Race and Economic Control: Instituting the Colonial Matrix of Power in the Pre-history of Pakistan

Abstract

This paper offers a critical examination, from a decolonial perspective, of the Pakistani nation-state’s instrumentalization of the developmental legacy of British colonial rule which sustained racialized identities contrived for economic control by the Crown. The British had introduced land reforms and to an extent attempted social-engineering in the region which is now Pakistan based on their policy of land acquisitions and racist categorizations of the peoples of the sub-continent. I contend that the present Islamic Republic of Pakistan is intrinsically structured on a social system engineered by the British who instrumentalized ‘race’ to establish an infrastructure of capitalist economy in the pre-history of Pakistan.