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X-WR-CALNAME:Where the Ghosts of War Sleep: Enemy Property and the Ruins of
  1971 in Pakistan
X-WR-TIMEZONE:Eastern Time (US & Canada)
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20261012T211856Z
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_51338644439946
DTSTART:20260202T171500Z
DTEND:20260202T181500Z
DESCRIPTION:Talk by Sadia Mahmood\, South Asia Program\, Cornell University
 \n\n \n\nMainstream historiography on South Asia has largely overlooked th
 e afterlives of the colonial Enemy Property regime in postcolonial India\,
  Pakistan\, and Bangladesh. Drawing on archival records from Pakistan and 
 India\, as well as oral accounts from the Thar borderlands of Sindh\, this
  talk traces how “enemy property” was produced\, contested\, and redis
 tributed in early postcolonial South Asia. I situate Pakistan’s practice
 s of seizing and reallocating enemy-owned assets within a longer internati
 onal legal genealogy that emerged during World Wars I and II\, when the co
 nfiscation of enemy property became a routine instrument of wartime govern
 ance. Transplanted into British India\, this legal and administrative appa
 ratus continued to shape Pakistan’s bureaucratic imagination during the 
 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars. I argue that the category of enemy property m
 igrated from a European imperial wartime technology to a postcolonial mode
  of governing minorities in South Asia\, often blurring the distinction be
 tween wartime enemies and religious communities deemed politically suspect
 . In the Thar borderlands\, the ruins of officially classified “enemy pr
 operties” function not only as material remnants but also as markers of 
 social and emotional vulnerability through which local populations continu
 e to navigate their dispossession. \n\n \n\nSadia Mahmood is an Assistant 
 Professor at Quaid-e-Azam University\, Pakistan\, and a Visiting Scholar a
 t the South Asia Program\, Cornell University. Her work examines the makin
 g of postcolonial religious minorities\, the histories of caste-oppressed 
 communities\, and state-making in Pakistan. Her research centers on the de
 sert borderlands of Tharparkar\, where memories of the 1971 Indo-Pak war c
 ontinue to shape collective memory and everyday life. She works with Pakis
 tan’s diverse Hindu and Sikh communities in Sindh and Punjab provinces. 
 Her articles have appeared in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies (
 2024)\, where she published “The Long Migration: Revisiting the Postcolo
 nial Minority/Refugee Crisis and Governance in East Pakistan\,” and in T
 he Indian Economic & Social History Review (2023)\, where she published 
 “Untouchability\, Caste\, and the Electorate: Revisiting Legacies of the
  Poona Pact in Pakistan.” She also has forthcoming contributions\, inclu
 ding “Historical Lines in the Dunes: Tharparkar\,” in the Handbook of 
 Sindhi Studies (Routledge).
GEO:42.447296;-76.482254
LOCATION:Uris Hall\, G08
SUMMARY:Where the Ghosts of War Sleep: Enemy Property and the Ruins of 1971
  in Pakistan
URL;VALUE=URI:https://events.cornell.edu/event/where-the-ghosts
CATEGORIES:Seminar
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