Architecture of Caste in Pakistan

Dalit Assertions in a Culture of Denial
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-032-76719-2
Verlag: Routledge India

Buch, Englisch, 322 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 649 g

This book is a groundbreaking and original contribution to understanding the intersectionality of caste, race, and class in South Asia. Grounded in rich ethnographic fieldwork, it situates its analyses in Pakistan to reveal how caste—often denied or obscured by nationalist, religious, and liberal-progressive discourses—continues to shape everyday hierarchies, moral imaginaries, and political structures. It unravels how both privileged and oppressed caste groups invoke the past to construct identities and contest histories in the present, showing how systemic discrimination has pushed Scheduled Castes and Pasmanda communities to the lowest rungs of the social, economic, and political hierarchy. Moving beyond the familiar frames of Indian caste practices, the book demonstrates that caste in Pakistan is not a relic of the past or a “Hindu problem,” but a transreligious and deeply entrenched social structure sustained across Hindu, Muslim, and Christian communities alike. Foregrounding caste as an analytic category and a fundamental marker of identity, the book interrogates the role of hegemonic actors—religious, nationalist, and secular—in strategically denying or reasserting caste to preserve structures of privilege. Combining theoretical sophistication with moral and ethnographic engagement, Architecture of Caste in Pakistan compels a rethinking of caste, religion, and equality in Muslim societies.

This volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of caste and discrimination studies, critical Dalit and Pasmanda studies, sociology, social anthropology, and South Asian studies.

Zielgruppe

General and Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hussain, Ghulam

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wirtschaftssoziologie, Arbeitssoziologie, Organisationssoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Soziale Gruppen & Klassen
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Minderheiten, Interkulturelle & Multikulturelle Fragen
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Historische & Regionale Volkskunde

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter 1

Introduction

Denial, Epistemic Violence, and Majoritarianism

Dalit Mobilization Amid Caste Resilience

The Missing Pasmanda Question and the Transreligious Imperative

Chapter 2

Witnessing from Within

Naming Against Erasure

Symbolic Decastification

Chapter 3

Architecture of Privilege

Transreligious Grammar of Caste

Sacred Genealogies

The Creation of Ashraf Caste Hegemon

Everyday Sayedism

Minoritisation of Dalits

Posthumous Ashrafization and the Symbolic Expropriation of Dalit Saints

From Harijanisation to Hinduisation

Borderline Belongings and the Reconfiguration of Dalit Political Subjectivity

Chapter 4

Architecture of Erasure, Violence and Denial

Denial and erasure through minoritisation

Denial of Dalitness

Logic of Spiritual Inequality

Violence of Religious Binaries

Partitioned Solidarities

Beyond Forced Conversion Narrative

Not Who Converts, But Why

Chapter 5

Politics of Naming and Belonging

Politics of Naming

Strategic Essentialism and Identitarian Claims

The Afterlife of 'Scheduled Castes'

Darawar Claims of Belonging

Chapter 6

Biopolitics of Representation

The Census as a Site of Struggle

Strategic Use of the SC Category

Separate Electorates Vs Joint Electorates

The Post-2002 Electoral Framework and Dalit Representation

Disparities in Local Governance

Trajectory of Dalit Political Exclusion from Electoral Politics

Loyalty, Tokenism, and Ashraf Patronage

Biopolitics of Enumeration

Chapter 7

Symbolic Empowerment and the Limits of Recognition

Mobilizing as Sindhi and Pakistani Patriots

Asserting Dalitness

The Making of Ambedkarite Sindh

Dalit Sujaag Tehreek: Vanguard of Anti-Caste Resistance

Crisis of Collective Action

Strategizing Assertiveness

Pragmatics of Strategic Mobilization

Charter of Demands: From Legal Recognition to Structural Redress

Chapter 8

Toward a Transreligius Reckoning

Reckoning with Erasure

The Struggle Beyond Binary

Possibilities of Dalit-Pasmanda Solidarity

Toward a Critical Transreligious Anti-Caste Epistemology

Research Gaps and Future Pathways

Über Autor(innen)

Ghulam Hussain (Sufi) is an Assistant Professor at Bahria University, Islamabad, and a Georg Forster (Humboldt) Postdoctoral Researcher at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich. His research focuses on caste, social exclusion, and transreligious identity in Pakistan. His work has been published in Postcolonial Studies, Critical Sociology, Journal of Asian and African Studies, and Interventions.