Entangled Impurities in Contemporary Sindh: Some Evidence from Law and Bureaucracy

Abstract

This article lays out a framework for conceptualizing how religious differences and hierarchical, hereditary inequality consolidate in contemporary Sindh. I argue that the terms Hindu, Dalit, and hari are often conflated due to their entangled trajectories. Addressing this conflation sheds light on how structural inequality and discrimination function in Sindh. The article begins by focusing on a government document that limits potential applicants for a sanitation job to “non-Muslims.” Next, it explores how the religious category of Hindu has become, over time, susceptible to ritual stigmas, social marginalization, caste oppression, and hierarchization. Last, it addresses a legal judgment that hinges on recognizing caste inequality but cannot say so. Analysis of the decision reveals how the entanglement of Hindu, Dalit, and hari legal categories produces certain citizen-subjects as perpetual legal minors requiring the state’s paternalistic protection. Throughout, the article illustrates how the production of multiple hierarchies in the social fabric of Sindh and Pakistan broadly operates through the deployment of caste stigma as a public secret.