Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. All the week, seven session of the modern South Asian Studies Seminar here at Oxford.
This week, we are pleased to have here with us Professor Sara Ansari.
Many of you in this virtual audience would be, of course, deeply familiar with Professor Chancelleries work.
But I will insist on saying a few words by way of an introduction before I pass on the proverbial mike back to her.
Professor Sara Ansari is a historian of modern South Asia based at Royal Holloway University of London.
Right from her very first book, Sufi Saints and State Power, one of the distinctive features of Professor Ansari scholarship has been the
tension that she has devoted to understanding the province of Sint in Pakistan.
In doing so, her work has brought forth not just fresh perspectives on the nature of state power and everyday politics in South Asia,
but it has also served what I think is a much needed corrective and counterweight to the
dominance of the Punjab region in the history of colonial and post-colonial Pakistan.
Another key thematic area of process and Saudis work is, of course,
the partition of India and Pakistan and a continuing legacy in the lives of ordinary citizens, especially women.
Last year, Professor Ansari co-authored a book with Professor William Gould entitled Boundaries of Belonging Localities, Citizens,
Citizenship and Rights in India and Pakistan,
which really again explored the kinds of interactions that took place between ordinary people and everyday state.
In the years immediately following independence, I believe that she is currently working on a monograph on the history of modern Pakistan.
And I think it is out of this deep familiarity with the history of the region that traditionally represented a paper titled Jerko Carious or.
He who tells has the right to eat development and the politics agreed on reforms
and in late 1940s and early 1950s consent before a handover to Professor Ansari.
I will say that we will have time to take a few questions from the general audience.
So please do use the queue in a bar, which should be right at the bottom of your screen to send in your questions and towards the end of the paper.
We will have the chance to select few questions and have our press on salary respond to some of them.
So over to you, Professor Sorrento. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Emoter. That's very kind introduction. I want to share my screen, so I'm going to do that now.
I think, Clare, I should do that. And then you take it from there.
As I understand it, yes. Somebody could tell me when when the screen is is is shared, then I can.
I'll begin my talk show. I thought, I'll let you know when I can see it on my end.
So I can't see it yet. OK, hang on, let me just.
Okey dokey. Share desktop.
Hopefully it'll come soon. Yes.
Yes. Would be brilliant. OK, fine. Well, that's my screen, Chad.
So great. Very nice to be speaking to people today. A morgue has just introduced my topic.
So knowing that time is is relatively short.
I'm going to kick straight off with my paper. And what I want to do today or begin my talk today by doing is quoting a relatively recent report.
So from about 2006, it was produced by the world by Ken called securing since future prospects and challenges.
And according to this report, the province of sinned. And you can see I've just kind of highlighted where it is in the world on this map.
The province of Sin had the narrowest distribution of land ownership in 21st century Pakistan,
with something like one percent of all farmers there owning 150 percent more land than the combined holdings of 62 percent of small farmers.
So we can see the kind of extent of that inequality.
Moreover, to quote the report, given the province's feudal traditions,
progressive ideas and reforms have always taken more time to take root in the interior of sin than in most other areas of Pakistan.
Sint has the highest incidence of absolute landlord landlessness, sorry.
Highest share of tenancy and lowest share of land ownership in the country.
So despite the introduction over the years of reform measures that on paper at least
have been supposed to address this inequality present within the SYNDEY countryside,
entrenched, unequal relationships still operate in the province today.
But discussion regarding agrarian reform, more specifically the rights of local sharecropping tenants,
or Hari's, literally the wielder of the plough, has been taking place a scent for a long time.
It began well before independence and has continued there basically ever since.
Indeed, campaigning by since Hari's to improve their lot animated provincial politics in Pakistan's early years.
But my paper is not just about the often overlooked struggle of since Hari's to change the status quo in what was this new state of Pakistan said.
It also touches on ideas about development and progress.
And I put those both in sort of inverted commas as these circulated in the province during that same period.
Discussion regarding optimal ways of organising the agrarian sector in South Asia has deep historical roots going back,
at least from the perspective of the British presence there to the time when and the
manner in which the East India Company secured its revenue bases in the subcontinent.
In the case of Sind following, it's annexation by the British in the mid 19th century,
the status of local hari's these landless peasants was downgraded from that of cultivated to sharecropper.
When were Deros the title?
Often a kind of given to large or traditional headmen and village chieftains were allocated property rights over land under their jurisdiction.
From then on land, with Hari's in effect attached, became a saleable commodity.
And as elsewhere in South Asia, the transfer of this property over time became a political issue, contributing to a rise in communal tensions.
By the early 20th century, that was seen as sende as elsewhere, if on a relatively lesser scale.
But whereas legislation in other parts of British India already, some of them created some space for it, for protection in favour of Kennan's.
No such legislation was ever passed in Sydney during the colonial period. And indeed, it wasn't until the early 1970s that the first meaningful,
if largely unsuccessful, attempt to challenge the tenancy status quo really took place.
So this, in a nutshell, is the kind of broader context in which the committee of enquiry on which my paper focuses was set up and tossed
in early 1947 with investigating possible ways of reforming tenancy arrangements in the SYNDEY countryside.
While its verdict, its report published the following May, that is, May 1948,
produced the introduction, which led to the introduction of the Tenancy Act or a Tenancy Act consent.
In 1950,
its report and its report recommended against the abolition of the some entire system and the grant of full tenancy rights to Syndey peasants on
the grounds that the latter seldom stayed long in the same place and would be incapable on their own of weathering seasonable crop failures.
It did, however, call for peasant peasants to receive their full share of produce, a better security of tenure.
So this outcome was viewed by contemporaries as confirmation of just how powerful landowners some in Gaza were.
Deros remained in the life and politics of the province.
But the fact that the committee had been commissioned before independence but
only issued its report after the new state of Pakistan had come into existence,
also perhaps offers us the possibility of reflecting on what impact the changing,
the broader changing political circumstances may have had on such discussions and thinking.
There were important connexions linking post Second World War reconstruction planning and the early,
in inverted commas, improvement policies that were pursued.
However, we see pre independence planning that against the backdrop of World War I tended to stress the need for greater efficiency,
seemingly making way for a growing emphasis on development in this recalibrated
political environment that led up to and then followed independence in 1947.
Not unexpectedly, development rhetoric was often closely connected with the idea of making a break with the recent colonial past.
In the context of early nation building was going to be essential to demonstrate that.
Suppose it progress that independence promised and brought had actually come about, or that it had promise had come about.
Efficiency, it could be argued, was all about making existing systems work better development again.
I'm putting all these things in inverted commas. In contrast, change things made places supposedly modern and being modern, at least on paper,
was what independent states needed to aim for, at least in the mid 20th century.
So my paper today really kicks off with me just talking a little bit about an individual agricultural so-called expert, somebody called Roger Thomas.
He was knighted, sir became Sir Roger Thomas.
He was a British landowner and government adviser in Sind who played a major role in determining agrarian
policy in that province during the period that we're looking at staying on in Pakistan after independence.
It was he who chaired the committee of enquiry. So hence he had, you know, an important role in determining its Aspers, its focus and its.
Its findings are then touch on how far earlier planning for post Second World War reconstruction underpinned
and was largely translated into with initiatives aimed at developing agricultural production in the province.
And after that, I'll turn to this party committee of enquiry.
It's kind of controversial outcome and political responses in the period that followed with an eye to the bigger story,
I suppose, of agrarian development and hurry politics in post 1947 Sind.
So turning first to Saroja Thomas. I wish I had a photograph just put up while I'm talking about him,
but I there's nowhere that I've been able to find a photograph of what he looks like
to just have to imagine him sort of sitting there sort of pulling various strings.
He was the adviser to the government of send in agricultural, agricultural post-war development between 1944 and 1952.
And as I said, he chaired this hiree committee of enquiry.
It's kind of, I suppose, more official name was a Sind Farm Tenancy Legislation Committee in 1947 eight.
This Roen allowed Thomas to champion his long held personal belief in the need to restructure and hence inverted commas,
improve economic relations in the seedy countryside.
His vision of what needed to change in Syndey agriculture to make it more productive trumped any other consider.
Relations. His strong faith and the positive impact of technology meant that he saw his mandate in terms of addressing
weaknesses in since agricultural arrangements rather than the pursuit of a root and branch land reform agenda.
Thomas was a Welshman born in 1886, in Pembrokeshire in 1913.
He was appointed the Indian Agricultural Service as a deputy director of agriculture in Madras during the First World War.
Thanks to the Indian government's interests in the economic potential of what would later become Iraq than Mesopotamia,
he was seconded to the government of India's foreign a political department in 1970 to serve as the
cotton expert with the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force being given the military rank of captain.
In due course, that is in 1923, he was appointed director of agriculture there.
But in 1926 he resigned from government service and became the managing director of a cotton plantation company in Iraq.
Having decided that his future lay in, quote, entrepreneurial agriculture by the late 1920s,
he'd returned to India, this time as an independent agricultural businessman.
And first he worked in the Punjab as managing director of the British Cotton Growing Association,
but ultimately shifted in 1932 to the District of Midfoot Costs incident, where, with two Indian partners,
he formed a private company, the Sind Land Development Company,
to farm lands reclaimed there as a result of the recently completed Lloyd Farraj or Sukkur Barrage Irrigation Project.
He remained in this role through to his death in 1960, though undoubtedly a large sum in DA himself.
Thomas, to be fair, was far removed from the stereotypical image associated with this label, at least in the context of Sende.
Rather, he was a very well informed exponent of modernising agrarian production,
something that would fuse them and doesn't send were really that interested. Before 1947,
he had maintained contact with like minded organisations and individuals across and beyond
the subcontinent with the aim of generating more efficient agricultural production.
In late 1944, at the prompting of the then governor of Sind, the Sin Premier,
Hidayatullah appointed Thomas to his cabinet as Minister for Agriculture.
But the appointment of an unelected European to ministerial office at precisely the
time when nationalist pressure was mounting across the region was badly received.
And so within a month, Hidayatullah, under pressure from Ginna Muslim League leader, had dropped Thomas.
However, a compromise solution was quickly found, and as said earlier,
Thomas's role was converted into that of the governor government of sins advisor in agriculture and post-war development.
Two aspects of his advisory role were closely intertwined, since in a highly agrarian province such as Sind.
Development planning was bound to be inextricably linked with agriculture closely linked to his
functions as agricultural flies were a string of appointments in various other official committees,
commissions of enquiry and other expert bodies, as well as the whole business of irrigation and problems of water, logging and soil salinity.
Another of his ambitions focussed on the spreading of co-operative methods of agriculture in his views.
These offered the possibility of increasing agricultural efficiency,
which in turn would raise rural living standards and alongside all of this, indulging his private passions.
He chaired the Pakistan Flower Show for most of the 1950s.
Somewhat, Thomas's collective activities point to, albeit via sort of one well-placed individual.
All the efforts that were beginning from the late stages of the Second World War made by the government,
India and also provincial governments to plan the post-war reconstruction of the region send a newly created.
It was only created in 1936.
Small and relatively marginal province had been drawn squarely into the wartime crisis, both as an allied military centre excuse me,
and a source of foodstuffs exportable to other parts of British India as and when required.
Once the war seemed to be ending, plans are to be put on hold with the outbreak of war quickly resurfaced.
By March 45, the provincial authorities have decided that what was needed was conscious and planned development, with the government leading the way.
But they recognise that the province would have to rely mainly on its own financial resources rather than
rely on problematic grants and subsidies from the centre to drive the province's draught master plan,
whose first priorities were irrigation, including the projected construction of a loess in barrage in the vicinity of Hyderabad and agriculture.
The following year, these post-war development challenges was summed up in a report produced for the Senate Cabinet.
In the finance secretary's view, the first stage of planning was to prepare individual schemes.
The next would be to accommodate these within a programme with a clear sense, a great sense of priorities and the limits of capacity.
Either way, this course of action called for an immediate rise in taxation.
If taxation was on was not not acceptable on the scale that the finance authorities felt it should be,
then the province would have to be content with fewer roads, dispensary's farms, schools and so on.
By 1947, of course, the broader landscape pollute. Political landscape was in the process of being radically reconfigured.
With independence came partition and obviously sand was included within the new state of Pakistan.
So in this context, the fledging Pakistani authorities are both provincial and federal level placed.
Huge rhetorical emphasis on developing the new state. Technical or technological progress was to be the order of the day.
As I said before, becoming modern was what needed to happen to Pakistan and Pakistanis.
And for this to happen. In turn, there had to be development. So in a manner reminiscent of discussions in the years running up to 1947,
the Pakistani states close identification with UN sponsorship of development programmes
and projects was viewed as crucial to its wider public or popular legitimacy.
On the other hand, the harsh reality was that newly created the newly created State of Bucks,
I'll find it very difficult to meet its everyday needs and shortages of essential items
and rationing were experienced by most Pakistanis in the year is following independence.
Pakistan was forced to go cap in hand to international organisations and austerity was the order of the day.
I think we should also note by the 1940s and certainly by 1957, perhaps a little bit confusingly,
there also existed in send a vocal send Hari committees or something totally different to the Harry.
Committee of Enquiry. This Hurry committee represented Harry interests and had been founded back in 1930 by amongst others.
GM cited late becoming since most high profile nationalist politician.
By 1947, however, the leadership of the Centenary Committee lay with head a toy whose photograph I do
have a former provincial civil servant who towards the end of the Second World War,
had resigned as a deputy collector in order to champion the rights of since landless peasantry.
Moreover, there had been, we should just note, hidden in the middle during the war in 1943,
a government sponsored tenancy committee that had already produced some recommendations regarding tenancy rights.
But due to the uncertainties associated with the war, no immediate follow up action had been taken on this report.
So in nineteen forty seven March 1947, just winding back at Cutch before the creation of Pakistan itself,
when Pakistan was still actually far from a done deal and under pressure from Central League leaders.
I mean, Jinnah, it is said, considered the uplift of cultivators in the province to be, quote, the foremost necessity of the day.
I mean, he was worried about what he called communistic influence and its chances of spreading fast over the rural population there.
But anyway, under pressure from people like Jinnah since then,
Premier appointed a five man committee to enquire into tenancy arrangements that we've got Thomas's chair.
And then we have Seddiqi, a bureaucrat and a landlord.
Kakkar, a landlord from Larkana, Gopi Chand, who was a Hindu landlord or Hindu landowner, I should say.
And then the most well known of this group of five, Masood Mohammed Masood Masood,
rather, the last serving district officer who was collector of Nawab Shah,
had won a reputation already for his Hari Uplift work, but who proved often unable to attend the committee meetings in Karachi.
Which one could informer's feeling a bit sort of conspiratorial think was what was partly planned from the start.
Significantly,
Masood was not well liked by men cyndie politicians at the time precisely because of his open support in the run up to independence for Hari rights.
He was described in the press locally as a pro Pakistan ISIS officer.
Kind of, in a sense, accused of encouraging Hari's not to contravene produce towards the payment of debts contracted by their Salman doesn't know.
Let's just move. This is a picture of Masood, who you probably have heard about already in relation to work that he did later in his life.
But anyway, so here are some of the kinds of things which were said about him.
The Cabinet Party Committee of enquiry, once established,
operated in a fairly or pretty classic fashion holding meetings over a period stretching from March 47 to early 48.
Thomas led the proceedings. Gathering information from both within Pakistan and abroad and the other members.
Apart from Masood seemed to go along in the main with whatever he recommended, only occasionally disagreeing.
But as the committee's minutes showed, Masood proved a repeated thorn in Thomas's side from urging changes to the
committee's initial terms of reference to challenging its working procedures.
And their disagreement over the terms of reference, for instance, reveals the basic difference of opinion between the two men.
Whereas Masood seemed to be hoping for, quote, radical reform that would restructure agrarian relationships in the countryside.
Thomas interpreted the committee's remit to find to mean finding ways to develop the province's agrarian potential.
What was important for him was not who owned the land, but how the land was formed or farm.
I should say. Progress on reaching a set of agreed recommendations proved slower than Thomas had originally anticipated.
By October 1947, the committee's attempt to generate data by distributing a questionnaire had, not surprisingly,
considering the disruptions caused by the wider partition related political
developments of the previous six months produced only a very meagre response.
Instead, it was decided oral evidence would be collected from a select number of witnesses,
most of whom were to be landlords or landholders or or local politicians and only a handful of.
Three representatives were interviewed, including head to botched toy and his colleague,
a little kid there who was the editor of the Harry Hot Car newspaper produced in his robot.
Now, the committee's majority report, which was presented to the same government in July 1948, wasn't immune to the Hari's plight.
It did draw attention to the huge inequalities present in the Sindy countryside.
It would have been hard for it not to have done so. By the late 40s, Hari's made up more than 50 percent of the province's total rural population.
Now that not only did they pay half the produce off of the land over to their sum in dollars, but, you know,
landlords typically deducted various levies which inevitably reduce the Haresh share of any profit.
So the report wasn't didn't pull, in a sense, any punches when it came to the challenges of that Hari's faced.
But to sympathetic observers, it was surprising,
having produced such a dismal picture of living conditions in rural Sind that the committee did not then recommend reforms or much more,
I suppose, radical reform to raise incomes and living conditions there.
Instead, it seemed almost that the report was suggesting that the problems of Hari's either of
their own creation or perhaps natural problems or the result of government neglect,
that the landlord was a friend of the hierarchy at heart and consequently land reforms were
undesirable and would even really represent a kind of a loss of just a lost fault for the hurry.
So this outcome was extremely disappointing to those who had expected more concrete reform and to Tahari activists.
One response suggested that while the. Reports proposed tenancy.
And so of the proposed tenancy legislation was touted as giving Cindy Hari's an opportunity to stand on their own two legs,
quote, in order for them to stand erect, some indoors should get off their backs first.
But from the perspectives of the supporters of the report, what was urgently needed in Cindy was not land reform,
but improved more modern, more developed tenancy arrangements, which would in turn support more developed.
That word again. Agricultural production and hence raise productivity.
So all aspirations that were totally in line with the long held views of its primary.
Author Thomas Now Masood dissented with the majority opinion, as mentioned before.
He stuck to his guns and refused to add his name to the report. Instead, he produced a note of dissent.
This is something that had been originally allowed and he decided this is what he was going to do.
He presented it to the authorities in July 1948 also.
But what he didn't expect was for his opinion to be then kept from the public.
It was held back.
And as these quotes that I've got up on the screen at the moment suggest there, you know, it it it triggered some commentary at that time.
I mean, the Pakistan times that still at that time,
a left leaning publication often critical of the authorities for failing to meet the expectations of Pakistan's common man noted that.
That's what that note of dissent was actually recommending, complete nationalisation of of of land.
Masood, who referred to the condition of the Horwitz's deplorable and so forth,
was calling for the complete abolition of the Southern dowry system with minimum compensation.
But importantly, I think we need to note,
he also allocated his eloquence squarely in the context of the post partition refugee challenges facing Pakistan,
setting out his case as follows a saying, I believe we can take several lakhs of refugees providing we overall overhaul our land tenure system.
And he went on at some length along those lines.
Indeed, in his desire to encourage the province's development.
Masood pitched his own, I suppose, argument in terms of him being fully in agreement with his committee colleagues.
I mean, there is no doubt he was committed to precisely the mechanised agrarian development that Thomas was also strongly recommending.
But as I've said, where he deviated from his committee colleagues was in relation to who owned the land.
Obviously, he, I suppose.
On this is this this was this kind of rhetoric that I've got on the screen in front of you, where he's describing in a way,
the lot of the Cindy hurry, which really, I suppose, resonated with those who later on came to see the content of his reply or of his dissenting note.
Anyway. Protests at the withholding of Massouda note of dissent quickly mounted with younger Muslim League members putting
pressure on the provincial party and on district league committees to pass resolutions demanding its publication.
Students Too Agitated. Even the president of the Pakistan Muslim League personally appealed to the sin governor governor
urging him to intervene so that the provincial government would yield to public demand.
To add a further twist,
a pamphlet signed by 16 Ulema alleged that the note of dissents contents were UN Islamic and that its right to had communist leanings.
On the other hand, some commentators suggested that any justification of some bhandari by the Ulema would help to drive the masses away from religion.
Anyway, to cut what is quite a long story short with a new sound minister in post who was less reliant on his predecessor for land support.
I'm talking about use of Haroon Cyndie. Authorities finally published Massouda Note in June 1949.
And, you know, this is when the kind of the rhetoric that I've just put on the screen of Psy made quite an impact.
In the meantime, the Sinda authorities had already published a bill in March 1949 announcing legislation
intended to regulate the rights and liabilities of tenants and landlords in the province.
Let's move on. All the while, the S.R.O. committee, and this is its flag.
We've got obviously the documents on the right hand side.
This is later produced in 1952 when, you know, how is it petitioning for amendments to the Senate Tenancy Act?
Horror's all the while under head boxes leadership. We're keeping up the sustained campaign to maintain public awareness of the horrid plight.
No demands at periodic intervals that include calling for hereditary rights on land and the
substitute of the kind of crop sharing system with cash rents included in the demands of the.
Or now being beat by the Hardy Santara committee were also wider issues like education to be made universal, free and compulsory.
And new elections to be held on the basis of adult franchise people.
And, you know, across Pakistan this time of becoming very frustrated that the elections were not being held,
despite all the promise that had come with independence. A convention, for example,
organised by Hari leaders in Karachi in March 1949 highlighted the lack the absence of any Hari representative or representation,
rather, in the existing Legislative Assembly.
At the end of that particular meeting, its president, apparently flushed with excitement,
declared that Hari's were not prepared to give up the red flag. It was the flag of the oppressed.
And as long as exploitation exploitation continued so long with the red flag be the symbol of their struggle against oppression.
You know, in 1950, as the bill was being debated, more than 15000 peasants from across the province gathered in Karachi.
They conducted a sit in outside the Sind Legislative Assembly.
And such was the disruption that the assembly members weren't allowed to leave the building while the protest was going on.
Despite the fanfare that greeted the legislation in some quarters, the act as a kick.
I suppose I signalled from the start fail to make any real difference.
Tahari lives by March 1951. The newly reappointed since Chief Minister M.A. Chloro, who was a large Landel holder himself,
felt sufficiently confident to declare much to the surprise of contemporaries that, you know, Ahari problem did not exist in the province.
Only in some newspaper offices. And he suggested that thanks to recent irrigation developments, which had increased the amount of land to be farmed,
it was actually poor zamin dogs who allied with each other to secure the services of the Hari's.
So that then triggered, obviously, press comments along the lines of what Mr Currow did not say was that he was determined to make his quote,
poor some adults richer and the rich hari poorer.
So this period of the early fifties sees no public meetings, pressure being put on,
I suppose, the authorities in different ways by Hari's and their representatives.
Again, in a meeting in 1950. You know,
the sort of the message that came from that meeting was that nothing short of the immediate dissolution
of the assembly and new elections on the basis of universal franchise would satisfy the peasants.
And as head a box, Dutoit pointed out, in spite of 15 years of service of the Hiree Committee for the cause of Hari's,
they're still at the mercy and some does.
They have no proprietary interest in the land, and the Tenancy Act passed last year has still not been enforced until now.
And I could go on and I probably shouldn't go on too long about this, but there are, you know, interesting sort of grass, grass roots.
So activities, activism is being demonstrated through this time.
I mean, we can think, you know.
No, we appreciate that the early 50s were, you know, a pivotal time for Pakistan in terms of its political development.
But I think it's important to factor in what's going on at grassroots level in somewhere like Sende,
which has tended not to be sort of brought into this this bigger picture.
What made the matter especially urgent in the early 50s was also the worsening food situation in parts of Sind, let alone the rest of the country.
You know, at a conference held in Macourt in July 1952, reportedly attended by about 20000 people and presided over by FARE's Ahmed FARE's,
who was then secretary of the All Pakistan Confederation of Labour.
The Hari Federation, as it called itself, then issued another call for the abolition of some and Dari.
Some in Dari needed to be abolished without compensation. It called for a land allotted to toilets of the soil on an equitable basis.
I think there's one last point that I just want to make because I appreciate there's got to be some time for questions.
And time has passed very, very quickly. I think the there's an elephant in the room of all of this.
And this is really where refugees, agriculturalists fitted into the picture.
In a sense, they were the elephant in the room. The messy politics,
foreign partition certainly complicated the realities and options involved on the ground in somewhere like Sydney because refugees, cultivators.
It's very clear, often ended up in competition with so-called locals when it came to the allocation of agricultural land during this period,
whether that was land left behind by migrating Hindus or made available by development, say, in in irrigation.
So, you know, this this idea that there was somehow first will a labour problem in in the province.
I think yes. I have a quote from a newspaper article from 1952.
This idea that there was a labour problem that could way be resolved by integrating more,
let's call them refugee agriculturalists into its agricultural landscape was a sort of subtext
to a great deal of what we see being discussed as that last couple of lines on this quote,
say, with such a measure. In other words, adopted, this government will not necessarily be a loser.
Quote, It will have doubled its land under the cultivation, giving a fillip to the grown will scheme and revenue put in crease.
But by the mid 1950s, if we look at a report that was compiled by US officials, you know,
there had been evidently very, very little progress made as far as addressing the Hari predicament.
Hari's had to apply for their rights due to an awareness of the law or fear of the landlord.
Not even five percent, it seemed, had gained them since the passage of the act.
Loopholes. It seemed, again, according to the report, permitted the landholder to follow the letter,
if not the spirit of the law, which in the case of Sind was emasculated, as it put it, by evasive language.
And so this particular report concluded that the passage of the legislation there,
rather than strengthening tenant rights, had led to the widespread eviction of tenants.
So really, I think this is probably where I would just like to end up making just one final comment,
which in a way involves me returning perhaps to the points I made at the beginning of my paper.
I think it's worth reiterating that rural poverty and send remains pervasive.
Again, with some stats just to back this up, some 19 percent of urban Cindi's are classed as poor,
but over twice as many rural Cindi's fall into this category within St.
Within Pakistan, again, Sint has the widest rural urban gap and the largest disparity in quotes, human development.
Though the province may contain amongst the highest per capita Pakistani incomes,
in part the effect of being home to the mega port city of Karachi alongside its extremely wealthy land home owners.
With around one million hiree families cultivating land under sharecropping arrangements,
its human development indicators in rural areas remain the worst in the country.
Technological developments aside, as symbolised by the increased number of tractors now used in the SYNDEY countryside,
deep structural inequalities remain at the heart of life in this part of Pakistan.
And I think, you know, we can definitely see an enormous, I suppose, continuity's, even if some of the,
you know, some of the things some things have changed, but the continuity is evident and very evident to see.
So I know I think I should stop here because my clock is telling me that we're about 20 to three.
And I know there may be questions that you'd like me to address. So thank you.
Thank you so much for that, Sara.
And let me just start out by saying and a while, if there are any questions from the audience, please do start sending them in.
We have already had one or two questions.
Perhaps you just want to start by saying that I like to try to use evidence of the U.S. military co-defendants and we will.
You ended by connecting that to the present moment.
And it's likely comical that just yesterday the former Russian chief minister of India there in defence of it,
said that, you know, the party wants to one day take over, send them the city of Karachi in particular.
So I think that I think people always could not have been more interesting.
We have a question from Sayed Karzai, who is perhaps sort of taking forward the point from the title of your paper.
And he says the translation of Jeckle Carious or. He says that perhaps to interpret it as has the right to meet is perhaps a bit too strong.
And it can be translated as is can eat rather than has the right to eat.
And I'm wondering if you could see a bit more on that and how you said that in the language of rights.
OK. Well, I certainly would defer to someone who who will have a much stronger grasp of language than me.
I suppose it's that idea of you can eat who who he who tells.
P, sorry. Not being clear. He who tells how can eat.
I chose that sort of that that saying really to us as a title for this paper,
because I felt that it kind of captured a connexion between the Hiria as as the producer on the one hand,
and the Hari as somebody entitled to a particular sort of set of rights almost that came or were associated or associated with with the.
The tasks that they carry out, so. I can't really sorry, I'm I'm being I'm stumbling because I'm not quite sure what else to say apart from that,
I would be it would be great to hear what actually Saïd himself thought on this matter.
All right. Arguably, the system doesn't allow it, so don't worry.
OK, say that there is a phone. No question you can upload.
But but, Sarah, if I could sort of ask you in terms of your alter, your book that you quoted last year with William Gould.
Yes. Perhaps we can bring that into the conversation where you very much develop how citizens
in the spirit world were using the language of rights and were making citizenship claims.
And do you perhaps see this fitting in that broader theoretical narrative that you put forward in that book?
What do you see this as something different to the argument of representing the.
I know I do. You're right. I see this as being part and parcel of that same argument, because I think that what I would see or how what I would see,
I suppose Hari's in Cindy's being perhaps one example of if not exactly hitting citizens,
but citizens certainly pushed to the margins when it came to being in a position to, you know,
take benefit from and enjoy the the new sets of rights in inverted commas that came to be associated with the creating of a new state.
So I think that I would certainly, yes, definitely link the struggles of of Hari's in somewhere like Sydney to the bigger picture of.
Know marginalised groups of citizens who were not able to enjoy the full fruits of citizenship post independence.
So this idea in a way of of differentiated citizenship, coming into play with different groups of citizens, having a differential access to.
The sort of. Being to being a citizen, so, yes, it's part and parcel for me is the same, the same.
So if you want to call it theoretical approach. Right.
Thank you. So your for your question. I'm afraid we are out of time, so we might have to leave it there.
This also brings to a close the modern politicians have not only restored the term Michaelmas,
we have a wonderful line of speakers next term and I hope that many of you will join us next term.
But until then, please join me in thanking Professor Saren. Sorry for that wonderful paper.
And I look forward to seeing a whole lot of you next term as well.
Thank you. Shall I leave this now, then come back?