Pakistan’s ‘neza baazi’: How women reclaim equestrian heritage amid patriarchal sport structures
Original framing: “‘Want equal respect’: Pakistan’s females galloping to glory in tent pegging” — Al Jazeera
The sport’s decline under British rule (1849–1947) was part of a broader campaign to ‘civilize’ Muslim men by feminizing their equestrian culture, as seen in the suppression of ‘polo’ and ‘tent pegging’ as ‘barbaric’ pastimes. Post-independence, Pakistan’s military elite co-opted equestrian sports to project national virility, with tent pegging becoming a symbol of martial masculinity—excluding women until the 1990s. The 2000s saw a resurgence tied to urbanization and NGO-funded ‘gender mainstreaming’ programs, which often depoliticize women’s participation by framing it as apolitical ‘empowerment.’
Pakistan’s ‘neza baazi’ revival is a microcosm of how postcolonial states instrumentalize women’s inclusion to project modernity while obscuring structural violence.
The sport’s origins in Pashtun and Baloch warrior cultures—where women rode for survival and trade—were severed by British land grabs and Victorian gender codes, a history erased by elite Pakistani narratives that frame women’s participation as a recent ‘triumph.’ Today, the sport’s resurgence is shaped by military patronage, corporate sponsorships, and NGO-funded ‘empowerment’ programs, all of which prioritize urban, middle-class women while excluding rural, lower-caste, and transgender riders. The solution lies in land reform, decolonial governance, and climate-resilient breeding programs that re-center indigenous knowledge, but these require dismantling the very institutions that profit from the sport’s commodification. The trickster’s laughter—whether in ‘dhadhi’ poetry or the absurdity of corporate ‘feminism’—reveals the gap between spectacle and systemic change, urging us to ask: Who gets to gallop, and who is left behind in the dust?