Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T22:02:09.259Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Everyday expectations of the state during Pakistan's early years: Letters to the Editor, Dawn (Karachi), 1950–1953

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2010

SARAH ANSARI
SARAH ANSARI*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX. UK Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Accessing the day-to-day, albeit pressing, concerns of Pakistanis in the early 1950s can be difficult as a result of the relative paucity of relevant primary material. One set of sources, however, are the letters written to the editors of contemporary newspapers during this period, in which correspondents outlined their expectations of, made demands on, and aired their frustrations with, the everyday state in the years following independence and Pakistan's creation. This paper draws on a sample of this correspondence on the letter pages of Dawn (Karachi) during 1950–1953 in order to explore the views of ordinary citizens as they grappled with problems of housing, transport, food rationing, water shortage, and corruption.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 1: From Subjects to Citizens: Society and the Everyday State in India and Pakistan, 1947–1970 , January 2011 , pp. 159 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For an innovative exploration of the state at its everyday level in Pakistan, see the forthcoming study by political scientist Matthew Nelson that pinpoints intersections between land, law and the logic of local (quotidian) politics in the context of the Punjab since independence. Examples of existing literature that engage (albeit in different ways) with the concept of the ‘everyday state’ in relation to India include: Gupta, Akhil, ‘Blurred Boundaries: the Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State’, American Ethnologist, Vol. 22, No. 2 (May 1995), pp. 375–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fuller, C. J. and Bénéï, Véronique (eds), The Everyday State and Society in Modern India (London: C. Hurst and Co., 2001)Google Scholar; Jeffrey, Craig, ‘Caste, Class and Clientelism: A Political Economy of Everyday Corruption in Rural North India’, Economic Geography, Vol. 78, No. 1 (January 2002), pp. 21–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Véron, René, Corbridge, Stuart, Williams, Glyn and Srivastava, Manoj, ‘The Everyday State and Political Society in Eastern India: Structuring Access to the Employment Assurance Scheme’, The Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 39, No, 5 (June 2003), pp. 1–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Moving away from South Asia, Sheldon Garon's Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), for instance, taps into the intimate everyday relationships between Japanese people and their government over the course of the twentieth century, while Ismail's, SalwaPolitical Life in Cairo's New Quarters: Encountering the Everyday State (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006)Google Scholar highlights the interplay of structural changes, state power, and daily governance in the context of contemporary Egypt.

2 Classic overviews of the first of these two developments include Sayeed, Khalid Bin, Pakistan: the Formative Phase (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968)Google Scholar, and Jalal, Ayesha, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As far as the second development is concerned, for the early decades of Pakistan's political evolution, see Callard, Keith B., Pakistan: a Political Study (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1957)Google Scholar; Ahmed, Mushtaq, Government and Politics in Pakistan (New York: Praeger, second and revised edition, 1963)Google Scholar; Jalal, Ayesha, The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan's Political Economy of Defence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; and the relevant chapters in Afzal, M. Rafique, Pakistan: History and Politics, 1947–1971 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; and Talbot, Ian, Pakistan: A Modern History (London: C. Hurst and Co., 2005)Google Scholar.

3 See Zamindar, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali, The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007) Chapter 5Google Scholar, ‘Passports and Boundaries’, and Chapter 6, ‘The Phantasm of Passports’, for a detailed exploration how the requirement for travel permits and then passports, in order to visit India, made an impact on the lives of ordinary Pakistanis during this period.

4 D. J. Fuller and John Harriss, ‘For an Anthropology of the Modern Indian State’, in Fuller and Bénéï, The Everyday State, p. 10.

5 Gupta, ‘Blurred Boundaries’, p. 356.

6 Fuller and Harriss, ‘For an anthropology’, p. 2.

7 Gupta, ‘Blurred Boundaries’, p. 386.

8 ul Haque, Nadeem and Sheikh, Arif, ‘Concerns of Intelligentsia in Pakistan: Content Analysis of Newspapers’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 29, No. 24 (June 11, 1994), p. 1485Google Scholar.

9 Gupta, ‘Blurred Boundaries’, p. 387.

10 For contemporary assessments of the problems involved in drawing up Pakistan's first (1956) constitution, see Burks, Ardath W., ‘Constitution-Making in Pakistan’, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 69, No. 4 (December 1954), pp. 541–564CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Choudhury, G. W., ‘The Constitution of Pakistan’, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 29, No. 3 (September 1956), pp. 243–252CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 See Ansari, Sarah, Life After Partition: Migration, Community and Strife in Sindh, 1947–1962 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

12 Dawn's self-projection as a ‘national’ newspaper, contrasted with that of Jang, another newspaper popular among Urdu-speaking migrants in Karachi that, during the 1950s, was more-or-less entirely a representative of muhajir interests. It should be noted, however, that there was a Gujarati edition of the newspaper, serving the needs of the city's long-established, but now expanded significantly in size thanks to migration from India, Gujarati-speaking inhabitants.

13 A Refugee, Karachi, ‘Refugee Rehabilitation’, Dawn, 9 December, 1951, p. 7.

14 Ansari, Life after Partition, pp. 127–132.

15 The concept of ‘social capital’ describes the pattern and intensity of networks among people and the shared values which arise from those networks. Definitions of social capital vary, but the main aspects include citizenship, ‘neighbourliness’, social networks and civic participation. See Field, John, Social Capital (London: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar for a useful introduction to this concept.

16 Zamindar, The Long Partition, Chapter 4, ‘Economies of Displacement’.

17 For further discussion of the functioning of housing societies in Karachi in the late 1940s and early 1950s and their relationship with the authorities, see Ansari, Life after Partition, pp. 132–144.

18 A Resident, Karachi, ‘Khudadad Colony’, Dawn, 6 January, 1952, p. 5.

19 ‘Economic and Financial Review, Pakistan, August 1953’, Despatch 196, 24 September, 1953, 890D.00/9–2453, United States National Archives. As Ian Talbot's contribution to this special issue—exploring the discourses, denials and dissonances of refugee rehabilitation in East and West Punjab—argues, the state often had a very different story to tell to that produced by refugees themselves.

20 A Victim, Karachi, ‘Bus Permits’, Dawn, 15 December, 1951, p. 5.

21 Ghayas Ahmad Siddiqui, Karachi, ‘Bus Routes’, Dawn, 14 February, 1952, p. 5.

22 Fida M. Jaffer, Karachi, ‘Improve Karachi-Sind Buses’, Dawn, 7 April, 1952, p. 5.

23 A Sufferer, Sukkur, ‘Insanitation in Sukkur’, Dawn, 28 January, 1952, p. 5.

24 A Jacob Liner, Karachi, ‘Dirty Jacob Lines’, Dawn, 16 December, 1951, p. 7.

25 S. M. Safdar, Karachi, ‘Urinals’, Dawn, 3 March, 1952, p. 5.

26 Rashida Bano, Karachi, ‘Burns Gardern’, Dawn, 21 January, 1952, p. 5.

27 G. Mohammad, Karachi, ‘Lalukhet Graveyard’, Dawn, 22 February, 1952, p. 5.

28 M. A. S. Baig, ‘Water Supply in Pir Ellahi Bux Colony’, Dawn, 16 April, 1952, p. 5. Dawn's editor at this time was Altaf Hussain, who enjoyed close connections with leading ‘refugee’ politicians and bureaucrats alike.

29 Abdul Sattar Pirzada, a leading politician from Upper Sindh, was one of the few Sindhis in the central government during this period. As minister with responsibility for food supplies during a period when there were shortages in essential foodstuffs, he (not surprisingly perhaps) came in for serious personal criticism from the general public. Rice was a staple part of the Sindhi diet—it is likely, therefore, that this particular correspondent was originally from northern India where rice had a less central role to play in what people ate on a daily basis.

30 A Housewife, Karachi, ‘Food’, Dawn, 23 February, 1952, p. 5.

31 Rashid Ahmed, Sukkur, Sind, ‘Blackmarket’, Dawn, 26 February, 1952, p. 5.

32 M. Ibrahim, Karachi, ‘Food’, Dawn, 15 September, 1952, p. 5.

33 Dawn, 9 January, 1953, p. 9.

34 A. M. Siddiqi, Garden West, Karachi 3, ‘Graft’, Dawn, 28 January, 1953, p. 5.

35 A. M. Baloch, Hyderabad,‘Graft’, Dawn, 23 February, 1953, p. 5.

36 A Citizen, Karachi, ‘Our Police’, Dawn, 31 January, 1953, p. 5.

37 Sir Gilbert Grace was the then Inspector-General of Police for Karachi, hence Dawn's play on his surname in this cartoon.

38 See ‘Summary of Political Events for Week Ending May 1 [1953]’, Despatch 757, 790.00/5–253, United States National Archives.

39 For discussion of related themes of refugee resettlement and rehabilitation in the context of late twentieth-century Calcutta (and West Bengal), see Chatterjee, Partha, The Rights of the Governed (Kampala: Centre for Basic Research, 2003)Google Scholar.

40 Dawn, 17 May, 1952, p. 5.