Architecture of Caste in Pakistan

Reviews / Votes

"Ghulam Hussain's book is a pioneering contribution to sociology, offering a rare and insightful analysis of caste, class, religion, and untouchability in Pakistani society. Both empirically rich and theoretically sharp, it is indispensable reading for anyone seeking to understand the persistence of caste structures in South Asia."

Prof. Vivek Kumar, Professor of Sociology, JNU, New Delhi



2. This book breaks new ground in caste studies and South Asia scholarship at large. Through meticulous research and ethnography, Hussain uncovers for us the underside of tapestry: showing us how the idea of Pakistan, not unlike other countries, is based on fictive modernity. The claim of an egalitarian socio-political view that transcends caste has never been pushed back as stridently before. Hussain demythologizes not only the state but also romantically held histories of the civil groups and shows the landscape of Sindh is rife with caste discrimination, untouchability, unfair wages, bonded labour and an intensely inequitable economy. It would be difficult to ignore this book, and go back to some of the pristine ideas of state and citizenship in Pakistan now. This is a must-read for any serious scholar of South Asia.

Rita Kothari, Professor of English, and the Head of the department of English at Ashoka University.

3. "Does caste exist in Pakistan?" "Is there caste among Muslims?" These are the questions which those of us who identify as Pakistani Muslims often face when we try to make a case for why the work of caste in Pakistan and the diaspora needs to be tracked, funded, and treated as a legitimate and crucial line of academic and activist inquiry. Ghulam Hussain's book, Architecture of Caste in Pakistan, not only answers those questions but lends legibility to the need for anti-caste scholarship coming from Pakistan in ways that is truly a ground-making intellectual and political achievement. The evidence which he shows for the working of caste in Sindh through his ethnographic inquiry makes a contribution to not only Pakistani anti-caste scholarship but to the field of critical caste studies (among others) as a whole. Hussain's brilliance comes in how he shows the banality of caste-as something not only confined simply to the spectacular but a commonplace structure of life-making in Pakistan. The empirical evidence and the theorizing grounded in the ethnographic work that takes the work of caste beyond the majority-minority and Muslim-Hindu binaries is the quintessential anti-caste theorizing needed for developing Dalit and anti-caste solidarity in this moment. This brilliant study offers a cacophony of caste-making praxis in seemingly unexpected spaces, and I am grateful for it.

Shaista Aziz Patel, Critical Muslim Studies scholar, UC San Diego

4. Being part of the researchers' community who are working closely with marginalized caste groups across Pakistan, I recognize the challenge of unionizing diverse and internally distinct social groups defined by ethnicity, religious rituals, tribal identity, caste, and geography of origin under a single "Dalit" framework. Also, the legal ambiguity surrounding terms such as "minority" and "Scheduled Caste" has largely remained within academic discourse and has rarely informed policymaking or legislative action in Pakistan.

Ghulam Hussain's Architecture of Caste: Dalit Assertions in a Culture of Denial in Pakistan is therefore a courageous and deeply engaged work that breaks the silence on one of the least acknowledged dimensions of inequality in Pakistan. His years of immersive ethnography in Sindh weave together theoretical sophistication with the lived experiences of marginalized communities, challenging both state narratives of Islamic equality and progressive denials of caste. This timely book is not just scholarship, but it is a call to action for scholars, policymakers, and activists committed to justice.

Hussain Bux Mallah, Senior Research Associate at the Collective for Social Science Research, Karachi.

5. Ghulam Hussain's manuscript provides the reader a crucial lesson in sociologically and anthropologically grounded research led by political praxis. Hussain does a monumental task showing how caste is a central structuring logic of oppression in Pakistan with sharpness, self-reflexivity, and rich empirical fieldwork led by organizing and activism. In addition to what is already a massive contribution, he cuts across orthodox debates that elide materially situated political contradictions that become apparent only by taking seriously the issue of caste in the subcontinent. Most importantly, Hussain recognizes grass-roots organizing of oppressed caste communities, without essentializing it in neoliberal and elitist tendencies, upon which the foundation on which decolonial, anti-casteist, and anti-capitalist political action and theory needs to be built. Overall, this book offers scholars examining social crises in Pakistan a foundational understanding of cultivating political consciousness that transcends epistemological blind spots, which sustain and perpetuate daily structural oppression within the context of what Ghulam Hussain aptly terms the 'Architecture of Caste.'

Ahmed Memon, Lecturer in Law at Cardiff School of Law and Politics