From Subjects to Citizens: Society and the Everyday State in India and Pakistan, 1947-1970

258 Pages·2014·1.92 MB·English

by  Taylor C. Sherman

From Subjects to Citizens
Society and the Everyday State in
India and Pakistan, 1947–1970
Edited by
Taylor C. Sherman
William Gould
Sarah Ansari
Cambridge House, 4381/4 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, Delhi 110002, India
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.
It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107064270
© Cambridge University Press 2014
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2014
Printed in India
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
From subjects to citizens : society and the everyday state in India and Pakistan, 1947-1970 /
edited by Taylor C. Sherman, William Gould, Sarah Ansari.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary: “Offers a fresh and timely perspective on the broader field of early postcolonial South
Asian history”-- Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-107-06427-0 (hardback)
1. India--Politics and government--1947 2. Pakistan--Politics and government--20th century. 3.
Postcolonialism--India. 4. Postcolonialism--Pakistan. 5. Public administration--India. 6. Public
administration--Pakistan. 7. Political culture--India. 8. Political culture--Pakistan. I. Sherman,
Taylor C., author, editor of compilation. II. Gould, William, 1973- , author, editor of
compilation. III. Ansari, Sarah F. D., author, editor of compilation.
DS480.84.F77 2014
954.04--dc23
2013040360
ISBN 978-1-107-06427-0 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Contents
Acknowledgements v
Introduction
Taylor C. Sherman, William Gould and Sarah Ansari 1
1. Personal Law and Citizenship in India’s
Transition to Independence
Eleanor Newbigin 10
2. From Subjects to Citizens? Rationing,
Refugees and the Publicity of Corruption
over Independence in UP
William Gould 38
3. Performing Peace: Gandhi’s Assassination
as a Critical Moment in the Consolidation
of the Nehruvian State
Yasmin Khan 64
4. Migration, Citizenship and Belonging in
Hyderabad (Deccan), 1946–1956
Taylor C. Sherman 90
5. Punjabi Refugees’ Rehabilitation and the
Indian State: Discourses, Denials
and Dissonances
Ian Talbot 119
6. Sovereignty, Governmentality and
Development in Ayub’s Pakistan:
The Case of Korangi Township
Markus Daechsel 143
7. Everyday Expectations of the State during
Pakistan’s Early Years: Letters to the
Editor, Dawn (Karachi), 1950–1953
Sarah Ansari 172
iv Contents
8. Concrete ‘Progress’: Irrigation, Development
and Modernity in Mid-Twentieth Century Sind
Daniel Haines 193
9. Partition Narratives: Displaced Trauma and
Culpability among British Civil Servants in
1940s Punjab
Catherine Coombs 216
Contributors 241
Index 243
Acknowledgements
This volume arose out of a workshop organized in September 2008 as part of
an AHRC-funded research project, ‘From Subjects to Citizens: Society and
the Everyday State in South Asia, 1947–1964’. This three-year collaborative
project (2007–2010) included William Gould, Sarah Ansari, Taylor
Sherman, and two PhD students, Daniel Haines and Catherine Coombs.
As per the nature of such a project, we are indebted to a gamut of other
people. However, we first owe our gratitude to the AHRC for funding this
collaborative research. We are also grateful to the other members of our
Steering Committee, namely Steven Evans, Craig Jeffrey, Ian Talbot and
Francis Robinson, for their helpful advice on the project.
In the course of this research we conducted three workshops. Although
the papers from all of them could not be included here, the discussions that
took place during each of them certainly helped strengthen the scholarship
in this volume. We would like to thank Paul Brass, Vazira Zamindar and
Christophe Jaffrelot for their valuable contributions as keynote speakers.
Those who presented papers at these workshops – Talat Ahmed, Kamran
Asdar Ali, Tommaso Bobbio, Ilyas Chattha, Nicholas Jaoul, Tahir Kamran,
Ravinder Kaur, Paul McGarr, Lata Parwani, Alasdair Pinkerton, Uditi
Sen, Ornit Shani and Ali Usman Qasmi – provided us with invaluable
comparative case studies. In addition to the presenters, the participants at
these gatherings, including Katherine Adeney, Masooda Bano, Crispin Bates,
Joya Chatterji, Rabia Dada, Antara Datta, Rohit De, Miraj Desai, Oliver
Godsmark, Bérénice Guyot-Réchard, Humeira Iqtidar, Roger Jeffrey, Justin
Jones, Andrea Major, Iftikhar Malik, David Hall-Matthews, Ayesha Mehta,
Zaki Nahaboo, Matt Nelson, Newal Osman, Pallavi Raghavan, Francis
Robinson, Yunus Samad, Shalini Sharma, Farzana Shaikh, Shabnum Tejani,
David Washbrook, Philippa Williams and John Zavos, ensured that the
conversation remained unfailingly amicable as well as steadfastly critical in
the most productive way. Colleagues at Devonshire Hall and the University
Conference Office, University of Leeds, as well as those at the Royal Asiatic
Society, London, and the Royal Holloway Conference and Events Office,
were generous in their support in setting up the three workshops.
Special thanks to Sarah Ansari, and the many others who helped to facilitate
our project in Sindh and Karachi, including Nausheen Ahmad, Sabihuddin
Ahmed (sadly departed), Aabida Ali, Karamat Ali, Sharafat Ali, Amin Ansari,
Babar Ayaz, Caroline Bates, Dr Aly Ercelan, Hameed Haroon, Dr Masuma
vi Acknowledgements
Hasan, Dr Ghulam Muhammad Lakho, Rafiq Safi Munshee, Lata Parwani
(and family), Gul Muhammad Umrani, and the patient staff of the Institute
of Sindhology (Jamshoro), the Pakistan Institute for International Affairs
(Karachi), and the Sindh Archives (Karachi). We would also like to thank
Ekta Gautam, Ram Advani, Vibhuti Narain Rai, C.R. Arun and the staff
of the UP State Archives (Lucknow) for their help in the parts concerning
Lucknow in this research. For help in Hyderabad and Delhi, we owe our
thanks to Dr Fatima Ali Khan and family, Padma Sree and Ravi Shankar,
Rajagopal Vakulabharanam, Vinod Jairath, Amer Ali Khan and Zahid Ali
Khan at Siasat newspaper, and the staff at the Andhra Pradesh State Archives
and the National Archives of India.
We would also like to thank Modern Asian Studies for permission to
reprint these articles, which were originally published as a special issue of
that journal in 2011, vol. 45(1). Paul Brass, Farzana Shaikh, Joya Chatterji
and David Hall-Matthews deserve special mention for their comments on
the chapters in this volume, as do the many anonymous reviewers whose
suggestions improved these pieces. A final note of thanks should go to
Suvadip Bhattacharjee at Cambridge University Press, India for seeing this
volume through to publication.
Introduction
Taylor C. Sherman, William Gould
and Sarah Ansari
Today there are more states controlling more people than at any other
point in history. Our world is shaped by the authority of the state. Yet the
complexion of state authority is patchy and uneven. While it is almost
always possible to trace the formal rules governing human interaction to
the statute books of one state or another, in reality the words in these
books often have little bearing upon what is happening on the ground.
Their meanings are intentionally and unintentionally misrepresented by
those who are supposed to enforce them and by those who are supposed
to obey them, generating a range of competing authorities, voices, and
allegiances.1
The above-mentioned comment about the negotiated relationship
between people and the states in which they live directly points to
the importance of the interactions that ordinary citizens have with the
state on an everyday basis. The chapters in From Subjects to Citizens
accordingly engage with what is now a critical debate in the social
sciences, namely the concept of the ‘everyday state’ and the various
processes by which elite ideologies and institutions are interpreted,
translated and manipulated at the quotidian level by men and women
as they negotiate their lives. As their authors emphasize, the state in the
context of newly independent South Asia did not operate as a uniform
entity, but rather conducted its business in terms of specific networks
1 Adam White (ed.), The Everyday Life of the State: A State-in-Society Approach (Seattle,
2013).
2 From Subjects to Citizens
of power and class structures that affected what it meant to different
sets of interests. As a result, the representatives of the ‘everyday
state’ developed complex but crucial relationships with individuals
and institutions alike, which greatly influenced how the state was
experienced by those living in this part of the world.
South Asia’s transition from colonialism to independence and
democracy in 1947 was undoubtedly one of the most momentous
events of the mid-twentieth century. Indeed, the project that brought
together the contributors to this volume aimed to investigate the shift
from colonial to postcolonial rule in India and Pakistan in order to
unravel the explicit meanings, and relevance, of ‘independence’ for the
new citizens of India and Pakistan in the two decades following 1947.
Rather than looking at the state from the perspective of high politics
and policy making, it took as its focus how ordinary people experienced
the end of British rule, and what the transition from being colonial
subjects to becoming Indian and Pakistani citizens meant in practice
for them. Inevitably, its approach was influenced by pioneering studies
such as Fuller and Bénéi’s The Everyday State and Society in Modern
India, that shed light on the ways in which the large, amorphous and
impersonal Indian State affected the everyday lives of its citizens,
arguing that state and society merge in the daily lives of most, with
the boundary between the two blurred and negotiable according to
social context and position.2 Though the study of postcolonial South
Asia has blossomed in recent years, including a burgeoning interest
in the nature of the ‘everyday state’ within the fields of geography,
political science, anthropology and development studies, a certain
lacuna exists in the historical perspective, particularly in relation to
the period straddling independence. Some work, for instance, explores
the experiences of Indian citizens, providing insights into the strategies
of dominant castes in specific localities in contemporary India, or
looking at specific popular notions of state corruption.3 Likewise,
2 C.J. Fuller, and Veronique Bénéi (eds), The Everyday State and Society in Modern India
(New Delhi, 2000).
3 Akhil Gupta, ‘Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics
and the Imagined State’, American Ethnologist 48, 4 (1995), pp. 787–796.