BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 METHOD:PUBLISH PRODID:-//Telerik Inc.//Sitefinity CMS 15.1//EN BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Eastern Standard Time BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20251102T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=1SU;BYHOUR=2;BYMINUTE=0;BYMONTH=11 TZNAME:Eastern Standard Time TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20250301T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=2SU;BYHOUR=2;BYMINUTE=0;BYMONTH=3 TZNAME:Eastern Daylight Time TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DESCRIPTION:The Moynihan Institute’s South Asia Center presents Ghazal Asif Farrukhi from the Lahore University of Management Sciences.In 2017\, a se emingly small change in Pakistan’s questionnaire for the upcoming census s parked vociferous debates about religious identity and the politics of rec ognition. While the questionnaire listed “Scheduled Caste” as a separate r eligion rather than a Hindu subcategory as it had previously done\, the Pa kistani state typically views caste as an anachronistic holdover from a di scarded\, interreligious past. Some saw this bureaucratic shift as an atte mpt to further diminish the Hindu minority and prop up the national Muslim majority\, reopening old wounds about religious nationalism. \;Anti-c aste progressives saw an opportunity to unsettle an entrenched Hindu-Musli m binary and imagine alternative political horizons for minority recogniti on and citizenship.How do untimely state projects render new political asp irations legible? How are categories of social analysis around caste and r eligion produced as minorities renegotiate imposed categories and conditio nal citizenship?Paying attention to rumors\, enumerative practices\, and p olitical campaigns around the census\, this talk argues that tools of bure aucratic documentation catalyze the reactivation of unsettled histories an d the imagination of new possibilities of recognition from within the stat e’s margins.This event is co-sponsored by the Anthropology Department and the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies.Ghazal Asif Farrukhi is Assis tant Professor of Anthropology at LUMS\, Lahore. In 2024-25\, she is a fel low at the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. Ghazal is currently completing a book manuscript provisionally titled 'Hi ndu Intimacies Amidst Pakistan’s Muslim State'\, which focuses on how Hind u women navigate ritual\, devotional\, and social boundaries while constit uting the interface for the state-led reform of religiously minoritized co mmunities. She also writes on the politics of caste emancipation in Pakist an. Her research has been published in 'American Ethnologist\, \;Inter -Asian Cultural Studies'\, and 'South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies '. DTEND:20250415T180000Z DTSTAMP:20260513T081347Z DTSTART:20250415T163000Z LOCATION: SEQUENCE:0 SUMMARY:Inheriting Caste: Minorities Out of Time in Muslim South Asia UID:RFCALITEM639142424280040682 X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:

The Moynihan Institute’s South Asia Center presents Ghazal Asif Farrukhi from the Lahore University of Manage ment Sciences.

In 2017\, a seemingly small change in Pakistan’s questionnaire for the upcoming census sparked vociferous debat es about religious identity and the politics of recognition.

While the questionnaire listed “Scheduled Caste” as a separate religion rather t han a Hindu subcategory as it had previously done\, the Pakistani state ty pically views caste as an anachronistic holdover from a discarded\, interr eligious past.

Some saw this bureaucratic shift as an attempt to fu rther diminish the Hindu minority and prop up the national Muslim majority \, reopening old wounds about religious nationalism. \;Anti-caste prog ressives saw an opportunity to unsettle an entrenched Hindu-Muslim binary and imagine alternative political horizons for minority recognition and ci tizenship.

How do untimely state projects render new political aspir ations legible? How are categories of social analysis around caste and rel igion produced as minorities renegotiate imposed categories and conditiona l citizenship?

Paying attention to rumors\, enumerative practices\, and political campaigns around the census\, this talk argues that tools of bureaucratic documentation catalyze the reactivation of unsettled histori es and the imagination of new possibilities of recognition from within the state’s margins.

This event is co-sponsored by the Anthropology Department and the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies.< /span>

Ghazal Asif Farrukhi is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at LUMS\, Lahore. In 2024-25\, she is a fellow at the Wome n’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. Ghazal is curr ently completing a book manuscript provisionally titled 'Hindu I ntimacies Amidst Pakistan’s Muslim State'\, which focuses on how Hindu women navigate ritual\, devotional\, and social boundaries while co nstituting the interface for the state-led reform of religiously minoritiz ed communities. She also writes on the politics of caste emancipation in P akistan. Her research has been published in 'American Ethnologis t\, \;Inter-Asian Cultural Studies'\, an d 'South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies'.

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