Book Launch & Discussion:

Towards Peoples' Histoires in Pakistan: [In]audible Voices, Forgotten Pasts 

Edited by Asad Ali and Kamran Asdar Ali

 

After seventy-five years of independence, the history of Pakistan remains centered on the state, its ideology, and the two-nation theory. Towards Peoples' Histories in Pakistan seeks to shift that focus away from the histories of an imagined nation to the history of its peoples. Based on the premise that the historiographical tradition in Pakistan has ignored the existence of people who actually make history, this book brings together historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists to shed light on the diverse histories of the people themselves. Assembling histories of events and peoples missing from grand narratives of national history, the essays in this collection incorporate a diversity of approaches to the past as it opens the possibilities of multiple histories, the archives through which they are registered, and the various temporalities in which they persist.