EXPLORING BADAL AS ZEEST-O-RIWAJ IN PUKHTUN CULTURE: A CASE STUDY OF FEMALES OF VILLAGE GALOCH, SWAT

Abstract

This paper deals with an often-discussed theme ‘Badal’ or revenge among Pashtuns. Albeit; this paper provides the insights into a gendered domain of ‘Badal’ that is the cultural and ritualistic aspect of reciprocity. There are multiple lenses that could be used to explore the ontology of this gendered ‘Badal’; including symbolic violence or the reciprocity through gift and exchange. This paper will explore these layers of epistemological meanings that are embedded in Pashtun Zeest-o-Riwaj or the Pashtun culture and rituals. Badal is what completes a Pashtun; making of Pashtun needs to be understood in its idiosyncratic feature of extended self through his or her commune. Personal identities are submerged and masked by the family or clan identities that constitute the communal and national identity for Pashtuns. This paper is based on the ethnographic fieldwork done in a Yousafzai Pashtun community in the rural setting of Swat district in post-Taliban era. The study brings forth the women centric accounts of Badal or reciprocity in a Pashtun cultural setting. In addition, it probed the question of latent symbolic violence that is either sustained or resisted by the Pashtun womenfolk. It provides hermeneutical insights to the gendered explanations of ghairat (often translated as shame). Even the educated women are involved in domestic chores rather than being employed in a formal setting; therefore, they are usually involved in this strategic reciprocal praxis. Badal as reciprocity is often a skipped topic when etic studies tried to understand the Pakhtunwali. Albeit, when an emic perspective of this ethnography explored the Badal from female perspective; new insights about burden and invisible symbolic violence were made overt.

Keywords: Pukhtun, Pukhtunwali, Zeest-o-Riwaj, Badal, Swat, Honor & Taunt.