In her review article (“Contesting notions of Pakistan“, Economic & Political Weekly, November 10, 2012, vol. XLVII, n°45.), S Akbar Zaidi, a political economist based in Karachi, draws a comparative, critical and stimulating analysis of six recent books focusing on Pakistan. These books, of varying genres (journalistic, policy-oriented, academic, literary…) and covering various themes (history, state formation, religion, politics, economy…), offer contrasting views, analysis and interpretations of today’s Pakistan. Continue reading A comparative review of recent books on Pakistan (EPW)
Tag Archives: Pakistan
Book: Poetry, Islam and Ethnicity in Postcolonial Pakistan
Nukhbah Taj Langah, Poetry as Resistance: Islam and Ethnicity in Postcolonial Pakistan, New Delhi, Routledge India, 2011.
“Focusing on the culturally and historically rich Siraiki-speaking region, often tagged as ‘South Punjab’, this book discusses the ways in which Siraiki creative writers have transformed into political activists, resisting the self-imposed domination of the Punjabi–Mohajir ruling elite. Influenced Continue reading Book: Poetry, Islam and Ethnicity in Postcolonial Pakistan
A photo exhibition by Omar Kasmani, Paris, CEIAS-EHESS
The red between black and white
Special photo exhibition, EHESS, main hall
15 September-15 October 2010
Omar Kasmani, a PhD student in Social Anthropology at Freie Universität (Berlin), is also an artist and photographer. We are very thankful to him that he accepted to contribute while featuring a photo exhibition: “The re
d between black and white” (see posters).
He chose images capturing the various aspects of Sehwan Sharif in Sindh, including people (faqîrs, ascetics, women and eunuchs), events (`urs, muharram), as well as ritual practices (dhammâl, charagi, ghusl) and ceremonies (nawchandi, rajabi). Around 30 photographs, mixing coloured images with black and white photos, were displayed in the main hall of the EHESS during the conference and for several weeks afterwards.
The artist’s statement is:
“My work questions the ‘black and white’ images of the ‘practising’ Muslim. Devoid of nuances, it is often imagined in contrasting tropes of uncritical submission to, or outright rejection of, religious tradition. Practices at the shrine of the ‘red’ saint in southern Pakistan highlight an inventive vocabulary of negotiation between local devotion and translocal agency giving rise to new forms of religiosity. Far from constructions of a fixed, homogenous and universal Islam, referred to invariably in the singular, with the capital I, my encounters in Sehwan sharif reveal the dynamic, heterogenous and plural capacities of ‘lived islams’.”
Some of the photos displayed at the exhibition can be consulted on the author’s website.
International conference, 23-24 September 2010, CEIAS-EHESS
International conference
Shrines, Pilgrimages and Wanderers in Muslim South Asia
Venue: CEIAS, EHESS, 54 Boulevard Raspail, 75006, Paris
Convenors: Michel Boivin & Rémy Delage
a
Thursday, 23 September 2010
9h-9h30: Welcoming of the participants
9h30-10h: Welcome address by Blandine Ripert, Director of CEIAS, EHESS-CNRS, and introduction by Michel Boivin (CNRS-CEIAS-MIFS) and Rémy Delage (CNRS-CEIAS-CSH-MIFS)
Session 1: Figures of wandering ascetics through history
During the first session, three contributors propose to analyze how the qalandari figure has been formed over time, using a large corpus of vernacular written sources mainly in Persian language, and how this movement relates to other mystical branches of South Asian Islam.
Chair: Catherine Servan Schreiber (CNRS-CEIAS)
10h-10h20: Alexandre Papas (CNRS-CETOBA), Vagrancy and pilgrimage according to the Sufi Qalandari path
10h20-10h40: Michel Boivin (CNRS-CEIAS-MIFS), Qalandar-s and Qalandarî-s: Antinomianism as a changing concept in the Indus Valley
10h40-11h: Discussion and debate
11h-11h30: Coffee break
11h30-11h50: Mojan Membrado (INALCO), Is there a connection between the Qalandars and the Ahl-e Haqq order?
11h50-12h30: Discussion and debate
Session 2: The saints’ charisma and conflicting representations of sainthood
The four papers reflect the multiple meanings of rituals that are performed in and around Sufi shrines, and which ultimately reflect the continuing success of these pilgrimages. The tension between the expression of emotions and the involvement of institutions in mediating that expression is measured in different ways.
Chair: Françoise ‘Nalini’ Delvoye (EPHE)
14h-14h20: Delphine Ortis (EHESS-MIFS), How discourses construct figures of ‘normalised holiness’
14h20-14h40: Omar Kasmani (Free University of Berlin-MIFS), Rearranging Gender: The question of spiritual authority amongst two women intercessors of Sehwan Sharif
14h40-15h: Discussion and debate
15h-15h30: Tea break
15h30-15h50: Mikko Viitamäki (University of Helsinki & Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE), Paris), Entertaining and ecstatic. Poetics and emotions in musical gatherings of a Sufi shrine
15h50-16h10: Ute Falasch (Humboldt University, Berlin), Managing a shrine inhabited by a living saint- the dargâh of “Zinda” Shâh Madâr
16h10-16h30: Discussion and debate
18h: Cocktail and exhibition
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Friday, 24 September 2010
Session 3: Pilgrimages, the city and the making of ritual spaces
The question is here about how localities, towns or cities have been structured over time by the ritual activity generated by pilgrimages but also by various actors or social groups competing for exerting social power and religious authority locally.
Chair: Thierry Zarcone (CNRS-GSRL)
9h30-9h50: Rémy Delage (CNRS-CSH-MIFS), A sociological reading of ritual processions: the case study of Sehwan Sharif in Central Sindh (Pakistan)
9h50-10h10: Yves Ubelmann (DAFA-MIFS), The shrine of La`l Shahbâz Qalandar and its urban surrounding: politics, urbanism and religion
10h10-10h30: Discussion and debate
10h30-11h: Coffee break
11h-11h20: Muhammad Mubeen (CEIAS-EHESS), The shrine and the Chishtis of Pakpattan (Pakistan): A historical analysis
11h20-12h: Jürgen Schaflechner (SAI, Heidelberg University), Moving through meaning: The pilgrimage of Hing Laj Devi in Pakistan, followed by the screening of a 17mn documentary film “Agneyatirtha Hinglaj”
12h-12h30: Discussion and debate
Session 4: Pilgrimage politics and Sufi shrines policies
Pilgrimages can be envisaged as “places” of politics in that they articulate on the one hand social and ritual activity, and on the other, competing discourses, secular and religious, tinged with different ideologies, and matrix of issues of power and domination.
Chair: Alka Patel (University of California, Irvine)
14h-14h20: Kashif Sherwani (CEIAS-EHESS), Maududi on Shrines and Sufism or the building of a new Islamic orthodoxy
14h20-14h40: Alix Philippon (University of Provence), An ambiguous and contentious politicization of Sufi shrines and pilgrimages in Pakistan
14h40-15h: Discussion and debate
15h-15h30: Tea break
15h30-15h50: Mauro Valdinoci (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy), Dead saints or living souls? Contested pilgrimages to Sufi shrines in Hyderabad (India)
15h50-16h10: Uzma Rehman (University of Copenhaguen), Spiritual power and ‘Threshold’ identities: the mazars of Saiyid Pir Waris Shah and Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai
16h10-16h30: Discussion and debate
Keynote address
16h30-17h: Pnina Werbner (Keele University, UK), Transnationalism and regional cults: the dialectics of Sufism in the plurivocal Muslim world
Book: Journal issue on Afghanistan and Pakistan
Outre Terre. Revue Européenne de Géopolitique, n°24, Afghanistan/Pakistan = Viêt-Nam + Somalie?, Paris Académie Européenne de Géopolitique, 2010, 445 p.
A dense issue of a journal specialized in “geopolitics”, Outre Terre, is devoted to Afghanistan and Pakistan, a theme reminiscent of the concept of “Af-Pak” coined by the US army. The editor nonetheless asserts in the first paper on the Durand line that it would be more relevant to use “Pakaf” (p. 9). The reader should, however, not stop at the enigmatic equation which works as a title. The volume gives a valuable insight into the different provinces of Pakistan, and the different features – cultural and others – of each of them. With numerous coloured maps, esxcellent articles are side by side with other more superficial papers. But although the papers based on factual analysis are numerous, there are also salient studies by confirmed scholars like Mariam Abou Zahab or Ahmed Rashid. The balance between such studies and factual reports is nonetheless not always convincing.
Michel Boivin
More infos
MA dissertation: Interdisciplinarity and Research in Social Sciences
Sohail Bawani, Integrating Interdisciplinarity in research and teaching/learning at higher educational level in Pakistan: exploring the case of Sehwan Interdisciplinary Project (SIP), MA thesis in Sociology, University of Karachi , 20 July 2010.
“This qualitative case study seeks to explore ways of integrating interdisciplinarity at the higher educational level in Pakistan, with special reference to illustrate viable moves for policy and practices in the area of research and teaching/learning. With this aim, this research provides an indepth analysis of the Sehwan Interdisciplinary Project (SIP) as a case in action of integrating interdisciplinarity to draw key empirical insights for theory and practice in Pakistani academia.
The research focuses on examining the meaning, nature, processes and challenges of integrating interdisciplinarity in the Sehwan Interdisciplinary Project (SIP) through its team members. The research finds that interdisciplinarity is an evolving process than a fixed construct: from its multi/pluridisciplinary phase to its full-grown interdisciplinary stage. The nature of interdisciplinarity within the SIP is a sort of disciplinary enrichment. In this case, each discipline explores and extracts from plurality of disciplinary sources to address the research problematic. In this regard, SIP had gone through a number of processes, procedures and related challenges to integrate such dynamics at the level of meaning and nature into the Project.
Lastly, while analyzing the following recommendations from SIP team members, the research provides useful insights for integrating interdisciplinarity at the higher educational level in Pakistan: (a) rethinking the conception of knowledge in the Pakistani academia; (b) seeking national interdisciplinary research initiatives, knowledge production and dissemination practices; (c) harnessing interdisciplinary research in social sciences by seeking cross cultural/institutional collaborations; (d) developing intradisciplinary/departmental synergies through creating new objects of inquiries; and (e) institutionalizing interdisciplinarity at macro and micro levels in higher education.”
Keywords: knowledge process, interdisciplinarity, multi/pluridisciplinary, integration, procedures, challenges, social sciences, teaching/learning, research, higher education, policy and practice

