A CONQUEST OF PASTS 175
not seen as a representation of a diverse, intermixed medieval society.
Some historians discarded the Chach portion of the text entirely, for the
account of the Hindu king contained nothing of note for the story of
Muslims. Others recuperated histories of the masses or Muslim settle-
ments. By the mid-nineteenth century, the readings of Islam's origins
reflected an overdetermined politics of antagonistic difference between
Hindus and Muslims in India. Chachnama then emerged in the imme-
diate aftermath of 1947 as a foundational text for the state of Pakistan.
After 1947, thought about 712 AD fell to two sets of historians in
Pakistan. One set comprised the historians of Sind-specifically
U. M. Daudpota (1897-1958) and Nabi Baksh Khan Baloch (1917-20II).
The other set comprised the historians of Pakistan-specifically
I. H. Qureshi (1903-1981) and S. M. Ikram (1908-1973). The usage of
Chachnama as a source text for Pakistan's "earliest" history was due
to the scholarship of S. M. Ikram, whose Ab-e Kausar (1941) itself be-
came the source text for Pakistan's textbooks in the 1950s and 1960s.
In 1953, Pak'.istan celebrated its-fifth anniversary with the produc-
tion of a commemorative volume issued from Karachi: Five Years of
Pakistan: August r947-August r9 5 2. The second chapter, "Pakistan's
Pasts," was written by the staff at the Department of Archeology. It
begins by addressing sites in the Indus valley that connect the country
to ancient history but quickly moves toward more important time pe-
riods. Pakistan thus presents one of its earliest official pronouncements
of its origins:
The explorations in Baluchistan and the excavations at Mohenjo-daro
in r950 had alike been concerned with the pre-historic period of the
country's history and with clarifying a picture of the past which as
already known in part. They represented the application of new
methods and more intensive study to old problems. The excavations
at Bhambhor, by contrast, were of pioneering importance. They were
carried out by the Department of Archaeology early in 195r, and they
represe~ the first attempt of a young Islamic State to understand her
own Islamic past. For Bhambhor is a site not of pre-historic times,
but of the Arabs' eastward expansion through Makran and Afghani-
stan into Sind and up to the border of 'Hind'. Its excavation is the first
of the kind on an Islamic site in Pakistan or, indeed, throughout the
Sub-Continent.