Imagining caste mobility and social order in early modern Sikh texts

This paper examines how caste mobility and social order are imagined in Kuir Singh's Gurbilās Pātshāhī Das (1751), an early modern text in Punjabi-Brajbhasha about the lives of the Sikh Gurus. More specifically, it interrogates how Kuir Singh's positionality as a Kalal, a marginalised caste group, informs his discourse on caste and social order. While Murphy and Dhavan have discussed Kuir Singh's criticism of caste hegemony, there has not been much discussion on how Kuir Singh’s caste positionality informs his discourse on caste and social order of his imagined early Khalsa community. Through a close analysis of literary vignettes in Kuir Singh’s Gurbilās, my paper argues that Kuir Singh discourse on caste, and his choice of locating himself within an elite cultural field of courtly Brajbhasha literature contributed to creating a literary and social space to imagine upward social and caste mobility in early modern Punjab.