Blog 6: A Mughal Historian in Mexico City

There were several fascinating aspects about Dr Taymiya’s talk. These range from her explanation of complex parallels between Mexican colonization and the colonization that is our point of reference (i.e., the subcontinent), her thoughts and lived experience of language as a tool of power and her description of the human body and material possessions as historical archives-all made comprehensible, relatable and thought provoking by her unique and intimate style of writing.

What I loved about this talk was how she made me re-think ways in which you can approach the discipline of history. She made me understand our deep historical embeddedness to our cultural and historical contexts that shapes the way we see the world, and seeps into our historical assumptions and writings. For instance, when she went to Mexico, as a Pakistani still smarting over the days of the British rule she expected the Mexicans to relate to her frustration but they did not. The affinity she assumed would exist simply existed on different grounds; of her being physically similar to them, not experientially. The Mexicans had time to make their peace with their past whereas we feel we have not. This reminds me of recent discussions in our class of how our way of seeing the world is influenced by the dominant ways of seeing the world, ways that are not value neutral. Dr.Taymiya’s experiences are eye-opening, for her and for those who read/hear them as it forces one to acknowledge their embeddedness in a particular discourse or historical context and hence a way of being. There exists confusion between framing your ways of knowing depending on who you are and where you come from, or by trying to minimize the effects of your experiences on the subject of your inquiry. Dr. Taymiya showed me that the former way is not an ahistorical approach (even though it might be deemed “affective” by her white male counterparts), but is in fact fruitful and inspiring when done correctly.

When it comes to the content of her paper, I loved her comparative approach which wasn’t as simple as ‘Pakistan vs Mexico,’ ‘Urdu vs Spanish’, but her observations relied heavily on her own experiences as a Pakistani woman living in the US for 12 years with a strong connection to Karachi, Urdu, spiced fruits and bougainvilleas. It also drew from her experience as someone who, though very comfortable in English, is asked where she is from in the US regularly. However, in Mexico, she does not ‘look’ different as she does in the US and is instead asked the same question because of her accented Spanish. What I am trying to get at here is that Dr.Taymiya proves to us the usefulness of the body as an archive. Her deeply personal experiences have allowed her to make meaningful historical interventions and is writing from a place of embeddedness instead of autonomy. For example, her observations about language instantly resonated with me when she said that we are all guilty of using English as a power move to put someone in their place. This reminds me of the writings of Albert Memmi in particular who talks at length about how the bilingualism of the colonized people is a means of participation in two physical and cultural realms, yet a state of not fully belonging to either. We use the language of our colonizer, to address the colonizer, when our colonizer deems it proficient enough. This aspect of Dr.Taymiyas talk struck me personally with a pang of guilt as someone who has always thought of her English proficiency as something empowering, but also brought me back to the themes of our class of the duality bilingualism creates in a person itself. Also, since several languages were discussed: Persian, Urdu, Turkish, English, Spanish and Arabic, I learnt that some languages are heavily gendered while others are less so. This is interesting from the perspective of gender and sexuality as when such rigid linguistic boundaries exist; it begs the question of how someone who does not fit into the normative gender binaries makes their peace with a language that seems to have no space for them.

Lastly, I am always interested in themes of nostalgia and longing in studying history which were brought up by Dr. Taymiya. I find it amusing how most of us do give into these feelings be it by planting a bougainvillea outside our house in San Francisco like Dr Taymiya or hearing about ancestral homes across the border from grandparents. By making the listener/reader of her work feel like he/she is a historical actor as well by participating in such nostalgia, she makes us feel an affinity to historical actors. For instance, the emperor Babur is the first person who comes to my mind as his memoirs are rife with a great sense of longing and nostalgia for his principality of Ferghana and I realize that theme of exile is relatable to so many of us, albeit in different ways.

In conclusion, this talk was a wonderful experience for introducing me to a new way of how history can be ‘done’, so to speak. Her experiences as a Pakistani woman in the US spoke to the same themes of nostalgia and identity she studied. Her multi faceted knowledge of the past and her ability to connect it so personally to the present makes her work all the more interesting, as does her style of writing and wonderful delivery.