Gender, Dissent and the Afterlives of the Pakistan Movement: Fatima Jinnah in the 1965 Elections.

This article focuses on Fatima Jinnah's politics in postcolonial Pakistan. Widely hailed as the 'Mother of the Nation' in contemporary Pakistan, Fatima Jinnah harbours immense symbolic significance. Her patriotism, however, came furiously under question when she campaigned against the military dictator Ayub Khan in the 1965 presidential election. Using unexplored Fatima Jinnah papers, this article reconstructs the story of the election. It argues that the figure of Fatima Jinnah needs to be firmly placed outside the reductive epithets of 'mother' and 'sister' to underscore her political agency. It unpacks her campaign to show how her advocacy for democracy contested Ayub Khan's interpretation of Pakistan's ideology. Ultimately, her politics of dissent saw her branded a traitor and became the battleground for questions of gender, Islam and political rights. This election deepens our understanding of women leaders in postcolonial Pakistan and South Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]