1

Encountering the State

Women’s Movements in Pakistan
Rubina Saigol

Introduction

In any society, at a given historical moment, violence exists in multiple forms and
manifests itself at various levels. Violence can be physical, emotional, psychological,
economic or ideological, and can occur all the way from the level of the individual, the
family and person to social, economic and political institutions and structures. The
resistance to violence similarly takes various forms and may be manifested in myriad ways
depending upon the specific situation. It can take the form of an individual contesting
and resisting violence in a personal situation that has social determinants, or it may take
collective forms where a whole community, class, ethnic, gender or religious group resists
the violence emanating from the state and socio-economic structures. Violence becomes
a way of reinforcing and reconstructing the dominant class and state structures in a
society but it can also become the method by which the prevalent structures of power
are contested, resisted and overthrown.

Violence is the assertion of power by the dominant classes and groups in society as well
as the tool of resistance by the downtrodden and dispossessed who seek justice, equality
or rights denied by the power structures. Violence can simultaneously be embedded
within the very structures of power and dominance, and occur as an event in which it is
directly exercised against a person or a group. Johan Galtung identifies structural violence
by arguing that it is a form of violence in which the social structure or a social institution
may harm people by preventing them from fulfilling their basic needs.1 Institutionalized
ethnocentrism, classism, racism, sexism, nationalism and heterosexism are some types of
structural violence which impair the enjoyment of fundamental human needs. In
contrast, Galtung identifies direct violence which constitutes an event in which violence
occurs and may be the product of the deeply embedded structural violence.

1
Johan Galtung, “Violence, Peace and Peace Research”, International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, 1969, Vol. 6, No. 3, 167-
191.

In Pakistan, the state has historically resorted to both structural and direct forms of
violence in order to maintain the existing social order and prevailing configurations of
power. One form of systemic structural violence is patriarchy which exists at both the
ideological and material levels and is based on the systematic subordination and exclusion
of women. It is reflected in state laws, policies and practices which discriminate against
women and prevent the enjoyment of equal citizenship status and associated rights. This
form of violence is deeply rooted in the ideological structures of the state and society –
laws, judiciary, educational curricula, religious institutions, cultural practices and beliefs,
customs and value systems.2

This form of violence, located in the superstructure of society, may be named ‘Ideological
Violence’ as it resorts to specific ideologies to diminish women’s status and position in
society. The fact that it is accomplished through the ideological superstructure does not
mean that it does not have material effects. The consequences of such violence may be
economic and physical in nature. This form of violence is deeply intertwined with the
violence that inheres in the structures of society be they feudal, tribal or capitalist.
Ideological violence is both structural and direct in that it constitutes the core of the social
and political institutions of state and society, and also gives rise to direct physical and
economic violence by precluding the possibility of enjoying fundamental rights to which
all citizens are entitled.

While structural ideological violence exists at the center of socio-economic and political
arrangements, the state resorts to direct violence in order to secure the interests of a
particular class of people. The state’s monopoly on violence enables the ruling classes to
gain control over economic and material resources for the consumption of the rulers. In
cases where economic privilege may not be available through ideological means alone,
the state resorts to physical violence to attain its objectives. Through intimidation,
threats, beating, incarcerating and using the Ideological Apparatus, such as the Anti-
Terrorist Act of 1997, the state attempts to ensure its access to land, money and other
resources that belong to a people.

2
For an explanation of Ideological State Apparatuses see, Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”,
Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, (London: New Left Books, 1971).

Oppositional movements may differ with regard to the kind of violence being deployed
by the state. The aims, methods and approach of social movements vary depending upon
the specific situation and the determinants of the conflict. When the onslaught on the
rights of people takes mainly an ideological form, the response may also be primarily
ideological in nature. However, when the state resorts to direct violence (as in beating,
incarcerating, threatening) and the use of force to suppress a movement, the dissent may
also take violent forms, especially when the threat is existential.

Pakistan has witnessed various types of oppositional women’s movements in which some
were focused on welfare and legal reform, such as All-Pakistan Women’s Association
(APWA), while others were concerned with class differentiation, labor rights and bread
and butter issues such as the Democratic Women’s Association (DWA) which was based
mainly in Lahore. In the pages that follow, two social movements are compared: one, the
Women’s Action Forum (WAF) movement which resisted an ideological war against
women’s rights, and two, the Anjuman-e-Mazareen (AMP) movement of peasants
threatened with eviction, the loss of land and basic livelihood. In the latter movement,
the women peasants played a leading role in protecting the land that was being forcibly
wrested from them by the military.

Women Action Forum: rights within a liberal state

The Women Action Forum (WAF) was formed in 1981 in response to discriminatory
legislation by the state. The dominant ideology of the ruling classes of the time was
‘Islamization’ which was used to provide legitimacy to an illegal military intervention. The
military regime’s attempt to demonstrate its Islamic credentials was focused primarily on
three areas: the judiciary, the media and educational curricula, that is, the Ideological
Apparatus of the State. The economy was mainly exempted from ‘Islamization’ for a
period of ten years on account of Pakistan’s entanglement with the global economy which
is based on interest. A few cosmetic measures, such as the imposition of Zakat and Ushr
were instituted to reflect the regime’s bias toward a specific version of religion.

The women of Pakistan were directly affected by the state interventions in the legal
system, the educational system and the media. Although Islamization was not the
invention of General Zia as it predates him in the form of the two-nation theory, the
Objectives Resolution, the Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology and the constitution of

1973 which contains a number of Islamic provisions, the military rule intensified the
process of Islamization to gain legitimacy especially in the context of the global Jehad
project against the Soviet Union in neighboring Afghanistan. The Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and
Deobandi version of Islam was invoked to conjure up the ‘Islamic state’. The state’s
reinvention and re-articulation of Islam and Islamic state tended to seep down to the
social and cultural levels where an environment was created that threatened to deny
women some of their basic economic and social rights. The JI’s restrictive and narrow
view of men and women’s roles in society is evident from the following passage by its
founder and ideologue, Maulana Maududi:

To preserve the moral life of the nation and to safeguard the evolution of society on healthy
lines, free mingling of the sexes has been prohibited. Islam effects a functional distribution
between the sexes and sets different spheres of activity for both of them. Women should in
the main devote [themselves] to their household duties in their homes and men should attend
to their jobs in the socio-economic spheres.3

Based on such views, the Islamization ideology, that now permeated the entire socio-
cultural milieu, was used to argue that women should be prevented from working outside
the home. This was particularly argued by Dr. Israr on his popular TV show Al-Huda, and
it threatened women’s economic security and created the fear that they would be forced
out of their jobs. In an agricultural country, which relies heavily on women’s labor in the
fields, such restrictions are meaningless, but the version of Islam being promoted was
that of the urban petit bourgeoisie in which the veiling and incarceration of women in the
home are pivotal values. The prevention of the women’s hockey team from going abroad
to play was yet another indication that the Islamization experiment would be carried out
on women’s bodies. Women in the media working as actors, anchors and announcers
were ordered to wear a particular kind of chadar and cover their heads. Such minute
regulation of the female body, its appearance and disappearance, sent alarm bells ringing
among middle class working women who were used to certain social and cultural
freedoms stemming from class position.

However, the most serious ideological onslaught was in the form of discriminatory
legislation. A parallel judicial structure was erected through the creation of the Federal

3
Cited in Aziz Ahmad, Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan, 1857 – 1964 (Oxford University Press, 1967), p.213.

Shariat Court (Article 203 of the constitution) with a view toward ensuring the compliance
of all laws with Islamic injunctions. This meant that all laws that conformed to the Jamaat-
e-Islami’s (JI) Deobandi version of Islam would be allowed and other interpretations
would be overlooked since the JI exerted enormous influence over the military regime of
the time. This version of Islam was far more purist, puritanical, strict and conservative
compared to alternative visions of an Islamic state.

The Fehmida-Allah Bux case based on the Hudood Ordinances, and specifically the Zina
Ordinance of 1979, ushered in the sense of urgency among women with regard to the
state’s regulation of their sexuality and body.4 There was a palpable fear that women
would no longer be able to prove rape since the criterion for proof became impossible
requiring four adult male Muslims of good character to testify to having witnessed the
act. Failing to provide such impossible evidence, the women would be booked for
adultery for having confessed to the act of intercourse or through pregnancy. A group of
women gathered at Shirkat Gah, Karachi and formed WAF as a lobby-cum-pressure group
to resist the state’s attempts to deny women’s fundamental rights. Soon WAF had
chapters in Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar and Quetta.5

However, the state’s ideological onslaught continued with a spate of laws designed to
diminish their citizenship status and provide legal cover for so-called ‘honour killing’.
These laws included the Law of Evidence of 1984 which reduced a woman’s testimony to
half that of a Muslim man in a court of law, and the Qisas and Diyat Ordinance which not
only reduced the value of women’s lives, it also privatized the crime of murder by allowing
recompense for murder and making it a crime against person instead of crime against
state. This ordinance was proposed during the military regime but became an act of
parliament during civilian rule in the 1990s.

WAF’s resistance against the state’s measures, and against the intensified violence that
ensued within society as a result of the atmosphere of fear created, was mainly non-
violent. WAF initially engaged in developing a counter discourse derived from liberal
interpretations of religion. Liberal, enlightened and moderate scholars of Islam were

4
Asma Jahangir & Hina Jilani, The Hudood Ordinances : a divine sanction? (Lahore: Rhotas, 1990).
5
Khawar Mumtaz & Farida Shaheed, Women of Pakistan: two steps forward, one step back? (London: Zed Books, 1987).

invited to WAF gatherings to explain that there were other ways of being Muslim that
deviated from the Deobandi-Wahhabi brand of religion and that Islam was not an
intolerant, fierce and anti-women religion. However, WAF members soon realized that
this strategy backfired because a greater number of religious scholars appeared on TV
and in public spaces to refute the claims of the liberal ones.

The realization that working within the paradigm of religious nationalism was self-
defeating led some WAF members to argue that WAF should not work within the
framework of religion and instead appeal to the universal human rights discourse and a
secular ethos to claim women’s rights. The resulting debate on a secular versus a religious
framework was a fiercely fought battle within WAF. The day was won by those who
appealed to a secular morality and WAF declared that it stood for a democratic, secular
and just state in which the rights of all citizens were equal and discrimination should cease
to exist.

Subsequently, WAF took on many issues such as defense expenditure, democracy,

decentralization, military rule, violence against women and rights of religious and
sectarian minorities. As a lobby concerned with justice and rights, WAF declared that all
issues are women’s issues and that a struggle for women’s rights could not be separated
from the movement for democracy and a secular state. WAF was promoting a narrative
that would lead to the construction of the liberal state.

WAF aimed to get its message across through various non-violent means. The ideological
battle was fought along ideological lines and WAF produced an alternative discourse
derived from human rights, justice and liberal theory. This was accomplished by
producing position papers, writing newspaper articles and essays, public speaking,
seminars, conferences and festive gatherings. The message was articulated not only
through intellectual discourses but through the medium of theatre, dance, music, song,
art and literature.6 At the same time WAF organized peaceful marches, demonstrations,
rallies, pickets and protest meetings. WAF never resorted to violence even when the state
used unbridled violence against women on February 12, 1983 when the women tried to

6
For an understanding of the multi-dimensional nature of the resistance of women against state-led ideological violence,
see Rubina Saigol, “Introduction” in The Pakistan Project: a feminist perspective on nation and identity (New Delhi: Women
Unlimited, 2013), pp. 30-39.

march to the Lahore High Court with a petition against the then proposed Law of
Evidence. WAF’s resistance, though persistent and steady, remained peaceful and took
the form of ideological resistance against the state’s dominant ideology.

WAF was confronted with structural violence reflected in the kinds of legal and ideological
superstructure being constructed. WAF was not often the victim of direct violence even
though some of the demonstrations were baton charged or tear-gassed by the state.
Most of the main leaders of WAF belonged to the educated upper or upper middle classes
which have a measure of protection based on class affiliation. Some of the women
belonged to the very classes that benefited from the Ziaist state of Islamization.
Nevertheless, the issues that WAF raised, such as the Zina Ordinance, seldom affected
the women of this class directly. These were issues with which the women of poor and
rural backgrounds were confronted, many of whom languished in jails under false
accusations of adultery. WAF’s struggle may have been led by relatively protected well-
to-do women, the stands that it took for women’s rights affected women of the urban
working and rural agricultural labor classes.

WAF succeeded in its aims only partially. While many of the discriminatory laws that WAF
challenged remain intact and protected by the 8th amendment inserted into the
constitution by the military regime, WAF did succeed in placing women’s issues at the
center of the national agenda. The WAF movement led to the recognition of women’s
issues nationally and internationally, and subsequently no political party, irrespective of
how conservative it may be, can afford to ignore them. Pro-women legislation including
the Women Protection Act (2006), the Sexual Harassment in the Workplace (2010), the
Anti-women Practices Law (2011) were passed by the Musharraf dictatorship and by the
civilian rulers post-Musharraf. Although the NGOs and donors played a role in the
passage of these laws, WAF’s original activism is what provided the basic thrust toward
women’s rights within the paradigm of the liberal democratic state. We turn now to a
very different kind of movement to examine the issues it faced, the methods it employed
and the outcome it achieved.

Anjuman-e-Mazareen: existential threat and survival

The Anjuman-e-Mazareen (AMP) movement that erupted in the Punjab in 2000 was not
restricted to women alone but involved entire peasant families. However, the women

played leading roles in the movement and remained in the forefront, ready to fight with
their Thappas, batons used for the washing of clothes. Since a large number of women
in ten districts of the province played a vanguard role in the struggle, it is examined here
as a women’s movement that involved the ownership of lands cultivated by the peasants
but owned by the government and controlled by the military.7 While the movement,
involving a million farmers in the Punjab, had spread across many districts, the focus here
is on Okara and the military farms because in Khanewal the struggle was against the
Punjab Seed Corporation which appropriated the produce and exploited the peasants.

A brief historical background provides the landscape of the struggle. The historical origins
of the peasant struggle go back to colonial times. The 1902 construction of the Lower Bari
Doab canal brought irrigation to a previously barren land composed of some forests and
sand dunes. In 1908, the colonial government encouraged thousands of farming families
in Eastern parts of the Punjab to migrate to western Punjab to till and cultivate the land
under the "Abaadkari Scheme", which led to the formation of new landed elites in the
Punjab. Some of the districts to which the farmers migrated include Okara, Khanewal,
Sahiwal and Sargodha. The land was owned by the British government and, after
independence in 1947, the Government of Pakistan became the owner. The farmers had
been granted tenant status under the Punjab Tenancy Act of 1887, which defined the
tenant-landlord relationship. The migrant farmers were promised proprietary rights to
the land if their labour made it suitable for cultivation. The land turned out to be the
most fertile in the country and the State retained its control over it. The settlement of
canal colonies and the commercialization of agriculture in South Asia helped entrench the
structures of power that enabled the British to consolidate the empire. The Punjab
Alienation of Land Act of 1900 ensured that fertile land in the canal colonies was given as
a reward to loyal subjects who helped protect British interests.8

The Military Farms Group Okara consists of 6 military farms and 18 villages comprising
17013 acres of land that is managed by Military Farm Authorities. The Military Farms

7
The farmland involved in the Mazareen struggle included Okara, 17013 acres; Dairy Farm Lahore, 6686 acres; dairy farm
Sargodha, 1525 acres; dairy farm Multan, 1050 acres; Remount Depot Renala Khurd 3193 acres; Seed Farm Parveenabad,
10433 acres; Jehangirabad Farm 15000 acres; Allah Dad Farm, 13000 acres; Darkhata Farm 1300 acres; Qadirabad Farm 350
acres; Bahadur Nagar Farm 13000 acres; Yousaf Wala Farm 1500 acres; 86/9/L farm 450 acres; Iqbal Nagar farm 1000 acres;
Cotton Farm Sahiwal 65 acres; 92/9/L farm 700 acres; Mohd Nagar Farm, Arifwala 625 acres; Kala Shah Kaku farm 450
acres; Sargodha Research Farm625 acres; Faisalabad 231 (RB) 400 acres; Sher Garh farm, 2625 acres; Seed farm Khanewal
7500 acres.

8
Ayesha Salma Kariapper, The Tenants’ Movement on the Okara Military Farms. Social Science Senior Project (Lahore:
LUMS, 2003), p. 6.

Group Renala, located near Okara, comprise 3143 acres and spreads over 4 villages. The
Military Farms Group Okara and Renala consist of a total of 20,156 acres of which 16, 627
acres are cultivated by 1323 farmers in Okara and Renala.9 The Okara Military Farms are
managed on behalf of the army by the Remount Veterinary & Farms Corps and the Army
Welfare Trust (AWT).10 The Okara Military Farms ensured the provision of the dairy needs
of the colonial, and later on, the Pakistani military. In the past the British army needed
Stud farms to breed horses for the Cavalry.11 However, with advances in technology,
horse breeding was no longer an urgent need, and the farms produced fodder for the
dairy animals to ensure the regular supply of milk, cheese and butter for the military and
the families of military personnel.

The revenue records of Okara show that the British rulers of India handed over the Okara
land to the British army for defense use in 1913 for a period of twenty years. In 1933, the
lease expired but the agreement was extended for another five years, at the end of which
the military ceased to have any legal claim to the land. However, the army continued its
unauthorized use of the land. The lease amount of fifteen hundred rupees per annum
was paid only until 1943. In 1947 the Pakistani military took over control of the lands
once again without any legal claim. Despite repeated entreaties by the Board of Revenue,
Punjab, no lease amount was paid by the military.12 The tenants received 60 percent of
the crop while the military took an unauthorized share of 40 per cent.

There were several challenges to the tenancy agreement, beginning in 1975, to change
the status of the tenants to lessees, but in 1996 the Board of Revenue, Punjab declared
that the relationship was one of landlord and tenant and therefore governed by tenancies
of land.13 Subsequently, the tenants’ position was vindicated by the Lahore High Court
and upheld by the Supreme Court.14 The attempts by the farm management to deprive
the tenants of their rights to the land they had cultivated for four generations thus failed.

9
Ibid, p. 5.
10
Soiled Hands: The Pakistan Army’s Repression of the Punjab Farmers’ Movement. Human Rights Watch, Vol. 16, No. 10c,
(July 2004), www.hrw.org/reports/2004/pakistan0704/pakistan0704.pdf (accessed January 19, 2014)
11
Ayesha Salma Kariapper, The Tenants’ Movement on the Okara Military Farms, pp. 7-9.
12
Bashir Buttar writes that after independence the military captured the farms that belonged to the government of the
Punjab. At different times the government of the Punjab kept writing letters to the Military Management which began with
the words “Huzoor, Jaan ki Amaan paoon to kahoon” (Respected Sir, if my life can be spared may I dare to say). The
requests were ignored and 50 per cent of the produce was taken by the military officers. In Lazawal Kissan Jedd-o-Jehad:
Lamha ba Lamha, 2002-2003 (The Indomitable Peasant Struggle: moment to moment, 2002-2003), (Jedd-o-Jehad
Publications, June 2003), p. 116.
13
Member, Board of Revenue, Punjab. Order No. 118/93.
14
Rubina Saigol, Ownership or Death: Women and Tenant Struggles in Pakistani Punjab (New Delhi: Rupa & Co. 2010).

 10

Sensing that the military’s hold over the highly fertile land was tenuous, in February 2000
the Ministry of Defense wrote a letter to the Governor of the Punjab requesting him to
direct the Board of Revenue, to transfer the 23,699 acres of land under Military Farm
Okara, Military Farm Lahore and Military Farm Bengali, to the Ministry of Defence free of
cost.15 In spite of the massive power of the military in Pakistan, the Board of Revenue,
Punjab, was able to resist the free of cost transfer of prime land to the Federal
Government.16 In the reply to Ministry of Defense letter, the Board of Revenue stated
that under Section 127 of the Government of India Act, 1935, and policy framework of
1976, any transfer of land from the provincial to the Central Government would be done
at the prevailing market rate.

When the Board of Revenue refused to succumb to military pressure for the transfer of
land, the latter conjured up another scheme in 2000. This time the management of the
farms, with help from General Headquarters (GHQ), invented a contract, which would
effectively change the status of the tenants from tenant to lessee, and ultimately lead to
their eviction from the land that had been tilled and made arable by four generations of
tenants. The contractual terms of the pattadari (cash rent) system devised by the
authorities leave no doubt as to the intentions of its framers. The land would be leased
out to the tenants for an initial period of seven years and the contract payment would be
increased by five per cent annually. The conditions were extremely harsh and the tenant
could be ejected from the land for minor infractions. 17
The tenants read the contract correctly and perceived the danger lying at the heart of the
agreement. Their fear of eviction and loss of the only means of livelihood, led them to
agitate for their ownership rights and their refusal to sign their death-knell in the form of
the contract. The tenants formed the Anjuman-e-Mazareen, Punjab (Tenants’
Association, Punjab), which contended that since the military was not the owner of the
farms, and had been taking the bataai (share) illegally, they would give the share only to
the real owner, the Government of the Punjab and not to the military.
Thus began one of the biggest civil disobedience movements in the recent history of the
Punjab in which a million tenant farmers, fearful of losing their very source of life and
identity, rose up in revolt against the most powerful economic and political institution in

15
Letter No. F. 3/50/99/D-4 (Army-IV), Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Defence, Defence Division, Rawalpindi.
st
February 1 2000.
16 th
D.O. No. 14-2001/631-CL-V, Board of Revenue, Punjab, Lahore. Dated 13 April, 2001.
17
Rubina Saigol, Ownership or Death, pp. 36-39.

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Pakistan, the military. Shocked and incredulous that one of the most powerless and
dispossessed sections of the country had revolted against the State’s awesome machinery
of coercion, the military reacted by using all the instruments of state repression and
control that it has in its deadly arsenal – the law courts, police and Rangers.
Tenants were kidnapped, beaten, jailed, threatened and their electricity and water
connections were cut off by a military determined to retain the highly fertile land. Many
tenants were booked under the Anti-Terrorist Act of 1997 in order to frighten them into
signing the contract.18 The struggle for basic economic rights, such as land, was
transformed into terrorism by a state that intolerant towards any form of resistance. The
children of the tenants were dunked in hot water in the summer and icy water in the
winter. Womenfolk were threatened with kidnapping, rape and the forced cancellation
of their marriage contracts. A total of eleven tenants were murdered by the military
which used firearms to shoot them. Scores were injured and ended up with broken limbs
and bruises all over their bodies.
With most of the male tenants either languishing in jails or injured and under death
threats, it fell to the peasant women to carry on the struggle. The land was not merely
an economic resource, it symbolized identity and ensured livelihood for the tenants who
would starve without it.19 As Bina Aggarwal argues
In the agrarian economies of South Asia…arable land is the most valued form of property, for its economic as well
as its political and symbolic importance. It is a productive, wealth-creating, and livelihood-sustaining asset.
Traditionally, it has been the basis of political power and social status. For many, it provides a sense of identity
and rootedness within the village; and often in people’s mind land has a durability and permanence which no other
asset possesses.

The potential loss of the land implied an existential threat for the tenants and
consequently the fear was deep, intense and urgent. Women, who are usually
responsible for the provision of food for the families, feared not only expropriation but
starvation of their families. They were determined to protect their land, their menfolk,
their children and their produce at any cost – it was literally a life and death matter for
them.
As women often do in peasant struggles, the weapon of resistance was a regular
household item used for the washing of clothes, the thappa. Each time the Rangers, police
and paramilitary forces arrived to browbeat the tenants into accepting the terms of the
contract, the women would emerge from their homes carrying the thappas and confront

18
Lazawal Kissan Jedd-o-Jehad: Lamha ba Lamha, 2002-2003 (The Indomitable Peasant Struggle: moment to moment,
2002-2003), (Jedd-o-Jehad Publications, June 2003)
19
Bina Agarwal, A Field of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p.
17.

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the security forces. In the scuffles that often followed the raid by the Rangers, many of
the women sustained injuries, some particularly serious ones. In one case the thappa
brigade, as they came to be known, laid siege to a police station where their male folk
were held and got them freed by surrounding the station.
Over the years that followed the creation of the AMP, the thappa brigade became famous
for its direct action, its undaunted courage in the face of awesome military might, and its
persistence in not yielding the produce. Women would stand guard over the produce all
night to protect it against theft by the authorities. In a number of cases, the women
blocked the Grand Trunk Road for hours until their demands were met and their menfolk
were released from detention. Women peasants directly questioned and accused the
Defense Minister, Rao Sikandar Iqbal, and even called the higher military officers Yazid
for blocking the water for the peasants’ lands and household use.
Women of all ages, young and old, Muslim and Christian fought together and used the
methods of civil disobedience to prevent the forcible and illegal takeover their lands by
the military. They replied to state violence with their own violence using household
implements to protect and defend their basic economic rights and their families. The
struggle was not just based on physical scuffles and fights with the Rangers and police, it
was multi-dimensional in the sense that the women sang songs and poetry written for
the movement, and danced and rejoiced at their many though small victories. They were
more strident, self-confident and forthright than the male peasants who were threatened
with dire consequences.
This was not a movement for women’s own separate rights as women. It was a fight for
economic survival and the protection of their male kin – in part a kind of extension of the
mother role. They did not demand the transfer of the land in their own names or even
that their names should be included in case the land was transferred to the tenants.
Nevertheless, the consciousness of rights that developed as a result of participation in the
movement ultimately extended to their personal lives because the thappa force would
arrive at a house where domestic violence either occurred or was threatened and
managed to prevent it, while warning the men against beating up women and children.
One peasant women was so energized by the experience that she set up a women’s rights
organization later on.
The AMP struggle used civil disobedience as a main method and although the women
could never match the violence of the state, they were able to muster enough courage
and spirit to fight back physically. Their struggle was borne of desperation, of deep fear
rooted in the loss of the very land on which they had depended for generations and which

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nourished and sustained them. Their struggle was one of survival because the threat was
existential in nature.

The land was not transferred to the tenants and in February 2001 the Lahore High Court
ruled against their rights.20 In spite of the order of the Lahore High Court, in 2003 the
Punjab provincial assembly recognized the fact that the military’s control over the lands
was illegal, yet the tenants failed to get ownership rights. However, they were able to
retain the entire share of the produce. They refused to yield their produce to the military
and this led to their becoming relatively better off over time. It can be concluded that
although the movement was not entirely successful in its aims because the land remained
the property of the Punjab Government, yet the movement was partially successful in its
refusal to hand over the yield to the military which had no claim on it. The use of force
by the movement and civil disobedience were successful in preventing the eviction of the
tenants from the land which they had cultivated for over a hundred years and which had
been repeatedly promised to them.
Tentative Conclusions and Reflections
The comparison of the two women’s movements leads us to some tentative conclusions
that shed light on the nature of both conflict and resistance. Conflicts may be of various
types involving direct and/or indirect violence which can take ideological, economic,
physical and psychological forms. Resistance can take many forms and shapes depending
upon the type of conflict, the methods used and the outcome achieved. The level of
personal investment in the issue may also determine the form a movement will take and
its outcome.
An exploration of the WAF movement shows that it is primarily a movement based on the
premises of liberal feminism which seeks legal reform and rights within the context of a
liberal democratic state. WAF did not seriously address bread and butter or economic
issues as the class composition of the majority of leaders ensured that they were not
confronted with issues of survival. This is the reason that WAF was a relatively peaceful
movement which, even when it confronted the state vigorously, did so without resorting

20
The Lahore High Court, which was heard by Justice Malik Muhammad Qayyum, passed the following order on February
20, 2001: “The petitioners are lessee of the land and the period of their lease has since run over. They are in possession of
the property without any lawful basis. If they want to stay on the land, they have to adhere to the revised policy of the
Ministry of Defence, Government of Pakistan and pay the rent in cash.” Order of Lahore High Court passed on 20.2.2001.
Writ petition filed by tenants under Article 199 of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973.

 14

to violence. It did not respond violently even when the state used violence against it. The
level of personal investment in the struggles was less acute given that most women
belonging to the urban educated middle class were not directly affected by the legal and
social onslaught. While most of the leaders were from the educated urban middle class,
the issues raised were not necessarily only those of one class. However, WAF fought the
ideological onslaught of the state with its own counter narratives.
WAF’s liberal reformist approach ensured that women’s issues would be placed on the
national agenda and the state and political forces would be forced to address them.
However, WAF was unsuccessful in getting the ruling classes to repeal the discriminatory
laws that initially gave rise to the movement. Political expediency forced the relatively
liberal political parties to appease the religious and conservative forces by retaining the
discriminatory laws. In return, the ruling coalition governments were allowed to remain
in power. WAF was partially successful in highlighting discrimination and subordination
based on gender, but was unsuccessful in ushering in legal transformation.
In contrast, the AMP movement reflects a sense of deep urgency and existential threat.
In this case the very lives and identity of the tenants were threatened with erasure.
Survival, literally, was the issue. The level of commitment and personal investment,
therefore, was extremely high. As a result the women in the movement took up whatever
weapon they could to fight back the state hitting at their economic survival. The fear in
this case was palpable and starvation was a real possibility.
For AMP then, resorting to violence of its own was a question of life and death. The class
composition of the movement was mainly based on rural peasantry whose own direct
interests were at stake. The AMP women relied on civil disobedience and the direct use
of force to protect the land, its produce and their families. They were exposed not only
to the structural violence of the state in terms of land distribution which impacted the
enjoyment of basic rights, but were also subjected to direct violence in the form of attacks
by the Rangers and the police. Fighting back the state with violence of their own was the
only option available to the AMP as ideological weapons such as peaceful
demonstrations, discursive battles, conferences and seminars were weapons only of the
educated middle classes.
Each of the two movements, WAF and AMP, achieved partial success in their struggles.
Each one was partially defeated. It is, therefore, difficult to say definitively whether
violent or non-violent movements are more successful in achieving their goals. In the end
the level of success of any movement depends upon the basis of the conflict, the kinds of

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measures used by the state, the levels of personal threat and fear, and the means used
to mount resistance against power.
__________________________________________________________
Published in:
‘Encountering the state: women's movements in Pakistan', in History of Non-violent Resistance in Pakistan,
Institute of Peace and Diplomatic Studies, Hanns Seidel Foundation, Islamabad, 2015.