Democracy in India. (University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1996), pp. 185-210.
Freitag, Sandria B. “Contesting in Public: Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Communalism.”
Ludden (ed.) Contesting the Nation pp. 211-234.
Varshney, Ashutosh. Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (OUP, 2003), pp.
281-300
Session 24: Violence and Hindu Muslim Conflict in India
Brass, Paul R. “The Persistence of Hindu-Muslim Violence, The Dynamics of Riot Production” The
Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India. (OUP, 2003).
Veer, Peter van der. “Writing Violence.” Ludden (ed.) Contesting the Nation, pp. 250-269
Sarkar, Sumit. “Indian Nationalism and the Politics of Hindutva.” Ludden (ed.) Contesting the
Nation, pp. 270-294.
Session 25: - I
Whelpton, John. A History of Nepal, pp. 178-235 (Cambridge, 2005).
Sebastian von Einsiedel, David M. Malone, and Suman Pradhan “Introduction”, Sebastian von
Einsiedel, David D. Malone and Suman Pradhan (eds.) Nepal in Transition: From People’s War to
Fragile Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Lawoti, Mahendra. “Ethnic Politics and the Building of an Inclusive State”, Einsiedel et al. (eds.)
Nepal in Transition: From People’s War to Fragile Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Session 26: Nepal - II
Thapa, Deepak. “The Making of the Maoist Insurgency” Einsiedel et al. (eds.) Nepal in Transition:
From People’s War to Fragile Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 37-57.
Karki, Arjun and Seddon, David. “The People’s War in Historical Context.” Arjun Karki and David
Seddon (eds) The People’s War in Nepal: Left Perspectives (Adroit Publishers, 2003) pp. 3- 48.
*Document on the Maoist Demands
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Sessions 27: Pakistan in the Contemporary Era: Is it possible to build a more inclusive
nationalism?
Jalal, Ayesha. “The Past as Present” in Maleeha Lodhi (ed) Pakistan: Beyond the Crisis State (OUP,
2011)
A Khan and R Khan, “Civil Society and Social Change in Pakistan,” Drivers of Change Pakistan,
Collective for Social Science Research.
Session 28: Revision