This paper is an attempt to investigate the historical trajectory of Ashrafia hegemony in Sindh, the province of Pakistan. I begin with the analysis of biopolitics of caste, class and religion organised around Hindu–Muslim binarism and unity as it unfolded during and after the partition of the Indian subcontinent. I particularly analyse the demographic shifts, the official categorisation of populations, and the communal and ethnonationalist claims that led to the specific kind of interpretation of religion, caste and class. Informed by the Ambedkarian subaltern perspective and based on the analysis of ethnographic data and vernacular literature, I explain that nationalist ideologies framed in the narratives of political Islam and Sufism tend to organise politics around Hindu–Muslim otherness, as in case of Pakistani nationalism, and Hindu–Muslim harmony, as in case of Sindhi nationalism. Based on that understanding, I argue that Ashrafia advantage, by and large, is the product of pre-existing historical hegemonic relations than any conscious strategy, and or directly imposed domination. Since both the Ashrafia narratives primarily imagine people through religious binaries, they lack the counter-hegemonic elements that could confront casteism that lies at the intersection of class and religion. None of the narratives, being performative projections of the ideal religious society, brought casteism in their focus while dealing with the structural inequalities, social hierarchies and the issues of political representation of the Dalit class. It resulted in the unwarranted legitimacy for Ashrafia hegemony, Jati Hindu domination and Dalit subordination. This re-hierarchised caste groups and continue to (re)distribute the caste capital by (re)producing Sayedism, Dalit exclusion and caste-class oligarchies.

This paper is an attempt to investigate the discursive bases of the categorical and identity-based choices available to the Dalits under the Ashrafia hegemony, and the resultant denial of Dalitness prevalent among the Dalits and the Sindhi civil society in, Pakistan. Informed by the Ambedkarian (subaltern) perspective, I analyse the conversational interviews conducted with the Dalit activists (mostly Scheduled Castes), and with their Ashrafia class counterparts. Interrogating the superior status of Sayed caste(s), I contend that the the denial of casteism, the opposition to the use of the ‘Dalit’ identity marker and the negation of the Dalitness seemed to have as much to do with the belief in Ashrafia values as it had with the normative sanction of the Savarna. values.Both the Savarna and the Ashrafia values seemed to seek legitimacy from the dominant ethnocentric forms of the politicized Sufism. Political Sufism merges the Savarna and Ashrafia norms by means of the syncretic narrative based on interfaith harmony and the civilisational rhetoric. Ashrafisation (also Savarnisation) and the reverence towards Sayeds were the key self-perpetuating hegemonic processes underlying the attempts by the Dalits and the civil society activists to dissipate cognitive dissonance underlying the existing Dalitness and the Ashrafia hegemony. I, therefore, conclude that the practices and the narratives prevalent in Sindhi civil society undermined the Dalit agency to come up with their own counter-hegemonic and emancipatory narrative(s).

This paper attempts the historiographical analysis of the caste as it reflects in Sindhi progressive literature and rural politics. In an attempt to reframe the harmonious image of Sindhi society, the Progressives popularised certain slogans, phrases and historical events as the metaphors of the nationalist and class struggle. Tracing from the early Partition phase (the 1940s), this paper interrogates the progressive’s orientalist literary trajectory that reframes caste metaphors and constructs the Sindhi nationalist narrative. It is contended that the reframing of some key historical events of Dalits and peasants seem uncritical and apologetic of caste friction, create an illusion of neutrality and at times even sanction casteism as a functional aspect of Sindhi society. The ‘progressive’ literature condones caste hierarchies and flattens the question of caste adding to the pre-existing hegemonic relations between the historically dominant and the subordinated caste groups. This diminishes the possibility of deploying the framework of caste-as-class for understanding caste, organising Dalits reckoning their agency as it may shape their immanent narratives and subverting caste hierarchies.

This paper is an attempt to understand the appropriation of spaces of Dalits by Sindhi progressive activists and short story writers in Pakistan as they construct, or rather undermine, caste at the anvil of religion and gender to reframe their own theo-political agenda premised on political Sufism or Sufi nationalism. I specifically discuss the narratives emergent of the three popular short stories that are reframed as having exceptional emancipatory potential for the Dalits. Assessing the emancipatory limits of the Sindhi progressive narrative, I argue that while the short stories purport to give fuller expression to religious, gender-based, and class dimensions of the problem, it elides the problem of casteism and the subsequent existential demand of Dalit emancipation. Given the hegemonic influence of local Ashrafia class, the internal caste frictions are glossed over through political Sufism or Sindhi nationalism. This gloss of politicized Sufism hampers Dalit agency and rather facilitates the appropriation of Dalit spaces by the Ashrafia class. This leads to the conclusion that the seemingly progressive literary-political narratives framed in theo-political idiom may offer to the oppressed no more than token sympathy, compassion, self-pity, and false pride in legends. Instead, they allow the appropriation of spaces and events of the oppressed, and the objectification of oppressed bodies by the oppressor.

This article examines the poetry of Shah Abdul Latif for its casteist and patriarchal drift. In particular, it focuses on the ‘Dalit question’ and the interpretation of Latif’s poetry by both progressive and conservative sections of Sindhi society. Latif’s poetry is highly lyrical, and several of his works inspire love for a transcendental being immanent in nature and in people. Yet much of Latiff’s poetry and his biography suggest that Latif was not as progressive and egalitarian as he is often represented to be. Metaphors of caste, gender and religion have materiality. They do not simply invoke esoteric mystical feelings but also furnish justifications in everyday life for persisting with entrenched casteist and patriarchal values. Observing the easy appropriation of Latif’s poetry by different sections of Sindhi society, I conclude that it provides a social and political idiom that depoliticizes casteism and lacks the capacity to inspire Dalit consciousness.

This paper is an attempt to explicate the emancipatory limits of a historical figure in a caste society. As a case study, it offers a critical analysis of a metaphor of Shah Abdul Latif, the eighteenth-century poet who inherited enormous caste capital as a Sayed and custodian of a Sufi shrine. The poetry and life history of Shah Latif are often invoked by Sindhi nationalists to pose an ontological challenge to the narrative of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Situating Latif in the South Asian political context, this paper offers a historiographical analysis of the vernacular literature on the projection of Latif as the prime symbol of emancipation for the Sindhi nation. It contends that Latif, as we know him today, is an anachronistic construct that was initially inspired by the Orientalist motive, and later used by privileged caste Hindus and Ashrafiya morality to feed the performative Sindhi nationalist agenda.