Until a year ago, 10-year-old Kavita wandered barefoot through the bazaars of Umerkot in Sindh — a begging bowl in her small hands as she walked beside her mother. Now, she walks to class each morning with a school bag on her back — part of a quiet but powerful education shift transforming one of Sindh’s most historically excluded communities, the Jogis.

“I used to beg,” Kavita tells Eos. “My sister still does, but now I go to school.”

The fifth of seven siblings, Kavita was born in abject poverty. Her father works mostly as a snake charmer, but takes up odd jobs to survive, similar to most members of the small Jogi community. On most days, her mother spends long hours in the bazaar seeking alms. “Now, my father tells us to study, so we won’t need to beg,” Kavita adds softly.

NOMADIC PAST, UNCERTAIN FUTURE

‘Jogi,’ derived from the Sanskrit ‘Yogi’, often connotes hermitage. Here, however, Jogi refers to the community. While mostly Hindus, the Jogis are not formally listed in Pakistan’s Scheduled Castes.

The Jogis trace their roots to the Rajasthan’s Barmer district in India. Before Partition, they moved seasonally across the Thar desert, working as snake charmers, palmists and fortune tellers. After the 1965 war, many settled permanently in Sindh, especially Umerkot.

In Umerkot’s Jogi Colony, where girls’ literacy was nearly non-existent, 65 girls now attend daily classes. Their journey from bazaars to blackboards reveals both Pakistan’s education challenges and its most hopeful solutions…

In 1977, then-Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto allotted them land that is now known as Jogi Colony. However, powerful local landlords encroached on parts of it, forcing many families to scatter across Umerkot and its surrounding villages. Today, around 700 households remain in the Jogi Colony.

Most live in poverty, with six to 12 children per household. While exact........

© Dawn (Magazines)