History of the Left in Pakistan - Kamran Asdar Ali - Professor/Historian - TPE #141

The Pakistan Experience

Author, Professor and Historian, Kamran Asdar Ali joins us for a deep dive podcast on the history of the left in Pakistan. Why did class politics not take root in Pakistan? What do we see so many nationalists movement in Pakistan? What has been the politics in Karachi? Kamran Asdar Ali and I discuss the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case, Muslim Nationalism, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Jinnah's politics on this week's episode of The Pakistan Experience. Kamran Asdar Ali is professor of anthropology, Middle East Studies and Asian Studies at UofT Austin. . He served as the the Director of the South Asia Institute at the University of Texas, Austin (2011-2017). He is the author of Planning the Family in Egypt: New Bodies, New Selves (UT Press, 2002) and the co-editor of Gendering Urban Space in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa (Palgrave 2008), Comparing Cities: Middle East and South Asia (Oxford 2009) and Gender, Politics, and Performance in South Asia (Oxford 2015). He has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (1998-99), a senior fellow at ISIM, University of Leiden (2005) and a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg at Berlin (2010-2011). He has published several articles on issues of health and gender in Egypt and on ethnicity, class politics, sexuality and popular culture in Pakistan. His more recent book is Communism in Pakistan: Politics and Class Activism 1947-1972 (IB Tauris and Oxford, 2015). Find out this and more on this week's episode of The Pakistan Experience. Please consider supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thepakistanexperience And Please stay in touch: https://twitter.com/ThePakistanExp1 https://www.facebook.com/thepakistanexperience https://instagram.com/thepakistanexpeperience The podcast is hosted by comedian and writer, Shehzad Ghias Shaikh. Shehzad is a Fulbright scholar with a Masters in Theatre from Brooklyn College. He is also one of the foremost Stand-up comedians in Pakistan and frequently writes for numerous publications. He can be found on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tinder. Instagram.com/shehzadghiasshaikh Facebook.com/Shehzadghias/ Twitter.com/shehzad89 Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 1:30 Question of Muslim Nationalism 14:00 Nation states, nationalities and 'quomiyat' 19:30 Jinnah's politics 24:30 Politics of Constituency: Sajjad Zaheer and the Communist Party of Pakistan 35:30 Identity Politics and class being the only criteria 44:40 Quamiyat, Mazhaab and the State using religion 53:00 Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case 1:01:00 Progressives and Perverts: The Middle Class Morality 1:09:00 UT Austin Ben Shapiro Edition? 1:11:30 Faiz and Jalib 1:17:30 Using religion as a strategy 1:26:30 Politics of Karachi 1:45:00 Daily Wage Labourers 1:51:30 Karachi is a port city without a port culture1