Margins rewritten: Pasmanda feminism and the politics of disappearance in Sajjad Zaheer’s Dulari

Sajjad Zaheer’s short story “Dulari,” first published in the 1932 Urdu anthology Angarey and later translated into English by Vibha S. Chauhan and Khalid Alv (2014), serves as a critical literary site for examining caste, gender, and religious marginalization within Indian Muslim communities. Situated in contrast to the framework of the 1930s Progressive Writers’ Movement (PMW), the narrative offers a rare glimpse into the lived realities of Dalit Muslim women, particularly those from Arzaal communities such as the Mehtar, Bhangi, Halalkhor, and Lalbegi. This article engages with “Dulari” through the lens of Pasmanda feminism to foreground a discourse that has long been eclipsed by dominant Hindu-centric frameworks in feminist and Dalit literary studies. In doing so, it challenges the caste-blindness of liberal feminism and the frequent Hindu-centrism of Dalit feminism by focusing on intra-Muslim caste hierarchies and their gendered implications. The reading draws on Anupama Rao’s theory of “embodied inequality” and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of “epistemic exclusion” to highlight how Dulari’s suffering is compounded by caste-based discrimination, Islamophobia, and invisibility in both Muslim and feminist discourses. Zaheer’s portrayal subtly critiques Ashraf elite morality while exposing the constrained modes of resistance available to the subaltern. Through this close literary and political reading, the article seeks to expand the South Asian caste literature canon and advocate for the inclusion of Pasmanda epistemologies within postcolonial and global feminist discourse. In doing so, it underscores the urgency of intersectional and decolonial solidarities that disrupt hegemonic narratives within both religious and literary traditions.