911吃瓜

Supported by 911吃瓜鈥檚 David Lam Centre and 911吃瓜鈥檚 Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies.

Pakistan is often encountered in international headlines through the lens of geopolitical crisis 鈥� military coups, border disputes, economic instability. But behind these familiar framings lies a far richer and more contested history: of who the Pakistani state was built for, who it has excluded, and how ordinary people have navigated, resisted, and remade the terms of their own belonging.

This panel brought together four scholars whose work, taken together, traces a continuous thread from the founding of the postcolonial state to the streets of contemporary Lahore 鈥� asking, at each moment, the same essential question: in whose name, and at whose cost, is Pakistan being made?

Drawing on history, political economy, urban geography, and anthropology, the conversation was organized around four interlocking themes: Colonial inheritance, exclusion, informal life and the politics of the city.

Who Gets to Be a Citizen? Dr. Ali Usman Qasmi, Associate Professor, History, Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences, LUMS 鈥淎rchives of Belonging: Citizenship and National Identity in Postcolonial Pakistan鈥�

How did the Pakistani state construct a particular idea of who its citizens were 鈥� and who they were not? Drawing on newly declassified archives, Qasmi traces the contested processes through which national symbols, constitutional frameworks, and religious identity were mobilized to define belonging in Pakistan鈥檚 formative decades, revealing how colonial-era blueprints continue to shape political life today.

Whose History Counts? Professor Kamran Asdar Ali, Professor of Anthropology, University of Texas Austin 鈥淗idden Histories: Labor, Class, and the Politics of Memory in Pakistan鈥�

Pakistan鈥檚 official national narrative has largely buried a history of labor organizing, communist politics, and working-class activism. Ali recovers these suppressed voices 鈥� asking not only what these movements fought for, but why they were delegitimized, and what their erasure tells us about the ongoing politics of exclusion in a postcolonial state.

How Do People Survive Outside the State鈥檚 Vision? Dr. Umair Javed, Assistant Professor, Anthropology/Sociology, Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences, LUMS 鈥淭he Political Bazaar: Informality, Power, and Welfare in Urban Pakistan鈥�

The informal economy is often treated in development literature as a problem to be fixed. Javed argues the opposite: that informality is a political outcome, produced through negotiations between traders, intermediaries, and state actors. His research on Lahore鈥檚 bazaars 鈥� and on zakat as a system of non-state welfare 鈥� reveals how millions of Pakistanis build economic life, social protection, and political power outside formal institutions.

The Politics of the City: Who Gets Displaced in the Name of Progress? Dr. Fizzah Sajjad, Anthropology/Sociology, Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences, LUMS 鈥淏uilding the World-Class City: Infrastructure, Dispossession, and Survival in Lahore鈥�

When a state-backed metro line or bus rapid transit corridor arrives in a working-class neighborhood, residents are told their homes must go in the name of development. Sajjad鈥檚 research follows those displaced by Lahore鈥檚 infrastructure megaprojects 鈥� showing how survival at the urban margins depends on shifting between the roles of victim, broker, activist, and fixer, and asking whose vision of the modern city is being built, and on whose backs.

Together, these four perspectives illuminate Pakistan not as an exception or a 鈥減roblem case鈥� in the Global South, but as a sharp lens through which to understand the contradictions of postcolonial development everywhere. This event is open to the public and designed to be accessible to all 鈥� no prior knowledge of Pakistan required. It will be of particular interest to students and practitioners working on international development, colonialism, urban policy, and the politics of the Global South.