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ABSTRACT
This paper offers an introduction to law, governance and culture in Gilgit-Baltistan. The first section provides a historical survey of the most significant events that make of Gilgit-Baltistan a disputed territory with uncertain constitutional status in Pakistan. The second section delves into the case law that has sanctioned the constitutional status and the rights of the people of Gilgit-Baltistan in connection with the concepts of liminality and marginality. The third section mentions two current mega-projects, the Bhasha Dam and the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), in order to highlight the economic and political stakes that Gilgit-Baltistan represents at the national and international level. The fourth section surveys religious diversity and sectarianism as components that consistently arise in recent socio-political analyses of Gilgit-Baltistan as factors underlying latent unrest and sudden conflicts. The paper concludes with a proposal to de-colonise the anthropology of Gilgit-Baltistan through a process of cultural expertise that includes perspectives and knowledge generated by scholars that are native of or have spent long periods in Gilgit-Baltistan without necessarily belonging to the elitist networks of first class universities around the globe.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Holden, Cultural Expertise and Litigation; and Holden, “Cultural Expertise and Socio-Legal.”
2. Holden, Legal Pluralism and Governance.
3. Holden and Chaudhary, “Daughters’ Inheritance, Legal Pluralism.”
4. Sökefeld, “Jammu and Kashmir.”
5. Quayyum, “Producing Liminal Spaces.”
6. Ibid., 16.
7. Al-Jehad Trust v. Federation of Pakistan 1999 SCMR 1379.
8. see among others http://tribune.com.pk/story/1023523/chinese-pressure-seespakistan-mull-constitutional-status-of-gilgit-baltistan/ and http://tns.thenews.com.pk/gilgit-baltistan-province/#.V4tcxldC7iA and http://unpo.org/article/18856.
9. Civil Aviation Authority v. Supreme Appellate Court Gilgit-Baltistan (Constitution Petition No. 50/218).
10. Haines, “Remapping Pakistan’s Liminal Geo-Body”; and Haines, Nation, territory, and globalization, 45.
11. Hong, Liminality and Resistance; and Kreutzmann, “Boundaries and space.”
12. Cook and Butz, “Mobility Justice.”
13. Kreutzmann, “Boundaries and Space.”
14. Gennep, Caffee, and Vizedomand, The Rites of Passage; Turner, The Forest of Symbols; and Turner, The Ritual Process.
15. Skakolczai, “Living permanent Liminality,” 34.
16. Abu-Lughod, “Writing against Culture.”
17. See note 4 above.
18. Leitner, Results of a Tour in Dardistan.
19. Racine, “Ijaz (Hussain), Kashmir Dispute”; and Singh, “Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.”
20. Snedded, The Untold Story.
21. Singh, “Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.”
22. See note 13 above.
23. Ibid.
24. Karrar and Mostowlansky, “Assembling Marginality.”
25. Pollner, Mundane Reason, 149.
26. Kalicki and Goldwyn, Energy and Security; Peimani, The Challenge of Energy; and Sachs, Common Wealth.
27. Donahue and Johnston, Water, Culture, and Power; Fauré and Rubin, Culture and negotiation; Oliver-Smith, Development & Dispossession; Smith, A History of Dams; Solomon, Water: The Epic Struggle; and Strang, The Meaning of Water.
28. Albert, Bernecker, and Rudolff, Understanding heritage; Benton, Understanding Heritage and Memory; Halbertsma, van Stipriaan, and Ulzen, The Heritage Theatre; Harrison, Understanding the politics of heritage; Stone, Cultural heritage, Ethics and the Military; Langfield, Logan, and Nic Craith, Cultural Diversity, Heritage and Human Rights; and C. Scarre and G. Scarre, The Ethics of Archaeology.
29. Brown et al., “Can Culture be Copyrighted?”; Brown, “Culture, Property, and Peoplehood”; Carman, Against cultural Property; and Renfrew, Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership.
30. Haines, Nation, Territory, and Globalization.
31. Cook and Butz, “Mobility Justice”; and Kreutzmann, “Boundaries and Space.”
32. Varley, “Targeted Doctors, Missing Patients.”
33. Hunzai, Conflict Dynamics in Gilgit-Baltistan.
34. Sokefeld, “From Colonialism to Postcolonial”; and Ali, “Sectarian Imaginaries.”
35. Feyyaz, Sectarian Conflict in Gilgit-Baltistan.
36. See note 33 above.
37. See note 32 above.
38. Sillitoe, Indigenous Studies and engaged Anthropology.
39. Ibid., 28.
40. Nordstrom and Robben, Fieldwork under Fire.
41. Grieser, “When the Power Relationship.”
42. Sokefeld and Strasser, “Introduction: Under Suspicious Eyes.”
43. Special thanks go to the Karakoram International University that allowed initial meetings and exchange of views during my deanship. Special thanks go to the Institute of Advanced Studies – Nantes for funding the international workshop on law and governance in Gilgit-Baltistan from which this special issue generates and inviting also scholars that could not provide conventional scholarly credentials because of poor exposure to international venues. Special thanks go to the blind reviewers who supported this endeavour. This special issue has developed around the concept of cultural expertise within the framework of EURO-EXPERT, the ERC funded project that Ilead at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies in Oxford, of which Iacknowledge the support.
44. See note 38 above.
45. Uddin, “Decolonising Ethnography.”