Umber Bin Ibad of Forman Christian College in Lahore, travelled from Pakistan to the University of Bath in the UK to undertake research on pilgrimage and diasporas as agents of cultural practice, and how they shape people’s memories of disputed territories.

The University of Bath’s Sports Training Village

“Look at this huge auditorium, it has all the sports facilities you can imagine. This swimming pool was used for the last Olympics, and that gallery we passed through showcases the medals the University has won.” It was mid September 2019, and day one of my secondment to the UK’s University of Bath. Dr Wali Aslam, a faculty member and colleague on the DisTerrMem project, was showing me around the campus to get me acquainted with, and inspired by, the environment where I was to stay for the next two months.

While this was my first such secondment, the project had already been underway for some months and I had ‘met’ and collaborated with colleagues in the UK, Poland and Armenia online, via a dedicated virtual working space. The research team had organized itself into four distinct ‘work packages’, each exploring the role and influence of different agencies in the management of memories of disputed territories.

I had opted to be part of the group focusing on cultural practitioners, and we were already collaborating on a literature review aimed at throwing light on what is already known and documented regarding the relationship of memories of disputed territory with cultural and artistic projects and practices. I chose pilgrimage as my particular area of focus, and set out to understand diasporas - the dispersion or spread of people from their original homeland - as agents of cultural practice.

The project’s first stakeholder workshop was due to be held in mid-October at the University of Warsaw, and I was to give a presentation. I decided to share some of the insights I had already chalked-out around heritage in my native Pakistan. Partially, the ideas came as an offshoot of my previously published work: Sufi Shrines and the Pakistani State - The End of Religious Pluralism.

I wanted to revisit this in the light of the excellent research article, On Agonistic Memory, by Anna Cento Bull and Hans Lauge Hansen, Anna being a University of Bath faculty member and a colleague on the DisTerrMem project.

The article stresses the importance of understanding antagonistic and cosmopolitan politics, and of uncovering the possibilities for a more agonistic approach to memories in Europe. To take these observations into a non-European context can all too easily lead to misrepresentations and inappropriate contextualization, so I felt it worthwhile to attempt such an exploration. In fact I surprised myself by discovering some exciting insights, and my presentation on Diaspora and the Heritage of Pakistan was well received.

The next major project event was scheduled for mid-November: an internal conference at which members of the four DisTerrMem work packages would share research-in-progress and provide critiques and feedback, in advance of completing and publishing the four literature reviews.

Kartarpur-Gurdwara-sahib - commemorating the burial site of Baba Nanak, the founding father of Sikhism, in Pakistan

In anticipation of this, I set about my research in earnest. Considering the Kartarpur corridor, a site for Sikh pilgrims on the border between India and Pakistan, I wanted to focus on the South Asian diaspora and their imagined belonging to this pilgrimage. I opted to spend my weekends in Birmingham as a guest in the house of Dr Virinder Kalra. He and his wife, Dr Tej Purewal, are professors of sociology at the University of Warwick and the University of London’s School of Orential and African Studies, respectively. Both are the authors of numerous books and articles related to borders, music, shrines and gender, mainly focused on the Punjab of both India and Pakistan. Their home is an enactment of a pre-partitioned Punjab in Birmingham, a reimagined space that defies borders.

During my visits to Birmingham I was able to meet members of the Kashmiri, Sikh and Pakistani diaspora who had been living in the UK for many decades. I participated in an event organized by the Indian Workers Association to celebrate Bhagat Singh, the twentieth-century Punjabi freedom fighter. I listened to discussions of JKLF (Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front) and Kashmiris from the valley (Indian occupied Kashmir). I had some excellent conversations with Mr Shams of JK TV that broadened my understanding of Kashmir and the war-ridden border dispute between India and Pakistan. I also enjoyed evenings of music featuring singers from Pakistan who came to perform for the trans-border audience of the South Asian diaspora in the UK.

Birmingham was noticeably different from Bath. The population of Bath is mostly white. As I walked around the city I began counting the numbers of South Asian people and confess I couldn’t score a lot. In contrast, it was hard to count many white people in some areas of Birmingham. The South Asian diaspora lived there in significant numbers and enriched British diversity. There was a strong sense of many and varied diasporic cultural practices reflecting their respective backgrounds. Often, diasporic communities show little reluctance in participating in each other’s cultural activities. Here, each group had its religious centres and enjoyed the freedom to go to their temples, mosques and gurdwaras. For me, having grown up amid the antagonistic feelings that shape and define both sides of the border between Pakistan and India, I was surprised to see South Asian groups defying the boundaries of their state of their origin by living together in their adopted state in relative harmony.

Two interesting – and perhaps slightly ironic - observations about borders, while working on a project about borders… I was unable to get a visa to travel to Warsaw so had to send a recorded presentation for the stakeholder workshop. So, borders still make their presence felt. In contrast to this, my work on the project so far has already allowed me to meet and work with colleagues from different parts of the world: Poland, Armenia and the UK, and from different historical and cultural backgrounds. I have seldom found myself in such a free environment in which everyone is doing their utmost to dissolve cultural, social, geographical and political differences and borders. It is an honour to be part of such an endeavor.

View Dr Umber bin Ibad’s Warsaw presentation: Diaspora and the Heritage of Pakistan

Read the four DisTerrMem literature reviews, on the roles of civil society groups, cultural practitioners and national and regional organisations, in managing memories of disputed territories: www.disterrmem.eu/publications

Dr Umber Bin Ibad is Associate Professor in the Department of History of Forman Christian College, Lahore, Pakistan. His research interests include South Asian history, social and cultural history, colonial and post-colonial history and theoretical trends in history. Discover more at www.disterrmem.eu/forman-christian-college

Exploring pilgrimage and diasporas as agents of cultural practice