Thread by @mahvishahmad

For all organisers, activists, archive nerds, history buffs —

Check this: 1 Nov ’21 @ 1.30-3.15pm GMT

**Dissident Histories of #Pakistan**



REGISTER HERE: eventbrite.com/e/dissident-hi…

FB: facebook.com/events/4139611…

mailchi.mp/34b593d4ec8b/d…

@RevPapers #RevolutionaryPapers

1/n

We’ll be launching TWO projects.

1: A new and revamped South Asian Resource and Research Centre (SARRC), an archive of socialist, peasants, feminist and other progressive movements, founded by the progressive poet and archivist Ahmad Salim 40 years ago in #Pakistan.

2/n

2: The Revolutionary Papers Digital Teaching Tools Initiative

@RevPapers is a transnt’l collaboration investigating 20th cent journals as sites of Left anti-colonial thought.

The tools allow educators + organisers to teach radical journals in classrooms + movements.

3/n

*What is SARRC about?* All scholars of the PK left know Ahmad Salim. He has a 45,000-strong collection on our democratic and socialist histories. At 70+ years old, he’s long been concerned that no one will be able to navigate his collection after he is no longer with us.

4/n

In a year-long collaboration b/w a fantastic, hard-working team (librarian Shahzad Abbas + his team of assistants, web designer Fahad @desmukh, team member Sara Kazmi, Ahmad Salim and yours truly) we’ve worked VERY hard to physically + digitally catalogue his archive.

5/n

We’ll be launching a searchable, physical library, and a website with a search database.

Our hope: To ensure that Pakistan’s progressive, archives are available for future generations to learn from, to dream from.

Special thanks to @ModArchivesUCLA and @LSEsociology.

6/n

*What are Digital Teaching Tools?*

We don’t want to fetishise radical, left journals as curious, passive objects from the past.

We want to mobilise them in our political present. They are repositories of political dreams unrealised that can reanimate anti-colonial futures.

7/n

*At the event* we’ll be presenting two Digital Teaching Tools, that allows *anyone* to revisit the rich analyses, critiques and alternatives of radical collectives that have mobilised throughout history in Pakistan, to reimagine a more just world.

8/n

Sara Kazmi will present a Digital Teaching Tool on the Mazdoor Kissan Party Circular, distributed in 1970s Punjab.

The tool will help you learn about the MKPs work with marginalised cultural forms, popular traditions, and regional languages.

10/n

I’ll be joined by my teacher, @mmtalpur, to talk about #Jabal, an underground bulletin of the #Balochistan People’s Liberation Front, circulated between 1973 and 1976, during Bhutto’s counterinsurgency operation in Balochistan, just two years after Bangladesh.

11/n

The tool on #Jabal will help you learn about a long-maligned struggle in 1970s #Balochistan, and political dreams of a multinationalist, multilingual, and communist political community with space for all repressed nations.

12/n

Both of these projects are very close to my heart, but I know they are a tiny step in a big effort that cuts across organisers, scholars, thinkers, poets, singers, dreamers to revitalise more expansive imaginations.

13/n

Join us. REGISTER HERE: eventbrite.com/e/dissident-hi…

And follow us on @RevPapers #RevolutionaryPapers

@ChapatiMystery @jamhoormedia @thecaravanindia @dawn_com @MarxistBlchstn @Rekhta @AuratMarchMultn @AuratMarchKHI @AuratAzadiMarch @AuratMarch @wdf_pk @wdfbalochistan @wdfkarachi @AWPPunjab @AWPIsbRwp @AWPSindh @AWPKarachi @AWPSaraikiWasib @AWPLahore @AWPPakhtunkhwa @HRCP87

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@meznaqato @rafiullahkakar @Rabail26 @Mubbashir_R @mariarshd @Rehman32Abdur @SundusSaleemi @saramsalem @SoniaQadir_ @spin_ghar @KalpanaWilson @SAsiaSolidarity @tri_continental @SouthAsiaYale @alia_amirali @Tooba_Sd @thaqafatalhind @Taimur_Laal @NSFGB