In Pakistan, the erasure of history
The vandalism of Ranjit Singh’s statue reflects Pakistan’s inability to confront the truth about its pluralistic past
On August 17, a young man vandalised a statue of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in Lahore, the capital city of the Empire ruled by the 19th century Sikh emperor. The statue was gifted to Pakistan in 2019 by the London-based SK Foundation, headed by Sikh historian Bobby Singh Bansal, to promote Sikh heritage and tourism in Pakistan. Since its unveiling in June 2019, however, the statue has been vandalised thrice.
Ranjit Singh has a complicated legacy. For certain Punjabi nationalists, he is a hero who built a fledgling empire and held back British advances in India. For those in the Seraiki region and the Pashtun belt, he was a tyrant who imposed violence upon ordinary people in his quest for territorial expansion. These themes have been fiercely debated among historians of Punjab and have invoked much passion in the field.
Yet, it would be naïve to suggest that the recent attacks on Ranjit Singh’s statue were induced by the alleged injustices during his rule. If that was the case, one could also attack symbols glorifying Muslim rulers who were accused of committing atrocities, on many occasions against Muslim rebels themselves. In fact, for many of those supporting this vandalism on social media, it was enough that the maharaja was a Sikh ruler who clashed with Muslim armies.
A similar backlash is witnessed each year on March 23, when activists gather at the site in Lahore where Bhagat Singh was hanged to demand that the government honour the martyr’s memory. Their requests have always been ignored and invariably lead to counter-mobilisation by religious zealots against recognising a Sikh freedom fighter. Bigotry has never had much space for historical nuances.
Such incidents point to a larger crisis of identity in Pakistan. In a desperate attempt to find an ontological origin for the nation-State, the history taught in Pakistani schools almost exclusively focuses on Muslims in the subcontinent. Non-Muslims are either erased from the books or emerge periodically as villains conniving against Muslim rule. This erasure of history in favour of ideology creates an awkwardly woven narrative as a raison d’etre for Pakistan, a narrative that is premised upon repressing key facts from our shared past.
Yet, we know repression does not eliminate facts but merely transforms our engagement with the past into a more traumatic experience. As repressed histories make themselves visible, they induce panic since they disrupt the fictions we are forced to tell ourselves. Ranjit Singh’s statue is one such reminder of a history we have long buried into the deep recesses of our unconscious.
The appearance of such reminders of a forgotten past result is an endless purge of elements that undermine the “pure” identity we aim to establish, a process that only engenders more paranoia about ourselves.
In recent years, there have even been debates on whether festivals such as Basant and Holi or more syncretic religious practices at shrines constitute “our” culture or need to be discarded. The constant construct of an “other” against which we measure our identity has only fuelled a politics of fear and suspicion since one can never formulate a fixed measure for one’s identity.
This repression is not only directed at religious minorities but also aims to undermine the linguistic/ethnic diversity of Pakistan. Different ethnic groups have historically imagined conceptions of cultural and spatial belonging that do not conform to the insular narrative of the nation-State. Over the past 74 years, the State has viewed these disparate histories as a challenge to its homogenising narrative of a Muslim past, suppressing challenges by ethno-nationalist groups. The violence exercised against marginalised nationalities stems from this desire to discipline their memories in order to sustain a myopic and punishing form of nationalism.
There are, however, some positive signs. Punjab’s provincial government immediately ordered the arrest of the individual responsible for vandalising the statue in Lahore. A few weeks ago, Prime Minister Imran Khan forcefully intervened to condemn an attack on a mandir at Rahim Yar Khan, and ordered its reconstruction. Moreover, many young people voice their disgust on such incidents that undermine the rights of minorities in Pakistan.
The struggle over identity is at the heart of Pakistani society today. Either we will accept the pluralism of our past to develop a coherent narrative that acknowledges the diverse cultures that shape our present. Or we will repress history (and historians) that diverges from the official narrative in favour of an uncomplicated and insular version of history. The manner in which we are able to grapple with our past will determine how we manage to imagine a future for our country and for our region.