Political Conflict in Pakistan

Book Description

This book is a major reinterpretation of politics in Pakistan. Its focus is conflict among groups, communities, classes, ideologies and institutions, which has shaped the country’s political dynamics. Mohammad Waseem critically examines the theory surrounding the millennium-long conflict between Hindus and Muslims as separate nations who practiced mingled faiths, and the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh renaissances that created a twentieth-century clash of communities and led to partition.

Political Conflict in Pakistan addresses multiple clashes: between the high culture as a mission to transform society, and the low culture of the land and the people; between those committed to the establishment’s institutional constitutional framework and those seeking to dismantle the ‘colonial’ state; between the corrupt and those seeking to hold them to account; between the political class and the middle class; and between civil and military power. The author exposes how the ruling elite centralised power through the militarisation and judicialisation of politics, rendering the federalist arrangement an empty shell and thus grossly alienating the provinces. He sets all this within the contexts of education and media as breeders of conflict, the difficulties of establishing an anti-terrorist regime, and the state’s pragmatic attempts at conflict resolution by seeking to keep the outsiders inside. This is a wide-ranging account of a country of contestations.

Author Brief

Mohammad Waseem

Mohammad Waseem is Professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. Formerly a Fulbright fellow at Columbia and the Brookings Institution, and Pakistan chair at St Antony's College, Oxford, he specialises in Pakistan's ethnic, constitutional, electoral, sectarian, military and militant politics. His books include Politics and the State in Pakistan and Democratization in Pakistan.

Chair

Christophe Jaffrelot

Christophe Jaffrelot is Avantha Chair and Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the King's India Institute and also the Research Lead for the Global Institutes, King’s College London. He teaches South Asian politics and history at Sciences Po, Paris and is an Overseas Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was Director of Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI) at Sciences Po, between 2000 and 2008.

Discussants

Farzana Shaikh

Farzana Shaikh is an Associate Fellow, Asia-Pacific Programme at the Chatham House. She provides regular analysis on current political and economic conditions in Pakistan. She is presently involved in helping to frame a research project on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor for the Asia-Pacific Programme. She has held a number of academic teaching positions in the UK, Europe and the United States, and been appointed to senior research fellowships at the University of Cambridge and the Institutes of Advanced Study in Princeton and Paris.

Ayesha Siddiqa

Ayesha Siddiqa is the author of 2 books including internationally acclaimed Military Inc – expertise in military decision-making, defence economics, civil-military relations and militancy and extremism in South Asia and the Middle East. She has also authored 12 book chapters and published over 300 articles in academic journals and opinion pieces in leading national & international outlets. She is the only woman and civilian to work with Pakistan Navy as Director of Naval Research. She has worked as an Advisor to the Chairman of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) – Pakistan’s Anti-Corruption Watchdog.