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Charlie Barker
Upper Sixth
East Town

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The Firth Society : Professor Iftikhar Malik

On Tuesday October 14th the Firth Society had the privilege to hear an address at Clifton from the acclaimed historian, Professor Iftikhar Malik, who lectured on ‘South Asia and Britain: Partners or Strangers?’. Professor Malik is a tutor and lecturer of History at Bath Spa University, specialising in South Asian history and the politics of the contemporary Muslim world, and has connections with universities in Oxford, Brussels, Karachi and Islamabad. He has published numerous historical works, such as ‘A History of Pakistan’ and ‘Crescent between Cross and Star: Muslims after 9/11’.

In his lecture to the Firth Society, Professor Malik made several surprising links between South Asia and the rest of the world, demonstrating in particular that Europe has closer ties to India than one would first have thought. It is easy to imagine that multiculturalism is a modern phenomenon, but in reality certain parts of the world, South Asia included, have been a melting pot of racial diversity since civilisation’s inception. These are lessons for our own time: if India can manage varied ethnicity within its population with the rudimentary administrative forces of the past, then why can’t we achieve equal success in this day and age? Perhaps the Browns of this world should recheck their History books.

The Professor started his talk with photos of his own travels in India, which highlighted the truly awe-inspiring geographical range the country can be proud of. From barren steppes in the north, through snow-capped Himalayas in the north-east, down to rolling central rainforest, rolling farmland and mangrove swamps on the coast. When presented with this natural diversity, it becomes easy to see how such a place can support so many different cultures over the years.

India, along with China and Mesopotamia, was one of the first true cradles of ‘civilisation’, as we would describe it, with coordinated inhabitations resembling a ‘state’ being traced back to as early as 3300BC. These original ‘Indians’ were in fact conquered by tribes coming from the north, and it was these newcomers who played a major role in the key religions of Buddhism and Jainism. But it was the links to far-flung places that truly fascinated me: such as how the conquests of Alexander the Great had an effect on India culture. Pottery and jewellery with strong Hellenistic influences was manufactured in South Asia for many years – a remarkable feat in a time when economic isolation was the political norm.

The second aspect of Professor Malik’s lecture that I found especially interesting concerned the Pashtun people of Southern Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan. The Pashtun are a loose coalition of tribesman whose history can be traced back thousands of years. When Alexander the Great invaded Ancient India in 334BC, he recorded in his diaries that the Pashtun were the most brutal and effective adversaries he had ever encountered. They blunted Alexander’s conquest to such an extent that he never went further east than the Indus. ‘The Secret History of the Mongols’ states that even Genghis Khan’s ravaging hordes met fierce resistance in the Pashtun region. But what really surprised me is that today, 2342 years after Alexander, the British Army is currently fighting the Pashtun in Helmand province. The Taleban’s main support base is in the Pashtun foothills, which perhaps explains why their military defeat has been declared an “impossibility” by the head of the British Army. To me, this connection demonstrates how history is relevant at all times to all places, and how our own history fundamentally shapes who we are and what we do.

18 November 2008

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