Dying to Serve Quotes

“This shaheed, who is less authentic than the asal shaheed, was majboor, only a bacha. He did not fight the real enemy but instead fought the gumrah bhai. He was absolved of any blame; he deserved pity but also respect. In the village imagination, the shaheed was not constructed as the willing soldier but as one who is helpless, infantilized, and unable to desert or reject this war. These tropes of infantilizing the soldier and of helplessness ran through the narratives of soldiers and the families of the dead, an imagining of the soldier that already existed in villages even outside the context of the current war and was actively pulled in to settle doubts and unease as they talked about the deaths of those who died in this war. 287/378”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

“For Ayesha, whose son died in this war, it was a particularly painful period when the TTP attacked an army school in Peshawar. She wept as she watched television footage of children’s bodies and mothers crying over their losses. Ayesha: If we had not provoked them [the Taliban], they would not have done this to us.60 Musharraf [former chief of army staff] is a dog. He brought this on Pakistan, and he should be kept in jail and never let out. Sister: My brother died fighting these people. Ayesha [cutting her short]: Would Musharraf have got into this war if his son was in the army? He should have sent his son. How many sons have become shaheed because of his decisions? 282/378”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

“The khateeb reiterates that his role is vital and positions himself as the spiritual teacher of the recruits. This position is belied somewhat by my earlier description of my encounter with him and his superiors, an impression strengthened by my conversation with other senior army officers. A retired infantry general shared with me how he had confronted the khateeb’s influence in the barracks while he was in services. A particular khateeb under his command during the Kargil war was asked to go to a post nearer the combat zone to motivate the troops. The cleric refused on the grounds that certain requirements of jihad29 had not been fulfilled, so he could not support the effort. “I summoned him and told him, ‘You talk of jihad; God will decide what is jihad. This is a war zone, and I am ordering a district court martial of you, and I will ensure that you are put before a firing squad right over here in front of my office.’” He then had him posted out of the area with immediate effect. The khateeb is told here that he is in no position to adjudicate what jihad is, the implication being that the military, in this case the commanding officer, has the right to adjudicate this over and above religious authority, whose only role is to motivate troops in the name of jihad as and when ordered by the military officer. The khateeb is a spiritual guide, then, with no real official authority, an army person but not regular army personnel. He is a “harmless” person yet one who must be monitored, as evidenced by the colonel’s initial reluctance to let me talk to him. As another retired infantry general jokingly put it, “He [the khateeb] is uneducated but very motivating.” Much like his soldier-class contemporaries, he is regarded by the officer class as somewhat uncouth but nonetheless essential for the training center. He has the specific task of motivating troops and acting as a religious mascot to lend credence to the militarism project. 265/378”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

“Whatever Jinnah may have imagined for the Pakistani state, the indeterminate nature of how Islam was conceived for the purpose of legitimizing the struggle for Pakistan has led to it being exploited by both political and military leaders alike. This exploitation has also played out through alliances with and appeasement of the religious right. Starting with the constitutional debates between the relatively secular Muslim League, which viewed Islam as an identity marker, and religious scholars, who embodied a more Islamist vision, Pakistan’s history is checkered with the state’s dangerous obsession with the empty idea of religion. 257/378”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

“Here, the disappearance involves the physical absence of a loved one, which leads to the intensely experienced loss of someone who was once dear and is now permanently lost. Damage for a loss can be calculated provided a system of exchange exists that can assess the injury. If there is no system of exchange, then no compensation is possible. Ophir suggests that the response to a condition of loss is mediated through “interest in what has disappeared” and “the impossibility of entering into an exchange cycle and restoring the disappeared.” He suggests that “each one of these on its own is a necessary but insufficient condition” for something to be experienced as loss. There are two ways to annul a loss: first, to let go of interest, and second, “to reduce it to the exchange value in some sort of exchange economy.” 217/378”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

“The next of kin stand ambivalent about the project of militarism and the use of their blood to serve a construct that they may not believe in or want to sacrifice for. Yet they accept this violence inflicted on them and on the bodies of those they love. They say “Khena parta hai” (“You have to say it”) and behave as though they do believe. They say it because they know the military is watching. They say it because without this frame the son’s death would be futile and the grief too great to make sense of. They say it because they need to say it to avoid the guilt and the realization that maybe the risk taken was too great and because they must accept the money and benefits offered, as it was for material needs that the tribute to the nation was risked in the first place. 204/378”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

“Imran had joined the army when he was a little over seventeen and had died in operations in Swat within his first three months of active duty. The father’s drooping, sorrowful figure walking back and forth to his son’s grave and sitting by it for long periods is a common sight in the village. The social studies teacher in the government school in Palwal, a young man, reflected on the grief of Imran’s father: “I have noticed him; he has taken it to heart. He has not thought about it from the other angle [of shahadat]. If he thinks from this angle, that shahadat has its own position, reputation, then he might have got some relief. He is not thinking from this angle; he is only thinking from one angle: that his son is no more.” The schoolteacher suggests that Imran’s father finds it difficult to follow the path that will allow him to move on and come to terms with his son’s unexpected and violent death. It is a story of grief that refuses to follow script, despite instruction. This and other similar stories are expressed even as the parallel script of shahadat remains intact, flowing along unhindered and unchecked, like the tears. 195/378”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

“The management of the family and their affect during this period is heavily gendered in a series of conflicting moves. The masculine military manages the external business of dying, much as the men do in a traditional Punjabi household during a regular funeral. Thus the men in the family are rendered passive during military funerals. They are reduced to the helpless feminine, merely receiving instructions from the military. The father weeping helplessly at the side of the grave or breaking down during the ceremonial handing over of the cap and flag juxtaposed with the composed and stoic military reflect other emasculations. The way women grieve is a point of concern for the military. A brigadier from the military directorate, which organizes funerals, explains this preoccupation. The soldier’s family, especially the mother and wife, are very jazbati (emotional). The soldier has gone through training; he is more educated and less emotional. Grief affects the zehen and can demoralize and stop future generations [from joining the army]. We don’t want to distress them [the family] further, so sometimes it is best that they do not see or touch. We want to save them from pain and distress. 183/378”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

“Ayesha, whose nineteen-year-old son had died after eighteen months in service, is one of many who attested to the policing of affect by men, in this case her husband. She explained that “they did not take me to the graveyard. Women normally don’t go, but when someone is a shaheed, women will go along to watch the parade. His [the dead son’s] father did not take me. He said to me, ‘A woman can bear less, for she is weak.’ He said to me, ‘You say namaz (funeral prayer), [but] the shaheed has a high status; you can’t cry for this death.’” She stopped and then added, perhaps to further explain to me why her husband didn’t think it was wise to take her, “I looked at the flag on the coffin, and I felt okha (uneasy). I still feel that way when I see the flag.” 175/378”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

“Ijaz: Your domestic life gets a little disturbed. My wife, my sister, my mother—I do not feel it, but they do, that I have become hard. [Pauses.] I don’t feel. [Lowers voice.] It is true we change; for example, laughing and joking we can’t do easily; I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because when I do that a little [laugh or joke] then my other zehen returns [and says], “No, don’t do this so much; this is enough.” Me: What do you mean by “other zehen”? Ijaz: Some things happen together in life, in practical life. Some people feel at the right time. For example, when someone dies they will feel for a few days, [and] then they will move on, perk up, and forget and come back to life and start enjoying it. I think as an army soldier, that instant happiness or sadness that people feel, we don’t feel that. The reason we can’t do that . . . [is] we have seen so much that our zehen is working on both sides. So today we are enjoying ourselves, and at the same time another disc is playing in our zehen that it was so hard to pick up that person whose body had been half blown away; earlier we did that and now we do this, so both these are playing in our heads. Just like a normal man enjoys something fully, we cannot do so. 160/378”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

“Soldiers had to find creative ways of expressing fear, because it was not permissible in its own right. Fear and possibly guilt for having survived could be expressed and made more acceptable as another emotion, such as grief for a fellow comrade who had died. Many spoke about how they would wail without shame for their friends who had died in battle. 159/378”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

“The figure of the mother on the magnificent stage at the YeD ceremony offering another son as cannon fodder and the overflowing mass of people in the NoK enclosure hint at the tragedy of death in war as well as at the casualness of life, the apparent ease with which it is offered to the military. These are subjects of violence that are willing to endure violence not only to their bodies but also to the bodies of those they love. 26/378”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

“The poor man, he stands still because he cannot do anything else; the fauji is only good for the fauj.”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

“The Pakistani military meets two essential criteria of kinship groups: (1) the ability to look after and protect the interests of the group and (2) affective investment in the group through ideas of honor and prestige.”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

“Fear is managed better in some soldiers and is trickier to master in others; shame and consequences loom large. The general goes on to elucidate further: The one who shows fear is lost; he has lost his honor and his reputation, and he will be taken to task. His promotion may be blocked. It’s the same concept at home. You try many ways to fix your child—many times he does things that you cover for him. Because you fear that you [the regiment] will be shamed if people find out. . . . The senior officer might try and encourage him, so he may say “Get up, child, it’s okay; shabash shabash [verbal encouragement implying in this context ‘come, come’].” If he still doesn’t move, then the commander will become harsh. He will push him, kick him, and drag him, and he will ask two other people to take the weapon from him. He will be verbally abused, and they will shame him by calling him a coward, a woman.”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

“The book sets up the potential of affect to both affix relationships of oppression and provide cathexis to resist or oppose these relationships. For this, we may need to reimagine relations between human beings and space as irreducible to the interpretations that we as human beings project onto them. A more object-centered perspective would allow us to acknowledge the existence of something beyond human imagination that rests within the environment and material objects that produce an affect experienced by us.34 This view challenges the traditional psychoanalytical association made between affective realm and human subjectivity, in which “affective possibility and potentiality” lie only within the inner world of human beings.”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

“Governmentality becomes an exercise of power that involves “the conduct of conduct” by which subjects are produced through the management of individual behavior”
― Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army