Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Nationalism – Pakistan'

Religion has always been at the core of the Pakistani national narrative. This research paper argues that the relationship between religion and nationalism in Pakistan is complex and has changed its character during different phases of the Pakistani political history. The aim of this paper was to understand this relationship during the period 1947 to 1988  of the Pakistani political history using the theoretical framework developed by Rogers Brubaker. Our analysis points out that the role of religion and its relationship has taken different shapes during different phases depending on political developments and processes, actors and visions. During the first time frame - from August 1947 - 12 March 1949 - religion under the leadership of the founder of the country Mohammad Ali Jinnah was viewed from the perspective of identity. This is explained by Brubaker’s first approach according to which religion functions as a mode of identification. During the politically chaotic decade after Jinnah’s death, religion was integrated into the organization of the state through the Objectives Resolution and the inclusion of Islamic articles in the country’s first constitution of 1956 and Islam was viewed as the cause of nationalism in Pakistan, explained by Brubaker’s second approach. When General Ayub Khan took over in October 1958 as the first military dictator, the country experienced progressive reforms challenging the role of Islam. This led to agitation from the religious parties who demanded political representation, acting as political claimants. This is explained by the third variant in Brubaker’s first approach in which religion is employed as a way of framing political claims.   During Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s tenure, the nations’s Islamic identity was emphasized to establish closer relation with other Muslim nations. Bhutto developed a transnational vision according to which the Pakistani nation was to lead other Islamic countries. This is explained by the second kind of Brubaker’s third approach in which religion is viewed as intertwined with nationalism.  General Zia ul Haq’s military dictatorship promoted Nizam-e-Islami to implement a process of Shariatization of the country. General Zia viewed Islam and the Pakistani nation as existentially interdependent and he attempted to bring religion, state and nation into a singularity. This kind of religious nationalism is explained by Brubaker’s fourth approach as a distinctive form of nationalism.

Cette thèse examine l'origine, le mécanisme et la mobilisation du nationalisme ethnique au Pakistan. Depuis sa création en 1947, le Pakistan a souffert d'un manque de consensus ethnique important face aux projets de construction nationale et consolidation de l'État du Centre. Les mouvements et partis ethniques du Pakistan sont un reflet important de la résistance sociétale contre l'hégémonie perçue de l'Etat. À l'heure actuelle, le Pakistan abrite plusieurs mouvements ethniques qui sous-tendent la grande désaffection avec les politiques de l'État. L'objet de cette thèse portera sur deux de ces mouvements, à savoir les nationalismes ethniques Sindhi et Siraiki. Au-delà de l'étude des mouvements et dirigeants nationalistes, cette thèse propose également une étude sur les courants plus larges de la politique partisane et du comportement électoral dans les provinces du Sindh et du sud du Punjab
This dissertation examines the origin, mechanism and mobilization of ethnic nationalism in Pakistan. From its inception in 1947, Pakistan has suffered from a serious lack of ethnic consensus in the face of nation-building and state-consolidation projects of the Center. The ethnic movements and parties of Pakistan are an important reflection of societal resistance against the perceived hegemony of the state. At present, Pakistan is home to several ethnic movements underlying the broad disaffection with the policies of the state. The focus of this dissertation will be on two of these movements, i.e. the Sindhi and Siraiki ethnic nationalisms. Going beyond the study of nationalist movements and leaders, this dissertation will also engage with the broader currents of party politics and electoral behavior in Sindh and south Punjab

This thesis is concerned with the principles of federalism and practice of federation in Pakistan, Baloch nation/nationalism and the politics of separatism. Since its inception, Pakistan adopted federalism as a system of government to manage a new country consisting of various ethno-national and linguistics groups. The purpose was to acknowledge diversity but discourage separatism. However, the history of Pakistan, including the creation of Bangladesh out of East Pakistan in 1971, shows its failure to fulfil this purpose of avoiding separatism. A key challenge faced by Pakistani federation for many years has been the conflict in its largest province of Balochistan. The conflict has multiple dimensions including a strong movement for separation of Baloch lands from Pakistan. This thesis investigates various phases of the Baloch conflict with Pakistani federation and analyses different strands of Baloch nationalism. It also explores the shifting power and relation of these strands – federalist and separatist - with the crises of federalism in Pakistan. It argues that the primary driver affecting Baloch nationalism is the failure of Pakistani federation to be genuinely federal. This thesis suggests that the Pakistan federation needs to revisit its constitution to make it more federal in a way wherein each ethno-national group feels the ownership of the country and can be convinced that its identity and language is protected and its land and resources utilised for welfare of the local inhabitants.

This study explores borderlands as a function of the imposition of the post-colonial state upon primary structures of identity, polity and social organisation which may be sub-state, national or trans-state in nature. This imposition, particularly in the postcolonial experience of Asia, manifests itself in incongruence between identities of nation and state, between authority and legitimacy, and between beliefs and systems, each of which is most acutely demonstrated in the dynamic borderlands where the competition for influence between non-state and state centres of political gravity is played out. The instability in borderlands is a product of the re-territorialisation of pre-state primary structures, and the state's efforts in accommodating, assimilating or suppressing these structures through a combination of militarisation, providing opportunities for greater political enfranchisement, and the structure of trans-borderland economic flows. The Pashtun tribes of the Afghan borderland between Pakistan and Afghanistan are exhibiting a resurgence of autonomy from the state, as part of the re-territorialisation of the primary substructure of Pakhtunkhwa that underlies southern Afghanistan and north-western Pakistan. This phenomenon is localised, tribally driven, and replicated across the entirety of Pakhtunkhwa. It is a product of the pashtunwali mandated autonomy of zai from which every kor, killi and khel derives its security, and through the protection of which each is able to raise its nang, and is able to realise its position within the larger clan or tribe. Other examples of competition between postcolonial states and primary structures are the Kurdish experience in south-eastern Turkey and the experience of the Arab state. While manifesting significant peculiarities, all three cases - the Kurds, the Arabs and the Pashtuns - demonstrate that the current configuration of the postcolonial state system in Asia is a fragile construction, imposed upon enduring, pre-state primary structures which are resurgent through competition with the state.

Sindhi Hindus comprise the world's most widespread South Asian diaspora. When the British divided their Indian empire in 1947, unlike Punjab, Bengal, and Assam, they did not partition Sind (today a part of Pakistan), despite the minority campaign for a partition of the region. Sind's partition in 1947 was a deterritorialised and demographic one, producing over a million 'non-Muslim' refugees who resettled in India and abroad. A frequently overlooked region in histories of South Asia, Sind is of profound importance to the history of the partition of India. In the decades preceding partition Sind formed the core of the demand for the creation of 'Muslim majority' provinces that later gave Pakistan its territorial basis. This thesis outlines a new history of partition from the pre-partition Sindhi movement for separation from the Bombay Presidency. It explores the hardening of communal identities in a province renowned for its blurred religious boundaries and the ambiguities of defining a 'Muslim majority' province in the run-up to the foundation of Pakistan. Partition histories emphasise the role of sudden and unexpected genocidal violence in creating refugees. The processes of nation-formation and establishing new political-legal sovereignties also shaped refugee flows. Sindhi Hindu migration at the time of partition is also located within their older histories of mobility and suggests a more complex picture of displacements at the time of partition. Largely unwelcome in India, Sindhi refugees exercised a considerable amount of initiative, in rehabilitating themselves and in challenging the state's slow response to their demands for rehabilitation. Using rarely studied legal archives, this thesis charts how, despite being a stateless minority, Sindhi refugees' legal campaigns shaped the Indian constitution and informed broader notions of Indian citizenship. Refugee initiatives to create a 'new' Sind and port in Kutch collided with the governmental agenda to secure the integration of the princely states and harness their economic resources to the Indian Union. By investigating the 'failures' of this attempt to re-establish 'Sind in India', this thesis provides unique insights into the fraught interaction between refugee resettlement and the birth of a new nation.

Ce travail s'intéresse à la construction du discours nationaliste sindhi au cours du 20e siècle, en proposant de concevoir celui-ci comme un discours performatif. Cette approche théorique nous permet de montrer qu'en dépit de son succès limité sur le plan politique, le nationalisme sindhi est tout de même parvenu à imposer sa vision ethnique de l'identité et participe à la construction d'un rapport de force au sein du Pakistan en visant à déplacer les frontières de groupes. Dès lors, nous proposons une socio-histoire du nationalisme sindhi, qui permet d'identifier les acteurs qui construisent, consolident et diffusent ce discours. Nous montrons que le discours nationaliste sindhi est porté par trois générations successives dont les profils évoluent en fonction des configurations politiques que connaît le Pakistan au cours de la période. Nous mettons aussi en évidence la fragmentation progressive des partis nationalistes, qui finissent par représenter un éventail de revendications allant de l'acceptation du jeu électoral à la lutte armée. Nous examinons ensuite le contenu du discours nationaliste pour comprendre le processus de production de marqueurs identitaires, en nous intéressant en particulier à trois thèmes : le soufisme, la folklorisation de la culture, et les symboles du Sindh dans la culture visuelle. La mobilisation de ces symboles dans des contextes variés favorise leur diffusion, par laquelle ils deviennent des marqueurs communément acceptés pour signifier le Sindh. Ainsi, cette thèse montre que le nationalisme sindhi, malgré l'incapacité des groupes séparatistes à obtenir l'indépendance du Sindh, a profondément transformé la société sindhie, et ne peut donc être considéré comme un échec
This dissertation focuses on the construction of Sindhi nationalist discourse during the 20th century, by proposing to conceive nationalism as a performative discourse. This theoretical approach allows us to show that in spite of its limited success on the political front, Sindhi nationalism has still managed to impose its ethnie vision of identity and takes part in the construction of a power struggle within Pakistan by aiming to displace group boundaries. Therefore, our socio-history of Sindhi nationalism identifies the actors that construct, consolidate and disseminate Sindhi nationalist discourse. We show that this discourse is upheld by three successive générations whose profiles evolve depending on Pakistan's political configurations. We also highlight the progressive fragmentation of nationalist parties, who end up voicing demands that range from participation in the political process to armed struggle. In order to understand the process through which identity markers are produced, we also examine the content of the nationalist discourse, concentrating on three thèmes: Sufism, the folklorization of culture, and symbols of Sindh in visual culture. Their usage in differing contexts facilitâtes their dissémination and ultimate acceptance as signifiers of Sindh that are also identity markers. Hence, this dissertation shows that Sindhi nationalism, in spite of the inability of separatist groups to achieve Sindh's independence, has deeply transformed Sindhi society, and thus cannot be dismissed as a failure

Cette étude souligne le dilemme de « l'intégration nationale ». L'étude de cas sur le Pakistan est très pertinente, en raison du fait qu'il a obtenu son indépendance au nom de la religion mais n'a pas pu maintenir son intégrité et a dû faire face à la désintégration en 1971. La recherche et l'identification des forces centrifuges et leur menace pour l’État du Pakistan se fait à différents niveaux. La recherche historique sur les différents facteurs permet de comprendre l'attachement aux identités locales et ethniques et leur impact sur les actions de l’État pour maintenir le fédéralisme. L‘Islam, le motif de base pour l'indépendance arrachée au Royaume-Uni n'a pas constitué une force suffisante pour garder le peuple uni. Un certain nombre d'autres facteurs tels que la pauvreté accrue, une intervention probablement insuffisante de l’État pour faire face aux demandes et aux problèmes locaux sont également responsables. La violence sectaire et le facteur externe de l‘intervention des États arabes ont également déstabilisé la situation au Pakistan. Dans la période de crise des années 90, la situation stratégique du Pakistan l‘a rendu plus vulnérable aux conflits internes. Cette situation a favorisé l'intervention militaire dans la politique pakistanaise. Le prétorianisme a affaibli l’État au fur et à mesure que les militaires se sont emparés des différents domaines de l‘État. Les défis majeurs à la cohésion de l‘État pakistanais sont la résistance baloutche pour l'indépendance du Baloutchistan, le nationalisme pachtoune et la menace posée par la minorité Mohajir qui revendique une l'autonomie en agitant la menace de la sécession. Notre étude amène à penser que la religion n'est pas une force suffisante d‘intégration, et que l'homogénéité ethnique et le processus de socialisation par la production et la transmission de normes et de la connaissance de l'histoire commune sont également fondamentaux. Ainsi, nous avons eu la possibilité au travers de cette recherche d'évaluer les forces et les faiblesses de l’État pakistanais, ainsi que les lignes de fracture politiques, idéologiques, religieuses et économiques
This study emphasizes the dilemma of ―national integration‖. The case study on Pakistan is very relevant, due to the fact that the state obtained its independence in the name of religion yet could not maintain its integrity and had to face dis-integration in 1971. The search and identification of centrifugal forces and their threat to the state of Pakistan is examined at various levels of analysis. The historical research of the various factors enables us tounderstand the importance of the attachment to local and ethnic identities and their impact on state‘s actions to maintain the federalism. Islam, the basic motive for independence from the United Kingdom has not been so much able to keep the people united. A number of other factors such as increased poverty, insufficient concentration of the state to deal with the local issues and grievances are also responsible for the difficulties in the process of integration. The sectarian violence and the external factor of the Arab states intervention contributed to the destabilization of the situation of Pakistan. During the crisis of the 1990s its strategic location made Pakistan more prone to internal conflict. This situation favoured the military intervention in Pakistani politics. Praetorianism has weakened the state at the various levels of military intervention. The biggest challenges to the cohesion of the Pakistani state are Baloch struggle for the independence of Baloutchistan, Pashtun nationalism and the Mohajir threat for autonomy or secession. Our study contributes to the demonstration of the idea that religion is not a sufficient force to bind the people but that ethnic homogeneity and socialized norms of common history are also fundamental. Thus it provides an opportunity to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the state along with the political, ideological, religious and economic fault lines

Les Baloutches sont un groupe ethnique résidant en Asie du Sud-central. Baloutchistan ou, à défaut, le Baloutchistan (qui signifie terre des Baloutches), est un territoire historique qui s'étend du sud-est de l‘Iran et sud de l'Afghanistan au sud-ouest du Pakistan. Le Baloutchistan historique est connu comme le Grand Baloutchistan. Le Grand Baloutchistan est aujourd'hui réparti entre trois pays: l'ouest du Pakistan, sud de l'Iran et le sud-ouest d‘Afghanistan. Les Baloutches sont donc principalement concentrés dans ces territoires. Cependant, il existe une population baloutche importante dispersée dans les Eats arabes du golfe Persique (comme l‘Oman, l‘Émirats arabes unis, etc), en Afrique comme ailleurs en Asie, ainsi qu’une petite diaspora en Europe, en Australie et aux Etats unis. Le nombre total des Baloutches dans les régions mentionnés est estimée entre 10 et 15 millions. Les frontières du Grand Baloutchistan d‘aujourd'hui sont le résultat d'une répartition territoriale officielle entre l'Afghanistan, l'Iran et l'Inde (Pakistan d‘aujourd‘hui) qui a eu lieu vers l‘année 1870. "Bien qu‘apparemment insignifiante dans le contexte de toutes les crises régionales et internationales qui affectent notre monde, le Baloutchistan est, en fait, un espace de liaison: le point à partir duquel les intérêts stratégiques diamétralement opposés convergent" (Draitser, 2012). En ce qui concerne la terminologie, l'utilisation du nom du Baloutchistan, il est utile de prendre en compte le fait que le Baloutche en persan signifie la crête de coq, et puisque les troupes baloutches qui ont combattu pour Astyages de Kai Khosrow en 585-550 BC portaient des casques avec une crête de coq, c'est pourquoi on a leur donnée le nom de « Baloutche ». Dans la liste des guerriers de Kai Khosrow de l'empire d‘achéménide, Ferdowsi a mentionné le baloutche dans le Shâh Nâmeh (Le Livre des Rois) sous l'autorité du général Ashkash (Dashti, 2012). Toutefois, la période pendant laquelle le nom du Baloutchistan ou Baloutchistan est entré dans l‘usage général n'est pas claire, mais elle peut être attribuée à la 12ème/18ème siècle qui a vu Nasir Khan I de Kalat devenir "le premier dirigeant indigène d'établir une autorité autonome sur une grande partie de la région" (Encyclopédie Iranica, 2014). Malgré qu'il n'y ait pas de consensus parmi les scientistes, l'histoire Baloutches et l'origine des Baloutches peuvent probablement être attribués à de pastorales nomades, des tribus indo -Iraniennes qui se sont installés dans le nord-ouest de la région iranienne Balashakan, étant eux- mêmes, les descendants des Aryens descendus au sud de l'Asie centrale il y a environ trois mille ans. Ces tribus indo-Iraniennes sont aujourd’hui connues sous le nom de Balashchik. Le Balashchik deviendrait connu sous le nom des baloutches, des siècles plus tard, quand ils ont migré du nord-ouest de l‘Iran au sud et de la périphérie orientale du plateau iranien, une région qui allait devenir Baloutchistan. Dans cette région du Baloutchistan, les Baloutches ont établi un nation-état indépendant ou semi-indépendant qui durerait environ trois cent ans (Dashti, 2012). Le Balûchistân attirerait les Britanniques dans la première moitié du 19ème siècle comme une voie stratégique pour sécuriser les routes commerciales vers l'Orient, et comme un tremplin vers l'Afghanistan contre les Russes pendant la Première Guerre afghane (1839-1842). Le Raj britannique continuait à statuer et d'administrer la région du Baloutchistan par les traités de 1841 et 1854 avec le Khan (souverain) de Kalat (la capitale du khanat de Kalat, qui était un état princier dominant une grande partie du Grand Baloutchistan). Le traité de 1876 assurerait l'indépendance et la souveraineté de Kalat, dès le départ des Britanniques de la région. Vers la fin du 19ème siècle, un certain nombre de processus de démarcation du Baloutchistan a eu lieu, la plupart du temps pour apaiser l'Iran. (...)
The Baluch are an ethnic group residing in south-central Asia. Baluchistan or, alternatively, Balochistan (meaning land of the Baluch), is a historic territory that stretched from southeastern Iran and southern Afghanistan to southwestern Pakistan. Historic Baluchistan is known as Greater Baluchistan. Greater Baluchistan is today divided into the boundaries of three countries: western Pakistan, southern Iran, and southwestern Afghanistan. The Baluch are therefore concentrated within these territories. However, there is a large Baluch population dispersed in the Persian Gulf States, and a small diaspora in Europe. Although there is no consensus among scholars, Baluch history and the origin of the Baluch can most likely be traced to pastoralist-nomadic, Indo-Iranic tribes that settled in northwestern Iranian region of Balashakan, having, themselves, descended from the Aryans who had moved south from Central Asia around three thousand years ago. These Indo-Iranic tribes became known as the Balashchik. The Balashchik would become known as the Baloch centuries later when they migrated from northwestern Iran to the south and eastern fringes of the Iranian plateau, a region that would become known as Balochistan or Baluchistan. Within this region of Baluchistan the Baluch established an independent or semi-independent nation-state that would last for approximately three hundred years (Naseer Dashti, 2012). Baluchistan would attract the British in the first half of the 19th century as a strategic pathway to secure trade routes to the East, and as a launching pad into Afghanistan against the Russians during the First Afghan War (1839-1842), The British Raj would go on to rule and administer the region of Baluchistan through the treaties of 1841 and 1854 with the Khan (ruler) of Kalat (the capital of the Khanate of Kalat, which was then a princely state controlling much of Greater Baluchistan). The Treaty of 1876 would assure independence and sovereignty for Kalat. Upon the departure of the British from the region. Late in the 19th century a number of demarcation processes of Baluchistan took place, mostly to appease Iran, then Persia. A dispute over claims to Sistan by both Iran and Afghanistan finally saw the division of the territory of Baluchistan in two, between Iran and Afghanistan, in 1904 by the British Commissioner, Sir McMahon. The Khan of Kalat would declare independence on 15 August 1947. The Khan also established an interim constitution that provided for a bicameral parliament. This period of independence lasted from 15 August 1947 to 27 March 1948. After a brief rebellion by the Baluch in Western Baluchistan against Persian rule, Western Baluchistan, or Iranian Baluchistan would finally be incorporated into Iran in 1928. The assimilation of Baluchistan into Pakistan following the 1947 partition of India, and subsequently the creation of Pakistan, was forceful, since the then Khan of Kalate, Mir Ahmed Yar Khan, refused to join Pakistan, and military force had to be used to placate the resistant Baluch, under the leadership of Mir Ahmed Yar Khan. The Baluch of Pakistan, therefore, consider Baluchistan occupied territory. The Khanate of Kalat ceased to exist on 14 October 1955 when the province of West Pakistan was formed. Since their forced accession into Pakistan up to the present, the Baluch have been subjugated to discriminatory policies that have assured their impoverished status. (...)

This thesis explores the fraught intersections between gender and the nationalist imaginary in the work of Pakistani women writers, from the period of the country’s inception in 1947 to more contemporary narrative treatments of the subject and its various tropes. The central concern is how these complex literary interventions figure across a hegemonic nationalist historiography which refuses to grant them a representational space. My project views the literary practice of these women authors in terms of what is at stake when their varied and diverse gendered contributions compel Pakistani nationalist discourse to re-evaluate its own precarious ideological foundations. These writers and the repressed histories their texts are a repository for, negotiate a tenuous path between the potentially regenerative power of an independent, postcolonial future and their position as marginalised silence within this supposedly ‘inclusive’reality. The project addresses its main research questions in an Introduction and four chapters. The first section unpacks how the work of authors such as Khadija Mastoor and Hijab Imtiaz Ali has been elided across various postcolonial discourses. In Chapter 1 I examine the various routes to agency that have been theorised by feminists in the postcolonial context and how this can be applied to the work of Pakistani writers, Farkhanda Lodhi and A.R. Khatun. These methodologies are tested III against the bloody Partitioning of the Indian sub-continent in the second chapter, necessitating a rethink of the possibilities of agency represented by the female body when it is under the threat of violence and erasure. My penultimate chapter focuses on the seemingly banal, but immensely popular genre of romance literature in Pakistan, on which very little research has been conducted. To this end I have chosen Qaisra Shahraz's romance epic, The Holy Woman. The final chapter explores tropes of migration and return in the diasporic imaginary of contemporary Pakistani women writers, Bapsi Sidhwa, Kamila Shamsie and Uzma Aslam Khan and their novels An American Brat, Kartography and Trespassing respectively.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
There are many national factors and historical trends that contribute to the awareness and emergence of Women's rights in Pakistan; colonialism, decolonization and nationalism, cold war, democratization, and the Global War on Terror. Feminism in Pakistan has undergone several changes in the course of time. The relationship between feminism and the Pakistani state has been evolutionary and has seen many instances of resentment, dispute and struggle. Eventually, the affiliation survived and the struggle changed into partnership, collaboration and genuine concern. The objective of feminism that was initially focused on the educational rights of women has shifted to a more pragmatic one, now aiming to focus on bringing about legal reforms in order to empower and strengthen the social, political and economic status of women. Conversely, the struggle between feminism, the state and various ethnic groups to empower women has been difficult. Because of the dynamic of a secular and hostile India opposing a Muslim-identified Pakistan, the mythologies that were born with the emergence of the Pakistani state functioned to orient religion against democracy, secularism and women's rights. This insecurity is one of the major reasons for women's rights being undermined in the name of religion. Apart from religion, culture and tradition have also been used to oppose women's rights. The objective of the thesis revolves around piloting a detailed analysis of the gender roles, based on feminism in Pakistan, by examining the various domains of ethnicity and nationalism in the state. These are formulated on the basis of gendered constructs along with Pakistan being an ethno-national state. The patriarchal state has deep effects on women in almost all aspects of life, and this research examines the gender politics associated with this. This research also focuses on exploring the diverse roles of women in the political sphere and looks for linkages between significant women’s initiatives, from history as well as recently, assuming that Pakistan has a particularly strong nationalism. Another interest is intensification in the dialogues based on the oppression of the Muslim women since the time of the US led war on terror, dialogues which have been framed in the binary of Islam versus modernity/west. As a result, these discourses have put Muslim women in a vulnerable position. All this led to the difficult positioning of women in society, religion as well as politics, needing ways that can enable woman to claim their individualities as not only daughters but citizens. This study has tried to explore the flexibility of the gendered identity and status of citizenship, which is the cause of much of the friction between Islamic laws and constitutional laws. The social control and social construction of women’s roles in Pakistan is complicated by this imposition of religion and sharia law along with secular politics. The basis of feminist discourse in Pakistani society is formed by the complex nature of the status of women in family, society and national identity. Therefore, in order to enable the women to improve their status of the nation there is a strong need to explore the status and positioning of women in all the contradictory discourses in regards to religion, community, household, and nation. This thesis explores this underlying gap between the role of religion and its representatives, and their connection towards, and impact on, gender roles. The study will also argue that in Pakistan, women’s activism focuses more specifically on their political participation than on empowerment, and how they encounter violence rather than preventing it. The study also talks about the failed attempts towards the practices governed by culture and informal negotiations. The debate based on identity, nationalism and religious orthodox militancy argue that the whole concept of the identity circulates around the woman and those belonging to minorities and ethnic groups. It is imperative to understand that this process is not prepared for people belonging to the same location and it is neither simple nor uniform, rather it is hierarchical and othering. The biggest challenge faced by this concept is, that it cannot be easily carried forward within the framework of its institutions, politics, epistemology as well as practices.

This dissertation examines the United States's elite news media's hegemony in a global media landscape, and how it can come to stand for the entire American nation in the imagination of outsiders. In this transnational, instantaneous digital media arena, what is created for an American audience can fairly easily be accessed, interpreted and relayed to another. How, then, is U.S. international news, which is traditionally ethnocentric and security-focused, absorbed in Afghanistan and Pakistan, two countries where the United States has acute foreign policy interests? This study draws from two bodies of scholarship that are analogous, yet rarely linked together. The first is on hegemony and the U.S. news media's relationship with American society and the government. This includes scholarship on indexing and cascading; agenda building and agenda setting; framing; and reporting during conflict. The second is on the American news media's relationship with the world, and nationalism as a fixed phenomenon in international news. This includes examining the different kinds of press systems that exist globally, and how they interact with each other. Afghanistan and Pakistan's media systems have expanded dramatically since being freed in 2002 and they struggle daily with making sense of the volatility that comes with the U.S.-led Afghanistan war. Through 64 qualitative, in-depth interviews with Afghan, American and Pakistani journalists, this study explores the sociology of news inside Afghanistan and Pakistan and how the American news narrative is received there. There is a widespread, long-standing perception in Afghanistan and Pakistan that American journalists stain the reputation of their nations as failed states. Just as the U.S. exercises global hegemony in a material sense, the U.S. media is powerful in shaping how American and international publics see the world. Yet, while American foreign correspondents are U.S.-centric in their reportage on the Afghan, American and Pakistani entanglement, so too are Afghan journalists Afghan-centric and Pakistani journalists Pakistani-centric. Nationalism is how journalists organize chaos and complexity. While their news stories can represent an entire nation, they are more likely to harden national identities than to broker understanding between nations.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2007
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This study examines the relationship between British perceptions and policies regarding India’s North-West Frontier and its Pathan inhabitants and the decline of British power in the subcontinent from 1919 to 1947. Its central argument is that two key constituencies within the framework of British India, the officers of the Indian Army and the Indian Political Service, viewed the Frontier as the most crucial region within Britain’s Indian Empire. Generations of British officers believed that this was the one place in India where the British could suffer a “knockout blow” from either external invasion or internal revolt. In light of this, when confronted by a full-scale Indian nationalist movement after the First World War, the British sought to seal off the Frontier from the rest of India. Confident that they had inoculated the Frontier against nationalism, the British administration on the Frontier carried on as if it were 30 years earlier, fretting about possible Soviet expansion, tribal raids, and Afghan intrigues. This emphasis on external menaces proved costly, however, as it blinded the British to local discontent and the rapid growth of a Frontier nationalist movement by the end of the 1920s. When the Frontier administration belatedly realized that they faced a homegrown nationalist movement they responded with a combination of institutional paralysis and brutality that underscored the British belief that the region constituted the primary bulwark of the British Raj. This violence proved counterproductive. It engendered wide-scale nationalist interest in the Frontier and effectively made British policy in the region a subject of All-Indian political debate. The British responded to mounting nationalist pressure in the 1930s by placing the Frontier at the center of their successful efforts to retain control of India’s defence establishment. This was a short-lived stopgap, however. By the last decade of British rule much of the Frontier was under the administration of the Indian National Congress. Moreover, the British not only concluded that Indian public opinion must be taken into account when formulating policy, but that nationalist prescriptions for the “problem” of the North-West Frontier should be enacted.
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