1 00:00:00,780 --> 00:00:06,860 Well, first of all, thank you. And those who can't be here for asking me to come speak today, 2 00:00:06,870 --> 00:00:12,599 I think I'm very grateful to you for giving me this chance to talk to a new set of people, 3 00:00:12,600 --> 00:00:17,220 a few familiar faces, perhaps in the room, but basically it's a new set of people. 4 00:00:17,580 --> 00:00:28,510 And to share some of the, I suppose, thoughts or that really William Goldeneye in the book that you just mentioned sought to explore. 5 00:00:28,530 --> 00:00:31,709 So I'll just start off that. 6 00:00:31,710 --> 00:00:38,970 So can I have a look behind you? But it may have stopped, so I may actually look at my watch to see how far how far through my stuff I've gone. 7 00:00:39,390 --> 00:00:45,150 So I think it's a surprise to anyone in the room for me to say what I'm about to say, 8 00:00:45,150 --> 00:00:54,660 which is that some say just transition from colonialism to independence in 1947 was undoubtedly, let's change the slide. 9 00:00:55,170 --> 00:01:01,350 Undoubtedly, one of the most momentous global events of the mid-20th century, the 20th century as a whole. 10 00:01:01,920 --> 00:01:04,020 I would suggest, not surprisingly, 11 00:01:04,020 --> 00:01:15,000 bear for the early post-colonial years in the subcontinent now exercise a great pull for a whole range of historians who, put it very simply, 12 00:01:15,420 --> 00:01:25,380 explore this period on the one hand to identify legacies, continuities, legal changes from the colonial era, 13 00:01:25,860 --> 00:01:32,400 and will be able to identify developments that may help to explain processes at work that in the 21st century. 14 00:01:33,180 --> 00:01:42,060 So as I just said in my paper today, I'll be drawing on the book and there is great boundaries of belonging that William Gould and I published, 15 00:01:43,080 --> 00:01:52,350 the 2019, which itself came out of a project with which we and others it was a it was very much a collective project, 16 00:01:52,860 --> 00:01:56,879 investigated the various transitions from subject to citizen, 17 00:01:56,880 --> 00:02:06,060 from subject to citizen political citizenship that took place in the context of early colonial post-colonial role of South Asia. 18 00:02:06,810 --> 00:02:16,950 Now we chose because of our own familiarity with them, but also because we felt that they work well together to focus on two localities. 19 00:02:17,220 --> 00:02:27,900 We got the word locality into the title of our book, so on to localities where they say to do in India and the province of Sind in Pakistan. 20 00:02:27,910 --> 00:02:31,860 And you can maybe just about make them out from the map, but it's probably a bit small. 21 00:02:34,180 --> 00:02:37,840 For us, these hinterlands, as we think of them of partition, 22 00:02:38,200 --> 00:02:46,660 provided us with an effective context for examining broader meanings of independence for India and Pakistan's new citizens. 23 00:02:47,300 --> 00:02:51,730 What these places also had in common was that they were both located in close 24 00:02:51,730 --> 00:02:58,990 proximity to where Central State power was directly exercised of the 1947, 25 00:02:59,290 --> 00:03:06,340 namely the then federal capitals of Delhi and Karachi, Karachi being Pakistan's capital in those early days. 26 00:03:08,340 --> 00:03:18,360 So I explore developments on both sides of this new 1947 border through the same lens was intended, 27 00:03:18,540 --> 00:03:24,840 we hoped, would allow us to draw attention to how the state, in its various guises, 28 00:03:25,260 --> 00:03:28,260 operated in these two new countries, 29 00:03:28,590 --> 00:03:39,240 as well as what being a citizen could signify for ordinary Indians and Pakistanis during a time of undoubted flux and uncertainty. 30 00:03:40,610 --> 00:03:48,589 The fluid and fluctuating links between Pakistan and India were epitomised brutally by continuing 31 00:03:48,590 --> 00:03:55,040 connections between people moving back or moving from one to the other and sometimes back again, 32 00:03:56,270 --> 00:04:02,630 together with the movement of information or sometimes misinformation in both directions, 33 00:04:02,930 --> 00:04:07,760 all of which combined to directly affect conceptions of who belonged where. 34 00:04:09,180 --> 00:04:15,210 Notions of citizenship. And along with this, what being a citizen in practice entailed. 35 00:04:16,710 --> 00:04:22,410 Came to be closely linked with a politics of belonging, not belonging to the new states involved. 36 00:04:25,040 --> 00:04:31,999 Moreover, during the early postcolonial years, ideas about and feelings of citizenship were created, 37 00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:38,090 forged at stake by contingent processes of interaction between the state, 38 00:04:38,420 --> 00:04:46,580 states representatives and institutions at different levels, different forum and society citizens in the making. 39 00:04:47,570 --> 00:04:54,170 And much of this engagement was linked to interactions and experiences taking place at the level of the everyday things. 40 00:04:54,530 --> 00:04:59,750 By which I mean specific local level configurations of governance, 41 00:05:00,050 --> 00:05:05,720 governance practices and discourses and bureaucratic representations themselves 42 00:05:05,840 --> 00:05:11,320 rooted in ongoing contingencies of power relations and social contexts. 43 00:05:13,400 --> 00:05:20,240 This concept of the everyday state, which is now deployed across the humanities and social sciences, 44 00:05:20,570 --> 00:05:27,620 had its basis in, I suppose, ethnographic approaches to the presence of the state in marginal areas, 45 00:05:28,010 --> 00:05:39,360 but then became expanded to encompass both the strategies of the state to assert itself and the responses of the people concerned. 46 00:05:40,520 --> 00:05:49,190 In other words, looking at everyday processes of state formation means looking at how actors in specific 47 00:05:49,190 --> 00:05:56,870 localities are impacted by and react to efforts of state actors to reorder social, 48 00:05:57,230 --> 00:05:58,940 political and economic life. 49 00:05:59,660 --> 00:06:08,809 And when we get as well include and I first began this joint project that eventually resulted in this book, although there were other outputs, 50 00:06:08,810 --> 00:06:19,130 as they call them along the way, we were very influenced by seeing, for example, this particular volume perhaps familiar to you. 51 00:06:19,760 --> 00:06:31,940 Published in 2001, an edited volume in which Fuller and I famously argued that in contemporary what was then, I suppose late 20th century India, 52 00:06:32,960 --> 00:06:36,980 state and society emerged in the daily lives of most Indians, 53 00:06:37,760 --> 00:06:44,240 and the boundary between them was blurred and negotiable according to social contexts and position. 54 00:06:45,500 --> 00:06:58,400 Hence their work focussed on how the large, amorphous and impersonal Indian state affected the day to day lives of ordinary citizens. 55 00:06:59,060 --> 00:07:02,150 Or put another way, for many people living in South Asia. 56 00:07:02,630 --> 00:07:09,590 The state perhaps represents all this. This is how people wrote about it. 57 00:07:10,010 --> 00:07:16,640 A machinery through which things could get done. Even fixed with its formal rules. 58 00:07:16,970 --> 00:07:21,980 Diverted or manipulated. Using the right context or influence. 59 00:07:21,980 --> 00:07:29,360 So as that working the system to to to very big sense anyway. 60 00:07:29,660 --> 00:07:41,870 So deploying this approach the history and let's say the historical specificities of South Asia now recognised as providing really an ideal space 61 00:07:43,130 --> 00:07:54,890 and ample scope for investigating the distinct yet intertwined means through which the post-colonial state reconstituted itself after 1947, 62 00:07:55,430 --> 00:08:04,160 alongside the development and the consolidation of different kinds of practices and also resistances to. 63 00:08:05,280 --> 00:08:06,509 By exploring the state. 64 00:08:06,510 --> 00:08:17,580 In this way, light can be shed on the complexity of both states society relations, as these reveal themselves in the everyday contexts of local life, 65 00:08:18,060 --> 00:08:25,230 including specific considerations of full governance practices as well, as well as ongoing contingencies. 66 00:08:25,320 --> 00:08:28,350 Power relations and social contexts. 67 00:08:30,110 --> 00:08:35,270 Now political independence in South Asia, 68 00:08:35,660 --> 00:08:43,760 not surprisingly heightened popular expectations as to how governance on the part of the state would operate. 69 00:08:44,120 --> 00:08:49,160 After that 1455 August. Turning point. 70 00:08:50,150 --> 00:09:00,050 Decolonisation will be the part, in short cultivated new public expectations about what the change would mean in people's everyday lives. 71 00:09:00,560 --> 00:09:09,410 But often in practice, when we look at the period more closely, we find disconnections between what India and Pakistan as new citizens heard in 72 00:09:09,410 --> 00:09:14,719 the lead speeches that could be relayed to them in the press or by word of mouth, 73 00:09:14,720 --> 00:09:24,020 or if they attended a public gathering and what they experienced first hand at the level of the province or district 74 00:09:24,560 --> 00:09:30,740 or the city or town in which they lived and where they interacted with that state and its representatives. 75 00:09:31,340 --> 00:09:35,320 And these are just two photographs taken from those early, early years. 76 00:09:35,330 --> 00:09:42,739 And on the left, you can only just about make them out. But at a public meeting held in Lahore in August 49, for instance, 77 00:09:42,740 --> 00:09:53,629 of then Prime Minister Tony Khan asserted that everyone in Pakistan had the same light and he used the word rights to be provided with food, 78 00:09:53,630 --> 00:09:58,100 shelter, clothing, education and medical facilities, 79 00:09:58,460 --> 00:10:08,600 implying that the State recognised its responsibilities for providing run of the mill necessities, run of the mill necessities of life. 80 00:10:09,580 --> 00:10:19,490 And a similarly paternalistic vein at the public meeting in New Delhi battalions was at the end of January 1948. 81 00:10:19,500 --> 00:10:22,640 So around the time that Gandhi was assassinated, 82 00:10:23,120 --> 00:10:35,329 the Indian counterpart to Nehru had identified as a major national problem the raising of 340 or 50 million people, 83 00:10:35,330 --> 00:10:38,750 raising them economically, certainly raising them educationally. 84 00:10:39,140 --> 00:10:41,830 So this kind of signalling really of the practical, 85 00:10:41,830 --> 00:10:50,659 the game as the day to day meanings and expectations of rights of citizenship helped establish that broader context within 86 00:10:50,660 --> 00:11:01,070 which Indians and Pakistanis engaged with the new realities of what it meant to be a citizen in the post 47 environment. 87 00:11:02,060 --> 00:11:12,350 So my paper today is really focusing on the dynamics or some aspects of these dynamics between citizens and the everyday state as these unfolded. 88 00:11:13,130 --> 00:11:22,520 And I'm going to take the whole business of elections really as the as the lens or prism through which to explore this and the elections, 89 00:11:22,520 --> 00:11:31,120 whether they actually took place or not. Let's do that. Because they didn't always or didn't always take place when they expected. 90 00:11:31,430 --> 00:11:35,240 So I'm going to be drawing on a chapter in that book by William Booth and myself, 91 00:11:35,630 --> 00:11:40,880 where we look at Constitution making and the people's experiences of elections. 92 00:11:41,360 --> 00:11:54,380 And in that chapter, we start off by, I suppose, quoting a very famous poem left by Rob Garrison, entitled Vacate the Throne of the People are Coming, 93 00:11:54,860 --> 00:12:01,310 set to be written on the 26th of January 1950, the day when India's constitution became effective. 94 00:12:01,880 --> 00:12:07,040 So here comes the biggest republic in the world. Prepare the throne for the 300 million people. 95 00:12:07,640 --> 00:12:10,700 The coronation is not of the king today, is of the people. 96 00:12:12,770 --> 00:12:17,049 We'll come back to that to get it. Now. 97 00:12:17,050 --> 00:12:23,560 Road Day is 2018 book A People's Constitution The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic. 98 00:12:23,950 --> 00:12:29,170 I think it's done a great service by showing how the Constitution takes in the context of India, 99 00:12:30,010 --> 00:12:39,040 rather than being a document just written in English created by the consensus of the little influence on India's greater population. 100 00:12:39,430 --> 00:12:45,640 In fact, this is designed to transform really the daily lives of citizens in profound and lasting ways. 101 00:12:46,300 --> 00:12:51,390 Indeed, the Constitution, according to day, came a line in the popular imagination. 102 00:12:51,400 --> 00:12:59,920 So much so that ordinary people attributed meaning to its existence, took recourse to it and argued with it. 103 00:13:00,400 --> 00:13:05,920 In other words, a day of use. The Constitution decisively made a difference in people's lives. 104 00:13:06,220 --> 00:13:14,170 In the post-colonial period, particularly during the Nehruvian, is from 1950 to 1964. 105 00:13:16,060 --> 00:13:26,680 Nor should we underestimate the amount of popular interest taken in the making of the Constitution itself on both sides of the border. 106 00:13:26,680 --> 00:13:36,950 Indeed, the progress of India's constitution making was closely followed in Pakistan, albeit, I suppose, inflected by awareness. 107 00:13:37,000 --> 00:13:42,310 The developments across the border in India were proceeding at a faster pace. 108 00:13:43,780 --> 00:13:54,050 So in January 1950. Influential English newspaper, Dawn. 109 00:13:54,160 --> 00:14:02,890 So the timing of what I'm about to share with you weekly coinciding with the inauguration of the Indian Constitution, 110 00:14:04,120 --> 00:14:10,449 a limited series of three linked articles entitled Pakistan. 111 00:14:10,450 --> 00:14:13,690 Those things appeared in them. 112 00:14:13,750 --> 00:14:19,930 The author set out ideas about what constitutes a supposedly civil liberties. 113 00:14:20,470 --> 00:14:25,810 And these are just some quotes from both those articles. 114 00:14:25,810 --> 00:14:34,810 So civil liberties. It was all part a part, rather, of the rights of citizenship that an individual commands as a citizen of a state. 115 00:14:35,050 --> 00:14:39,550 What you may ask, what is a citizen and what is meant by the rights of citizenship? 116 00:14:41,110 --> 00:14:47,770 He also proceeded to answer the question by then, explaining that while some civic duties were imposed by law, 117 00:14:48,040 --> 00:14:56,110 a good citizen, as he put it, realises the highest freedom in discharging all the moral and legal duties of citizenship. 118 00:14:56,620 --> 00:15:02,680 Because true freedom implies existence for everyone of the opportunity to contribute, 119 00:15:03,220 --> 00:15:07,510 of the richness of one's own experience to the furtherance of the common good. 120 00:15:08,730 --> 00:15:15,360 And so for him, a good citizen should not be a passive instrument at the hands of government. 121 00:15:15,870 --> 00:15:29,880 Rather, citizens should exert themselves to find out what is conducive to the welfare of the body of the body politic of which they are a part. 122 00:15:31,670 --> 00:15:37,249 And one way in which Indians and Pakistanis anticipated that they could pursue their 123 00:15:37,250 --> 00:15:42,200 newly acquired rights and responsibilities as citizens of these independent states. 124 00:15:42,620 --> 00:15:49,540 Whether or not that constitution was in place and we shouldn't forget to mention people were well aware of this, 125 00:15:49,550 --> 00:15:57,800 but it took until 1956 for Pakistan's constitution would be promulgated in contrast to 1954 India. 126 00:15:58,490 --> 00:16:04,490 One of the ways of doing this was by taking part in elections, participating in elections. 127 00:16:04,910 --> 00:16:15,500 So just to quote, because, again, the prospect of this of this participation of citizens in independent states, 128 00:16:15,710 --> 00:16:20,850 free, free, independent states was was exhilarating. 129 00:16:20,870 --> 00:16:26,030 So it's equivalent to give way. Listen to the thunderous roar of the charity of time. 130 00:16:26,660 --> 00:16:29,480 They keep the throne and the people are coming. 131 00:16:31,310 --> 00:16:39,560 But of course, elections meant engaging with the state, not simply the politicians that led it, but also the, say, the government servants, 132 00:16:39,560 --> 00:16:50,030 the bureaucrats and different levels within the bureaucratic hierarchy who were responsible for organising the polls from drawing 133 00:16:50,030 --> 00:16:58,249 up lists of eligible voters to making sure that there were enough boxes into which those same voters could deposit their voting, 134 00:16:58,250 --> 00:17:04,670 says elections also offered opportunities for people to end frustrations with the second Brigade. 135 00:17:04,700 --> 00:17:15,320 Very often it was their encounters with it at the everyday level with the frustrations that they had in these situations. 136 00:17:15,950 --> 00:17:19,280 So again, turning to work, as others have done, 137 00:17:20,600 --> 00:17:34,010 which coincided with with the project that William Gould and I were running in her 2017 study, How India Became Democratic, 138 00:17:34,790 --> 00:17:43,820 which provides really a very detailed exploration of the preparations underpinning India's first general election over the winter of 1950 152. 139 00:17:44,390 --> 00:17:51,770 Audit Shani argues that the drawing up of electoral rolls based on universal franchise ahead or 140 00:17:52,190 --> 00:17:58,110 rather than following the promulgation of the Constitution because those roles will be put together. 141 00:17:58,110 --> 00:18:02,479 The way before the Constitution was actually would being expended produced 142 00:18:02,480 --> 00:18:07,250 debates about citizenship often driven from below by Indians of varying means, 143 00:18:07,250 --> 00:18:10,610 but also including Indians of more modest means. 144 00:18:12,010 --> 00:18:16,839 While tremendous political and administrative efforts went into the making of the 145 00:18:16,840 --> 00:18:23,350 Universal franchise for what was the largest electorate in Democratic history, 146 00:18:24,070 --> 00:18:27,160 the production of the actual electoral rolls themselves, 147 00:18:27,670 --> 00:18:35,080 the paperwork that underpinned this exercise informed the process of constitution making really from the ground up. 148 00:18:35,320 --> 00:18:47,020 So this is a very, I suppose, poor summary of some of the key elements in what all shiny sought to present in that book. 149 00:18:47,890 --> 00:18:52,000 And from as early as November 1947, 150 00:18:52,330 --> 00:19:01,690 a Constituent Assembly Secretariat had set in motion the preparation of those draft electoral rolls based on the universal franchise, 151 00:19:02,170 --> 00:19:05,210 implementing what would turn out to be the first, I suppose, 152 00:19:05,260 --> 00:19:09,070 constitutional promise to be fulfilled by the new Indian Republic, 153 00:19:09,850 --> 00:19:15,489 namely the principle that every adult citizen would have the right to vote with the aim of 154 00:19:15,490 --> 00:19:25,000 holding fresh general elections as early as possible after the new constitution came into force. 155 00:19:26,350 --> 00:19:30,630 Moreover, during the putting together of the lists, 156 00:19:30,940 --> 00:19:39,640 Shawnee argues that more Indians grew to conceive of their voting rights as a basic constitutional guarantee, 157 00:19:40,240 --> 00:19:48,910 and hence various citizens organisations were established to safeguard the right to franchise that it promised. 158 00:19:50,710 --> 00:19:58,660 Numerous other Indians, meanwhile, fought to get their names entered on the roll to ensure their voting rights as citizens. 159 00:20:00,310 --> 00:20:04,540 As far as casting a vote itself was concerned. 160 00:20:07,570 --> 00:20:13,630 When the first Indian general elections were held between October 51 and February 1952, 161 00:20:14,050 --> 00:20:19,060 political figures across the spectrum expressed doubts about the readiness and 162 00:20:19,060 --> 00:20:25,660 preparedness of India's largely ruled society for universal suffrage after all. 163 00:20:26,140 --> 00:20:34,440 As people reminded others, please 85% of the electorate. 164 00:20:35,540 --> 00:20:42,350 Could neither read or write. In addition, the size of the Indian general election was unprecedented at the global level. 165 00:20:42,860 --> 00:20:46,759 There were to be in the figures also huge, 166 00:20:46,760 --> 00:20:56,450 but there were to be around 25,000 candidates standing in or across central and state assemblies for something like four and a half thousand seats, 167 00:20:57,440 --> 00:21:01,340 500 for the central parliament, the rest for provincial parliaments. 168 00:21:01,880 --> 00:21:14,960 There were almost 225,000 polling booths with 2 million sealed boxes, ballot boxes made from some huge amount of tons and tons of steel. 169 00:21:16,880 --> 00:21:23,270 As William dug out and, you know, there were 12,000 polling stations, 50,000 booths. 170 00:21:23,720 --> 00:21:32,570 While it was estimated that around half of the state's total police force of 55,000 were engaged in the maintenance of law and order during this time. 171 00:21:34,230 --> 00:21:35,670 Again, the figures go on. 172 00:21:35,670 --> 00:21:44,550 16 and a half thousand class were appointed to collect the electoral rolls, nearly 400,000 reams of paper used for printing the rolls. 173 00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:54,960 That was something like 56,000 presiding officers with a further 280,000 helpers and that 225,000 or so police officers. 174 00:21:55,920 --> 00:22:03,060 The voting stations themselves were spread over more than 1 million square miles in the case of remote hill villages. 175 00:22:03,510 --> 00:22:10,140 Even bridges had apparently had to be specially constructed to facilitate people getting to the polls to cast their vote. 176 00:22:10,920 --> 00:22:14,730 Maybe not so surprisingly for one American observer. 177 00:22:14,880 --> 00:22:17,970 This all added up to a challenge of colossal proportions. 178 00:22:18,930 --> 00:22:25,170 The well-known British observer, Pindar Lu, for one, went so far as to suggest that it was an absurd farce, 179 00:22:25,800 --> 00:22:29,100 watching millions of illiterate people registering their phones. 180 00:22:31,100 --> 00:22:35,570 In the event, levels of participation prove to be encouragingly high. 181 00:22:36,560 --> 00:22:44,630 There is election speeches were delivered to around 2 million people at something like 300 mass meetings in terms of turnout. 182 00:22:44,690 --> 00:22:55,700 Bombay, the city with the greatest density of polling stations, saw levels of around 70% while in and cool coach in these reach nearly 80%. 183 00:22:56,900 --> 00:23:01,970 Despite the often large distances involved and the inaccessibility of many villages, 184 00:23:02,150 --> 00:23:08,120 some of which the participation rather of rural voters living in vast constituencies, 185 00:23:08,720 --> 00:23:14,630 some of which have populations of over 350,000, was higher than in the towns. 186 00:23:15,680 --> 00:23:21,200 As we all know what I think we will be familiar with election symbols, 187 00:23:21,200 --> 00:23:28,969 what used to be a literate cast that Bongiorno will account for a party and for another a half a tree, 188 00:23:28,970 --> 00:23:35,120 perhaps multiple ballot boxes, one for each party to use to prevent mistakes by voters. 189 00:23:35,120 --> 00:23:44,370 And indeed, scientists have developed an indelible ink to foil impersonation that involves the use of some 400,000 files buildings. 190 00:23:44,430 --> 00:23:54,319 So just the sheer size and quantity and extent and scope of this election related activity did I think a 191 00:23:54,320 --> 00:24:04,130 great deal to necessarily familiarise but introduce in some cases the new state to its new citizen this. 192 00:24:05,210 --> 00:24:12,500 Ahead of the elections. A documentary on the franchise and its functions and the duty of the electorate was shown in thousands of cinemas, 193 00:24:12,770 --> 00:24:17,780 and many more voters were reached through broadcast from the Arabian posters and 194 00:24:17,780 --> 00:24:23,240 emblems everywhere to be seen in shops and booths on the old colonial statues. 195 00:24:23,570 --> 00:24:30,140 And for instance, it said that in Bengal a common practice was to paint votes for Congress on the backs of stray cows. 196 00:24:30,980 --> 00:24:33,379 Indeed, such was the success of these elections, 197 00:24:33,380 --> 00:24:41,360 despite inevitable complaints about electoral misdemeanours in due course that the new US ambassador to India trust, 198 00:24:41,360 --> 00:24:49,850 the balls changed his view from initially thinking that the country would need a benevolent dictatorship for a period he came to believe. 199 00:24:49,910 --> 00:24:54,920 Also, he commented that illiteracy was no ball to, quote, intelligent voting. 200 00:24:56,790 --> 00:24:58,610 All the saying in places such as U.P., 201 00:24:58,620 --> 00:25:06,840 there were allegations in the run up to the elections almost well that were often rather centred on the choice and background of the candidates, 202 00:25:07,500 --> 00:25:11,700 mostly linked with black markets activities of the kinds of use the MENA, 203 00:25:11,700 --> 00:25:18,840 but also involving accusations of nepotism and alleged association with criminal organisations. 204 00:25:19,350 --> 00:25:25,889 There was likewise disgruntlement expressed regarding how full the Congress leadership had become 205 00:25:25,890 --> 00:25:32,310 distanced just in the short time since independence from the everyday concerns of ordinary citizens. 206 00:25:34,700 --> 00:25:40,400 However, despite claims regarding the deterioration of India's principal political party, 207 00:25:40,790 --> 00:25:48,140 there was a sense in the final months before the election that exercising the vote was an exercise in rights assertion itself. 208 00:25:48,890 --> 00:25:55,160 Newspapers were filled with discussions of how to overcome the aforementioned structural challenges of the electorate. 209 00:25:55,580 --> 00:26:03,800 So the literacy, the distances and extent of the electoral operation itself, and even knotty problems of election expenses. 210 00:26:04,550 --> 00:26:11,840 So that in a sense, this is the situation in India. 211 00:26:11,840 --> 00:26:17,600 That's just so I mean, I've been focusing on India. I'll turn my attention now to to Pakistan. 212 00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:25,820 And let me turn our attention to to Pakistan. We see the events the events that. 213 00:26:27,420 --> 00:26:30,120 Through the post partition years I'm holding and somewhat different. 214 00:26:31,710 --> 00:26:40,020 Unlike Indians, Pakistanis did not have the opportunity to take part in a general election until 1977, 215 00:26:40,050 --> 00:26:46,260 till nearly two decades after their neighbours had first gone to the polls as fully as full fledged citizens, 216 00:26:46,260 --> 00:26:53,970 with a vote to cast direct comparisons with India as far as the experience of working people at a national level. 217 00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:58,440 During excuse me the first decade of their dependents of tricky to draw. 218 00:27:00,760 --> 00:27:09,940 All the same. People in Pakistan spent much of the 1950s actively anticipating elections, getting ready for them, 219 00:27:10,570 --> 00:27:14,620 and occasionally even participating in the little provincial or local level. 220 00:27:15,130 --> 00:27:25,450 So while the scale of Pakistanis experiments in democratic participation were considerably more tentative than their Indian equivalents, 221 00:27:25,840 --> 00:27:33,130 the significance invested in these occasions in terms of hope and expectation, I would suggest, could be just as high. 222 00:27:35,250 --> 00:27:39,610 But is for both the new Pakistani state and its citizens. 223 00:27:39,610 --> 00:27:46,090 Simply preparing to vote became a rite of passage as far as what being a citizen promised, 224 00:27:46,750 --> 00:27:56,050 with enormous emphasis placed on putting the necessary electoral scaffolding in place as a first necessary step. 225 00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:06,190 I was in India, in Pakistan. Voting or voter registration rather assumed enhanced means, 226 00:28:06,540 --> 00:28:14,820 particularly taking place as it did against the backdrop of the long term impact of politicians demographic upheavals. 227 00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:19,960 Indeed to judge from available records. The authorities there, 228 00:28:19,970 --> 00:28:28,170 the various levels expended a lot of effort during this period trying to work out who was living 229 00:28:28,170 --> 00:28:35,460 where and in what precise numbers as part of wider public preparations in anticipation of voting. 230 00:28:36,740 --> 00:28:40,190 From periodic hit counts throughout the 1950s, 231 00:28:40,610 --> 00:28:50,299 driven by the need to quantify the whereabouts of displaced refugees in cities such as Karachi and elsewhere to the 232 00:28:50,300 --> 00:28:58,640 more specific preparation of electoral rolls number counting assumed political even nation building significance. 233 00:29:00,730 --> 00:29:11,830 So in a similar fashion to the challenge facing India in the run up to the 1950 152 national general election, 234 00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:19,690 there is a drawing up of electoral rolls, whether it's city or province or optimistically, as it turned out, national level. 235 00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:30,640 Repeatedly tested the Pakistan state's capacity to identify, verify and record those of its. 236 00:29:31,740 --> 00:29:36,390 New citizens deemed eligible to vote in a number of cases. 237 00:29:36,990 --> 00:29:47,370 Elections were postponed if not cancelled, ostensibly because the authorities were unable to make the necessary preparations in time, 238 00:29:48,030 --> 00:29:55,200 but also thanks on occasions to official concerns about the elections likely wrong outcomes. 239 00:29:56,840 --> 00:30:07,280 So if we take just some of some examples of this in the case of the elections to the Karachi Municipal Corporation, 240 00:30:07,280 --> 00:30:15,470 so we're talking city level elections that were scheduled for early 1953. 241 00:30:15,920 --> 00:30:24,530 The floors were all to evidence of council procedural maladministration, produced a storm of public protests, 242 00:30:24,980 --> 00:30:32,840 leading one contemporary to comment that quote perfection in the use of one of the major instruments of representative democracy. 243 00:30:33,290 --> 00:30:38,150 Free elections fairly conducted, has not yet been attained in Pakistan. 244 00:30:38,450 --> 00:30:46,010 If the situation resulting from the recent balloting for members of the Karachi Municipal Corporation is any indication. 245 00:30:47,530 --> 00:30:54,249 And despite all the talk beforehand about fair and well organised elections, quote, In many wards, 246 00:30:54,250 --> 00:31:03,280 political polling arrangements were not ready in time, leading to many complaints about mismanagement and inefficiency. 247 00:31:04,030 --> 00:31:08,739 Both independent candidates and Muslim League candidates complained say the 248 00:31:08,740 --> 00:31:14,140 polling booths were either not in place or closed at the scheduled voting times. 249 00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:18,220 So the practicalities left a great deal to be desired. 250 00:31:20,370 --> 00:31:26,159 When Pakistan's first provincial election had been held, but was held in the Punjab in March 51. 251 00:31:26,160 --> 00:31:35,190 So going back to before those Karachi elections, the shortage of housing, the high costs of rents as well as utilities and food, 252 00:31:35,520 --> 00:31:42,360 unemployment and undisguised favouritism in the allotment of property was expected by many contemporaries 253 00:31:42,360 --> 00:31:49,320 to produce widespread opposition to any one or any thing associated with the central government. 254 00:31:50,720 --> 00:31:59,780 In due course. With the votes counted, the league emerged perhaps suspiciously victorious and the low turnout of only around 30%, 255 00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:03,740 together with the party's unexpectedly clear margin of victory, 256 00:32:04,190 --> 00:32:10,880 prompted widespread complaints that the election's being a farce, a mockery and a fraud upon the electorate. 257 00:32:11,820 --> 00:32:20,340 Critics claim that more than 50 contestants had won their seats precisely thanks to their relationship with government officials. 258 00:32:20,790 --> 00:32:28,230 And in many eyes, these kinds of, quote, illegal tactics constituted a blot on the face of democracy. 259 00:32:29,400 --> 00:32:37,830 As a subsequent Electoral Reform Commission report flagged up, quote, government servants had to be unequivocally, 260 00:32:37,830 --> 00:32:43,830 unequivocally directed to keep themselves altogether aloof from politics. 261 00:32:44,190 --> 00:32:49,860 They must not be allowed to canvass or otherwise interfere or use their influence 262 00:32:49,860 --> 00:32:54,270 in connection with or take part in elections to the legislative bodies, 263 00:32:54,570 --> 00:32:59,400 except by way of freely exercising their right, the right to vote. 264 00:33:00,650 --> 00:33:05,870 This apparent high moral stance will be retrospectively, however, 265 00:33:05,870 --> 00:33:14,690 did not prevent the authorities themselves from playing a last minute trump card on the day before those polls or the polling itself started. 266 00:33:15,260 --> 00:33:22,249 Bold newspaper headlines announced that an attempted coup and so you will be familiar with this history. 267 00:33:22,250 --> 00:33:24,800 The Robert Kennedy conspiracy had been foiled. 268 00:33:25,880 --> 00:33:32,990 So just that they feel these elections there was this shock horror headline that a conspiracy had been foiled. 269 00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:38,120 And while newspapers refrained from explicitly calling on voters to support the ruling party, 270 00:33:38,420 --> 00:33:43,430 the implication of this apparent coincidence was clear the nation had been placed in danger. 271 00:33:44,360 --> 00:33:50,840 Pakistanis, in this case Punjabis, needed to back the party that had averted this crisis, namely the Muslim League. 272 00:33:53,160 --> 00:33:55,680 On the other hand, perhaps surprisingly, 273 00:33:56,370 --> 00:34:03,930 the election for Sydney's provincial legislative assembly eventually took place in May 1953 after some delays. 274 00:34:04,350 --> 00:34:07,980 They had originally been scheduled for a year early put off. 275 00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:19,420 Those elections impressed some members of the public by the extent to which they appeared to be more fair and impartial than many had been expecting. 276 00:34:20,380 --> 00:34:26,440 The then election commissioner, Syed Hashim Raza, it seems and taken personal responsibility. 277 00:34:26,440 --> 00:34:36,160 At least he took personal credit, I suppose, for ensuring that the administration would perform its duties, in his words, honestly and impartially. 278 00:34:36,970 --> 00:34:41,050 He had told the province to, quote, set the election machinery in gear, 279 00:34:41,710 --> 00:34:47,380 outlining the measures that included different coloured ballot boxes for the different parties so as to 280 00:34:47,380 --> 00:34:54,580 assist the illiterate and strict orders to government officials were made to remain aloof from factionalism. 281 00:34:55,420 --> 00:35:03,190 All the same, I think we should note the district local polls, which had been scheduled to begin in March that same year, were once more postponed. 282 00:35:03,190 --> 00:35:10,329 So there's a continual sort of refrain of local elections at different levels being postponed on the grounds of, 283 00:35:10,330 --> 00:35:14,620 quote, two elections and about the same time with overwhelm the administration. 284 00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:22,700 Now, only one sixth of the voters in this Legislative Assembly election were women. 285 00:35:23,270 --> 00:35:30,830 And this, I think, highlights or reminds us of the gendered realities involved in electoral participation at this time, 286 00:35:31,310 --> 00:35:39,290 and also of the additional challenges facing Pakistan's female citizens in the making at the highest level. 287 00:35:39,590 --> 00:35:48,049 Again, perhaps not surprisingly, the failure to include any women members in Pakistan's second constituent assembly in 288 00:35:48,050 --> 00:35:53,700 mid 1955 triggered a range of responses from female activists who complained that, 289 00:35:53,720 --> 00:36:01,640 quote, Women must have a voice in the lawmaking of the country, especially when the question of their rights is involved. 290 00:36:02,240 --> 00:36:08,180 If at the very outset they are ignored, how can they hope to get justice in matters concerning them? 291 00:36:09,620 --> 00:36:20,780 In 1956, when the assembly minus any direct female involvement had finished drafting the constitutional paperwork, it was in their capacity as, quote, 292 00:36:20,810 --> 00:36:29,270 surprise and pain that citizens that these same female activists argued that the country's leaders had, quote, 293 00:36:29,270 --> 00:36:36,530 called on us and called upon us many times over the past eight years to play our whole part in the life of the nation. 294 00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:41,450 And yet they had not repaid this commitment by guaranteeing full rights. 295 00:36:43,510 --> 00:36:51,850 Meanwhile, of course, the key provincial election in terms of wider Pakistan political impact was the one that 296 00:36:52,270 --> 00:37:00,370 had taken place in changing the screen that had taken place in East Bengal in March 1954, 297 00:37:00,370 --> 00:37:06,040 whose results rippled, I should maybe say, ripped across the country as a whole. 298 00:37:06,430 --> 00:37:14,020 This poll involved some 20 million voters, of whom the vast majority had never participated in any election before. 299 00:37:14,710 --> 00:37:18,970 Despite the rhetoric of East Bengal's incumbent Muslim ministry, 300 00:37:19,450 --> 00:37:26,109 which repeatedly stressed its expected victory, one report reminded observers that, quote, 301 00:37:26,110 --> 00:37:32,950 The ordinary man is made aware at every point of an administration and a political party, 302 00:37:33,340 --> 00:37:41,380 which to him seemed to him to be full of individuals who are personally corrupt and feathering the openness at his expense. 303 00:37:42,460 --> 00:37:50,560 As another contemporary commented, quote, The Muslim need to spare no effort on the organisational side to win this election. 304 00:37:51,130 --> 00:37:57,100 Controlling as they do the electoral machinery, the administration, the police, the nominal funds. 305 00:37:57,490 --> 00:38:01,240 They stand a good chance of pulling it off by hook or by crook. 306 00:38:01,660 --> 00:38:04,300 The fact is that the election is not free and fair, 307 00:38:04,630 --> 00:38:11,350 and the league commands infinitely greater resources of inducement and force and fraud than the United Front, 308 00:38:11,380 --> 00:38:15,340 the opposition coalition which actually did lose those elections. 309 00:38:17,160 --> 00:38:26,220 So my my last example today, I suppose, returns to my own personal comfort zone, namely the city of Karachi, 310 00:38:26,550 --> 00:38:33,500 where, again, we're talking about municipal elections that took place in April 1958. 311 00:38:33,510 --> 00:38:39,840 So towards the end of the 1950s, and which Karachi still being the federal capital, 312 00:38:40,110 --> 00:38:44,280 were regarded by contemporaries as a crucial test of public opinion. 313 00:38:44,700 --> 00:38:54,299 When national elections still appeared, we'll be able to mystically to be in the offing in the event these election results confirm the faction ridden 314 00:38:54,300 --> 00:39:02,220 nature of the city's politics and public frustrations with mainstream politicians more than anything else. 315 00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:11,160 So these Karachi level elections once again exposed the practical challenges involved in, say, 316 00:39:11,170 --> 00:39:21,280 registering citizens to vote with the names of only around a quarter of that was about 450,000 of the city's eligible electorate, 317 00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:26,410 having been included in those lists drawn up by the end of February that year. 318 00:39:27,790 --> 00:39:37,120 Holding Pakistani nationality was still not at that time an automatic requirement or proof of voter eligibility. 319 00:39:37,750 --> 00:39:45,220 Instead, with full one nationality still in many cases to be confirmed, the criteria were first adult food. 320 00:39:46,210 --> 00:39:49,360 Secondly, a minimum of one years residence in the city. 321 00:39:49,810 --> 00:39:58,150 And thirdly, appearing on the electoral roll themselves that as a victim, a sort of circular, circular process at work. 322 00:39:58,210 --> 00:40:03,670 This meant, though, that people still living on footpaths, as many, many were in Karachi in the late fifties, 323 00:40:04,030 --> 00:40:08,920 were restricted from voting as they had no officially recognised fixed abode. 324 00:40:09,340 --> 00:40:15,879 So citizenship was this very sort of what was I was going to say sticky. 325 00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:21,940 But I didn't mean that but. Fluid. 326 00:40:22,120 --> 00:40:26,050 Fluid concept or reality is a better word. 327 00:40:26,680 --> 00:40:34,509 Anyway, before the vote the polls took place. Forecasts suggested that the city would remain a stronghold of the Muslim League yet again. 328 00:40:34,510 --> 00:40:44,110 That sort of optimistic expectation on the part of different forecasts is helped by support from Karachi's large refugee population. 329 00:40:44,770 --> 00:40:50,860 As it turned out, the election results revealed a picture of political life that was far less cut and dried. 330 00:40:51,490 --> 00:40:59,290 For a start, the elections demonstrated an urgent need for electoral procedures to be tightened up if the general election was going to stand. 331 00:40:59,290 --> 00:41:07,690 Any chance of being free from charges of vote rigging and party organisation, generally speaking, was also going to have to step up again. 332 00:41:08,590 --> 00:41:15,250 This was apart from having controls the league, the Jamaat e Islami outperformed expectations, 333 00:41:15,460 --> 00:41:22,540 winning 18 of the 25 seats that it contested, as well as running a more tightly organised campaign. 334 00:41:22,570 --> 00:41:28,110 Its manifesto offered a raft of practical solutions to Karachi's many problems. 335 00:41:28,120 --> 00:41:36,400 On the one hand, it promised somehow to provide housing and improved hygiene facilities both needed. 336 00:41:37,210 --> 00:41:46,120 On the other, it committed to bring about Karachi's moral uplift through a programme of education, abolition and prohibition. 337 00:41:46,990 --> 00:41:52,510 According to Jamaat leaders, the party's success in these will be at this level, 338 00:41:52,540 --> 00:41:58,359 elections hinged on voter disillusionment with established parties and politicians whose 339 00:41:58,360 --> 00:42:05,049 failure to deliver on repeated provinces over the previous decade alienated voters, 340 00:42:05,050 --> 00:42:08,830 or at least alienated a relatively significant proportion of them. 341 00:42:11,020 --> 00:42:15,669 Either way, elections such as these in Karachi highlighted the frustrations of people living 342 00:42:15,670 --> 00:42:20,320 in the city with the everyday circumstances that daily trials and tribulations. 343 00:42:21,160 --> 00:42:26,550 While the authorities decision to dissolve, the corporation was presented as a relief to cope, 344 00:42:26,620 --> 00:42:30,670 the 2 million exploited terrorists and displaced citizens of Karachi. 345 00:42:31,630 --> 00:42:39,940 Others suggested that, quote, In the present democratic age, this is before the military had intervened and taken power. 346 00:42:40,300 --> 00:42:45,340 The death of any democratic organisation at the hands of government cannot be considered proper. 347 00:42:46,270 --> 00:42:47,790 Comments such as these, I suppose, 348 00:42:47,810 --> 00:42:56,530 point to high levels of contemporary public concern regarding exactly what method of action over the long run would be taken to, 349 00:42:56,530 --> 00:43:02,770 quote, reform the irregularities and make the corporation a democratic organisation. 350 00:43:03,730 --> 00:43:11,870 The same questions put also to the country more broadly at what was a very delicate time. 351 00:43:11,870 --> 00:43:15,560 That same in Pakistan's political storm. 352 00:43:16,630 --> 00:43:20,110 So I'm really coming round to my conclusion now. 353 00:43:20,110 --> 00:43:27,160 So this is not a hugely long paper. I hope that gives us more time to discuss the need to hear your own thoughts. 354 00:43:27,340 --> 00:43:33,820 But I'll just I'll just put some concluding, put together with some pictures to look at in the backdrop. 355 00:43:34,390 --> 00:43:40,150 So what I've tried to do in this paper is address just one aspect of what is clearly a much larger issue, 356 00:43:40,150 --> 00:43:46,180 namely the process of people across South Asia getting their voices as citizens heard through the 357 00:43:46,180 --> 00:43:53,050 mechanisms of elections at one level or another in the early post-colonial years across South Asia. 358 00:43:53,890 --> 00:43:58,090 What citizenship meant remained a work in progress. 359 00:43:58,510 --> 00:44:04,630 In this context, voting and equity not voting came to represent the degree to which to progress. 360 00:44:04,670 --> 00:44:12,430 Let's put that in inverted commas. But each country was making as far as tiny people who had only been subjects under colonial rule, 361 00:44:12,760 --> 00:44:19,149 very restrictive when it came to things like the franchise into bona fide citizens was concerned with that. 362 00:44:19,150 --> 00:44:22,840 Right. The intrinsic inherent right to vote. 363 00:44:24,220 --> 00:44:31,870 In India, as I've indicated, while the outcome of the first national elections proved to be more successful than some observers had anticipated, 364 00:44:31,870 --> 00:44:41,199 the polls provide the people with the opportunity to vent their frustrations alongside engaging with the state in a new fashion or in a new fashion. 365 00:44:41,200 --> 00:44:44,799 For the vast majority of them in Pakistan, 366 00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:53,950 the deceptively simple act of casting a vote was less and less straightforward and ultimately a more unsatisfying process. 367 00:44:54,220 --> 00:44:59,710 But elections that did take place there proved to be well-supported on the whole, at the local level, at least, 368 00:45:00,190 --> 00:45:07,840 even if the various representatives of the state involved went to great pains to try to secure the outcomes that they desired. 369 00:45:09,770 --> 00:45:17,929 In many ways, ordinary citizens in both India and Pakistan tended to share similar assumptions that exercising 370 00:45:17,930 --> 00:45:25,340 their democratic democratic rights was an inescapable dynamic of political modernity. 371 00:45:26,180 --> 00:45:31,010 Thanks to the ongoing interaction of a matter such as the preparation of those electoral roles, 372 00:45:31,490 --> 00:45:37,240 we can see the idea of universal franchise becoming meaningful or at least more meaningful, 373 00:45:37,250 --> 00:45:40,850 having some kind of meaning for both Indians and Pakistanis. 374 00:45:41,390 --> 00:45:47,390 Even when elections failed to materialise in Pakistan or failed to keep to their original timetable. 375 00:45:47,750 --> 00:45:52,280 I think we should not overlook the fact that they remain keenly anticipated and the 376 00:45:52,280 --> 00:45:57,650 subject of much of the heated public discussion articulated in different forums. 377 00:45:59,460 --> 00:46:05,130 So I suppose what William and I hope the study of boundaries of belonging would encourage 378 00:46:05,520 --> 00:46:09,690 was further thinking about the changing modes of active political citizenship, 379 00:46:10,500 --> 00:46:16,080 which was shaped by forms of political engagement in Pakistan and India in the late forties and fifties. 380 00:46:17,140 --> 00:46:27,760 In the first five years, let's say after independence, both new states faced in many ways comparable public complaints regarding everyday governance, 381 00:46:28,330 --> 00:46:31,870 which were, to a great extent, interrelated and closely connected. 382 00:46:33,220 --> 00:46:36,940 In both. The everyday problems that people encountered, however, 383 00:46:36,940 --> 00:46:45,580 did not create a sense of fatalism about political redress or undermined popular belief in the importance of representation. 384 00:46:46,180 --> 00:46:52,810 Even though factional politics quickly mapped onto the patrician patronage networks of resource allocation, 385 00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:57,670 accusations of maladministration, corruption and the like, 386 00:46:57,670 --> 00:47:04,780 it would seem did not hinder Indians and Pakistanis from exercising or seeking to exercise what makes what 387 00:47:04,780 --> 00:47:13,930 they saw as their hard won democratic rights as citizens of new states excited about what the future holds. 388 00:47:14,410 --> 00:47:17,739 So that's where all things I just put some slides up at the end. 389 00:47:17,740 --> 00:47:21,550 You might think you have these slides linked to anything she's just been saying, but I thought, well, 390 00:47:21,910 --> 00:47:29,020 you know, the kind of a slide that at least gave you a glimpse of contemporary Pakistani elections. 391 00:47:29,620 --> 00:47:32,610 Let me believe. Trust. So thank you. But aside.