'Intergalactic' Resistance Studies Conference

Individual presentation

Beyond ‘digitalised resistance’: the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) and political organizing in the age of social media in Pakistan.

Munir Ahmed
The fourth industrial revolution a.k.the digital revolution is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres (Schwab, 2015). The digitalization of social life in the post-colonial context like Pakistan has also resulted in conditioning the political sphere. As a result, the field of politics has become increasingly complex as the digital space continues to obscure and challenge the established traditions of political organizing on the left and right alike. Apparently, the digital sphere has taken its toll on progressive politics more by reducing resistance politics to mere ‘digitalised resistance’ while shrinking the space for physical political organizing in Pakistan at large. However, in the most brutalized ethnic periphery of Pakistan, the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) has evolved into a potent social movement that has, to a large extent, reclaimed resistance politics through online and physical political organizing in Balochistan. Led by young women, the BYC has championed the cause of Baloch peoples’ resistance movement in Balochistan, fighting dispossession by large-scale infrastructural projects, enforced disappearances, militarization, and environmental degradation. Currently, the BYC is facing a brutal state crackdown with almost its entire leadership imprisoned under a draconian and colonial law. Therefore, in this study, I intend to explore how the young Baloch women have not only been able to participate en masse but have also been able to lead this movement. I am also interested in further exploring the various ways in which the young Baloch women have been able to indeginise this movement in ways it is connected to and speaks with its political subjects in Balochistan. Finally, this study will analyse how BYC has been able to redefine the contours of political organizing in the age of social media in Pakistani Balochistan.
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