Creating and Recreating Community in the Gray Zones of Empires

To what extent did premodern states enable or diverge from the racial and ethnic discourses that have a long history in the pasts of modern states? Are these appropriate categories of analysis for the premodern past? To engage with these questions I turn to the watershed of the Indus River, a convergence zone for many imperial formations. During the period of Mughal rule, 1526-1748, it was also a contact zone between pastoral and agrarian communities, multiple religious groups, as well as a number of linguistic communities. While imperial control over urban areas was strong, in the rural hinterlands local kinship groups and some religious networks had greater authority. The ability of the Mughal state and its neighbors to extend and enforce different forms of social identity and hierarchies, therefore, depended greatly on the willingness of urban and rural elites to find mutual ground. Forms of social ordering more familiar to urban and courtly contexts—kin and tribal affinities, caste hierarchies, status groups affiliated with imperial service—had a presence in rural areas as well, but these were constantly adapted to suit local needs.

Key forms of social identity—kinship and shared cultural traits—could either harden or become more malleable when local communities either collaborated with or resisted imperial ambitions. Critically, sources from the period, do not consider any of these identities with the same immutable categorizations as modern notions of race or ethnicity. Yet, despite the shifting nature of communal identity, the rules for enforcing these could become draconian and rigid, if local conditions demanded such an intervention. Such a blend of flexible discourse and varying enforcement forces scholars to engage not only with the key terms of social analysis in our work, such as ethnicity, but also to excavate the tensions they pose with our sources.