ETHNICITY, GENDERED JUSTICE AND INTERSECTIONALITY IN THE VERDICT

Abstract

This paper analyzed The Verdict (2021) by Osman Haneef to discuss the intersection of ethnicity, gender, class, and religion as it affects the legal consequences in Pakistan. Conceptually informed by the Social Dominance Theory and intersectionality. This qualitative textual analysis was analyzed of the macrostructural themes of the minority racialization, patriarchal control, and institutional complicity as well as, to microstructural level that examines aspects of courtroom dynamics and framing of the story. The results showed that ethnic and religious minorities experience structural legal injustice, being legitimized by the narratives of the dominant group; gendered justice is a method of hierarchy and female autonomy is commodified; even the class privilege offers a small shield, being negated by nationalism and religious discourse; and the intersection between any of these variables creates greater injustices that cannot be called additive discrimination. The comparison demonstrates the novel representing the judicial system in Pakistan as the constant facilitator of the hierarchies where the resistance was treated as the personal but not the systemic kind of change. This study is of both literary and socio-legal significance because it helps to show how fiction can interrogate the problem of structural inequality and highlights the importance of adopting intersectional justice reform.