Panelists: Dr. Sarah Waheed and Dr. Ali Raza
Where: Live on LUMS Facebook

Saida Waheed Gender Initiative (SWGI) in collaboration with the LUMS History Department held this online session. Dr. Sarah Waheed discussed her work as Dr. Ali Raza moderated the session. They discussed how censorship, Urdu literature, Islam, and progressive secular nationalisms in colonial India and Pakistan have a complex, intertwined history. Dr. Waheed offered a timely examination of the role of progressive Muslim intellectuals in the Pakistan movement. Rather than seeing 'religion' and 'the secular' as distinct and oppositional phenomena, her book demonstrates how these concepts themselves were historically produced in South Asia and were deeply interconnected in the cultural politics of the left. While discussing detailed analysis of trials for blasphemy, obscenity, and sedition, and feminist writers, Dr. Waheed argued that Muslim intellectuals engaged with socialism and communism through their distinctive ethical and cultural past. In doing so, she provided a fresh perspective on the creation of Pakistan and South Asian modernity.