Representation of Pashtun identity in British colonial discourse

Abstract

Production, classification and fixation of knowledge about Pashtuns remained one of the basic strategy of the colonial writers for the building of great empires. The British writings, travelogues and ethnographies produced, categorized and reproduced the indigenous identities. This colonial mission was started George J.R. Foster between 1782 and 1784. His work differentiated Pashtuns and Indians and sketches his personal encounters with local people including the mullahs. However, Mountstuart Elphinstone started ethnographic study of Pashtuns in 1808 through the Khyber Pass that was published in 1815. That’s why the present study examines the systematic production of knowledge about the Pashtuns in British colonial discourse from 1815 to 1947. This study also focuses on indigenous scholarships and responses to colonial discourse. This study also examines theoretical dimension of Pashtun identity with post-colonial thoughts, subaltern approach and discourse analysis. This paper argues that colonial discourse produced the knowledge about Pashtun as tribal, martial, and ungovernable. These were not neutral claims but designed to facilitate imperial control over the indigenous population and their historiography. By studying both colonial discourses and indigenous responses, oral traditions and resistance movements, this study demonstrates that colonial knowledge about Pashtun identity is neither imposed thoroughly nor accepted passively. This identity is continuously negotiated and amended through the process of fragmented politicization. It concludes that the categorization of local population through knowledge have had enduring legacies of the British forces, but this was persistently contested and reinterpreted by postcolonial intellectuals.