Well, thank you so much for inviting me and for hosting the seminar.
I've been following, of course, the rich in the tradition of intellectual honesty at Oxford, particularly in South Asia.
And I'm really glad that I see a lot of senior members here. I know Fassel has been, has not, never been directly my teacher,
but has been a teacher in the field of intellectual history because we follow his work
and learn from him and other senior members who were here just before I started.
Just a little bit about the book, the context of the book.
This is primarily this book is written in primarily the polemic with such a but popular form of writing.
And the reason for that was partly because of the conditions under which this book was written.
I was in the UK for my Ph.D., and once I returned to Pakistan, I made the mistake of repeating some of the things I had learnt in the UK.
So you join a public sector university. You hold steady circles.
Reading groups encourage students to raise difficult questions.
But this was happening at a time when there was a creeping secret martial law taking place in Pakistan.
This is 2016 17. Dissent was being crushed under the title of the war that is reinvigorated war on terror and to keep this story short.
Universities were seen as the primary battlegrounds of this new hybrid war that the state was fighting.
It was that the claim was that the state is no longer at war, only militarily.
But there is now a war of ideas,
and the attempt is to to play with the minds of the people and they are academics who are misguiding the youth of the country.
This is a trove, of course, that's been used that's maybe pleasingly used all over the world.
In Pakistan, it just has perhaps has more severe consequences.
So universities became these these battlegrounds and other than the physical
repression against students who are not allowed any representation on campuses,
professors came under a lot of scrutiny as well. You may know that last year, in March,
the University of Management Sciences tried to hold a conference on Bangladesh to commemorate 50 years of the of the break up of Pakistan.
And it was remarkable that that conference led to an incredible backlash from the
country's right wing to the extent that Rangers' Best was sent with the university,
the vice chancellor was stretch and eventually the conference, which was, by the way, mostly a Zoom conference, had to be cancelled.
So even 50 years after this event, you can see how history has this presence in Pakistan,
this almost dramatic presence where it has to be perpetually denied as well.
Everyone is an aberration. The general march of of Pakistan's development.
But at the same time, its presence is felt through heavily. That cannot be thought.
Any mention cannot be tolerated. And I remember when I was given a warning I was in the political science department that the
former Christian College in Lahore and a member of the intelligence came up to me and said,
You know, we're OK with whatever you teach, but we just have one request.
Don't discuss politics in your class. And I was like, You know, it's I'd be happy to honour this request, except that I teach political science.
So just guide me into how I can teach political science without discussing any formal politics in classrooms.
Anyway, I was amongst a number of academics who was fired from my post, and right now there's a unwritten ban on hiring me.
And of course, a sedition case was also put against me and other academics and thinkers who were pursuing similar trajectories.
So I guess this is that this is the kind of authoritarian context in which I thought it was important to
write a book like this just to show just to kind of trace the roots of authoritarianism in Pakistan,
but also make a certain kind of a political statement that,
you know, despite this kind of censorship, there are people the publishers, my publisher, the WHO runs for the books was brave,
brave enough to publish this book because many publishers were scared of publishing anything in Pakistan that has to do with the military.
So it was a statement that there are people who are still willing to do stand up,
and the people across the country is also doing it at being a much heavier price than any of us have.
So with this background, so for today's discussion, I'll just talk about three teams.
I mean, this book is called eight pieces on Authoritarianism, but I think today we'll discuss three salient features that I think are important in
there in understanding the nature of authoritarian rule in contemporary Pakistan.
The first is. Has to do with this what I call a permanent state of emergency in Pakistan.
You know, Pakistan one difference, one way of differentiating Pakistan from India or from other countries that do have a Republican tradition,
is that even up to today, there's not even a minimal agreement on how to run the country, the form in which the state will function.
Even today on on social media, the trends taking strike was happening, saying, You know, we need the presidential system in Pakistan.
There's also discussion about having Shari'a,
having military dictatorships and and the repeated interventions of the military has meant that we do not have that that
context of that minimal agreement that could allow for certain qualities of certain predictability or certain routine.
Of complex, which is why the sense of emergency, which you know, in order to this massive,
super delicate situation is what remains one of the most invoked kind of phrases in
Pakistan's political theatre that Pakistan is going through this terrifying moment.
It's surrounded by enemies. It's under threat of destabilisation, and hence it requires extraordinary measures for protecting.
And this then brings me to this argument about the crisis of sovereignty.
Pakistan, you know? Terrorists have over the past 50, 60 years there's been a lot of discussion on how even in our modern times,
political theology is extremely important for keeping any country together, for keeping any political community together.
And of course, Schmidt is one of the most important thinkers in this tradition that there has to be a certain worldview,
a certain broader kind of a transcendental point of view that that transcends the everyday politics that holds the community together.
That is that is that that becomes a sacred bond in within which politics and decisions take place.
You know, my supervisor was just reading her book The Violence and There as well.
She talks about how political theology played a very important role.
Theology, both in terms of the use of religion, but also the idea of of the sacred, played a very important role in the anti-colonial movement,
particularly challenging the sovereignty of that group, challenging the sovereignty of the colonial state.
Now in Pakistan, we do on paper have a theology.
We have a lot of it more than most modern countries, which is why Pakistan is often a theocratic state.
You know, since 1949, we've had what's called the objectives resolution, which said we suggest that,
you know, Pakistan, the objective the purpose of Pakistan is to have is,
is to is to is to enact the sovereignty of Islam and to ensure that all rules and regulations in the country are in accordance with his will.
And this is something that's reflected in the Constitution of 1956 of 62 of 73 more so its empty tree with the preamble repeats the objectives.
The resolution and calls allow the sovereignty of Pakistan to sovereignty belongs to Allah.
What I find extremely interesting is that despite this kind of transcendental sense of purpose,
Pakistan has has had a lot of trouble defining itself in relation to the world.
You know, in the in the early 1950s, when, after the signing of the siege of centre backs,
Pakistan became the America's most allied ally in the 80s, of course.
Famously, Pakistan was hosting America's jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and by early 2000s,
Pakistan was leading the anti jihad in the region against the Taliban, again backed by American dollars.
And recently, it's led to some comical situations where, you know,
the foreign minister was recently asked his opinion ensemble London brother, he's a shaheed or not, whether he's a martyr.
And he refused to answer that.
Similarly, the Taliban Pakistan, which is a declared terrorist organisation and was responsible for the murder of school going children in 2014.
The Pakistani state is back in negotiations with that to mainstream, and they've even been called brothers.
Imran Khan recently celebrated the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan by
saying that the Taliban have broken the shackles of slavery in Afghanistan,
and he's ahead of the state that is still an ally in the war on terror.
That is that facilitated NATO's war in Afghanistan. So we aren't even sure today whether we've lost or we want because technically,
legally we are part of the losing side, which is why many people call Pakistan a red deer state.
It rents out its geostrategic position in order to do to cut deals with superpowers and to continue reproducing the elite consensus that exists.
And right now, of course, Pakistan is very close to the Communist Party of China,
so Pakistan is probably one of the few countries that's close to Communist China,
America plus America, Saudi Arabia Taliban,
which again shows the kind of almost like a profane nature of of calculation when one of our ruling elites.
But the point I want to make is that all of it becomes more and more clear when the military intervenes.
To suspend the Constitution. Now recall, I said the Constitution actually belongs not to the people are not sovereign.
The sovereign sovereignty belongs to us, and it almost becomes comical.
When the state intervenes, the military intervenes, suspends the constitution and says till the situation is restored to normalcy, we will not be.
We will not lift the suspension, which almost feels like, you know,
it's it's like saying right now the situation is so bad it's out of from the hands of out of the hands of Allah.
We are the agents of order. We will go in.
We will restore order and then hand over sovereignty back to us as if I was unable to do that.
And this this, I think already. Kind of hints at the fact that rather than having the other being a theocratic state,
this act in particular of suspending the Constitution, exemplifies that Pakistan lacks a coherent political theology.
It's not anchored in it in political theology. Otherwise, these contradictions would not have been this obvious.
Instead, there's brute power is brute calculation and brute force of force used against citizens, which makes it, you know, I in the book,
I use the term, the profane state, you know, state that that does not abide by its own theological premises actually undermines it.
Again and again, which then leads me to my second point.
This undermining does not just happen at the level of of of suspending the Constitution.
It also from this stems naturally stems that the rights of the people are also suspended.
And we can see that even in the normal democratic times, you know, trade unions aren't allowed to.
Trade unions aren't allowed women who come out to protest and are targeted by the state minorities.
So these are stories about Pakistan that many or that many have already hurt.
But I think one thing that again is emblematic of of of the intensity of of the violence is the case of missing persons in Pakistan,
which have highlighted in the book because I think it's one of those things that many people shy away from.
It is one of Pakistan's most scary open secrets.
Of course, it's one can argue it's a technique of governance that's increasingly being used across the world.
The Indian help Kashmiris.
The cases are rising in Turkey, of course, to the history of of enforced disappearances in Argentina and other parts of the world.
And here I bring in Professor Baku's.
Fantastic work on enforced disappearances and the question of sovereignty.
She shows very clearly that she does a very interesting reading of Hobbs and fuko focussed reading of clubs and shows
that what football misses is is the fact that is is the central importance of the category of the enemy in hearts.
And through that, she builds that argument, saying that eventually modern sovereignty is not just about eliminating guns,
it's actually about erasing an invisible rising concept which has with this difference,
has serious consequences because what's happening with the missing persons is that.
It is a form of of terrifying violence. We've seen people, people close to us who've gone missing.
One of my students I remember, was abducted from his home and.
The effect that it has is not only on the family, but everybody around the persons abducted is is naturally horrified by this blatant use of power.
Yet you cannot nominate who's done it because there are no records.
The state doesn't acknowledge it. The media doesn't acknowledge it.
The courts don't acknowledge it. So there is this this kind of absence.
But this absence is is is is the technique used by the state to show its presence in a very terrifying way.
It's this kind of, you know, ink that erases itself.
And I think that's that's one one way of looking at this form of sovereign violence as this think that erases itself and erases the bodies as well.
So this erasure of both the ink and the surface is central to modern forms of violence.
And of course, one can one one knows that one. Can you know that how even at this violence is not something that just happens now,
it's a reminder of an ordinary forms of violence and how the state was built.
And they said this about the form of violence in which the state communicates with people without in the language of violence,
without showing itself directly. So this.
So that's the one aspect of of missing persons. A second, I think, very important thing where where they were, where the case of missing persons,
I think can again complicate our understanding of of modern forms of power is that.
When when these enforced disappearances happen, clearly it did.
It's not it's not similar to the targeting of entire communities or of every.
The modern power also works in differentiating people, certain people, leaders, agitators from the crowds.
So you know this, of course, this has been happening since the French Revolution, you know, interpolating certain individuals as the great leaders,
the cite some of the work that I did in my dissertation, where in in the 1920s 1930s the colonial state was obsessed with, not with with the crowds.
I mean, we talk a lot about the crowds of the 1910s, 20s, 30s by the 1930s.
The colonial state is not scared of the crowds, as it is of certain individuals within those crowds the extremists,
the communists, the, you know, the professional agitator.
And in fact, the term political starts becoming used more and more by by British bureaucrats of
colonial officials in the 1930s for these individuals who they feel are shaped by ideas.
So, you know, so, so so there are a lot of examples that I give where we officials are like, Oh, this event was not political.
This this labour strike of fifty thousand people was not political.
There was they were, they were. They were just demanding better wages. But this protest of 500 people was apolitical.
There were ten people were what non communist agitators or nationalists or extremists.
So this this this understanding of who is political comes from it.
It started it started getting defined in terms of once organisation affiliation, all once it to some.
And this case of missing persons that we see is again a very targeted attack on certain
individuals that the state differentiates from the rest of the community as the ringleaders,
as the foreign agents, as the enemies within the question.
Of course, a foreign agent is something that is extremely important today in Pakistan.
Also in India, you know, the I, you know, often say that the number of people in Pakistan who have been accused of being religious,
you know, much about the father of the nation was accused of being deported. Then you had the family.
You would have not been as he never should be absent.
It would almost seem like Draw is the most popular political party Pakistan, and you could do the same in India with the ISI.
Everyone is a decent person who believes in human rights and believes in the rule of law is declared an Ice Age.
So there's, you know, it's it's this equation of dissent with with with the enemy.
I think is is is is one win over and the other then is to target specific individuals.
And this differentiation, I think, is very important. Every time we see the state cooperate, it differentiates between, as I said,
between people who are just protesting for a cause and people who are guided by by worldviews.
So this this differentiation, I think, is something that that becomes more clear in how sovereign violence takes shape in contemporary Pakistan.
OK, my third and last point is is about.
Is is on is on the question of the form and content now here.
You know, one can. One has.
One has of course, heard about how Pakistan has a has a system of controlled democracy.
That's in any case what I've ordered in in my book.
And here, I think there's a very interesting dynamic between between the the form and content of the court system in Pakistan for historical reasons,
primarily the anti-colonial movement and and the regular elections that that's been taking taking place in the 20th century.
Democracy at some level has a hegemonic presence for for for both the rulers and the.
So very few people openly say, Well, we hate democracy, at least those in power.
The interesting bit is, even military dictators never say that they hate democracy.
They say, we are here to have to improve democracy, to protect democracy, never to to dismiss democracy as such.
So. This has been a tension at the heart of the Pakistani state project since the 1950s.
Do they want to? They want republicanism, they want democracy.
But at the same time, there's this extreme fear of the people,
so so the hope is to be able to control the decisions of the people who have us to have to have to set up a contest,
a background context in which the will of the people can either be manipulated or
suppressed while showing the while keeping the facade of electoral democracy going.
And I think this is this idea of a hybrid democracy, of a controlled democracy,
of a manufactured democracy is something that is happening across the world now with,
you know, one can argue, even in places like Russia or Turkey or any other that maybe, you know, it's different everywhere.
But Pakistan in this regard has to be given credit because if we were the pioneers in the
fifties and it's been 60 65 years and this has been this process has been perfected.
And how do we how does the state manage elections? I read a quote, so.
Says time has come, and I'm quoting.
Time has come to end the political role of intelligence agencies, but they have ruined the country by manufacturing puppets agencies.
So these are secret agencies only promote those individuals it can control.
They won't control politicians, control judges and control bureaucrats.
They manipulate elections to install puppets. A country cannot function like this.
This is Imran Khan. In 2007 was now the prime minister is widely accused of being a puppet himself of the larger audience to do this.
So, so one can so, and I think he explains it way better than anybody else on how the system works.
We have what is called accountability, the accountability process, the anti-corruption drives that happen every few years.
I argue that the nature of capitalism in Pakistan is such that it's very difficult
to amass wealth without without breaking at least certain aspects of the law.
So in that sense, there's almost like universal guilt amongst the ruling elites who also are politicians.
Also happened to be like, is that that's the class from which politicians come from?
So, so if the intelligence agencies want to cobble together a coalition available for all they need to do is begin an anti-corruption drive.
And and that'll leave the leading politicians that if you do not support the party,
we want you to support in these elections, we we will open up cases against you.
And this is a remarkably effective method of disciplining Davids.
The political ends. There's a term called the king.
You know, the but the parties that supported by the establishment and they keep changing their names and their faces.
But but they but they're at the core is their loyalty to what's called the military establishment and to their own financial interests.
So this is one way the second way, of course, is to disqualify or at times kill opponents, which again, Pakistan has a sordid history of.
And third is is the election date rigging. There have been hardly any elections in Pakistan where they haven't been by serious allegations of rigging,
and the recent ones in 2018 were again very controversial because it was widely
believed that Imran Khan Sport I just read from was supported by the military
establishment and was brought in as a puppet who brought in all these elected
electable politicians from different parties in order to form a winning coalition.
Now the idea then, is to have have have a puppet who will be who has exclusive powers,
but who cannot question the basic architecture of power, which means the security issues,
the foreign policies, as well as a major business interest owned by the military,
will not be under the purview of the government and there will be silence on them.
No. This this form.
One can say, is useless. So one can dismiss form,
but I think it's always a mistake to dismiss form because form is if form has has has yet again develop the content of its own.
And this particular relationship between the content between content is authoritarian content and democratic form.
I think it produces all kinds of tensions within Pakistani politics that are at times they ducked it for opposition politics.
So on paper, naturally, we have a lot of rights constitutionally.
And in fact, from the missing persons to questions of student rights, workers rights, women's rights,
minority rights are often raised through available platforms by invoking the laws that the state has given.
But more interestingly, every time.
A prime minister has been brought into power as a puppet by the military establishment almost every time,
no matter how powerful or insignificant, how popular or unpopular the prime minister is.
He or she has gotten into a conflict with the military establishment by taking their role as prime ministers semi-serious.
And this this tension, I think, is very is very central to understanding the drama.
So, you know, even recently, it's interesting that the the the chief of army staff prince, the prime minister,
but then the prime minister has the power to give the chief of army staff an extension or dismiss him and basically this particular prime.
The government saw a major crisis between the prime minister and the chief of army staff.
The prime minister was unwilling to give him an extension and now this talk of how he's about to be discarded by the military.
Similarly, Evocities was again a puppet formed by the military in the 1980s and by by 1990.
He was challenging the military's hold on power and there had to be a military coup to overthrow it.
And even this time, as we speak, he's in England, in exile.
Similarly, with Bhutto, it was, you know, you can generally pass right hand man.
A military military favourite guy promoted by the military eventually turned on them and had to be killed.
And in 1979, even Benazir Bhutto made deals with the military, and eventually she had to be removed.
This is not just to the politicians. It's true for other institutions as well.
On paper, the judiciary is free. And from time to time are judges who.
Refused to play the game, and that's what I call going off script.
This is a script if we imagined this to be a scripted form of democracy.
There are always characters who go off script. The script can never be fully controlled in advance.
There are always elements of contingency that can be invoked and that can lead to reversals.
And recently, we've had judges this number who are challenging some of the taboo financial institutions, the financial empire of the military.
In 2007, we saw major lawyers movement in the country, which was precipitated by the dismissal of the Chief Justice of Pakistan,
Chaudhry, who again had challenged the domain of the military, particularly on the missing persons case, but on other cases as well.
So, yeah, so the system works in such a way that the the they must always remain a gap between the content and the form.
So the relationship of those in power of three judges of prime ministers must be ironic to their position.
Legally speaking, what if they don't have a sense of irony? Some people don't.
Then the system goes into a state of crisis when a prime minister states himself seriously, when a judge takes himself seriously,
when a politician takes so seriously, when that gap that that gap, that ironic gap is removed and then the exercise of power becomes more difficult.
So to end this point, as I said, corruption and anti-corruption in Pakistan is not about corruption.
It actually fuels corruption. If anything, because precisely because it's it gives an opening to to corrupt politicians,
keep doing the corrupt business as long as they knew for the king.
But it is. What can we call the technique of governance? Anti-Corruption is a technique of governance.
This democratic facade is a necessary condition to which as a legitimises itself.
But precisely because of the nature of the forum that all these there's always this enormous contingent
possibility of reversals of certain individuals going off script and taking themselves seriously.
I just like to end by saying, I think what is interesting about the moment right now in Pakistan, despite the horrors that we hear of,
is that there are a lot of young people across the country who are pretty much tired
with the kind of fear mongering that that has that's been going on for so long.
You know, if you call someone. A raw agent now.
You know, we all have all that most people just laugh about it.
It's something that has become a joke.
I think that the corruption of language is such that that the state no longer has the adequate words to dominate the opposition.
Nominate these new movements, like the pursuit of this movement, which is a movement of Pashtuns who have been ravaged by war on 14th March,
which is a movement of women asserting themselves in the public sphere.
Or, you know, Christian rights activist, Baluch activist, trade unionist people from different walks of life who are who are rejecting these labels.
They no longer have the potency. These words no longer have the potency that they did discredit individuals.
Which also raises the danger of direct forms of violence spread when words cannot discredit people.
But I think something new was definitely taking place in Pakistan.
We may not have the adequate words of concepts for it,
but I think new forms of political belonging are appearing onto the stage slowly and despite the difficulties.
I think there's a lot of reason to remain hopeful. I just stop there.
Thank you.