HISTORY AND CULTURE OF MARWAT TRIBE IN KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA, PAKISTAN

Abstract

Change is inevitable within the universe. It plays a significant role in the course of history in terms of “ancient” and “modern”, both in positive as well as negative senses. The modern scientific and technological developments have changed the world into a global village and brought many good and bad things for humanity simultaneously. The overall improvement in human living standards through these developments may be a blessing for humanity but military and cultural invasions of the well-developed nations (being well-equipped with the weapons of mass-destruction and having monopoly over the international media) are a curse for the less-developed nations. The former are dominating the later not only politically and economically but, slowly and steadily, also replacing their centuries old indigenous histories and cultures with the concepts of globalization, despite the fact that indigenous histories and cultures worth as a valuable intangible heritage for their respective nations and its preservation, at least, within the pages of history is essential. In this regard, Subaltern Studies have been emerged on the horizon of historical knowledge. This research paper, too, is focused on the subaltern history and culture of a Pakistani ethnic tribe known as Marwats. Majority of the Marwats’ population is rural having an enriched intangible heritage of indigenous histories and cultures. But, the dilemma of this heritage is that it is fading along with the death of older indigenous generations and their younger generations are not only ignorant of it but also less interested in it. They consider it as a backward and useless discourse of history. They feel shy of it whenever they come across it incidentally, despite the fact that their present is deeply rooted within their past. Hence, this research paper is an attempt to preserve the history and culture of Marwat tribe in the pages of history as precisely as possible for the forthcoming generations of Pakistan.