A ‘people’s history’ and its sources: Part - I

When the Institute of Historical and Social Research (IHSR) led by Dr Jaffar Ahmed in Karachi organized a conference recently at the Pakistan Arts Council to celebrate the life and works of Dr Mubarak Ali, it became a clarion call to action for all those who have been inspired by his writings.

It became a gathering of activists and intellectuals who are more interested in people’s history rather than the history taught by textbooks of Pakistan Studies. Dr Mubarak Ali was rightly called ‘The People’s Historian’, keeping in mind the over 100 books that he has written to debunk the official versions of history in Pakistan. Those who gathered to pay tribute to Dr Mubarak Ali included names such as I A Rehman, Dr Haroon Ahmed. Tasneem Siddiqui, Dr Tariq Suhail, Aslam Gurdaspuri, Dr Ghafir Shahzad, Dr Tahira Khan, Dr Aafia Zia, Dr Mannan Ahmed, Dr Huma Ghaffar and many more.

Over 20 enlightening papers were presented in the conference by the likes of Prof Tauseef Ahmed, Dr Sarfraz Khan, Dr Shah M Marri, Prof Ejaz Qureshi, Ahmed Saleem, Dr Anwar Shaheen and others. But before going into the details of the conference, for the uninitiated a brief description will do well to clarify what people‘s history is and what are its sources. My readers sometimes complain that I usually write about people who are no more in this world; they suggest that I also write about those who are still around. This point has been well taken.

In a series of columns, I will discuss the contribution of the people around us whose writings help us understand our present in relation with the past. These writers have contributed to people’s history. So, what is people’s history? Rather than bombarding you with various trends in historiography and sociology in the 20th century such as the Annales School, critical theory, economic history, Marxist historiography, social history, and subaltern history, let’s get the basics right by developing our own functional understanding of people’s history and its sources. Simply speaking, if you want to grasp people’s history, you need to look at a variety of contents in a wider context.

If you just read the content in an officially approved book, you will hardly get to know people’s history. So, the content should come from multifarious sources spanning from accounts, announcements, articles, biographies, columns, diaries, essays, interviews, journals – both officials and unofficial – letters, magazines, monographs, news items and stories, notebooks, office memos, oral history, personal records, reports, statements, testimonies, verification documents, working papers, and others. But, you say collecting that much is not possible. Well, that’s where the context comes in; it all depends on how wide you want to keep your context.

For example, if you are a general reader and not a professional historian, and you want to understand people’s history in the 70 years of Pakistan, a Pakistan Studies book will not help you much. It will give you officially sanctioned platitudes that perhaps you know by heart. People’s history focuses on events, ideas, and people that are directly concerned with people. Let’s take the events of the early 1950s. An official textbook of Pakistan studies will tell you that the first prime minister of Pakistan Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated and Khawaja Nazimuddin became the second prime minister of Pakistan.

Then the book will go on to enumerate the prime ministers who filed in and out of the PM House. A people’s history should give you a perspective that is different from the official version. It should focus on events that are more relevant to people in a wider context; such as why a peaceful movement such as Khudai Khidmatgar was targeted by state machinery and what impact it had on the people. Why was the Objectives Resolution introduced and how has it affected people’s lives for the past 70 years?

People’s history should teach you about the battle of ideas in society: which ideas are pro-people and which against their aspirations? For example, the idea of the One Unit imposed on the people of West Pakistan in 1955 had a devastating impact of the country’s polity; how and why that happened should be a focus people’s history. Similarly the idea of parity between the two wings of Pakistan had an anti-people slant; who did it and why: that is a topic of interest for people’s history. The students’ movement in both the wings are a part of people’s history.

People’s history, in addition to looking at events and ideas with a people’s perspective, also focuses on the people themselves: activists, artists, bureaucrats, civil servants, common people, crafts persons, intellectuals, journalists, leaders, peasants, poets, writers, and workers. For example, how Mirza Ibrahim, a great trade union leader of the Subcontinent was defeated in one of the early elections in Lahore through rigging, is a matter of people’s history that you will never find in a Pakistan Studies book. How and why was a great poet such as Faiz Ahmed Faiz implicated in a conspiracy case and incarcerated for years in the early 1950s?

Coming closer to the 21st century, a people’s history should enlighten us about why the Taliban were implanted in Afghanistan and how that disastrous policy has affected the common people of this region. How did the PCOs of General Musharraf affect the judiciary and the legislature in this country? A common people’s perspective of these events, ideas, and people will give us a people’s history. This type of history does not give us leaders’ perspectives such as given in the biographies of Generals Ayub Khan and Pervez Musharraf; though those too are important sources to establish our understanding of their versions.

A people’s history is also the history of marginal groups such as those who have been sidelined: be they ethnic, religious, or sectarian communities or groups; or mentally or physically challenged people; transgender people, differently able people, women, especially belonging to the lower economic strata, or simply the poor. Essentially, people’s history ought to be non-conformist; it does not conform to the customary or established narratives of history. It enlightens us about how oppression works in society and who perpetuates it; a people’s history should teach us how the poor have remained poor in the 70-year history of Pakistan and who has been responsible for it.

So, you ask, what is the difference between a leftist or Marxist history and a people’s history – aren’t they the same? No, I’m afraid not. They are not the same though they do have some similarities. Whenever you put an ‘ism’ or ‘ist’ with an approach or ideology, you end up justifying all the rights and wrongs committed in the name of that ‘ism’ by all the shades of those ‘ists’. Or you end up clarifying that you don’t believe in that kind of ‘ism’ but a slightly different ‘ism’. There are too many nuances and of leftist and Marxist approaches that perhaps it is better to prefer a people’s history.

To clarify, let’s take an example of Chinese official history written during the period of Chairman Mao who claimed to be a leftist and Marxist. That ‘Marxist’ and official history written from 1950 to 1980 would have us believe that the Cultural Revolution was right and the Great Leap Forward was beneficial to people. But now a people’s history would look at these event and ideas with multiple contents and put them in a much wider context to judge how these momentous turns in the history of modern China have actually affected the common people there.

Next we will look at some sources of people’s history in Pakistan.

To be continued

The writer holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK and works in Islamabad.

Email: mnazir1964@yahoo.co.uk