Post-revisionism has come to question the cherry-picking of history and the ideological lack of nuance of both orthodox and revisionist historians
It is often said by some historians that Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, did not have a single, cohesive narrative explaining his idea of Pakistan. This is largely correct. But by citing Jinnah’s inaugural address to the country’s first Constituent Assembly in August 1947 — in which he envisioned Pakistan as an inclusive and pluralistic Muslim-majority State — the liberal intelligentsia insists that Jinnah saw his creation as a democratic and progressive entity. However, those who disagree with this often produce documented quotes in which he speaks about constructing an Islamic Republic. Historiography would define this claim as “orthodox history” and the previous one as “revisionist history.” The truth is he was a sharp politician who adjusted and readjusted his words according to the audience. So, in a Constituent Assembly that had a majority of “Muslim modernists” and also some prominent non-Muslims, Jinnah explained the new country as a pluralistic entity. On the other hand, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while addressing an audience of conservative Pakhtuns, he spoke about a country run by Islamic laws. Then, while talking to the Voice of America, he asserted that Pakistan was not to be a theocracy. Orthodox historians and revisionists have for long fought over his legacy by using his words. But the following is how a relatively new strand of historiography would explain the discourse between them: Both are correct.
This new strand is called post-revisionism. It first emerged in the 1970s in the US as an “objective” response to revisionist as well as orthodox historiographies, which dominated history till the 1950s. It is about history that is formulated by historians and intelligentsia to justify the creation and then existence of a nation-State. The works of Pakistani historian, the late IH Qureshi, are a case in point. His books emphasised the “historical justification” of the creation of Pakistan, by suggesting that the national impulse in the Muslims of South Asia had developed during the 500-year-old Muslim rule in India. He saw it as an evolutionary process that culminated with the creation of Pakistan in 1947. This thesis was adopted by the State and became the country’s orthodox history. But from the mid-1980s, Pakistan’s orthodox history began to be countered by some scholars. KK Aziz, Sibte Hassan and Ayesha Jalal launched a severe critique of the country’s orthodox history by deconstructing it and restoring “facts” which they believe had been distorted/suppressed because they contradicted the origin story of Pakistan.
The works of these historians endeavoured to validate the more liberal sides of Jinnah. They also demonstrated how he had been reshaped as a quasi-Islamic ideologue by orthodox historians. This was revisionist history taking to task orthodox history. In the last two decades, revisionist history in this context has picked up momentum. For example, in August 2015, the Sindh Government decided to include Jinnah’s August 1947 speech in the curriculum. The speech, which was largely suppressed by the State since 1977, also made its way into a 2019 book on Jinnah published by the Inter-Services Public Relations, the media wing of the Pakistan Army.
But there are historians who see some inherent problems in the revisionist school of thought. This gave birth to what came to be known as post-revisionism. It largely emerged from the works of American scholars such as JL Gaddis and Thomas Peterson. While studying the origins of the Cold War between the US and the erstwhile Soviet Union, Gaddis and Peterson claim that both orthodox as well as revisionist historians were heavily invested in defending their respective ideologies in discussions on the Cold War.
For example, while orthodox historians accuse the Soviet Union of starting the Cold War “to undermine US democracy and freedom”, revisionists blame the US for “betraying the Soviet Union after World War-II in a bid to sideline it in the post-war order.” Gaddis and Peterson find this discourse problematic. They lament that historic evidence was cherry-picked to defend their respective ideological dispositions. This made the orthodox and the revisionists miss out the many nuances which greatly contributed to the start of the Cold War. To Gaddis, these economic and political nuances made the Cold War inevitable and no one side could be blamed for starting it. Another problem that post-revisionists have with the revisionists is that, even though the latter want to demystify and deconstruct the ideological edifice of orthodox history, they do this by replacing it with their own set of ideological preferences. It thus becomes a clash between ideologies in which important historical nuances get ignored. Critics of revisionism have also demonstrated that since revisionism is more about critiquing than documenting history, it has given birth to “historical negationism” or “denialism”, which piggybanks on revisionist ideas to claim that horrific episodes of genocide, such as the Holocaust, never happened. Also, since revisionists, just as orthodox historians, are largely driven by political ideologies, there is always the danger that, in the event of their preferred account of history not being accepted, they may end up substantiating the history that they set out to counter. For example, some revisionists want Pakistani liberals to let go of Jinnah’s image as a progressive leader, and accept that the creation of Pakistan as a Muslim-majority country was a mistake. Thus, they inadvertently end up substantiating the image of Jinnah constructed by their orthodox opponents. This is when revisionism ends up eating its own tail.
(Courtesy: Dawn)