Configurations of caste identities in Waris Shah's Hir (mid-18th century)

Caste is a vivid feature of Wāris Shāh’s Hīr, a Punjabi Sufi text attributed to the mid-18th century, which recounts the tragic love story of Hīr and her lover Rāṅjhā. Farina Mir has noted caste as a recurrent feature of later colonial-era versions of the romance of Hīr-Rāṅhā, where “zāt (caste or kinship group)... figures in these texts as the most salient category of social organization” (The Social Space of Language 2010, 123). This was a feature of Wāris Shāh’s earlier version as well. This paper will explore the multiple dimensions of the articulation of caste in Waris Shah’s Hīr – in relation to Jaţness as well as other community definitions – to understand the meanings of caste discourses at this time, in this text.