Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this paper, I will attempt to explain the decision by General Pervaiz Musharraf to start peace negotiations with India in January 2004. This understanding was reached between the leaders of India and Pakistan at the sidelines of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in Islamabad after a period of extreme tension between the two sides. During the last decade, relations between the two sides have been very unstable in the wake of nuclearization and limited war in Kargil.General Musharraf is widely credited to be responsible for the Kargil adventure. India blamed Musharraf government for attack on its parliament on December 13, 2001 and moved its forces to forward positions on the border. This stand-off was eventually defused with the initiation of official dialogue between the two governments in 2004. Thus, I seek to analyze the decision by Gen. Musharraf to begin peace negotiations with India. Beyond this, I want to explain the larger process of foreign policy decision-making in Pakistan.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this paper, we ask two questions: 1) Why are some religious parties more successful than others in coming to power? 2) Are moderate religious parties more successful than extremist parties?

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: January 2004 marked a change in India-Pakistan relations as the two nuclear rivals pledged their commitment towards peaceful resolution of the conflict between them. Although the conflict is far from over, recent initiatives towards dialog are indicative of a willingness to work through long-standing, bitter animosities. Understanding how the India-Pakistan conflict has been sustained is critical at this juncture - the first step towards solving problems is to recognize how they emerged. Unfortunately, existing scholarship on this conflict remains limited in its reliance on traditional historical perspectives. For example, the claim that the India-Pakistan conflict is grounded in religious differences tells us nothing about how 'religion' has been deployed such that it is legitimized as the basis of hatred. A genealogical approach, on the other hand, is capable of dealing with the obscurities that accompany traditional historical explanations for it is concerned precisely with the conditions of emergence in which socio-political arrangements are socially (re)constructed. Therefore, this paper argues in favor of a shift from traditional history to genealogical accounts that move beyond static explanations emphasizing transcendental origins to dynamic accounts of the processes in which the India-Pakistan conflict emerges. Specifically, I analyze Main Hoon Na (I'll Be There), a Bollywood film about the India-Pakistan conflict, as a site from which to explore the complex negotiations in which boundaries between 'self' and 'other' have been imagined in the India-Pakistan context such that conflictual relations are legitimized. To investigate these processes is to produce reflective scholarship that highlights the importance of daily practices in which social realities are embedded both morally and practically.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Analyzing, from a relational perspective, how the India-Pakistan conflict has been sustained, this paper veers from traditional conceptions of ethics as part of the analytical framework and suggests that we relocate ethical concerns in international relations research to the realm of empirics. Specifically, I focus on partition literature to present a genealogy of bounding practices that highlights the role the imagination of difference in 1947 (when India and Pakistan came into existence as independent nations) plays in legitimizing conflictual relations between India and Pakistan today. A genealogical tracing of these legitimations highlights how past deployments become the moral-practical ingredients for present actions. Simply, how a social phenomenon like the India-Pakistan conflict is made meaning-full depends on the specific ways in which people make sense of how it has been imagined in the past; these narrations of previous exercises in meaning-making form the ethical guidelines that influence the character of social actions in which our realities are socially (re)constructed. Shifting our consideration of ethics in this manner provides us with three distinct advantages over existing scholarship. First, it allows us to understand how the conflict between these two nuclear rivals is embedded both morally and practically in everyday life. Second, by shifting ethical concerns from the realm of how things should be to understanding how ethics shape social reality, reification is avoided and agency is preserved. Finally, the Weberian distinction between scholarship and politics can be preserved by recasting ethics as part of the empirical component of ones? research instead of its overarching goal.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In the following paper, I will examine the current debate in Pakistan over the validity of the Hudood Ordinances, especially the ‘Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance.’ By outlining this debate and tracing the history and methods of implementation of the Zina Ordinance in Pakistan, I will demonstrate how it has been used to subjugate women in Pakistan and why it is necessary to approach the existing criminal laws with a new perspective. Finally, I will attempt to determine what implications a debate of this nature holds for the future of the status of women in Pakistan.