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The Institute for Global Prosperity's ERC Project Takhayyul is carried out in eleven different countries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia, often included in the concept of the Global South, where people are more vulnerable to global changes and crises - as we have seen in the flood catastrophe in Pakistan. Many members of our team are scholars who have expertise in the geographies they grew up in. This series has been emerged due to the pressing issues that have been taking place in the contexts we work on and care about. The urgent need to create a platform where we can address the emergent issues as they happen, to channel our intellectual and academic expertise, combined with the deep care to the events taking place has prompted this podcast series.
00:00:01:23 - 00:00:28:21
Sertaç Sehlikoğlu
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the fifth of our Takhayyul Nativeness and Emergent Issues Podcast series organized by the members of the ERC project named Takhayyul at the UCL’s Institute for Global Prosperity, the IGP. I am Sertaç Sehlikoğlu, the primary investigator of this five year project. The need for this podcast series emerged due to a number of reasons.
00:00:28:23 - 00:00:58:17
Sertaç Sehlikoğlu
Firstly, the members of this team, as many of you may already be familiar, are often native scholars who have expertise about the very geographies they have grown up in. The project is carried in 11 different countries in Eastern Europe, Middle East and South Asia, often referred to as the Global South. That's being said., those very contexts are more vulnerable to global changes and crises, as we have seen in the flood catastrophe in Pakistan.
00:00:58:17 - 00:01:23:09
Sertaç Sehlikoğlu
As a result of the global warming. Thus, the members of this team has suggested to create a platform one year ago where we can address the emergent issues as they happen with other scholars, intellectuals and activists. Today our host is Mezna Qato, who is a traveling research fellow at the Institute for Global Prosperity in our very own Takhayyul project.
00:01:23:12 - 00:01:59:09
Sertaç Sehlikoğlu
She is also a Margaret Anstee Research Fellow at the Newnham College, University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the social history of the modern Middle East histories and theories of social, economic and political transformation amongst refugee and stateless communities. The politics and practice of archives and global micro histories of movements and collectivities in the Middle East. In Takhayyul Project, she develops a study of everyday sociality of imagination in the long century of Palestinian liberation work.
00:01:59:11 - 00:02:08:17
Sertaç Sehlikoğlu
Today we are hosting under her leadership Sanaa, Alimia, Goldie Osuri and Saadia Toor. Without further ado.
00:02:08:21 - 00:02:37:21
Mezna Qato
Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much to Sertaç and everyone who is part of organizing this podcast and all of the other podcasts and to the broader Takhayyul team. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce our speakers for today who will be bringing into conversation on contemporary events in Gaza, the after, the effects and the impacts and the echoes of us across the Global South.
00:02:37:23 - 00:03:08:12
Mezna Qato
But here in particular in South Asia. Our first speaker will be Dr. Golda Osuri She's a professor of sociology at Warwick University. She worked in Australia with a focus on indigenous nations and colonialism. Her research lies at the intersections of political sociology, critical social and cultural theory, critical race and whiteness studies and media and cultural studies. She also works on religio cultural sovereignty within the context of India.
00:03:08:18 - 00:03:47:18
Mezna Qato
Her current research is concerned with the complex ways in which colonial sovereignty continues to structure the activities of postcolonial nations states while deploy the alibi of an anti colonial history. After Dr. Osuri, Dr. Saadia Toor will speak. She is an associate professor of sociology and women's Studies at the College of Staten Island City University, New York. Our political and intellectual interests lie in exploring the ways in which imperialism has played out in Muslim contexts, specifically Pakistan, from the Cold War to the war on terror, and the role of artistic and cultural production within them.
00:03:47:22 - 00:04:14:10
Mezna Qato
Dr. Sanaa Alimia is a political scientist at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations in the University. She worked as a research fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient School at Freie University Berlin. She was a visiting assistant professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Peshawar and as a senior teaching fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS.
00:04:14:10 - 00:04:22:19
Mezna Qato
Her research focuses on migration, surveillance and urbanity and Afghanistan. Welcome, all. Let's start with you, Dr. Osuri.
00:04:22:24 - 00:04:52:20
Goldie Osuri
Thank you so much, Mezna. And thank you so much to the organizers of this podcast. I'm really honored to be able to speak on this issue and my talk of sort of titled it Unpacking Global Solidarities. So the phrase Global South has become quite a popular way of describing inequities, but also the ways in which old colonial centers, in fact, dominate from the geopolitical world order to your American institutions, as well as academic theories.
00:04:52:20 - 00:05:23:14
Goldie Osuri
So the goal, of course, is to decolonize and shift away from the centers of colonization and domination. So many have been proclaiming that the Global South is in solidarity with the people of Palestine, in Gaza and the West Bank as they witnessed the settler colonial techniques of ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing. And this is, of course, true at the level of millions of people marching around the world, many backed by their governments, for example, in Indonesia or Yemen or Turkey, in Kashmir and in India.
00:05:23:15 - 00:05:57:19
Goldie Osuri
However, pro-Palestine protesters have been banned, criminalized, and protests are being obstructed in Kashmir. There has been a long standing affective solidarity, as Kashmiri scholar Arthur Zia puts it, with Palestine. This solidarity has been marked by protests, including marches, graffiti and other expressions of solidarity from the 1960s on in the 1980s, during the first Intifada in two days in 14 young college women marching against Israeli strikes in Gaza, a Kashmiri teenage boy was killed by police, firing on anti-Israel protesters.
00:05:57:21 - 00:06:23:18
Goldie Osuri
In 2018, there were protests against moving the US embassy to Jerusalem in 2021, against Israeli strikes again against Gaza, where 21 people were arrested, including a professional artist who expressed solidarity through graffiti. So I think this research shows that Kashmiris feel that Palestinian wounds are their wounds. It's a solidarity that knows and protests against occupation and settler colonialism.
00:06:23:20 - 00:06:49:01
Goldie Osuri
So on October eight, India banned any solidarity protest in Kashmir, as well as speeches by clerics in mosques. This model of criminalizing pro-Palestinian solidarity is not operative in India. In Uttar Pradesh, in the state of the Pradesh on October 25, two Muslim scholars who had on their WhatsApp profile an image saying I stand with Palestine, were charged with, quote, promoting enmity between social groups.
00:06:49:02 - 00:07:16:21
Goldie Osuri
And of course, police have detained protesters and organizers in Delhi and Mumbai. And meanwhile, pro-Israel rallies are allowed to go ahead mainly by Hindutva organizations and groups. Hindutva, you know, persons, including retired Army personnel, have been volunteering to go and fight in Israel. The liberal opinion in India is that this has more to do with controlling potential so-called Hindu-Muslim violence ahead of India's general elections next year.
00:07:16:23 - 00:07:48:10
Goldie Osuri
But the effect, of course, is Islamophobic and directed against censure or detention of Indian Muslims or political dissidents, as well as, of course, trying to stop solidarity with Palestinians. The Hindutva Islamophobic disinformation machine has been playing a major role in aiding, as well as amplifying Israeli disinformation about Palestine, especially on social media. So, for example, journalist Aditya Rajagopal spoke of Hamas dissecting a pregnant woman's body and letting the fetus die outside the womb.
00:07:48:16 - 00:08:23:14
Goldie Osuri
But the incident was in fact a report about from the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres of Palestinians and Lebanese Shias, for which the Israeli IOF has been held responsible. A news report in the new Arab deems Indian rightwing accounts as, quote, leading producers and amplifiers of anti-Palestinian disinformation. But despite this level of support, of course, there have been protests continuing in India and chief minister of the Communist Party of India inaugurated a pro-Palestine rally of more than 50,000 people, cutting across political affiliations from Kashmir.
00:08:23:15 - 00:08:49:10
Goldie Osuri
I see brave Kashmiris continuing to share and amplify the voices of Palestinians and their allies despite the Indian ban against solidarity. So it is important. I guess my point in saying all of this is that it is important we break down this idea of the Global South into sort of different levels or differentiate these levels of people of trade unions and left wing organizations, right wing fascist organizing.
00:08:49:12 - 00:09:33:10
Goldie Osuri
And the level at which governmental leaders and politicians work these levels differentiate the ideologies, hierarchies and power relations within the category of the Global South at the level of government, of course, India has a long and strange history of relationship with Palestine as well as with Israel. In public terms, it is often said that India has long supported Palestine since 1948, as that is saying In his book, Hostile Homelands points out that a dance of public support for Palestine, recognition of Israel, buying of arms and a deepening diplomatic and trade relationship with Israel reveals the ways in which India's own political interests have played a role rather than an ideological investment per se.
00:09:33:12 - 00:10:05:09
Goldie Osuri
In that solidarity with Palestine, Assad argues that for Nehru, India's first prime minister, support for Palestine was a way of ensuring leadership of the Global South., through, “international solidarity with anti-colonial movements worldwide”. So in the current context, the alliance between Hindutva and Zionist ethno nationalist, racist ideologies was expressed by Binyamin Netanyahu during Modi's 2018 visit to Israel as ancient civilizational affinity.
00:10:05:11 - 00:10:32:00
Goldie Osuri
“India and Israel are two of the most ancient civilizations on earth” said Bibi to Modi, apparently the greatest texts human beings have produced are in Sanskrit and Hebrew. This Hindutva Zionist alliance must be understood for what it is an overt, racialized, Islamophobic, castist alliance. This civilizational talk was invoked, in fact, as genocidal device on October nine after the Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians.
00:10:32:01 - 00:10:58:12
Goldie Osuri
Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant stated, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed.” Again, the next sort of quote “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” And this is, of course, genocidal intent. India expressed its strongest solidarity with Israel after the October seven attack.
00:10:58:17 - 00:11:29:10
Goldie Osuri
On October 26th, India explained its abstention from the mildly phrased Jordanian initiated UN General Assembly resolution for humanitarian truce by stating that, “Terrorism is a malignancy and knows no borders, nationality or race.” At the UN, of course, Netanyahu stated that, “No civilized country would tolerate such attacks”, even as 120 countries, mostly of the global South, voted for the truce.
00:11:29:13 - 00:11:53:16
Goldie Osuri
This apparent mixed message can be understood through a couple of points that I want to make. India has been complicit in supporting Israel's genocidal intent. Simultaneously, India continues to want to be perceived as a benevolent Global South leader, an issue which explains the support for the two state solution. And of course, you know, there's money that has been doled out in terms of developmental aid.
00:11:53:20 - 00:12:18:17
Goldie Osuri
Furthermore, India's previous anti-colonial capital has now transmogrified into a competitive world power allied with the imperial settler colonial powers of the US and the UK. And in fact India itself is a settler colonial state in relation to Kashmir. These are important points to think about when we think about echoes of Gaza in the Global South. Thank you.
00:12:18:19 - 00:12:22:06
Mezna Qato
Thank you so much. Dr. Osur. Dr. Toor.
00:12:22:09 - 00:12:54:12
Saadia Toor
Thank you so much for the, Thank you. Mezna, Sertaç. And everyone who has put this podcast in this conversation together. I want to thank Goldie for setting it up so perfectly for me, because I also wanted to start by interrogating critically this term called the Global South, because from the very beginning of the occupation of Palestine, what counted as the Global South was at that time was many regions were actually colonized and going through anti-colonial nationalist movements of their own.
00:12:54:15 - 00:13:34:03
Saadia Toor
But where Pakistan and India both got their independence in 1947, just before the colonization of Palestine and before independence, even solidarity of the anti-colonial nationalist movement with the cause of Palestinians was very clear. But then, you know, once you get into the post-independence period, things start to get a little more complicated, especially as time goes on. What I did want to highlight, especially given my own research, is the the centrality of the cause of Palestine for all anti-colonial nationalist movements that emerged in the mid-twentieth century, and particularly so for South Asia.
00:13:34:03 - 00:13:56:07
Saadia Toor
And of course, with that, you know, we're already setting up this split between people and left wing intellectuals and the states that emerged. Right. Which have their own calculus. And that's the case in Pakistan as well. So in Pakistan gained its independence. It did not recognize it still does not officially recognize Israel. So the Pakistani passport is not valid for travel to Israel, for example.
00:13:56:09 - 00:14:24:19
Saadia Toor
On the other hand, Pakistan played a very has always played a very important role because of the the fact that the military and the civil bureaucratic establishment was very much opposed to was very anti-communist. And so even though it's nominally part of the nonaligned movement, leaned heavily towards the US. And so as part of, you know, the US sphere of influence in Asia, the Pakistani state, as you can imagine, you know, a very particular kind of role.
00:14:24:19 - 00:14:55:02
Saadia Toor
And we saw that obviously very clearly in, you know, the 1979, the proxy war in Afghanistan. But for even the period of the Cold War preceding it, the establishment had been very aware and close to the US State Department, which of course, set it up in a tension with public opinion and obviously always in tension with the very popular and very deeply entrenched left leaning anti-imperialist into, you know, cultural movement in the subcontinent.
00:14:55:04 - 00:15:19:07
Saadia Toor
And so I wanted to specifically talk about two major figures in that. One was the poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, who wrote several poems, you know, for the Palestinians, mostly written during his time in Beirut from 1978 to 1982, when he went there in self-exile to edit as the only non-Arab editor of Lotus magazine of the Afro-Asian Solidarity movement.
00:15:19:07 - 00:15:57:06
Saadia Toor
And in that position, but also through the networks of anti-colonial intellectuals and writers prior to that, Faiz Ahmad Faiz was very close to Palestinian writers and poets, including Kanafani and Yasser Arafat, the leadership of the Palestinian people. And I think that experience Faiz, actually living in Beirut was very important. But his and the solidarity of other left wing intellectuals in Pakistan with the Palestinian people had been kind of paramount, I think, for Afro-Asian solidarity at that time, the Palestinian cause is very central.
00:15:57:08 - 00:16:23:03
Saadia Toor
And I say this because it's very easy to talk about Pakistan. And, you know, as a Muslim majority country that therefore is obviously for pro-Palestine. But as Goldie was pointing out, number one, that doesn't necessarily really play out in terms of the the interests of the the establishment, the ruling establishment, which has to see obviously, Palestine because of the enormous public, you know, Palestine in Palestine solidarity.
00:16:23:05 - 00:16:44:04
Saadia Toor
But as you know, we can see even today, even though the statements coming out of the Pakistani leadership have been unequivocal in terms of like calling Israel, you know, the colonial, that the occupying power and calling on it to, you know, seize it, hostilities and standing in solidarity for the for the Palestinian cause and for the Palestinian people.
00:16:44:04 - 00:17:13:11
Saadia Toor
The language that has been used that some people have written about has been more muted than you would normally have seen coming from our political leadership on this on this issue. And that's because Pakistan has for a long time been playing, trying to play. The state of Pakistan has been trying to, you know, to balance its its own investments and interests in the sort of zone of influence of the US with its obviously, it's the need to maintain some kind of legitimacy domestically.
00:17:13:13 - 00:17:57:12
Saadia Toor
And so, for example, the regime of under whom the proxy war with Afghanistan was fought and who bore a lot of responsibility for that, instituted a new regime Islamization as a way to legitimize his military dictatorship. But that Islamization and the other kinds of like is expressed through that for Palestine, obscured the fact that at the same time CIA had been instrumental in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, like the Pakistani army had played a role in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which remained hidden for a very long time from public view in Pakistan, and I think still is not, you know, recognized as much under Pervez Musharraf, another military dictator, you know, during the war on terror.
00:17:59:00 - 00:18:19:12
Saadia Toor
So from the first proxy war with Afghanistan to the second occupation, an attack on Afghanistan by imperialist forces, Musharraf tried very hard to normalize relations with Israel. There was a lot of talk of recognizing Israel as a state. But again, public opinion was was so totally against it that even as a military dictator, he was unable to do that.
00:18:19:12 - 00:18:45:13
Saadia Toor
What we should have did, managed to do, ... initially. And what we should have managed to do was create a group of, you know, space for liberal Pakistanis to start, you know, sort of talking about start, you know, internalizing kind of Zionist talking by liberal Zionist talking points and about the need to recognize Israel and and sort of treating the Palestinian cause almost as too much of a Muslim cause.
00:18:45:15 - 00:19:22:06
Saadia Toor
But public opinion, I think from the left to the right has still solidly been pro-Palestine. The other big towering intellectual figure and political figure that Pakistanis have taken pride in has been that of Eqbal Ahmad who was born in what was then, you know, undivided, colonial, colonized India, and then as a young man, as a young Pakistani man, basically went off to fight in the Algerian struggle and ended up very close to revolutionaries all over the world, engaged in anti-colonial anti-imperialist struggles, including Vietnam, was very close to Edward Said and also to the Palestinian liberation movement, particularly Yasser Arafat.
00:19:22:06 - 00:20:00:01
Saadia Toor
And so I think, as Goldie was saying, when we talk about the Global South and the Global South’s, support for Gaza, and Palestine to the West Bank, we have to take into account, you know, the various levels of power at play and and sort of structural investments, political investments at play there. But what I think is, is remains very clear is the very strong, very principled support for Palestine and against, you know, the settler colonial aggression and occupation of Israel that we are seeing emerge in the younger generation in Pakistan.
00:20:00:03 - 00:20:32:07
Saadia Toor
And I see emerge in the younger generation, Pakistan, because following on the Zia ul Haq military dictatorship and his whole Islamization campaign, a lot of progressives in Pakistan, including leftists, and not that they ever reject the solidarity for Palestine, but they remained muted on very important issues of national liberation such as Kashmir and also Palestine because of this perceived idea that these would be seen too much as sort of like Muslim sentiments.
00:20:32:07 - 00:21:01:05
Saadia Toor
And I'm very glad to see that the younger generation in Pakistan has absolutely no such issues. And they see once again how the issue of Palestine remains an unresolved issue of colonial occupation in this modern period. And the irony being that this occupation, this colonial occupation, emerged at precisely the time when other parts of the Global South were actually fighting and receiving their independence.
00:21:01:07 - 00:21:04:14
Mezna Qato
Thank you so much, Dr. Toor. Dr. Alimia.
00:21:04:14 - 00:21:52:13
Sanaa Alimia
Thank you so much Mezna for inviting me here and everyone from the organizers to thank you very much, Goldie, and of course, Saadia as well who I'm very much indebted to as somebody who's always been a mentor and supporting my work along my career. I'd like to speak a little bit now about refugees in Pakistan and expressions of solidarity and the current deportation crisis that's taking place and linking it a little bit to what's happening in Gaza as an important moment and try to get us to consider how we have to connect the struggles that are taking place across the world at the moment and how Palestine is an important case for us to learn from and the impact that that’s having in this current moment.
00:21:52:15 - 00:22:29:16
Sanaa Alimia
Perhaps to start, of course, in Gaza and in Palestine, because for many of us who have of course been glued to our screens, the images that we are seeing of parents with their children coming across our screens are incredibly haunting figures. There are too many stories we know that are unfolding in real time that are being livestreamed, and too many of these stories are rendering us in many ways, you know, senseless and what it must be, of course, in this moment to be engaged in the struggle to be Palestinian in this moment is something that is evoking our consciousnesses in deep ways.
00:22:29:19 - 00:23:00:08
Sanaa Alimia
There are too many incidences of violence, too many children that we're seeing who are unable to eat the food of their mothers, that they lovingly cook for them. Too many children who are alone in this moment of the 2023 genocide of Palestinians by the state of Israel, a genocide that has been enabled, aided and abetted and directly funded in many ways by the usual colonial subjects the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, France and Germany and other European Union countries has killed.
00:23:00:10 - 00:23:23:12
Sanaa Alimia
You know, we don't know the exact numbers, 18,000 people at least. And the number is something that's going to to rise. We know the average age of the persons who have been killed as being five years old and this genocide that we are seeing operates in part on a continuum is part of the same family of violence, of colonialism, of enslavement and of exploitation.
00:23:23:14 - 00:24:03:04
Sanaa Alimia
It's also, of course, a very specific part of what was highly because the 100 year war in Palestine. And it's also an important moment of rupture that has necessitated reflection and the conversations that we're having today that are transforming our moral, ethical and political and intellectual universes. As many have said and are saying right now, this is a moment in which we can return to how things were once this is over for those of us who are concerned with creating a universe that is marked by justice and liberation in which we are all free from tyranny, racism, casteism, sexism, fixation of the abled body and the exploitation of the earth in all of its glory.
00:24:03:06 - 00:24:22:07
Sanaa Alimia
It is in this moment that we are reminded that none of us are free until all of us are free. As the black liberation struggle in the US has taught us. When millions of people are chanting in the streets across the world, in our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinian. We are reminded of the interconnections of all of our struggles.
00:24:22:07 - 00:24:47:02
Sanaa Alimia
And it is in this moment too, that we are reminded that injustice is not always easily hidden, nor is it easily erased from those who have had to face this injustice. It's not always easily erased from a people's memory, however well-funded the oppressor may be, however powerful their weapons, however brilliant and audacious the lexical acrobatics may be, and the gaslighting may be for those who live the truth.
00:24:47:04 - 00:25:23:11
Sanaa Alimia
They know the truth. They show us the truth, for they are the truth. And it's important at this moment for those of us who are working in this complex, layered world as the Global South that we remember and keep Palestine at the forefront of our conversations. In my own work, which is an oral history of Afghans living in Pakistan as refugees for the past 40 years, I am reminded in this moment of our duties to each other, of our duties to the communities with whom we work with, that in the struggle for truth, rights and freedom and unless ... is speaking for everyone, it will ring hollow and parochial.
00:25:23:11 - 00:25:50:07
Sanaa Alimia
The idea of freedom has to be not just for you and yours, but it has to be for us and ours and us all together. This moment, too, is a reminder for those of us who work on oral histories and people's histories that the role of the scholar is one to document and to act as a witness, but to also contextualize, to explain, to make clear the structures and the conditions, and to make clear the linkages that allow such conditions of violence to take place.
00:25:50:07 - 00:26:11:17
Sanaa Alimia
In the context of my own work, in September 2023, the government of Pakistan announced a decision to deport what it calls undocumented Afghans, and it said it wanted to expel 1.7 million persons, a number that appears to have been drawn out of thin air. The current government in Pakistan is a caretaker government, and it really has only one job, and that is to usher in elections.
00:26:11:17 - 00:26:38:10
Sanaa Alimia
Instead, it's chosen to announce an utterly inhumane plan for what is effectively a monumental population transfer of seismic proportions. Visionless and without a mandate, this government acts as lackeys of the military establishment without a thought to the long term implications for peace in the country and the region. And of course, with no regard for the impact of the people's lives who the who they are upending. The current deportation drive has many enablers and complicit actors.
00:26:38:13 - 00:27:00:06
Sanaa Alimia
There's a long list of failures of the international humanitarian aid and refugee regime, something we seem to be finding familiar in the context of Palestine, too. In 2023, as the expulsions are underway of Afghans in Pakistan, we find international humanitarian agencies often be more concerned with the processes rather than the actual needs of the people on the ground.
00:27:00:11 - 00:27:27:23
Sanaa Alimia
This is a familiar story. Even after the 2021 Taliban came into power. The current moment of deportation, mass deportations of Afghans in Pakistan has also been enabled and emboldened by the usual suspects. Our colonial friends appear again on the scene. The US, Canada, Australia, the UK, France, Germany, Holland, the European Union. They're all engaged in their own racialised regimes of abuse, incarceration and the deportation of migrants who are brown, black, Muslim and poor.
00:27:28:02 - 00:27:54:03
Sanaa Alimia
Their actions have emboldened the Pakistani state, who, as the you mentioned, have always had an intimate relationship in many ways with the West to act as they please. Neighboring Turkey and Iran, too, are also deporting thousands of Afghans. The anti-imperialist thinker Anila Daulatzai, she says much of this has also connected to the exceptional racialization and orientalism that Afghans face, even within sometimes the so-called left wing anti-war
00:27:54:18 - 00:28:42:11
Sanaa Alimia
movement in the West and even indeed amongst South Asian political thinkers and scholars and organizations to the deportations that are currently happening, often leave our jaws on the floor too. Because, as stated in a global petition by an Afghan reparations collective, many of the conditions of war within Afghanistan, the reasons why people cannot live and thrive in their own country and dignity and with dignity as a self-determined people are directly as a consequence of the military interventions in Afghanistan by our usual imperial suspects and colonial suspects, as well as neighboring Pakistan and Iran, too, as the British anti-racist intellectuals, Sivanandan had told us, “We are here because you were there”, in the case of Afghans.
00:28:42:13 - 00:29:08:03
Sanaa Alimia
In Pakistan, this expulsion is particularly shameless because of Pakistan's own interventions in Afghanistan. And what we see happening and taking place is similar gaslighting techniques that we see in Israel, too, of what they do to the Palestinian peoples. In the struggles, Pakistani politicians often appear on the TV or media telling us bold up, bold, you know, straight, not straight faced and with a straight face, you know, these very bold lies.
00:29:08:05 - 00:29:31:10
Sanaa Alimia
In November this month, a couple of days ago, a spokesperson for the foreign Ministry said that the expulsions that are taking place that are affecting millions of people within the country, there's actually some 4 million Afghans within the country is compliant with international law. It's absolutely not. They said and the foreign ministry spokesperson says that our record for the last 40 years in holds hosting millions of Afghans speaks for itself.
00:29:31:14 - 00:29:55:21
Sanaa Alimia
But the record, as my own work had shown, is one of violence and discrimination and harassment. The solidarity that has often been expressed for Afghans within the country has usually come from Pakistanis who are living side by side with this person in various refugee camps or informal housing areas, people of comparable standings within the country. It's estimated in the past few weeks that at least half a million people have been forcibly expelled.
00:29:55:21 - 00:30:33:10
Sanaa Alimia
And it appears that the government is doubling down on its intentions. And there are many organizations and civil society activists, journalists, people on the ground, including the Joint Action Committee for Refugees and Aurat March, who have been screaming boldly and acting with much courage and strength to speak up for Afghans in the country and to document the cases of violence that they are facing and have also been trying to do so whilst connecting up the struggle of Afghans within the country to also other struggles within Pakistan, as well as the Palestinian struggle that is taking place and unfolding across our screens in real time today.
00:30:33:12 - 00:30:50:13
Sanaa Alimia
For many of the people who are being forced across this border, who are being taken away and ripped away from their homes, in their neighborhoods, in the communities they are being made to cross over into a homeland that they left 40 years ago have never been to, were not born in or have chosen to leave. It's a massive catastrophe.
00:30:50:13 - 00:31:17:03
Sanaa Alimia
And with winter kind of at the cusp and on the door, we know that the conditions will get worse across Pakistan, as Saadia mentions, and across class lines, across political lines, personal religious lines and ethnicities, there has been constant vocal disgust against Israel's murderous campaign and this is really needed. And of course, it's very welcome because Pakistan, too, has saw the as mentioned, like many Muslim countries, has amends to make to the Palestinian struggle.
00:31:17:06 - 00:31:40:11
Sanaa Alimia
Yes. For its back door talks with Israel for buying spyware from the Israeli state in more recent months, and also, of course, for its direct interventions against the Palestinian Liberation Organization in the 1970s, when Zia ul Haq, of course, was somebody who went and directly fought and led Jordanian forces in that September in 1970, despite the duplicity of the state.
00:31:40:11 - 00:32:08:12
Sanaa Alimia
Of course, this idea mentions Pakistanis have historically stood with Palestinians and continue to do so from the ordinary person, from myself, from you to the religious right, to the worker, to the peasant, to the poets, to the thinkers. And so the you mentioned the Marxist anti-colonial and indigenous thinkers and movements and fairs, atmospheres to appeal to the workers and organizers from the 1970s summons to Mazdoor Kisan Party to today’s Women’s Democratic Front to or the Awami Workers Party.
00:32:08:12 - 00:32:32:16
Sanaa Alimia
All have stood with the Palestinian peoples. At the same time, the important lessons that we must learn is not to be silent on the cases within the country in the treatment of Pakistan towards Afghans through these expulsion processes. What can we learn from the struggle of the Palestinian people who struggle is being articulated and carried out with so much dignity which they should not have to do but are doing and are showing us a way forward?
00:32:32:21 - 00:32:40:20
Sanaa Alimia
How can we move forward and connect our struggles? That's perhaps the question that I would like us to think about and to to perhaps discuss.
00:32:40:20 - 00:33:09:12
Mezna Qato
Thank you. Wow. Thank you so much, all of you, for those thoughtful, rich interventions and explorations. They kind of in many ways, they echo each other as much as they echo anything else, but also speak to quite different angles and perspectives and geographies. So I thought before actually I have I have a load of questions, but before I get there, I wonder if there might be things that you have to say to each other, perhaps Goldie, I can start with you..
00:33:09:12 - 00:33:10:18
Mezna Qato
00:33:10:19 - 00:33:32:03
Goldie Osuri
Thank you Mezna. I really enjoyed listening to Saadia and Sanaa. I mean, I feel like I learned a lot and there's a lot to take in. I think one of the things there's a lot of things that struck me, but one of the things that was sort of really struck me, and I think it's related to what Sanaa said, this idea that, you know, none of us is free until all of us are free.
00:33:32:05 - 00:33:57:10
Goldie Osuri
And it kind of links into Saadia and the way that idea was kind of unpacking something about the Pakistani left and the ways in which there's a muted ness when it comes to thinking about Palestine or Kashmir, because it's so it's close, It's associated with, I guess, being Muslim or, you know, Muslim sentiments or political Islam or a related phenomenon.
00:33:57:12 - 00:34:30:15
Goldie Osuri
And I was wondering if it isn't I mean, for me in many ways, and I think people have been saying this on social media and elsewhere, and there's something about the current incessant, you know, genocidal bombing of Gaza and the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and attempted in East Jerusalem, that it really has exposed the idea of the liberal left, especially in relation to either being mute, you know, mute, silent, or, you know, so maybe being a seen as ineffective.
00:34:30:15 - 00:35:10:08
Goldie Osuri
But in fact, there's more to that. It's actually violent. And I'm not talking about what is considered, you know, left in terms of the political idea of the left, in terms of political parties or something, because that's it's almost and that's in fact, quite rightwing, I would say. But I'm just talking about, I guess people who are considered to be part of the, you know, I guess, liberal left in terms of scholars or, you know, part of the general sort of populace and so there's a kind of violence in in being silent or, you know, there's this continual kind of attempt to say, well, there's something about both sides and, you know, like this is
00:35:10:08 - 00:35:31:18
Goldie Osuri
a war between Israel and Hamas or, you know, all of that, both sides, all of that kind of fear almost of Muslims and demonize and things as being Muslim. And so there's a kind of real Islamophobia there. So I feel like that kind of struck me as something that was part of, in a way, both of those talks.
00:35:31:20 - 00:35:45:04
Goldie Osuri
There's a necessity to think through that in relation to the current political climate. If we're going to think about ideas like, freedom and decolonization. So I just I thought I would raise that as a topic to think about.
00:35:45:05 - 00:35:46:21
Mezna Qato
Thank you so much, Goldie. Saadia.
00:35:47:14 - 00:36:26:23
Saadia Toor
Yeah, you're absolutely right Goldie. I think if I had more time to articulate my thoughts that I would have pointed out is that that most definitely this insidious kind of Islamophobia that has emerged in amongst what you're calling the liberal left, you know, people who consider themselves progressive in Muslim countries still. But but also, you know, in other parts of the Global South where there's this this kind of discomfort with any kind of movement that is of Muslim people and expresses itself even, you know, if not predominantly, but in some way in in a muslim idiom.
00:36:26:23 - 00:37:04:14
Saadia Toor
Right. And I find that always very interesting, because these are the same people in Pakistan, for example, who rightfully elevate their affairs. But if you Faiz’s poetry, even though Faiz was a communist, because, you know, he was brought up as a Muslim and so and was writing within an idiom that or the forms of cultural expression that are steeped in sort of Islamic culture, like Ghazal, like Urdu poetry. The metaphors that he uses, the, you know, the sort of like language that he deploys are steeped in Muslim metaphors.
00:37:04:14 - 00:37:26:05
Saadia Toor
Right? And it makes me really angry. We certainly have seen this, you know, when it comes to, I think, elite Indian academics in the West. And I probably have the same thing to say about elite Pakistani academics in the West in this period, except they aren't that many of them. But there is, you know, a critical mass of Indian academics in the West that consider themselves to be anti-colonial postcolonial.
00:37:26:11 - 00:37:58:18
Saadia Toor
We're in terms of decolonization and decoloniality. And then when it came to October 7th, suddenly either fell silent or felt the need to talk about how decolonial was not a term that applied here and did not apply in the context of Palestine. And of course, you know, we can also always, you know, talk a lot about how that has played out within the subcontinent in terms of solidarity with Kashmir and the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination, which is also a struggle against settler colonialism, as you pointed out.
00:37:58:18 - 00:38:34:05
Saadia Toor
Right. And the resonances between the Kashmiri struggle and the Palestinian struggle being so clear to Kashmiris themselves, as you as you said. And I think that you can see the sort of connection between that and what Sanaa was talking about in terms of the a completely unabashed, sometimes orientalist forms of racism that are used in even not across all of the progressives in Pakistan, thank God, but within sort of, you know, even recently within within what would be considered progressive parts of that movement, within feminist parts of that movement, not all that much.
00:38:34:10 - 00:38:57:02
Saadia Toor
Not the Women's Democratic Front, but other portions of the feminist movement that should be completely in solidarity with the Afghans that are being the refugees that are being deported and sent back to Afghanistan. And yet the racism, which is deeply tied to the Islamophobia, I think, you know, if you have time, we can unpack that and then we'll be able to unpack that probably much better than me.
00:38:57:03 - 00:39:27:15
Saadia Toor
The kind of deep Islamophobia that underlies that, the racism against Afghans, particularly Pashtuns, you know, outside of Khyber-pakhtunkhwa in the rest of Pakistan. And it seems odd to say that because how can, you know, whatever Muslims and progressive Muslims be Islamophobic? But of course, we've seen that. We’re not even talking about, you know, X Muslims and the whole sort of ideological front of the X Muslim. We’re talking about progressives that consider themselves people from, you know, Muslim majority countries that consider themselves progressive.
00:39:27:21 - 00:39:53:09
Saadia Toor
But this deep investment in secularism that has emerged in Pakistan and possibly elsewhere, and I see resonance is of it, for Pakistan, it emerged following Zia ul Haq Islamization campaign. What emerged was this sort of kneejerk reaction against anything that was to Islamic and the connection to the racism against Afghans is that somehow Pashtuns are sort of the leading edge of this being too Islamic, right.
00:39:53:09 - 00:40:27:22
Saadia Toor
That this kind of like racism of how you understand the Taliban, for example, that for them it's just only natural that the Taliban are Pashtun, because course Pashtuns are sort of exceptionally non-secular, non tolerant, extremist Muslims. Right. So in a way, like basically passing on the tropes of the ideas around Islamophobia that they're sort of under, right, Islamophobia in the West, that Muslims are exceptionally illiberal, passing that on within a muslim majority context to an ethnic minority, and in this case to an extremely vulnerable population of refugees.
00:40:28:03 - 00:40:31:04
Saadia Toor
The exact same tropes. I see the resonances a lot.
00:40:31:10 - 00:40:53:24
Sanaa Alimia
Yeah. Thank you so much Saadia. I think I'm just going to jump in because I think it's a really interesting way of kind of like framing it, right, This Islamophobia against Pashtuns and Afghans who of course across various ethnicities within the country is really something that you kind of like see playing out. And it even shapes a lot of the migration and anti migration discourse that governs Pakistan today.
00:40:53:24 - 00:41:16:15
Sanaa Alimia
This idea that we need to secure the territories from this Islamist risk and from a geopolitical level, forget the fact that the state has been central in kind of like funding and facilitating the Taliban throughout the various years and has had an interest in doing so. But there is this language that creeps in, you know, we need to be protected from Islamists both outside.
00:41:16:15 - 00:41:40:20
Sanaa Alimia
And this is, of course, the language of the state and migration policies, but often also seeps into other spaces. And then also this social conservatism that really kind of like governs the tropes that surround kind of like how it is that non-Pashtuns within Pakistan, especially in dominant urban centers in the Punjab and also in Sindh kind of imagine and understand Pashtuns within the country who happen to be citizens as well as often refugees.
00:41:41:01 - 00:42:07:07
Sanaa Alimia
And it's really violently palpable in a kind of creates these, you know, experiences, lived experiences of discrimination as well as these massive kind of material kind of inequalities that people are subject to. But it's just the the hypocrisy is astounding. Like I said, you know, the hypocrisy is astounding of the state, especially because of given their own insidious actions within Afghanistan and kind of the entire kind of like funding and military apparatus.
00:42:07:07 - 00:42:35:08
Sanaa Alimia
And we see echoes of that, of course, in other contexts. And of course, what you were speaking about also when you were talking about Faiz Ahmed Faiz is kind of language and being versed very much in kind of read the tradition through which he was raised in, you know, if you thinking, of course, of the anthem that everybody sings ... the only name that will remain of course, will be that of God when all of these injustices will be laid bare for the world to see.
00:42:35:10 - 00:43:01:00
Sanaa Alimia
And I think that forgetting kind of like that element in that tradition, of course, within kind of certain spaces. And of course not everybody does forget. Many people remember and remain not necessarily true to it, but connected to kind of that ethos because of course, many people within the struggles, political struggles within Pakistan are part and parcel of those of societies and formations themselves, and they're able to articulate it really, really powerfully as well.
00:43:01:02 - 00:43:23:07
Sanaa Alimia
I'm thinking here of course, there is a really interesting and exciting scholarly work and literature that's coming out, like you said, rightfully so, by a younger generation who are able to kind of somehow work their ways out of these contradictions that seem to be so heavy and ever present of a people's framings of what they understand to be progressive within the South-Asian context.
00:43:23:08 - 00:43:49:18
Sanaa Alimia
I also want to just to kind of come on a bit briefly to Goldie's point in terms of some of the violence of the silences that we have within academia, particularly for scholars. And of course, I dare you to mention this to scholars who are working on these topics of decolonization, who may be studying people's movements. And somebody else said it so beautifully and so powerfully is that we don't make the struggle.
00:43:49:20 - 00:44:09:20
Sanaa Alimia
The struggle makes us We, as scholars, are indebted to the struggles and to the peoples who we're studying, especially if by studying peoples movements, especially if we're studying people's struggles, especially if we're studying people's liberation movements, we are indebted. We have not made the struggle for all of our kudos and our radical chic and all of these other things.
00:44:09:20 - 00:44:38:12
Sanaa Alimia
And our salary comes from the work that we do by studying and working with and on these persons, these communities and these movements. And I think that in these moments when people do not have the capacity to talk or claim that they don't have the capacity or feign a neutrality or feign kind of, you know, both siding types of these types of debates, I think it's an utter kind of like form of cowardice that is also intellectually very dishonest, too.
00:44:38:13 - 00:45:02:05
Sanaa Alimia
I know that may may sound too harsh a thing to say, but I think that these are in these moments, if we want to remain true to an intellectual tradition that is not just bound to the neoliberal academy where we're producing, you articles for article sake, there has to be an element. We will be able to confront these questions and to confront our role within the world that we're making in the knowledge that we're producing.
00:45:02:05 - 00:45:22:04
Sanaa Alimia
It has to be kind of at the forefront of our all of our kind of scholarly kind of interventions. And I find it quite I think that perhaps the way Goldie framed it as the violence of of not saying anything and it is a type of violence in a way is almost a type of a denial of a critical inquiry in a truth to.
00:45:22:08 - 00:45:55:08
Mezna Qato
Thank you so much, everyone. This was really fruitful and to think also how each of your interventions and now you're in conversation with each other has sort of illuminated certain kind of reoccurring themes that hopefully will you're introducing and then will become much more clear and much more robust as we develop the series. One question I had, perhaps I'm not sure who we would like to take it up is about politics and in a very kind of very specific sense here, I mean, sort of very narrow politics of position.
00:45:55:10 - 00:46:29:13
Mezna Qato
In particular, I was thinking about how all three of you talked about how this moment has clarified certain dynamics locally, has clarified and forced articulations between different movements, different parties, different figures within them. How do you see or how do you read eyes in terms of those kinds of local dynamics, local political dynamics? You know, in making a sense, Goldy, you talked about how Modi has taken up some of the you know, has bound Hindutva ideologically to Zionism in this really concrete way.
00:46:29:16 - 00:46:58:18
Mezna Qato
How is that read politically across other political movements within India? And the same as well in Pakistan and maybe also in relationship to some of what you addressed, which is this sort of dissonance that sometimes happens where states can claim solidarity with Palestine and often, as you rightly point out, at the expense of their own complicity with such violent Palestine like practices of their own.
00:46:58:19 - 00:47:03:03
Mezna Qato
So just some thoughts about politics and political mobilization at the moment.
00:47:03:05 - 00:47:33:19
Goldie Osuri
I think when we think about politics and positions and political movements, who might even be critical, for example, of Modi in the to the Hindu movement in general and the affiliation with Zionism and binding it in that sort of close way. I think what's interesting is that for a lot of Indian, especially the Indian left, that it felt like such a big shift away from Indian support of state, support for Palestine.
00:47:33:21 - 00:48:03:01
Goldie Osuri
And is this a lot of hand-wringing around it? I think I wrote a paper a few years ago about itineraries of solidarity with Palestine, but at the same time, there's a level of non acknowledgment of the kind of state or governments India has had before Hindutva. I say it's almost like everything started with Hindutva, and before that India was this amazing secular state that had credentials for a kind of anti-colonial global leadership.
00:48:03:01 - 00:48:36:05
Goldie Osuri
And with this shift, the critique was more of Hindutva and not of previous governments. And for me, Kashmir made any kind of just a little bit opening up of what India has done in Kashmir, sort of made visible the untenability of that liberal sort of political position and those movements and, you know, some, a few people out of those, out of some of those political movements have now sort of attempt to acknowledge what has been happening in Kashmir.
00:48:36:07 - 00:49:17:04
Goldie Osuri
But they're often attributed only to Hindutva. So I guess so the broader issue is there's an inability to acknowledge a kind of soft Hindu liberal position in that politics. And even though there's been this support for Palestine and support often quite a strong support for it, this kind of unacknowledged liberal Hindu position is unable to acknowledge the levels at which, you know, previous Indian governments and the Indian state has so embroiled in its own occupations and in doing so, embroiled also in support for the occupation of Palestine.
00:49:17:04 - 00:49:33:06
Goldie Osuri
Through those early years, Indian governments have had relations with Israel, have bought arms from Israel in their wars with China and Pakistan, for example. So those kinds of things have been exposed in a sense in the current context. You can see it quite clearly.
00:49:33:09 - 00:50:13:17
Mezna Qato
Thank you. Go. The one impression I got from your work, please clarify, is there a difference to, between certain kinds of Indian nationalisms, even anti-colonial nationalisms that are perfectly willing to condemn, critique, anti-Muslim Hindutva sentiment and politics and practices but have a hard time with Kashmir? And part of this has to do with the question of sovereignty. And in a sense, my question then becomes, well, what is that difference for them such that they can then be in solidarity with Palestine and the struggle for self-determination there and not see a kinship to that struggle with Kashmir?
00:50:13:19 - 00:50:44:01
Goldie Osuri
I think there is very much the sense, you know, your right to point out that it is about sovereignty, but there's an inability to face the idea that India could ever be an occupying power, so that nationalism is really strong. You know, even the most critical of Indian left academics, critical of Indian nationalism. I mean, you scratch the surface and there is very much an investment in the Indian nation state, and there's an inability to see the Indian nation state as being an occupying power.
00:50:44:04 - 00:51:30:09
Goldie Osuri
It's often seen as a problem of Indian democracy and a criticism of Indian democracy in that Indian democracy could be pensive, but it's an inability to see that that's actually that India has engaged in settler colonial logics and since 2019, more formalized under state, you know, settler colonial project. I'm trying to point out with that something that's out there or commented on quite methodically, even though there is kind of a critique of Hindutva and its anti-Muslim sentiments and so on, there is a kind of soft Hindu majoritarianism that is Islamophobic and therefore sort of is able to reduce Kashmiri struggle for self-determination as something that is Islamist.
00:51:30:11 - 00:51:37:02
Goldie Osuri
And I think there's a similar kind of move in thinking about the Palestinian resistance.
00:51:37:04 - 00:51:39:18
Mezna Qato
Thank you so much Goldie. Saadia, do you have any thoughts?
00:51:39:21 - 00:52:06:13
Saadia Toor
Yeah, I think just riffing off of Goldie. I think, you know, what's interesting in the Indian context was that because as I was saying before, the issue of Palestine became such a central issue for Third World solidarity that India under Nehru felt that it was precisely important to maintain India's secular credentials too, and also its leadership of the nonaligned movement and all of that.
00:52:06:13 - 00:52:33:21
Saadia Toor
To have this very vocal support for Palestine. And so you have a generation of Indian left intellectuals that kind of grew up being very strongly. And for all the right reasons as well. But through this kind of like Nehruvian fandom and the kind of, you know, nationalism that Goldie is talking about, this uncritical nationalism and this belief that India is a secular nation state with Pakistan always being the evil other, the evil twin, right?
00:52:33:24 - 00:52:57:17
Saadia Toor
So this deep kind of like solidarity always with the Palestinian struggle, while at the same time being unable to recognize what India was doing in Kashmir and also what, you know, what was happening to Muslims within the Indian nation state itself. I think that, you know, really has a lot to do with the anti-Muslim sentiments that was very much a part even of like the secular Nehruvian nationalism.
00:52:57:17 - 00:53:22:00
Saadia Toor
And I think where, you know, where this breaks down now, even though, of course, there is still this way in which and in fact when Kashmir because we intellectuals have called out anti-colonial left Indian intellectuals precisely for being very vocally pro-Palestine again for all the right reasons, and yet unable to see a single word in support of Kashmiri self-determination.
00:53:22:00 - 00:53:45:04
Saadia Toor
But I think what's interesting now that we're seeing now is the fractures within that old, you know, solid support for Palestine and the contradictions of that with their own kind of anti-Muslim, liberal, anti-Muslim racism is always, you know, when it comes down to Hamas. So you see a lot of like discomfort suddenly with, you know, what happened on October 7th.
00:53:45:04 - 00:54:17:12
Saadia Toor
And you see that, you know, amongst a lot of like the self-proclaimed post-colonial anti-colonial Indian intellectuals and also a lot of liberal Pakistanis also. Right. I think it's really, really important. Bear with me, since I keep saying this, it's really important to understand this kind of investment in a particular idea of secularism in South Asia and how it's deeply connected to sort of seeing any expressions of Muslimness as being essentially and at their root, illiberal.
00:54:17:16 - 00:54:43:09
Saadia Toor
So this idea of a muslim secularism becomes impossible to imagine. And I feel like there was a moment in Pakistan's history where intellectuals like Faiz Ahmad Faiz and other communists and socialist poets and writers and political workers had carved out a particular kind of Muslim secular space, you know, of politics within Pakistan, which, of course, was not something that the Pakistani establishment liked at all.
00:54:43:11 - 00:55:06:23
Saadia Toor
And, in fact, you know, the U.S. also didn't like that. So it's really sort of like, you know, the ways in which anti-Zionist Jews are something that Israel cannot tolerate in the same way having towering intellectuals of Muslim extraction, who are also secular, but also unafraid of sort of asserting solidarities with struggles that others might find uncomfortable.
00:55:07:00 - 00:55:41:23
Saadia Toor
I think that was so important. And the the Pakistani establishment crushed that front, but with a lot of help from the US. Right. The U.S. pumped a lot of money in the Cold War years before the Afghan proxy war in the seventies, in the fifties and sixties, actually into undermining the important popular power of that kind of an intellectual left intellectual front and also very specifically into shoring up right wing organization and that kind of social engineering that Mahmood Mamdani talks about so well in good Muslim, bad Muslim.
00:55:41:23 - 00:55:47:11
Saadia Toor
I think it's so crucial to understand that happening within the South Asian context and its resonance is kind of globally.
00:55:47:16 - 00:56:13:01
Mezna Qato
I think, you know, I mean, one of the things that also strikes me about that is the way secularism and its repertoires also end up feeling inadequate for the moment in certain kinds of ways. And we see an inability to catch up, as it were, or at least to articulate a new understanding or something resonant globally, but also in South Asia.
00:56:13:01 - 00:56:36:11
Mezna Qato
So yeah, I absolutely hear you and I and as you were speaking, I was thinking about some of the conversations that have been happening on social media of the different epistemology that are at play when people are in conversation that are almost talking over each other rather with each other. And the dynamics of that are certainly clear and clarifying as to what the political stakes have been and are. Sanaa?
00:56:36:13 - 00:57:00:10
Sanaa Alimia
For me, I was thinking through, you know, when we're talking about why is it that there is this inability to kind of reflect on the various forms of oppression that are taking place within the nation state and the boundary of your own kind of like space and territory when it's so easy in some cases, certainly in the Pakistan case, to articulate solidarity with Palestine in many ways.
00:57:00:10 - 00:57:35:16
Sanaa Alimia
But it's not so easy to articulate support and solidarity, say, with Afghan refugees as one example. But of course, there's also the other examples within Pakistan, too, Baluchistan. Why is it that India is unable Indian intellectuals and India leftists have consistently from there, of course, many wonderful comrades within that space, but many have not been able and been unwilling to kind of speak about Kashmir to articulate the concerns of the Kashmiris, you know, and the quest and the move and the push for self-determination and haven't been able to articulate that support.
00:57:35:20 - 00:58:04:20
Sanaa Alimia
Certainly in the Pakistan case. Of course, we know that the state has over the years kind of committed various forms of atrocities on its own populations and peoples. 1971, of course, when we had East and West Pakistan was one of those clear examples of this. And even until this day of course, many people within mainstream kind of society, within Pakistan too, still won't talk about what happened in 1971 and I think confronting yourself
00:58:04:20 - 00:58:32:14
Sanaa Alimia
Confronting our own world and our own immediate universe is, of course, always a daunting task, but it's one that is really incumbent upon us, especially those who are operating and apparently are operating within kind of these spaces where we are trying to push for a remaking of the world that is more just and equitable for the workers, for peasants, for and for women, for transgender communities, for refugees, for all of these different kind of groups and persons and peoples.
00:58:32:14 - 00:58:58:15
Sanaa Alimia
And I think what I take hope from in this current moment is that we do have those people and spaces, particularly a newer generation of people who are trying at least to build those bridges and who are trying to articulate those solidarities for Palestinians whilst at the same time also trying to hold to account the various injustices that are taking place within our own kind of like immediate doorsteps and the like.
00:58:58:15 - 00:59:22:02
Sanaa Alimia
And I think that that particularly being articulated by a younger generation, but also of people who are able to kind of make those connections, I think is a really powerful moment and it's one that we should be building on and giving more space to and being doing the work to create those connections. And I think it is crucial work and I think this is the process of learning that is happening and unfolding between our rights.
00:59:22:02 - 00:59:57:14
Sanaa Alimia
I think so ideas, reflections on that era of the 50s, 60s and 70s where there was a really rich tradition of left wing activism as her work has kind of shown, was really about building those connections within the subcontinent, within Pakistan, across the different ethnicities and nations and peoples within Afghanistan and Pakistan too. A lot of the times with those connections and conversations that were taking place across the borders, a lot of Pashtun intellectuals were having conversations with Afghan intellectuals, there was a lot of exchange and there was a willingness, of course, of people to form these coalitions.
00:59:57:14 - 01:00:33:07
Sanaa Alimia
And of course, the violence with which those groups were met was astounding. And of course, the study rightly points out, was funded by the US and by the West and brought but also, of course, there were many of the Gulf states who were also actors in funding, particularly in the 80s, of course in the Soviet Afghan war. These GCC countries who have their own interests in, of course, not only extracting racialised labor from Pakistan, of course also from India too, but in some cases also having an influence through kind of the the alliance of political Islamism, of a particular color and a particular flavor.
01:00:33:10 - 01:00:58:01
Sanaa Alimia
And, you know, there's been that kind of moment that has been so difficult to come back from. But people have been doing the groundwork and people are trying to do that groundwork. And I think being able to create those spaces, being able to listen to those voices, being able to give those voices more, more of a platform, becomes more crucial, becomes a really crucial task, because that is, of course, what we are learning at this moment from what's happening in Palestine, too.
01:00:58:05 - 01:01:01:15
Mezna Qato
Thank you so much, Goldie, for that. Sadia.
01:01:01:17 - 01:01:05:21
Sertaç Sehlikoğlu
And I'd like to conclude with thanking everyone from the bottom of my heart.