Tag: Habib University

Karachi, March 31, 2022 (PPI-OT):The final session of the 5th Post-Colonial Higher Education Conference, Habib University’s flagship conference was held online on March 25. Titled South Asia and The Colour Line, it featured sociologist Mishal Khan, and Associate Professor of History at Swarthmore College, USA. The panel was moderated by Dr. Shama Dossa, Associate Professor in the Social Development and Policy program at Habib University, along with Conference Chair, Dr. Nauman Naqvi, Associate Professor in the Comparative Humanities program at Habib University.

Khan began her lecture by sharing her reflections on what she believes South Asia has to offer to urgent debates about racial capitalism and its history. She brought into focus W. E. B Du Bois’s famous formulation in his essay, The Dawn of Freedom, where he says, “the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the Colour Line.”

She stated that Du Bois was clear in admitting that the colour line was not just the division between black and white but a global racial ordering, which is the topic of this conference. “In his formulation, the European empire and capitalism were both inextricably tied together creating a world that locked colonized people into subordinate positions that enabled capitalists and colonizers to draw on their resources and of course, their labour.”

She spoke about the interventions she made her in her research, “Abolition as a Racial Project” that explores what racialization means in the South Asian context. Khan argued that in South Asia and the colonial world in general, we need to focus attention away from the legacies of slavery and more towards the focus on British abolition – this was itself an essential tool used to reorder the world for the purpose of global labour control. She went on to state that this came from the same appreciation that racialization as a global process of modernity began in the Atlantic world and had different contingent consequences in the rest of the world.

Through a graph, she showed how the sorting of racial categories was crucial to processes of global racial capitalism, particularly to establishing India as a site of free labour. She established that slavery cases always involved Africans or Shidis. The Shidi community was the “residue behind questions of slavery.”

Race, caste, kinship, she pointed out, are all terms that we impose on a complicated social reality that involves many distinct kinds of legacy, including slave legacy. Khan concluded by stating, “Whiteness and whether or not we think about different formulations of social hierarchy in South Asia look like whiteness but are not quite that.”

Farid Azfar’s presentation was titled, ‘Turtle Hunters: Capitalist War in Colonial Karachi’ that displayed a print without a context called Graphic in 1880. This was a series of four panels as a kind of satirical parable to turtle hunting that served as a kind of colonial governance.

Azfar suggested through this print that along with being a satirical parable, it also displayed colonial abjection of whiteness and a state of rapturing: “it was a story of a group of people possessed by a power produced for them by highly fortuitous historical conditionings, reflecting a subliminal subconsciousness of the fact that they were once luckier and more capable than their own colonial forebearers.”

He stated that the point of restructuring this history was not just to blame the West for everything but it was to retrace the role of human agency in constructing the problem so that the steps to reverse the problem can at least be imagined, if not affected.

“The capitalist war,” Azfar went on to say, “that is staged on and waged upon the archipelagic, shapeshifting, politically recalcitrant trading zone that was Karachi depends on the pre-existing energies of a city that has long combined the elements of smuggling den and pirate’s nest.” He concluded by leaving us to ponder on the reparation of the future in terms of race, “even today, as beset as Karachi is with crisis, the utterly exceptional place that kind of springs from these works can also be a battleground for reimagining the future of racial capitalist regime.”

As the seminal intellectual conference ended, opening dialogue and contemplation on whiteness in South Asia, each panel left us with much to ponder over given our postcolonial racial realities. The Conference Chair, Dr. Nauman Naqvi, thanked the speakers for their participation and efforts while reminding us why this topic was important to talk about, “it is especially important to the entire modern period. The way that South Asians have repressed the whole racial aspect and created racial attitudes has to do with our own oppression.”

The racialized order served to simultaneously reduce human beings to a biological reality that does not correspond to either their nature or to the nature of reality itself. Acknowledging Habib University’s pedagogical vision and mission to further the reparative project of reimagining and reconstructing a hopeful future, Dr. Naqvi stated, “Habib’s mission is central to the work of this project. This de-racialization is linked to the process of hooking up with our inheritances and legacies.”

For more information, contact:
Habib University
Karachi, Pakistan
Tel: +92-21-34301051-55
Email: marketing@habib.edu.pk
Website: www.habib.edu.pk

Karachi, March 31, 2022 (PPI-OT):The third session of the Fifth Post-Colonial Higher Education Conference was titled, ‘Aesthetic Whiteness’ which featured Associate Professor at Institute of Urdu Language and Literature at Punjab University, Nasir Abbas Nayyar, and Lecturer, Comparative Humanities at Habib University, Daniyal Ahmed as panellists. Dr. Nauman Naqvi, Conference Chair, was moderator of the session.

The speakers stated that the roots of white nationalism are much deeper than we think, and this prevails not only in the West but also in Third World countries as well. The future of the entire planet is threatened by this dilemma. Professor Nayyar said that unfortunately, less has been said and written on this subject. It has not been studied enough how racist attitudes have permeated literature and become a part of our identity.

“Whiteness pervades every area of our lives. A small example of this is that white skin is considered to be a symbol of beauty in our country. Capitalist institutions take advantage of this,” he stated. He said that there are also influences of white supremacy on Urdu literature. Indians were called natives (local) and a separate identity category was created for them. The whiteness was different from European identity in every way. In the colonial context, a native is a stranger on its own soil, cut off from their true identity and alienated from their origin. He is deprived of the right to live with dignity.

In the white man’s world, he needs validation to work. White racism is not just about arrogance, prejudice, nor political strategy anymore; it has extended to our real, physical, mental, scientific and imaginative worlds.

According to Professor Nayyar Abbas, the first of the basic principles of whiteness theory is that it considers power as its right. Second, they possess all ‘superior’ human qualities because they have power. They are high-minded, true, civilized and true benefactors of the common people and they possess the divine right to rule over the lower nations.

He went on to say that the colonial power, under the guise of racism and establishment of economic monarchy, also offered various interpretations to find its moral justification. According to Daniyal Ahmed, “today’s youth tends to learn guitar and other instruments of Western music rather than instruments of classical music.” He stated that, for a long time in the Western world, Eastern music was considered merely a noise and it was believed that there was no science or thought behind it. However, over time, that is now changing and white people are becoming more interested in our music.

On the other hand, Pakistani music competitions have very few people who sing and listen to classical music and it has more of a Western aesthetic. Despite the effective power and strength of traditional music, many musical instruments invented in Europe, such as the harmonium, have been adopted. Through an example, he pointed out that the heritage that protects our heritage is now considered abusive in our country – all this has occurred after the colonial era.

Ahmed argued that we have given place to Western composers in our music which has prompted us to view our own musical instruments and composers with our own lens. Furthermore, the link between capitalism, colonialism and globalization has also influenced music.

The speakers of the session said that the ethnic classification established by the government in the colonial era is still embedded in the global system. Addressing the speakers and audience, Dr. Nauman Naqvi said that black thinkers, in particular, as well as others say that modern times and systems are in fact ethnic. Racism and capitalism are intertwined and inseparable. Its effects are also present in the culture. This fact has caused irreparable damage to European and Western culture itself.

For more information, contact:
Habib University
Karachi, Pakistan
Tel: +92-21-34301051-55
Email: marketing@habib.edu.pk
Website: www.habib.edu.pk

Karachi, March 29, 2022 (PPI-OT):Habib University Career Connect was held on March 22, 2022 to help students smoothly navigate the transition from university life to a professional career. This year, more than 85 organizations from different industries such as energy, banking, media, manufacturing, development and technology sectors took part in the event. More than 300 Habib University students and alumni attended Career Connect with most of the alumni returning to the campus as company representatives to inspire soon-to-be graduates on the job market.

Recruiters conducted on-spot screening interviews, collected resumes, and familiarized students with exciting job opportunities and hiring processes. The company representatives guided students regarding their career choices and current hiring trends. Underlining the significance of Career Connect, Shoaib Khan, Head of Career Services, Habib University shared that the event is deeply connected with Habib’s institutional objective to ensure outstanding students outcome both within and beyond the University. He added that Career Connect plays an instrumental role in allowing students and alumni to learn about the expectations and requirements of the country’s leading employers.

Praising Habib University’s efforts to encourage students to indulge in critical thinking, Maham Faiyaz Siddiqui, Specialist – Talent Acquisition and Employee Experience at Dawlance remarked, “What we love about HU is how they have prepared students towards critical thinking. Promoting critical thinking, diversity and right set of values sets Habib University apart.”

The response to the event was overwhelming, particularly from industry leaders like PTCL, Aga Khan University Hospital, Gul Ahmed, Habib Metro Bank, Atlas Honda Limited, Soorty Enterprise, Alkaram Textile Mills, United Bank Limited, ICI Pakistan Limited, Astera Software, The Citizens Foundation (TCF), Bosch Pharmaceuticals (Pvt.) Limited, Daraz, Habib Bank Limited, Independent Media Corporation (Pvt.) Ltd. (GEO TV Network), Siddiqsons Limited, Lucky Textile Mills Limited, Mehran Spice and Food Industries, Logicose, Dawlance, Indus Hospital and Health Network, amongst others.

The event was hosted at the Habib University campus, ensuring proper compliance with Covid-19 SoPs and maintaining appropriate social distancing protocols. Many organizations congratulated the Habib management on a very well-conceived and effectively managed event and endorsed such events where students were provided with an appropriate platform to evaluate employability prospects.

For more information, contact:
Habib University
Karachi, Pakistan
Tel: +92-21-34301051-55
Email: marketing@habib.edu.pk
Website: www.habib.edu.pk

Karachi, March 29, 2022 (PPI-OT):The second session of the Fifth Post-Colonial Higher Education Conference was titled ‘Whiteness and Postcolonial Nationalism’ which featured Professor at the Department of History, Stony Brook University, USA, Shobana Shankar and Assistant Professor of Practice in the Communication and Design program at Habib University, Behzad Khosravi Noori, as panellists. Najeeb Jan, Associate Professor in the Comparative Humanities program at Habib University, moderated the session with Dr. Nauman Naqvi, Conference Chair, as discussant.

Professor Shankar began her lecture by proposing that a history of whiteness must include the intimate and complex relationship between Africans and Africa, and South Asians and South Asia. “This relationship,” she explained, “is often but not always unfolding ad transformed in the presence or shadow of Europeans, but this is Afro South Asian relationship also informed European’s ideas of others and themselves.” Owing to her extensive research in modern Africa, the African diaspora and African-Indian encounters, Professor Shankar shed light on how the mobilities of Africans and South Asians, and their globalized spaces are unparalleled.

Africans and South Asians constitute two of the world’s largest diasporas, and their long interactions have unfolded through migration, labour, imperialism and in the global making of difference, social systems of difference and race-making. Whiteness cannot be disentangled from European encounters with non-European subaltern subjects. Africans and South Asians have been agents in the making of difference that includes but is not always racial categories, she went on to say.

“Race, of course, is an idea, not a fact. It is not a biological difference but a constructed and reconstructed form of difference that includes a set of shifting discourses and practices of human difference.” Through her work, Professor Shankar argues that we must look at ideas of genealogy, blood, skin colour, gender, sexuality, religion, purity, occupation, ability, ideas about nature, human nature, in considering what is race and what is not a race.

“Whiteness as an idea does exist outside of the West and even in the West for most of the past centuries, the belief in more than one European race has existed in America and beyond. So, in other words, South Asia and Africa have become critical spaces to fracture the idea of whiteness,” she went on to say.

Professor Shankar argued that the making of whiteness is tied to the making of Blackness in Afro-South Asian history, suggesting that we see whiteness and blackness as evolving ideas and ideologies in South Asia, transforming through South Asian interactions in African and Black politics.

Dr. Behzad Khosravi Noori delved into how much one could make the notion of whiteness within the transnational form of identification more complex. He attempted to navigate the relationship between different ideas of whiteness and the idea that of Aryanism and the effect of the notion of a concept of Aryanism in Persia/Iran.

In his artistic way, he pointed out that he believes whiteness is one of the main challenges of societies today. His lecture explored when we became Aryan: “There is some sort of internalization of the idea of Aryanism and Blackness within Iranian society and Iranian political mentality, and I try to navigate where it is from and how we could find it false.”

French novelist Arthur De Gobineau, Dr. Behzad said, was argued to be the father of racism. He explored how the Frankish-German idea became the main idea of Aryanism in Europe. “For the first time, Arthur claimed that the Persians were once great Aryans. He understood that we are not Middle Eastern or West Asian, Asian, or Arab – we are Aryan,” Dr. Noori pointed out. Persians had been interbred too often with the Semitic Arabs as their own Persian tragedy was in his work. He thought that it was the land without racial prejudice. He was shocked that Persians regarded black as equal.

Arthur De Gobineau was the only person to define 19th century Iran as democratic. Dr. Noori found this interesting because the only democracy in his mind was the land without racial distinction and hierarchy. He said that they could be the closest cousin of our white Europeans. “If you are Persian, you are Aryan – European Aryan. So, they were white.” Furthermore, Dr. Noori went on to point out that Gobineau also believed that Shia Islam was part of a revolt by the Aryan Persians against the Semitic Arabs, seeing a close connection between Shia Islam and Persian nationalism.

For more information, contact:
Habib University
Karachi, Pakistan
Tel: +92-21-34301051-55
Email: marketing@habib.edu.pk
Website: www.habib.edu.pk

Karachi, March 28, 2022 (PPI-OT):The fifth edition of Habib University’s flagship intellectual conference, Postcolonial Higher Education Conference, began with its first discussion on the theme for this year, Whiteness in South Asia: India, Iran, and Pakistan, on the 22nd of March, 2022 live on Habib University’s Facebook page. This year’s topic sought to illuminate and analyze the historical and current operations of ‘Whiteness’ in the region of South Asia.

The first session, Whiteness and Colonial Governmentality, featured Professor Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, Professor in Global Thought and Comparative Philosophies at SOAS, University of London, and Fellow of Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge, UK, as keynote speaker along with Dr. Chandra Mallampali, Professor of History at Westmont College, USA.

Dr. Muhammad Haris, Assistant Dean of the School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Program Director of Comparative Humanities featured as the discussant in the session with Dr. Nauman Naqvi, Associate Professor, Comparative Humanities as Conference Chair.

Dr. Nauman Naqvi, the Conference Chair, began with echoing of last year’s theme, Reparative Futures, and Habib University’s pedagogical mission in upholding the task of reparation through these essential discussions on our postcolonial bearings. Explaining the daring yet relevant theme of the conference, Dr. Nauman Naqvi stated, “Whiteness, it appears, runs through the global modern era in ways visible and invisible to shape discourse, imagination and power everywhere to the considerable detriment of not just human society, but planetary futures.”

He went on to establish the goal of the conference this year, “Our aim is to motivate reflection on the regional manifestations of a key feature of the modern world – both in its making and in its presenting – a key feature of the modern order: race.” The context of South Asia, he explained, is important because the racialized nature of the modern world has blurred our vision of recognizing it fully. National empires such as the Spanish empire, French Empire, Portuguese empire, etc., and their national character meant apartheid, or discrimination of race and nationalism, and between the ruler and the ruled. This was the making of the colonial government wherein race and racism played a key role.

“Our world,” Dr. Nauman Naqvi further stated, “is in desperate need of healing and reparation and cognitive reparation is an essential part of that process, White supremacism, no doubt, the most intensive and extensive form of collective narcissism in human history poses today an existential threat to humanity.”

The keynote speaker of the panel, Professor Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, began with a viewing of his film Future Politics as he showed how racism has become a science. He went on to extenuate the trans-spatial space of racism to the discussion and push it beyond the traditional sites of governmentality: “the concept of the white man was developed and then turned into a science for many ways of subjugation. During the period of the 18th and 19th century Enlightenment, all the wonderful inventions that humanity experienced came with a very destructive mentality. The structure of mentality is now transpatial in the way that it was not before – the sites of racialized discourses are now online and magnified.”

He emphasized the role of technology that has both positive and disastrous effects in its nefarious purposes as he showed in Future Politics through identifying three principles – psycho-codification, microbial surveillance and posthuman warfare. He stated that we need a global movement that requires local manifestations and AI (Artificial Intelligence) driven technology through ethical means.

“Racism,” said Professor Adib-Moghaddam, “as a discourse to govern is always enmeshed and entangled with various forms of power. It is still out there, the site of which is slightly different than it used to be.”

In researching about why human beings create hierarchies, he spoke about the racial differences between Iranians and Arabs, and how these differences formed the purpose of the sovereign and Reza Shah’s governmentality. Until 1979, a different narrative was introduced which was positioned exactly against the notion of Iranians being Aryan and ‘different.’ The expressions of Third-Worldism and pan-Islamic solidarity that framed the resolution in 1979 were partially due to the dichotomy which was exploited by revolutionaries from 1979 onwards, he explained.

Discourses about the future, he pointed out, are significant in the search for that perfect trans-human, like the Enlightenment’s idea of perfection. Racism, he said, was also about creating the perfect individual and perfect society, “I think the narratives floating around when it comes to Artificial Intelligence and what it could do to humanity and society are problematic and the counter-narratives of imperfection are very important in the site of research and practice.”

Algorithms are all laden with racist and destructive forms of hierarchies within societies, Professor Adib-Moghaddam argued. Dr. Mallampali’s presentation built upon his book, Race, Religion and Law in Colonial India: Trials of an Interracial Family, that concerns a famous court case involving an interracial family. He used this to illustrate some of the discourses about race that circulated in the British Empire in the 19th century.

“A much more pervasive ideology of empire was present which was predicated on white supremacy in the notion of colonial ordering on racial difference,” he pointed out. This ideology had to do with the Europeans’ awareness that humanity had physical and cultural differences, and there was a degree of futility in trying to efface those differences. Dr. Mallampali thus explored the question of how the world could be governed considering these differences.

An imperial multiculturalism is still predicated on the notion of the European as the universal person, a type of white normativity that towers overs humanity. Colonial law in South Asia adopted this multicultural vision. Dr. Mallampali argued that colonial law needed to find a way to accommodate differences which the first Governer-General of India, Warren Hastings, developed in 1772. India was to be governed according to separate Hindu and Muslim laws. This showed that there was an awareness of the difference, however, the implementation of the law became a mechanism of control.

The case of Abraham vs Abraham (1863) puts these discourses on display – the ordering of difference and assimilation which is why its ethnographic material was an interesting access into discussions of race. The case is also essential as it challenges the colonial ordering of racial and religious differences. The interracial family in the book was recklessly intermingled in its customs and habits. By going to court, they accultured themselves into a type of compartmentalized identity and a knowledge system deployed by colonialism, he argued.

Dr. Mallampali concluded by saying, “this tells me that the politics of identity can operate within colonial frameworks, even in the assertion of non-whiteness and nationalism. However white they appear to be, we enter these spaces that are created by the regime and we can still be playing out the dynamics of white supremacism.”

For more information, contact:
Habib University
Karachi, Pakistan
Tel: +92-21-34301051-55
Email: marketing@habib.edu.pk
Website: www.habib.edu.pk

Karachi, March 15, 2022 (PPI-OT):Zain Saeed, Program Director and Assistant Professor Communication and Design has won the Getz Pharma Award for his debut book ‘Little America’ at the recently concluded Karachi Literature Festival.

The book follows Sharif Barkati, obsessed with “American” ideas of love and freedom, and his investigation of the desire to create a public place where people are allowed to do whatever they want, free of the conservative gaze of Pakistani society. This, he envisions as Little America located on the Karachi coast. The novel questions the meaning of freedom and what can be sacrificed in its name.

‘Little America’ was launched in September 2021 at Habib University’s campus and was met with praise. Speaking about winning the award at Karachi Literature Festival, Saeed said, “It was a massive surprise, I’m still a little unsure of how to react. The literary community in Karachi has been really kind to me, so I’m just trying to enjoy the moment.”

Elaborating on his next steps, he mentioned that he has been invited to discuss the book at the Lahore Literary Festival. He is currently working on his second book which is set to be published in a month’s time.

Saeed, who teaches a number of creative writing and literature courses at Habib University, earned his MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. His work has appeared in several publications including Glimmer Train for which he wrote ‘The Earth is a Stingy Bastard’ in 2017. He has also written for the Hindu Blink and “The Man at the Window,” and “All is Accommodation,” for the Freiburg Review.

Saeed’s research interests involve race, writing pedagogy, language change, as well as literature in English. He is also interested in the evolution of language in fiction. Fiction writing in English has a small pool of authors in Pakistan. The literary sphere suffers from a lack of good literature and writers. The question that comes up repeatedly is how to encourage Pakistani writers to keep our literary culture alive.

Saeed advised, “I would encourage them [writers]to try to tell stories about themselves, about who they are, their own experiences, about what it means to live in Pakistan for them. There are too many stories out there about the West and how it sees people in our part of the world, even from writers of Pakistani heritage, and we need to change that.”

For more information, contact:
Habib University
Karachi, Pakistan
Tel: +92-21-34301051-55
Email: marketing@habib.edu.pk
Website: www.habib.edu.pk