Current Institutional Affiliation
Doctoral Candidate, City University of New York (CUNY) / Graduate Center

Award Information

International Dissertation Research Fellowship 2013
Institutional Affiliation (at time of award):
Anthropology, City University of New York (CUNY) / Graduate Center
The Hijras, the 'Missing,' and Human Rights: Legal and Political Mobilization in the 'Lawyers' Movement for the Restoration of Judiciary' in Pakistan (2007-2009)

This project examines how the 'Lawyers' Movement for the Restoration of Judiciary' in Pakistan facilitated new possibilities for law and the juridical apparatus. How did the mobilization of lawyers make possible the use of law as an instrument and court as a site for correcting political, social and economic wrongs for the socially and politically marginalized? The language of (providing) justice, (fighting) corruption, and (establishing) rule of law emerged as the central mobilizing trope in the 'Lawyers' Movement'. However, after the movement consolidated, these tropes became central to the public discourse on law and criminality, and they now serve as prescriptive devices to call attention to and resolve most social, political and economic problems in Pakistan. As a result, socially and politically marginalized groups, such as the hijras (transgender performers), have petitioned the higher courts for protection of their human rights. Hijras were awarded voting rights by the Supreme Court in 2009. As the liberal, rights-oriented language emerged as the central mobilizing trope of the 'Lawyers' Movement', my research question is: how, and in what ways, did this particular way of framing social and political wrongs by lawyers involved in the Movement produce the desire for the socially and politically marginalized (the hijras and the claimants for the 'missing,' respectively) to demand civil and human rights from the courts? Along with examining the judicial archive of the hijra case and conducting interviews with hijras and their counsel, my research will consist of collecting oral-histories and conducting interviews with the lawyers who were active in the movement and direct-observation of a supreme court case to do with the human rights violation of the 'missing persons,'suspected members of various separatist and militant groups who are claimed to be in Pakistan's intelligence agencies' extra-judicial custody in their domestic 'war on terror.'

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