Suchergebnisse

The ethno-nationalist historiography in South Asia primarily emerged as the postcolonial critique of British colonialism. Alternatively, the anti-caste historiographers have criticized the postcolonial historiography for reflecting the similar hegemonic bias towards the possible pre-or-post colonial histories of the internally colonized classes and castes. In this article, while appreciating with epistemic humility the equally legitimate position of Michel Boivin, I interrogate the concept of the 'declassed' caste groups as it tends to relativize the erasure of caste, the structural aspect that is peripheral to Boivin's avowed goal of capturing diversity instead of difference, but central to the contemporary critical anti-caste scholarship that I rely on as an alternative framework of reference. Contending his selective epistemic prioritizing of the privileged Amil, Khoja, Mirza castes, I argue that Boivin's archival ethnography has not effectively attended to the embedded caste-based political orders. He has failed to adequately address the possible erasure of caste, thereby adding to the ahistorical portrayal of the underprivileged castes such as Kolhi, Bheel, Meghwar, and Jogi. Boivin's rendering of the 'Sufi Paradigm', therefore, is in continuation with the scholarship on Sindh that undermines hierarchical differences based on caste discrimination, and facilitates Sindhi progressive intelligentsia to historicize the privileged caste myth of caste-neutral Sufi Sindh.

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.

Using recent data for 2017/2018 the article provides empirical evidence on the persistence of the traditional inter-caste inequality in higher educational attainment—enrolment rate being much low for low castes than the high castes. The educational attainment of middle caste is lower than high castes but better than low caste untouchables, indicating a graded inequality in education attainment, unique feature of caste system. Between the income group the low income groups suffered the most from low education attainment than the high oncome groups. The inequalities in ownership of wealth and income and caste discrimination faced by low caste untouchables are the main reasons for low education attainment among the low caste and low income groups. The shift in the government policy towards privatisation of higher education also has taken the education beyond the reach of low income household. The caste discrimination result into high drop out among the scheduled castes. In the end based on the empirical results relevant (caste) group specific and income group specific policies are proposed to promote higher education among the low castes and low income groups. JEL Codes: 123, J24, D63, J71