Hum Sayyid, Tu Mírásí: Reading for caste in Pakistani Urdu television drama serials

Given the extreme dearth of empirical studies documenting the prevalence and operation of caste in Pakistan, this article invites viewers of Pakistani Urdu-language drama serials to consider how caste dynamics shapes characters and plotlines of widely consumed media. Urdu language dramas are viewed extensively not only in Pakistan but also across the diaspora, making them an important site for both the encoding and unraveling of dominant caste ideologies prevalent in a predominantly Muslim Pakistani context. Drawing on two drama serials, Standup Girl (2023) and Udaari (2016), I examine how caste is simultaneously consolidated and concealed through discourses of “class difference,” “family honor,” and patriarchy. I focus on these two dramas because their female protagonists hail from caste-oppressed communities associated with lower class hereditary performance traditions in Punjab. Pejoratively labeled as Mírási/bhānd, these characters depart from the normative figure of the “respectable” heroine – typically coded as belonging to dominant-caste or Sayyid backgrounds – even when economically disadvantaged. By centering the characters of Zara and Meera and their association with performance labor on the stage, the article renders caste legible in ways that resist its narrative erasure. This article contributes to broader, transregional, transcultural, and transreligious discussions by demonstrating how cultural production serves as an important site for enacting, normalizing, and contesting caste violence.