ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the emergence of a separate Muslim identity as it was enabled through British colonial practices of representation. It explains how an election was in particular responsible for the disaster of Partition because of the representations it produced and enabled. The chapter shows that the representative institutions and practices inaugurated by colonial rule and democracy promotion continue to have a malign effect on Pakistani politics. With the new forms of colonial governmentality introduced by the British in the early nineteenth century, however, religion became a particularly important category. However, as part of an ongoing process of managing uncertainty, colonial governors categorised individuals, codified the laws by which they lived and created a separate private sphere. Instead, the point is to show in a focused way that the violence of Partition and the beginnings of democratic self-rule were not ruptural, but rather were produced by and continuous with the representational practices of colonialism.
