Scholars discuss sourcesof provinces’ history

KARACHI: Discussing trends in the documentation of history in the country’s four provinces, scholars on Friday said the subject of history was not given much importance in the region.

The scholars expressed their views at a session on the second day of the two-day conference, titled ‘Celebrating Dr Mubarak Ali -- the people’s historian’. The Institute of Historical and Social Research had organised the conference to discuss and eulogise the works of Dr Ali at the Arts Council of Pakistan.

Journalist and academic Dr Tausif Ahmed Khan moderated the session that was titled ‘Pakistan Mein Awami Tareekh Ki Zaroorat Aur Us Ke Amali Masail’ (the need for people’s history in Pakistan and its practical issues).

Dr Sarfaraz Khan, former director at the Area Study Centre (Central Asia) at the University of Peshawar, said the biases leaning towards nationalism and class had affected the quality of history writing of the region.

He said writing history is not enough. “We should convert the consciousness obtained after writing and reading the history into a materialistic force.” Dr Khan said the history of the Pashtun region was mainly based on oral tradition and it was not extensively available in written form. He said Tappa, a form of folk poetry consisting of couplets, was a source of history as women expressed their views in it under restrictions of taboos.

Discussing Baacha Khan-led Red Shirt Movement, Dr Khan said it had emerged as an anti-imperialist movement. “They used to raise slogans that they had expelled the British colonisers and are brave Pashtuns [who are] ignoring the class system in society,” he said. “In the same situation at that time, we saw the emergence of the Mazdoor Kisan Party, a party struggling for peasants’ rights, within the Pashtun society.”

He said that Ghalla Dher Tenant agitation had also a remarkable impact on Pashtun society.

Ahmad Salim, a renowned scholar, said literary works by Baba Farid, Madhu Lal Hussain, Bulleh Shah, Waris Shah, and Khawaja Ghulam Farid were the five key texts of the resistance poetry of Punjab. “Their work has provided sufficient material about Punjab’s history,” he said.

He was of the view that Punjab unfortunately did not give importance to its folk narratives which are in fact public narratives. He said young scholars and researchers studying literature and history should compile the stories of Punjab’s residents of all the historical periods in the form of ‘public history’.

Prof Aijaz Qureshi, a scholar who recently co-authored ‘the Economy of Modern Sindh’, said Chachnama was the biggest source for writing Sindh’s history. Other most prominent works of Sindh’s history included Tareekh-e-Masoomi, Lab-e-Tareekh Sindh and Tareek-e-Mazhar Shahjahani, he added.

He also named the peasant movement in Sindh called ‘Hari Tehreek’, Movement against One-Unit, language movement, and the Movement of the Restoration of Democracy as prominent public movements in Sindh’s history.

Dr Shah Mohammad Marri, a scholar from Quetta, said like the other parts of the country, traditional historians of Balochistan included in their history the praise of their kings, tribal chieftains and notables of the region. “However, a few among them had scientifically written the history of the Baloch nation.”

He added that recent scientific developments in the fields of archaeology, anatomy, DNA and digital science had challenged the work of most of the historians.

Mehmood Sham, a senior journalist and former editor of Daily Jang who presided over the session, analysed the papers of the scholars and said the conference’s organisers should also have included papers on the histories of Azad Jammu & Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan region in the session.