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‘If I speak, they will kill me, to remain silent is to die’: Poetry of Resistance in General Zia’s Pakistan (1977-88)
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Kalra, Virinder and Butt, Waqas (2019) ‘If I speak, they will kill me, to remain silent is to die’: Poetry of Resistance in General Zia’s Pakistan (1977-88). Modern Asian Studies, 53 (4). pp. 1038-1065. doi:10.1017/S0026749X17000130
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17000130
Abstract
The ethnic and sectarian divisions that were part of General Zia’s (1977-88) political strategies in Pakistan were resisted not only through street protest and political opposition, but also in the realm of culture. In particular, poetry was a vehicle through which to express discontent as well as to mobilize the population. By offering an analysis of a number of poems and the biographies of the political poets who wrote them. This article offers another perspective on the question of resistance in this period of Pakistan’s history. Whilst the outcome of the policy of ethnic division was to divide the struggle against General Zia into a broad anti-Punjab front, this article highlights how it was class division and the securing of elite consent that was the major achievement of the Zia regime. In contrast to previous research, we highlight how resistance came from all groups in Pakistan as reflected in the poetry and literature of the time.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Modern Asian Studies | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0026-749X | ||||||||
| Official Date: | July 2019 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 53 | ||||||||
| Number: | 4 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 1038-1065 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1017/S0026749X17000130 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
| Copyright Holders: | Cambridge University Press 2019 | ||||||||
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