Urdu-speaking Shiʿa khatibs (orators) in Karachi regularly speak on the origins of Pakistan, seeking to recuperate Shiʿi contributions to the foundation of the nation-state. In this article, I argue that such claims do not resist, subvert, or undermine statist historical narratives. Instead, the claims mimic, in structure and teleology, the very statist historical narratives that they attempt to challenge. I draw upon twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork in Karachi and demonstrate how thoroughly circumscribed such claims are. I read this minority rhetoric as an attempt to appropriate the majoritarian discourse, rather than as an attempt to challenge the dominant historiography of the origins of Pakistan. I turn to the domain of Shiʿi khitabat (oratory), a ubiquitous and public performance, and identify the important role played by such mass and physical gatherings in the articulation of historical claims. My works emerges from, and contributes back to, scholarship on South Asian Shiʿism, oratory, and the public sphere.

Pioneering Pakistani female journalist Zeb-un-Nissa Hamidullah in her ‘Between ourselves: a weekly feature for women’ columns, which appeared in Karachi's English-language daily newspaper Dawn during the late 1940s and early 1950s, encouraged her readers to stretch rather than breach the boundaries in how (educated) Pakistani women—as ‘good wives and wise mothers’—should fulfil their familial (and wider social) responsibilities. Her advice—which often took the form of ‘homespun’ homilies—consistently flagged up the crucial role of women, whose duties included not simply overseeing their children's behaviour but teaching their offspring, through their own emotional responses, how to feel. In their capacity as mothers, women needed to exercise sabr (patience and perseverance) when providing all-important emotional training for future Pakistani citizens who—like the state—were still in the process of being made. Accordingly, this article discusses the spatially defined context in which ‘Between ourselves’ appeared—that is, Dawn itself and the fast-expanding city of Karachi which was rife with uncertainties—before turning to the emotional ‘good practice’ that Hamidullah promoted.

Hydropericardium syndrome has caused huge economic losses to the poultry industry in Pakistan. The disease was reported for the first time in 1987 at Angara Goth, a broiler producing area near Karachi and given the name Angara disease. The disease is prevalent in 3–7 week old broilers and characterized by its sudden onset, accumulation of a jelly like fluid in the pericardial sac, inflamed liver with basophilic intranuclear inclusion bodies, congested kidneys and up to 70% mortality rates. Fowl adenovirus 4 has been found to be the causative agent. In Pakistan, the status of scientific research on various aspects of hydropericardium syndrome is quite unsatisfactory. There is an extensive use of formalin inactivated liver homogenate vaccines for the prevention and control of disease. Moreover, the gross lesions seen in post mortem examination are only the criteria for the clinical diagnosis of disease. Keeping in view the economic significance of hydropericardium syndrome, the need for additional scientific research on proper diagnosis and control of disease is suggested.