Between the Local and the Global there Lies the Nation: Selected Stories of the 1960s in Lahore

Abstract

Labour and student activists in Pakistan were part of the global movement of the 1960s with its sense of expanded possibilities.  This article explores how this political imagination was expressed in Pakistan, focusing on local stories oriented around Lahore. Using the 1960s as one particular window to look at the aspirations of ordinary people, this essay shows that even though  students and workers alike hoped for a change in the status quo, there was no one typical national experience of this decade. Any historical narrative that assumes that there is a Pakistan with one imagi­nation in any decade necessarily imposes erasures in order to construct a neat story of what the 1960s in Pakistan “truly” was. Through newspaper articles and police reports, some everyday stories of that time are selected and used to differentiate the common picture of experiences of the 1960s in Pakistan.