Caste and Islam for Citizenship

Abstract This article argues that caste consciousness underlay Muslim identity and politics in early independent Pakistan despite official portrayal of caste as a phenomenon peculiar to non-Muslims. It unravels the component threads of such caste consciousness among Pakistani Muslims by focusing on Arain elites who produced a caste history tailored to fit within Pakistan's newly emerging nationalist self-imagination. Through a published Urdu-language narrative of Arab-Muslim birth sponsored by their caste association, Arain elites posited that their caste selves were component parts of their religious (Muslim) and national (Pakistani) selves, to the exclusion of other axes of belonging such as region and language. In this way, they sought to redefine caste in terms consonant both with Islamic universalism and Pakistani nationalism. The Arains’ trajectory in Pakistan elucidates the historical entanglements of caste with religion and politics that contribute to its pernicious persistence across religious communities and political borders in South Asia.