In Pakistan, official state ideology, with its insistence on sameness and unity — encapsulated in the idea of one nation, one language Urdu and one religion Islam — tries to erase difference in the name of nation-building. In everyday settings, however, relations and exchange between communities are often sustained through a maintenance rather than overcoming of difference. In this paper, I consider the centrality of the maintenance, rather than the closure of difference, in encounters between young Hindu and Muslim men and women in Karachi.
Focusing on upwardly mobile settings, where many of my interlocuters have migrated from smaller towns in Sindh to Karachi for education and employment, I illustrate how friendships across religious divides develop out of mixture of practicality, need and personal inclinations. Aware of their position as a vulnerable religious minority and rightfully fearful that any hostile encounter could transform into a blasphemy charge, my Hindu interlocuters often depend on the protection of their Muslim friends.
Hindus worry about giving their Muslim friends access into their homes and family life, in case it leads to romantic liaisons and attachments with sisters and female relations. Ammara Maqsood is an associate professor in social anthropology at University College London.
Her research coalesces around questions of middle-class religiosity, aspirations and intimate subjectivities and class politics in urban Pakistan. Currently, she is working on the ERC funded project Multi-Religious Encounters in Urban Settings that explores inter-religious interactions in non-liberal contexts.
Oxford Talks Toggle navigation. Help Login. The value of difference: Hindu Muslim encounters in Karachi, Pakistan.
