https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9538-1840
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Abstract
The Sindhi nationalist historiography is a classic case of how to read historical, archaeological, and political texts of importance to justify the present-day modernist ideologies premised on excluding marginalized sections of society. This essay interrogates the Sindhi nationalist literati elite’s epistemic neglect of the underprivileged caste’s lifeworld. That disregard reflects in their literary and political writings that arguably rely on the British Orientalist historiography to construct the myth of caste-neutral and egalitarian culture of Sufi Sindh. It traces the historicisation of the claim of Hindu–Muslim interfaith harmony, and its persistence in the post-Partition Sindh. Based on the content analysis of progressive literature and the historiography of progressive politics in Sindh, it is concluded that owing to the casteist social structural barriers the privileged caste elite at the vanguard of progressive nationalist politics was blinded by their own privileged position to justly address the caste question. That inherent blindness to see through the problem of caste is the reason that progressives’ emancipatory projects to redefine the past and myths end in failure.
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Notes
1 Proto-nationalists were the early progressive and conservative literati, or the proto-progressives that began asserting the historical uniqueness of Sindh as a Sufi region. They influenced the Sindhi nationalists in the mid-twentieth century to construct the Sindhi identity on the pattern of the nation-state model.
2 I have relied on Hussain (Citation2020a) to inform my understanding of caste whereby caste and class are seen as embedded in each other. When I write about the “privileged caste” it should be understood as the “privileged class” at the same time.
3 By Dalit both Hindu and Christian Dalits are meant. Yet, since Hindu Dalits make up the majority in Sindh, the term Dalit in this essay should be understood as usually meant to refer to Hindu Dalits or Scheduled Castes.
4 For instance, Michel Boivin argues that “Beg claimed that Shah Abd al-Latif had a ‘good nature’ with supernatural powers” (see Boivin Citation2020, 169).
5 No academic study done so far subscribes to this narrative of forced conversion in Pakistan, except for some NGO reports that are quite sketchy, selective, and lacking in empirical evidence (see Schaflechner Citation2017; Wajid Citation2017; Hussain Citation2020b). However, over the past couple of decades, there have been filed several cases alleging that non-Muslim girls or women have been abducted and allegedly forcibly converted and married off to Muslim men. Yet, in almost every instance, the allegation of “forced conversion” could not be proved. Most of such cases have proved to be runaway marriages whereby a non-Muslim male or female converts to Islam with the intention to marry a Muslim as conversion to Islam is normatively considered as a necessary ritual to solemnise a marriage (see Hussain Citation2020b).
6 Before Partition, Dhak Bazar, a covered mall of Shikarpur, was a spectacle of untouchability. The privileged caste Hindus would not allow Muslim males and lower-caste Hindus to enter into the mall. Only Muslim women were allowed to enter the mall street. Separate hedge places were built at the corners or gates of the mall for Muslim peasants to load and unload cargo. There had been some incidents of Hindu merchants assaulting and raping Muslim women, or asking sexual favours in exchange for money or commodities (Interview with Agha Noor Ahmed Pathan, former Director [Admin] Academy of Letters, Islamabad, 2020). Similarly, Muhammad Moosa Bhutto cites Altaf Shaikh, a Sindh travelogue writer, noting that once he was invited by a (privileged caste) Hindu host to his home. During a conversation about Sindhi culture, when a Hindu daughter asked her mother about “Ajrak” (Sindhi shawl), the mother said, “my daughter, in Sindh ‘jatt’ [ignorant] Muslims wear this shawl” (Bhutto Citation1977, 109). The affiliates of G. M. Sayed were quite angry at Altaf Shaikh for mentioning that event, and told him that they knew that Hindus thought that way about Muslims, but by writing against Hindus they could suffer politically (Bhutto Citation1977, 110).
7 Sindh was eventually separated from the Bombay Presidency in 1936 (Khuhro Citation1997; Bhutto Citation197Citation7, 62–63).
8 For further reading on the caste-class embeddedness and its understanding by the progressive Urdu and Sindhi literary activists, read Hussain (Citation2020a).
9 For instance, four munshis (scribes) “who accomplished the larger part of the translations during the decade were [Amil] Hindu, Nandiram Navani and Udharam Thanvardas Mirchandani; and Muslim [Shia Ashrafia and a Sayed]” (see Boivin Citation2020, 49).
10 Generally considered as the primary source on the early history of Sindh, Manan Ahmed Asif (Citation2016) has questioned that assumption, arguing that though it was originally written in Arabic, it was not a book written in the thirteenth century on the history of the seventh- and eighth-century Sindh when Arabs conquered Sindh, but a genre of “Persian advice literature” (Citation2016, 92), an “Indic political theory” (2016, 67) or a guideline regarding governance for the rulers of Sindh in thirteenth-century Sindh.
11 Michel Boivin believes that Richard Burton “remains the only comprehensive exposition of Sufism in nineteenth-century Sindh” (Citation2020, 106).
12 The “new elite” referred to Sindhi gentlemen from the castes of scribes, merchants, and landowning Ashrafia “who were educated in the English schools in Karachi and Hyderabad before joining the civil service”. According to Boivin, “[the] new elite felt that it was necessary for the common people to understand the text of the Shah jo Risalo, where previously they had listened to it without understanding any but a very few verses” (Citation2020, 147).
13 These professional caste musicians often sang in praise of Sayeds and Pirs, and thus were spiritual followers of Sayeds. For instance, Boivin himself gives an example of Suleman Shah, a sung faqir, who was a follower of Pir Ali Gohar Shah (see Boivin Citation2020, 273).
14 Boivin in The Sufi Paradigm relies heavily on Dr. Nabi Baksh Baloch’s collections of oral traditions to inform his argument about devotional regimes of knowledge (Boivin Citation2020, 276).
15 Bania is the colloquial term for the privileged business and mercantile class of Hindu castes.
16 Amils were employed by the British to translate English texts into Sindhi to use in the newly created schools (Boivin Citation2019, 234). Amils of Sehwan would worship Sayed Pir Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (d. 1274) for centuries (Boivin Citation2020, 49).
17 See Jangles from Sind by Omar (Mrs. A. Ives-Currie), written in 1922 and published in 1936, for which Sir H. Dow, the second Governor of Sind, wrote the foreword “as an old Sindhee” (Joyo 2014, 15).
18 Amongst the Sindhi Muslim scholars, Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo was the first to get inspiration from the left-oriented Marxist-nationalist literature produced by privileged caste Hindus. His theoretical interpretations and translations of the Marxist literature greatly influenced G. M. Sayed, Shaikh Ayaz, Ghulam Muhammad Girami, and Siraj Memon, and to some extent Pir Hasam-u-din Rashidi. Despite being secretary of the Sindhi Adabi Board, a literary institution of the government, for 30 years, and an editor of its digest, Mehran, Joyo did not write a single line in support of Pakistan, and instead propagated an ethno-nationalist, secular, and Marxist ideology.