Publication Date

Spring 2026

Abstract

This dissertation examines how Shia communities in Sindh, Pakistan, mobilize the poetry of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai as counter-history within a postcolonial order that folds sectarian difference into homogenized national culture. In dominant state and literary discourse, Latif is cast as a universal Sufi poet whose spirituality transcends doctrinal division and secures Sindhi and Pakistani belonging. The performances studied here place pressure on that settlement by treating the Risalo as a medium through which Karbala remains historically present. Drawing on three years of ethnographic fieldwork at the shrine of Shah Abdul Latif in Bhitshah and related sites in Sindh, the dissertation shows how Shia performers revoice Latif’s poetry so that it bears suffering, moral injury, and endurance in forms exceeding official narrations of culture and religion. It argues that these performances do historical work by making the sacred past audible and asserting presence against erasure under sectarian precarity.

Keywords

Semiotic anthropology, decolonial theory, Shia Islam, South Asia, Sindh, Pakistan, Shah Abdul Latif

Project Sponsors

American Institute of Pakistan Studies, Suhair Zaheer Lari Memorial Fellowship Fund, Department of Anthropology University of New Mexico

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

English

Degree Name

Anthropology

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Anthropology

First Committee Member (Chair)

David Dinwoodie

Second Committee Member

Les Field

Third Committee Member

Suzanne Oakdale

Fourth Committee Member

Matthew Cook

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