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The imperial underpinning of the early anthropology of Pakistan constituted "the other" as a subject of comprehension, categorization, and containment. Later, with the post‐9/11 geopolitical backdrop, anthropologists focused on selected themes such as religious and ethnic disparity and political nationalism, eliding some topics or groups. What would it mean for the anthropology of Pakistan to consider alienated themes and groups while emphasizing the infinity of the Other? How would conceiving the Other beyond a political or religious other, or even beyond a human subject, create a possibility of decolonizing the anthropology of Pakistan while exploring multiple futures—emergent, imagined, and expected? Such an approach critically moots a reexamination of theoretical, methodological, and epistemological tenets and urges the discipline to engage with diverse lifeworlds. It brings the face of the Other face‐to‐face with anthropology beyond humanity to consider all beings, intersubjective and collaborative experiences, and shared values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study problematises the discourses of Pakistan's national curriculum textbooks to investigate how they represent Pakistan's indigenous languages/cultures through the prism of religion to constitute secondary school students' particular postcolonial linguistic identities. It also draws on the perspectives of 12 teachers and 424 students to record their responses. Taking insights from Paulo Freire's cultural invasion, Robert Blauner's internal colonisation and selected postcolonial perspectives, the study notes a dynamic interplay of the sampled textbooks, schoolteachers and the school as a site of discursive social practices. Jointly, they position students within an exclusionary homogenous Urdu‐loving group—a language which is represented as Arabic's tributary. Indigenous languages are recognised, however, as an adjunct to Arabic and Urdu, emphasising their role in the proselytisation of Islam in the region. Similarly, fine arts and indigenous cultural festivals are represented from a particular religious lens. The students strongly identify with this curious case of internal colonisation and cultural invasion, and support it. They exhibit self‐righteousness and aversion towards linguistic/cultural pluralism and minorities, which entails implications for Pakistan's national cohesion and educational parlance of equity and inclusivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the labour geographies of nationalism through sharecropper "articulations" of anti‐colonialism. I study the Punjab Kisan (peasant) Committee at the eve and dawn of Pakistan's independence from British colonialism. I analyse their actions and claims through newsletters, activist memoirs, and colonial reports. I situate them in relation to other social and political forces: the state, landlords, and Muslim nationalists. Whereas labour geography has often ignored nationalism, I outline an approach for the sub‐field to address this gap. First, subaltern nationalisms re‐articulate labour, land, gender, and religion in place‐specific ways. Second, exclusionary and liberatory nationalisms are variegated responses to the dynamics of being integrated to an imperialist world‐economy. This study found these multi‐religious peasant committees articulated sovereignty over labour, land, and social reproduction with the national question. Further, this article contributes to the subaltern and labour historiography of Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On July 4, 2018, then–Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mian Saqib Nisar, announced an unprecedented campaign to crowdfund the Rs. 1.9 trillion ($12.4 billion USD) needed to revive construction of the Diamer–Bhasha and Mohmand dams. Encouraged to contribute as a form of ṣadaqa (voluntary charity), donations from Pakistanis at home and abroad peaked at Rs. 12.9 billion ($80.4 million USD), despite widespread criticisms questioning the fund's motives and feasibility. Drawing on the developmental logic of dams and calls for a Nayā Pakistan (New Pakistan), the dam fund transformed Diamer–Bhasha into a popular symbol of a modern, prosperous, and pious nation. This paper explores the aspirations and limitations of these claims by tracing the historical, political, and affective discourses that inform the campaign. In order to contextualize the emergence of the dam fund, I argue that the broader developmental and humanitarian significance of the campaign should also be understood in relation to the statist frame of Pakistani Muslim nationalism. Above all, I seek to understand how the dam fund simultaneously presents Pakistanis as vulnerable to extinction, yet capable of their own rescue. I ask: what happens when the nation itself imagines itself as both the giver and recipient of charity? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On July 4, 2018, then–Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mian Saqib Nisar, announced an unprecedented campaign to crowdfund the Rs. 1.9 trillion ($12.4 billion USD) needed to revive construction of the Diamer–Bhasha and Mohmand dams. Encouraged to contribute as a form of ṣadaqa (voluntary charity), donations from Pakistanis at home and abroad peaked at Rs. 12.9 billion ($80.4 million USD), despite widespread criticisms questioning the fund's motives and feasibility. Drawing on the developmental logic of dams and calls for a Nayā Pakistan (New Pakistan), the dam fund transformed Diamer–Bhasha into a popular symbol of a modern, prosperous, and pious nation. This paper explores the aspirations and limitations of these claims by tracing the historical, political, and affective discourses that inform the campaign. In order to contextualize the emergence of the dam fund, I argue that the broader developmental and humanitarian significance of the campaign should also be understood in relation to the statist frame of Pakistani Muslim nationalism. Above all, I seek to understand how the dam fund simultaneously presents Pakistanis as vulnerable to extinction, yet capable of their own rescue. I ask: what happens when the nation itself imagines itself as both the giver and recipient of charity? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]