CRAFTE Lecture & Thematic Day

The Cold War, Afro Asian Solidarities, and Culture Wars in Pakistan 1947- 1977

Lecture Abstract

 If the formal transfer of power in August 1947 was an occasion of profound optimism and triumph in India and Pakistan, it was also accompanied by a sense of profound disillusionment amongst those who felt betrayed by decolonization and freedom. For one, independence had brought with it the devastation of Partition. But for a range of political actors, and in particular the Left in Pakistan, the years after independence were a betrayal of all the promises of national liberation. More specifically, the decades following independence were marked by civil and military authoritarianism, severe repression of political activities and civil liberties, and the consolidation of power by elite and landed interests. In the international arena, Pakistan had also firmly allied itself with the Anglo-American power bloc. This meant greater repression of progressive politics. True freedom, as one of Pakistan’s foremost poets lamented, lay further along the horizon. It was in this context that leftist Pakistani intellectuals, writers, poets, and activists aligned themselves with the post Bandung era of Afro-Asian solidarity and a renewed sense of internationalism that was situated in the rapidly decolonizing Third World. Afro-Asian conferences and conventions promised continued struggle against neoimperialisms, socio-economic transformation of formerly colonized countries, reassertion of political and economic sovereignty, and a rejuvenation of long suppressed national cultures, literatures, and artistic expressions. This period, then, demands a reassessment of histories on ‘post-colonial’ South Asia which are mostly national histories. This is especially the case insofar as Pakistan is concerned. Instead, the many scales of internationalist politics in this era show how Pakistan was profoundly tied to the global politics of not just the Cold War (a story that is well rehearsed in the historiography on Pakistan) but also the politics of Afro-Asian and Third World solidarity.