For Arabic women I see only one single way to unblock everything: talk, talk without stopping, about yesterday and today, talk among ourselves, in all the women’s quarters, the traditional ones as well as those in the housing projects, talk among ourselves and look. Look outside, look outside the walls and the prisons!
In an essay in this issue, Amal Zaman quotes from Algerian feminist Assia Djebar’s Women of Algiers to underscore how feminist resistance looks beyond the limits of what women are told is possible. The current issue of Narivaad echoes this desire: to catalyze conversation among socialist-feminists across Pakistan, and to “look outside”, towards a liberated future. We inhabit a present structured by the deepening hold of capital, empire and patriarchy. As we write this, the Pakistani state’s crackdown on the Baloch movement intensifies, a movement as old as Pakistan, that in recent years has seen women emerge as its revolutionary vanguard. Arrests, police brutality, censorship, silencing, and abductions have become routine from Quetta to Karachi. As the Baloch struggle for sovereignty over their lands, in Sindh, an anti-canal movement fighting the ecological devastation heralded by the so-called Green Pakistan Initiative is gathering widespread support among the dispossessed inhabitants of the region. In the war-ravaged north, Kurram remains under siege as disputes over land interlock with proxy geopolitical conflict to create a never-ending cycle of Shia-Sunni violence, and every day, more Afghans are deported across the border in a wearying repetition of “The Great Game” of empire. Djebar’s instructions to talk among ourselves, and “look outside” seem all the more integral to socialist feminist analysis in these exceptionally hard times.
As the Pakistani state redoubles its efforts to enforce a territorial and political unity rooted in capitalist developmentalism, militarism and right-wing patriarchal religious ideology, we defy their dictates and assert our own vision for revolutionary unity. This vision is rooted in “saanjhi jiddo jehad aur saanjhi azaadi” – in collective struggle, and collective liberation. The Women Democratic Front Manifesto argues that without “the mutual solidarity of organized political forces with a critical consciousness of all the oppressed… our freedom is not possible: we all will be free together, or none will be free!” Guided by this spirit, and material conditions that demand a coalitional politics binding progressive forces across the region, this issue brings together feminist voices from movements situated in diverse sites of conflict: from the urban to the rural, from working class neighbourhoods to internal colonial zones.
What do “collective struggle” and “collective liberation” mean for socialist-feminists organizing in Pakistan today? We recognize that “collective struggle” is not a romantic ideal, but rather, an ongoing practice that produces rather than presupposes the unity of the collective. Collective struggle demands a thoughtful and dynamic politics of solidarity from us, which understands that the uneven development of capitalism in turn produces distinct articulations of anti-capitalism.
Our 2025 issue of Narivaad brings together nine pieces that highlight how women, khwaja sira, and gender non-conforming people resist the patriarchal expectations imposed upon them within the home, as well as the intertwined forces of capitalism and imperialism that shape their everyday lives. These essays tackle a range of issues within contemporary feminist thought, including unpacking questions of identity, building both mainstream support and alternative communities, expanding beyond from liberal feminist frameworks, and understanding ‘peripheral’ feminist movements from the periphery. More importantly, each piece indicates that the problem of patriarchy cannot be isolated from capitalism and imperialism. Thus, the fifth issue of Narivaad points towards the urgent need for an expansive understanding of feminism in Pakistan, one that looks beyond ideas of individual rights and liberties in order to reach towards a feminism that critiques the connected patriarchies of home, state, and capital and insists on building a progressive future for all. Through the curation of this issue, we seek to define a new set of parameters for socialist feminism in Pakistan.
This issue seeks to bring a multiplicity of feminist movements into conversation with one another. We looked for pieces that contained a clear articulation of feminist resistance, theorizations of patriarchy beyond their immediate contexts, and strategies to build progressive futures. Our intent behind bringing these movements together was not just to acknowledge and celebrate the various socialist feminist efforts in Pakistan today, but to further the crucial work of coalition building. In light of political, economic and social repression in modern day Pakistan, forming sincere alliances across various movements is vital. Women and gender nonconforming folks, particularly those who are working-class or represent oppressed nations and religions, have historically borne the brunt of oppressive state policies. Pakistan’s imperialized economy relies crucially on their labour, both as underpaid informal labour and unpaid caregivers. Hence, feminist resistance on all fronts must foreground our understanding of how to build progressive futures.
Dur Bibi asserts that a progressive future in Balochistan cannot be built without Baloch women, highlighting the various strategies that Baloch women have taken over the years in order to demand accountability from the state regarding extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of Baloch people. Since 2013-14, with the event of the first Baloch Long March, as well as the death of Baloch student activist-in-exile Karima Baloch, there has been a shift within the character of the Baloch movement with women taking over the movement’s frontline, and as a result, being subject to political violence. Whether it is Dr. Mahrang, Sammi Deen, or Bebow Baloch, the presence of Baloch women at the forefront of the movement poses a veritable threat to the establishment, and this is evidenced by the repression they face in the form of abduction, imprisonment or denial of their human rights while in state custody. Relatedly, Tayabba Jiwani’s poem “Baat Kia” (So What) weaves a narrative that echoes the resonating dissonance between the “periphery” and the extractive “centre.” The sarcastic refrain, “so what if,” spans both the historical as well as recurring asymmetries between the colony and the metropole, so to say, and ultimately Jiwani weaves double entendres that expose the gap of a hegemonic narrative and the material conditions of the ongoing injustice in Balochistan.
In “Without Stopping”, Amal Zaman takes us on a search for “narratives of feminist resistance” that aim to expand the parameters of English-oriented and Eurocentric literary canons by introducing our readers to feminist authors whose critiques of capitalism originate in the material conditions of slavery, colonialism, and racialized labour. Amal Zaman offers new openings for socialist-feminist political education through a focus on literature in translation that re-asserts Afro-Asian and tricontinental connections. Amal argues that in order for literature to be considered socialist feminist, it must contend with patriarchy and imperialism as two halves of the same whole, and traces the erasure of feminist perspectives articulated in regional languages and cultures within the dominant hegemony of elite, English and Urdu-centered education in Pakistan. She discusses feminist novels by Algeria revolutionary Assia Djebar and Guadeloupian author Maryse Conde, books that narrate gendered life under empire and enslavement. The piece concludes with a list of recommendations that would make an excellent syllabus for a study circle on feminist literatures from the global south.
The building of collectives is another articulation of feminist resistance that threads itself through the issue, whether in the case of strengthening solidarities between women across class, as demonstrated by Alia Haider, or Baloch women breaking out of the isolation of the home in order to become involved in political struggle. In its documenting of the repression of students and workers in the face of Zia’s military dictatorship and the country’s capitalist overlords, Fahmida Riaz’s Awaz positions feminist resistance as a bulwark against political erasure. Aurat March Lahore too argues for a broadening of our feminist imaginations in service of resistance. In a collaboratively-written piece, Aurat March Lahore asks how to measure the success of a movement without employing capitalist frameworks of success. The piece questions whether visibility is a marker of impact, posits failure as a necessary part of movement building, and emphasizes the importance of solidarity work within a collective. Aurat March Lahore concludes that building feminist futures must begin with strengthening our feminist collectives.
Documenting struggles both local and abroad, Riaz’s editorials for Awaz, a 1980s anti-dictatorship magazine published in Karachi, set a historical precedent for socialist feminist work in Pakistan by underscoring the need to resist capitalism, patriarchy and imperialism together. Echoing Awaz, our issue centers feminist efforts that resist capitalism and imperialism within their struggle against patriarchy. Alia Haider’s lessons from organizing with working class women in the streets of Chungi Amar Sadhu for clean water, healthcare, and fair wages serves to deepen our conversations on the intersection between socialist feminism and the working-class revolution in today’s Pakistan. Despite electoral defeat, she is optimistic about the future as the political process of mobilising for the election has radicalised many HKP sympathisers and expanded possibilities for the party’s organizing among labour and students.
Situated in a socialist feminist analysis of the state, Piryanka Hafeez Dero’s research essay lays out various instances of the state’s exploitative relationship with the land and its people behind the mask of development. Reflecting upon her personal experiences of socialist feminist struggle from the Canal Protests at Babarloi Bypass in Khairpur, Sindh, Dero’s piece discusses how projects such as Green Pakistan Initiative in Punjab exploit vulnerable groups. These neocolonial developmental projects lie at the intersection of state capitalism and patriarchy, alienating local populations, economically exploiting them, and taking away their autonomy over their land. Women play a central role in resisting these injustices, by insisting on the preservation of an anticapitalist relationship with land and water. Their resistance marks a different politic, one that connects deeply with the land.
Socialist feminist movements insist on a praxis that allows for women and gender nonconforming people to participate politically in the present moment as a way to inform the shaping of a progressive future. Many of the pieces in this issue contend with the resources socialist feminists require in order to build progressive futures, namely the strengthening of internal collectives as well as access to progressive literature. Zara’s writing on non-normative gender experiences contributes to ongoing political education efforts in progressive movements by expanding our analysis of gender identities beyond the categories of men, women, and khwajasiras. Recently, there has been a concerted attack on the historical Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act passed in 2018, which grants legal rights to transgender persons in Pakistan. Much of the vitriol towards the act and to “transgender” persons has pitted the category of “transgender” (as unacceptable) against that of “khwajasira” and “intersex” (as somewhat acceptable). Some conservatives thus concede minimal recognition to “intersex” and the historically and socially recognized groups of khwajasira but challenge the concept of “transgender”, seeing it as part of the broader umbrella of Westernised LGBTQ identities meant to disrupt the moral fabric of Pakistan. These discourses rest on a fundamentally misinformed understanding of gender identity, which understands gender categories are stable, bounded, and easily identifiable, and hence, regulated. Zara’s piece, in contrast, weaves together personal narrative with broader medical and political debates to demonstrate just how thorny the issue of gender identification, experience, and categorisation is.
Through the spotlighting of these various feminist movements, Narivaad underscores the necessity of a socialist feminist analysis in the context of Pakistan. As we read together feminist experiences from Balochistan, Sindh, and Punjab in this issue, it is imperative to remind ourselves of the material and political conditions particular to each context. At this juncture, socialist-feminist solidarity is not merely a representational task. We must forge and maintain political friendships, actively integrate political education grounded in local contexts, and work to support and learn from, rather than try to lead, movements emanating at the periphery of the post-colonial state, patriarchy, and class. Our collective liberation lies on this path, made rich with the particularity of each struggle, a dialectical convergence against the intersecting oppressions of imperialism, internal colonialism, ecological extractivism, and labour exploitation. To this end, a political magazine provides a dedicated space and time to reflect on collective liberation, and is a necessary tool for advancing political analysis. It is our hope that Narivaad will serve to build a vocabulary and theoretical understanding of socialist feminism in Pakistan over time.
