Sarah Ansari – författare

Investigates how women, religion and culture have interacted in the context of 19th and 20th century Iran, covering topics as seemingly diverse as the social and cultural history of Persian cuisine, the work and attitudes of 19th century Christian missionaries, the impact of growing female literacy, and the consequences of developments since 1979.

Investigates how women, religion and culture have interacted in the context of 19th and 20th century Iran, covering topics as seemingly diverse as the social and cultural history of Persian cuisine, the work and attitudes of 19th century Christian missionaries, the impact of growing female literacy, and the consequences of developments since 1979.

This book explores the shift from colonial rule to independence in India and Pakistan, with the aim of unravelling the explicit meaning and relevance of 'independence' for the new citizens of India and Pakistan during the two decades post 1947. While the study of postcolonial South Asia has blossomed in recent years, this volume addresses a number of imbalances in this dynamic and highly popular field. Firstly, the histories of India and Pakistan after 1947 have been conceived separately, with many scholars assuming that the two states developed along divergent paths after independence. Thus, the dominant historical paradigm has been to examine either India or Pakistan in relative isolation from one another. Viewing the two states in the same frame not only allows the contributors of this volume to explore common themes, but also facilitates an exploration of the powerful continuities between the pre- and post-independence periods.

The 1947 Partition had a major impact on issues of citizenship and rights in India and Pakistan in the decades that followed. Boundaries of Belonging shows how citizenship evolves at a time of political transition and what this meant for ordinary people, by directing attention away from South Asia's Partition 'hotspots' - Bengal and Punjab - to Partition's 'hinterlands' of Uttar Pradesh and Sindh. The analysis, based on rich archival research and fieldwork, brings out commonalities, differences, and the mutual co-construction of the 'citizen' in both places. It also reveals the way in which developments across the border, such as communal violence, could directly impact on minority rights in its neighbour. Questioning stereotypes of an increasingly 'authoritarian' Pakistan and 'democratic' India, Sarah Ansari and William Gould make a major contribution to recent scholarship that suggests the differences between India and Pakistan are overstated.