Poetry as Resistance: Islam and Ethnicity in Postcolonial Pakistan

Modern South Asia Seminar by Dr Nukhbah Taj Langah. She will talk about language and poetry as a form of resistance in Postcolonial Pakistan. The talk will be followed by drinks.

Her talk will be firstly on discussing the historical background, context and maturity of the Siraiki political movement and ethno-linguistic awareness. She introduces Siraiki terminology as a symbol of the distinctiveness of Siraiki culture and also as a theoretical basis for analysing poetry. Her discussion foregrounds the significance of associating the political and the literary. Consciously or unconsciously poets can also be regarded as political activists and that their poetic expressions leave a deeper impact on the readers as compared to any other literary form. One of the major objectives of her talk is to indicate that their experience of belonging to a postcolonial nation has largely impacted and complicated their literary expression, their attachment to their mother culture, and, most significantly, their efforts towards grappling with the poetic forms for expressing resistance against postcolonial rulers. It is this frustration with the ultimate inability to express themselves sufficiently which has also made them create a bridge between poetry, art and folk tradition, the best example of which is their association with mysticism.

Dr Nukhbah Taj Langah has received her Honors, Masters, and PhD degrees from University of Buckingham, University of Warwick, and University of Leeds (UK) respectively. She returned to Pakistan in 2008 and joined the English department of Forman Christian College University, Lahore, as Assistant Professor. Her latest book is titled Poetry as Resistance: Islam and Ethnicity in Postcolonial Pakistan (Routledge, 2011). She has been serving as Head of the Department at FCCU since 2013 and is currently on sabbatical leave till July 2016.