Paper short abstract:

The Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC), a group of 40 religious and conservative groups founded in November 2011, with an aggressive anti-American and anti-Indian agenda, offers an insight into the ways how sectarian emotions are being used and controlled for political and strategic gains.

Paper long abstract:

The paper discusses the DPC project as an attempt to form a coalition of competing and conflicting religious and political forces that is presented as an emotional 'outburst' of calculated anger and anxiety.

The use of emotions in this political project caters to various competing and conflicting needs which will be unpacked in the paper:

• References to its emotional contents are being used to justify and legitimise more aggressive demands made by the Difa Council. They are thus portrayed as temporary and can still be revised.

• Emotions play a particular role in sectarian politics where lines of dissent with sectarian competitors and adversaries are routinely drawn to consolidate support and downgrade the opponent. While it can provide steam to the project it can also prove divisive and disruptive.

• There are also attempts to stir up emotional attachment to the fatherland, to Pakistan, the military and the legacy of Zia-ul-Haq. These look more like institutional concerns that reflect the anxiety of losing out in the current reconfiguration of politics in Pakistan and in the strategic competition with India.

• Emotional politics also allow the Difa Council to join the current bandwagon of popular 'tsunami' politics of the Imran Khan variety. They are thus meant to confer new legitimacy on the religious right in the national political arena that is increasingly dominated by emotional mass meeting where a new generation of young Pakistanis has the chance to vent their anger over the failures of the political and economic system.

E-paper: this Paper will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed