Mixture between populations is an evolutionary process that shapes genetic variation. Intermixing between groups of distinct ancestries creates mosaics of chromosomal segments inherited from multiple ancestral populations. Studying populations of mixed ancestry (admixed populations) is of special interest in population genetics as it not only provides insights into the history of admixed groups but also affords an opportunity to reconstruct the history of the ancestral populations, some of whom may no longer exist in unmixed form. Furthermore, it improves our understanding of the impact of population migrations and helps us discover links between genetic and phenotypic variation in structured populations. The majority of research on admixed populations has focused on African Americans and Latinos where the mixture is recent, having occurred within the past 500 years. In this dissertation, I describe several studies that I have led that expand the scope of admixed studies to West Eurasians and South Asians where the mixture is older, and data from ancestral groups is mostly unavailable. First, I introduce a novel method that studies admixture linkage disequilibrium (LD) to infer the time of mixture. I analyze genomewide data from 40 West Eurasian populations and show that all Southern European, Levantine and Jewish groups have inherited sub-Saharan African ancestry in the past 100 generations, likely reflecting events during the Roman Empire and subsequent Arab migrations. Next, I apply a range of methods to study the history of Siddi groups that harbor African, Indian and Portuguese ancestry, and to infer the history of Roma gypsies from Europe. Finally, I develop a novel approach that combines the insights of frequency and LD-based statistics to infer the underlying model of mixture. I apply this method to 73 South Asian groups and infer that major mixture occurred ~2,000-4,000 years ago. In a subset of populations, all the mixture occurred during this period, a time of major change in India marked by the de- urbanization of the Indus valley civilization and recolonization of the Gangetic plateau. Inferences from our analyses provide novel insights into the history of these populations as well as about the broad impact of human migrations.

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This thesis explores the origin of one of the most engrossing concerns of the post-colonial Indian state, that is, its extensive, intricate, and expensive feeding arrangements for the civilians. It tracks the colonial origin of the post-colonial welfare state, of which state-management of food is one of the most publicized manifestations. This thesis examines the intervention of the late colonial British state in food procurement and distribution in India during the Second World War, and various forms of such intervention, such as the introduction of food rationing and food austerity laws. It argues that the war necessitated actions on the part of the colonial state to secure food supplies to a vastly expanded British Indian Army, to the foreign Allied troops stationed in India, and to the workers employed in war-industries. The thesis brings forth the constitutional and political predicaments that deprived the colonial central government's food administration of success. It further reveals how the bitter bargaining about food imports into India between the Government of India and the War Cabinet in Britain hampered the state efforts to tackle the food crisis. By discussing the religious and cultural codes vis-à-vis food consumption that influenced government food policies, this thesis has situated food in the historiography of consumption in colonial India. In addition to adopting a political approach to study food, it has also applied sociological treatment, particularly while dealing with how the wartime scarcity, and consequent austerity laws, forced people to accept novel consumption cultures. It also contributes to the historiography of 'everyday state'. Through its wartime intervention in everyday food affairs, the colonial state that had been distant and abstract in the perception of most common households, suddenly became a reality to be dealt with in everyday life within the domestic site. Thus, the macro state penetrated micro levels of existence. The colonial state now even developed elaborate food surveillance to gather intelligence about violation of food laws. This thesis unravels the responses of some of the political and religious organizations to state intervention in quotidian food consumption. Following in this vein, through a study of the political use of famine-relief in wartime Bengal, it introduces a new site to the study of communal politics in India, namely, propagation of Hindu communal politics through distribution of food by the Hindu Mahasabha party. Further, it demonstrates how the Muslim League government's failure to prevent the Great Bengal Famine of 1943-44 was politically used by the Mahasabha to oppose the League's emerging demand for the creation of Pakistan.

This dissertation intervenes in the fields of South Asian Masculinity Studies, Affect Studies, Critical Disability Studies, Feminist Cultural Studies, and Trauma as well as Memory Studies. The focus of this project is on the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, a nine-month long war between East Pakistan and West Pakistan, which started on 26 March 1971 and ended on 16 December 1971 with Bangladesh, former East Pakistan, emerging as an independent nation. I concentrate on East Pakistani/Bangladeshi muktijoddhas (freedom fighters) who fought in the war, and birangonas (survivors of sexual violence) who were abducted by military officials and their collaborators. Drawing on political speeches, parliamentary debates, press statements, and governmental news reports, I examine how these sources create a narrative of the manly muktijoddha who demonstrates his masculinity through exhibiting courage and disavowing his pain. I further analyze memoirs by freedom fighters who complicate this image of the courageous muktijoddha through recollecting moments of pain and fear during combat. Significant to my analysis are also survivor testimonies of gender, physical, and sexual violence of wartime women in East Pakistan/Bangladesh, which oppose a more singular nationalist rhetoric of the 1971 war that celebrates the male muktijoddha while marginalizing women’s experiences. I delve into how birangona testimonies narrate the women’s trauma of sexual violence and of witnessing their daughters’ abuse by wartime soldiers. In analyzing women’s stories, I highlight the importance of listening to the voices of birangona-mas (survivors who are also mothers), and thereby question the nationalist mythologizing of the muktijoddha’s mother who sends her son to war. In exploring the muktijoddha, the muktijoddha’s mother, and the birangona/birangona-ma, I argue that there are multiple alternative readings of the war that are suppressed by nationalist discourse, which warrant recognition within Liberation War and South Asian history. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / My dissertation focuses on the Bangladesh Liberation War that took place between East Pakistan and West Pakistan from 26 March 1971 till 16 December 1971. This war led to the independence of Bangladesh, former East Pakistan. During the war, Bangladeshi governmental documents and nationalist speeches portrayed the East Pakistani/Bangladeshi freedom fighter or muktijoddha as an ideal masculine figure who fought against West Pakistani soldiers with courage. I analyze memoirs by freedom fighters who show how they both conform to, and disrupt the nationalist portrayal of the courageous muktijoddha. I also examine personal recollections of birangonas (women survivors of sexual violence) who speak of their trauma, reveal narratives of their daughter’s abuse by soldiers and their collaborators, and provide a reading of the wartime woman that challenges the nation’s vested interest in the ideal male muktijoddha. Overall, my project encourages people to rethink the Liberation War from the perspectives of wartime men and women survivors who have witnessed violence and mutilation firsthand.

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The purpose of this thesis is to assess Pakistan’s relationship with Afghanistan before and after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. I argue that the nature of the relationship was transformed by the region becoming the centre of Cold War conflict, and show how Pakistan’s role affected the development of the mujahidin insurgency against Soviet occupation. My inquiry begins by assessing the historical determinants of the relationship, arising from the colonial legacy and local interpretations of the contested spheres of legitimacy proffered by state, tribe and Islam. I then map the trajectory of the relationship from Pakistan’s independence in 1947, showing how the retreat of great power rivalry following British withdrawal from the subcontinent allowed for the framing of the relationship in primarily bilateral terms. The ascendance of bilateral factors opened greater possibilities for accommodation than had previously existed, though the relationship struggled to free itself of inherited colonial disputes, represented by the Pashtunistan issue. The most promising attempt to resolve the dispute came to an end with the communist coup and subsequent Soviet invasion, which subsumed bilateral concerns under the framework of Cold War confrontation. Viewing the invasion as a major threat, Pakistan pursued negotiations for Soviet withdrawal, aligned itself with the US and gave clandestine support to the mujahidin insurgency. External support enhanced mujahidin military viability while exacerbating weaknesses in political organization and ideology. Soviet withdrawal in 1989 left an unresolved conflict. Faced with state collapse and turmoil across the border, heightened security concerns following loss of US support, and intensified links among non-state actors on both sides of the frontier, the Pakistan government drew on its recently gained experience of working through non-state actors to attempt to maintain its influence in Afghanistan. There would be no return to the relatively stable state-state ties prevailing before 1979.

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