Political Anthropologist. Focus on Pakistan. My book: https://t.co/S1hdVMW0VZ
May 27 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
One of the greatest paradoxes of Western liberalism is how much emphasis there is on interpersonal civility, avoidance of overreaching, respecting autonomy of others etc. and yet how much support there is for extraordinary and ruthless mass violence.
The extent of the erasure of violence from interpersonal relationships, including even from language, and yet a kind of indifference towards and support for the most horrifying violence. These things have always been connected.
Nov 30, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Back to debating who is or isn't 'elite' in Pakistan. Elite is quite differentiated. Does your family own capital or work for a living? Did you grow up living in your own property or pay rent? Joint family? Education a big portion of income? Use buses? live off your income?
And then there are questions symbolic capital too: did you go to English medium schools, have access to global cultural capital, can use this to acquire class mobility with higher paying jobs or possibly become a capitalist yourself. Lots of things matter.
Apr 11, 2022 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
Do PTI people ever wonder why almost all the Pakistani progressive lawyers, writers, journalists and academics in the social sciences and humanities are generally critical of PTI? They can't believe that we are all lifafas can they?
These tweets always get PTI people so here’s my piece from 2014 on why PTI isn’t the answer. arsalankkhan.blogspot.com/2017/07/why-in…
Apr 10, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
These people think remittances they send to their families are charity for the nation. Imagine telling your family you can’t send them money for essentials cause your party is no longer in power.
If you think sending money to your family is some voluntary act of charity and not part of your obligations, you should think less about Imran Khan and more about your relationship with your family.
Feb 12, 2021 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
There's a discussion in Pakistani twitter on whether science is a 'colonial construct.' This statement is too strong, but the fact that racist colonial ideology shrouded itself in scientific legitimacy is an undeniable historical fact:
Charles Darwin, arguably the most influential modern scientist, reproduced the racism and sexism of his time, associating so-called "primitive" people with the state of nature and identifying them with animals. This is the ideological ground of colonialism.
Feb 11, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The #MunawarFaruqui case highlights how colonial era blasphemy laws (295-A) connect India and Pakistan in ways that no simplistic narrative of secular India vs. Islamic Pakistan adequately captures. livelaw.in/columns/munawa…
Postcolonial reforms of Pakistan's laws of course make them much harsher, but what is common in both cases is the link between religion and nationalism. It is nationalism that allows two different religious traditions, Hinduism and Islam, to create the same forms of violence.
