ABSTRACT

Speaking of the various realities that exist in our society, the caste reality is one crude reality, other than those like gender and class. The caste category is one of its kinds in context of India, and that cuts across gender, class as well as all religions of the society. Marginalization and discrimination of the Dalits, irrespective of their gender, class or religion is the reason for increasing need for bringing the category “Dalit” into focus, and discussion table. In the general sense, when we speak of “caste” the picture of Hinduism automatically comes into picture. And thanks to the constitutional order that has recently also recognized the Sikhs and Buddhist into the category having scheduled caste population, even they have caste within their folds now. But religions like Islam, or Christanity are yet to gain a similar commonly accepted recognition from the people in general as well as the constitution of India.

Introduction:

The term Dalit has different connotations in different contexts. While Dalits in general term denote the schedules caste population in the Indian constitution, the term “Dalit” means the most lowly or “downtrodden” and which therefore undertakes all the marginalized and downtrodden communities such as the Dalits and tribes both, but it mostly refers to the scheduled caste population, who are also the outcaste or untouchables of the Hindu community.

Various writings by scholars and ethnographic studies show that caste reality does exist amongst communities such as Muslims and Christians as well, but such data is often not supported with facts and figures from the field, or have not been widely accepted. Caste thus manifests itself in various forms such as discrimination, marginalization of the lower castes and conforming to the caste based norms, practices and occupations, yet remain ignored and unexplored.

The issues and concerns of the Dalit community has been much discussed in public forums, and been advocated by many scholars and intellectuals. Through human rights perspectives, untouchability, and the concept of purity and pollution are gross manners of violating human rights and human dignity. And the various forms of discrimination, marginalization and exploitation faced by the Dalits by hands of the oppressive caste system has been a commonly found phenomena in many of the Dalit communities. Domination of those without power in hand of the powerful, hegemony of culture, beliefs and practices has been a common phenomenon in all societies, and the Muslim community is different in no manners.

I would like to present the article here today, to bring this issue into light, and provide this category of Dalit Muslims a platform for discussion, debate and recognition.

Problems of the Muslim community:

Speaking of the Muslim community and the problems that it faces; two types of threats are posed against the Muslim community in today’s context; one is the external threat that is posed against all Muslims when they are seen as having links with terrorist groups, having Pakistani influence, and therefore threat to the state. And another being the internal threat that is posed by internal barriers such caste based division and discrimination within the community (Kader 2004). Although Islam professes for a caste-less society, there is existence of a caste-like stratification within Islam as well. Caste system is often said to be barely visible among the Muslims, but the Muslim Matrimonial page is a stark example of the same.

The issues of identity and conflict, that form the external threat to Islam, has been core to the Muslim community ever since partition such as those mentioned by Balraj Puri in his article “Indian Muslims since Partition” regarding the struggle for self-identity of the Indian Muslims (Puri 1993). “ By and large, mainstream Muslim politics reflects the elite-driven symbolic/emotive/identity politics (Babri Mosque, Uniform Civil Code, status of Urdu, the Aligarh Muslim University and so on) which thoroughly discounts the developmental concerns and aspirations of common Muslim masses” (Ansari 2009). Of the various issues of the Muslim community, what remain ignored are the issues within the community, and which equally impact the majority of the Muslim community, especially those coming from the lower strata of the community. When the needs and problems of Muslims in India are made inclusive and all encompassing, it ignores the regional and class specifics needs of the community, and what gets highlighted are the problems that only one particular section of the community sees and feels. “I feel this quest for an All-India level Muslim leadership is not only futile, it is also counter-productive. Muslims in India are regionally divided, and are organizing at the regional level. I think this is a good thing, because the social conditions in different regions are different” (Y. Sikand 2010).

Instances of upsurge from the lower strata of the community are always suppressed by the upper caste and elite people, and which further pushes the concerns and problems of the common man into the background. Quoting Irfan Ahmad here, the powerful and the privileged have always “dismissed resistance to them as a ploy to sow seeds of disunity , now in the name of nation, now in the name of community, both of which are (more) imagined than real.” (Ahmad 2003). The hegemony of the powerful is maintained by either not recognizing the voices coming from the below, or disregarding them on grounds of causing disunity and division in the community. The elite Muslims who are often found to be representing the entire Islamic community find it difficult to see the lower caste groups from their community standing against the elites of their own community. Owing to similar reasons, the Dalit Muslim movement is thought to be harmful for the unity of the Muslim community.

Such hegemony of power of the elite upper caste Muslims in all spheres of the society is a very commonly found phenomenon in the Muslim community. The Muslim religious forums and the government institutions have always been monopolized by Ashrafs (Ahmad 2003). Ahmad further compares the Hindu Mahasabha that campaigned against inclusion of Harijans in the caste census separately, with the Bihar Muslim League, which also advocates for not counting the Dalit Muslims separately; where both opposed enumeration of caste in the census on grounds that it would weaken the community. This also shows the similarity that upper caste and right wing groups have across Hindu and Muslim religions, and the suppression that they cause over the lower castes and those from the subaltern.

The terms “Dalit” and “Dalit Muslim”:

The term “Scheduled Caste” is an administratively created category, signifying the Dalit population in India. The term “Scheduled Castes” has been defined in Article 366(24) read with Article 341(1) as: ““Scheduled Castes” means such castes, races or tribes or parts of or groups within such castes, races or tribes as are deemed under Article 341 to be scheduled castes for the purposes of this Constitution.”

Article 341 of the Indian constitution The article further states that those caste groups shall be deemed as Scheduled castes in the constitution of India, who have been declared so by the president of India. Furthermore the parliament may include in or exclude from the list of the Schedules caste group caste groups that it finds necessary.

A constitution (Scheduled Caste) Order, 1936 was issued to list out those caste groups and communities accepted as Scheduled Caste, depending upon the practice of untouchability and other social disabilities, and which were later amended in years 1950 and 1990 to bring into order that only such a person who professes the religion Hindu (the Sikh or the Buddhist) religion shall be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste. This therefore does not leave the scope of adding other communities into the list of scheduled castes, who are from religion other than Hindu, Budhhist or Sikh.

Class has always been the criteria for measuring the backwardness of a particular community in the Indian constitution, and caste is often found being used interchangeably with class. Even the two backward classes commission (Rangnath Mishra Commission and Mandal Commission) have identified and accepted caste as a category for identifying the backward classes. The National Commission of Minorities report also advocates that SC status to be given to certain castes among the Muslims and the Christian communities. Initially the means of identifying communities as SC was done on the basis of the existence of practice of untouchability and exploitation among the communities. But later on the criteria came to be modified, to include other recent converts from Hindu Dalit community, such as the Sikh and Budhhist converts. When the Dalits from Buddhist or Sikh communities have been recognized for affirmative action by the state, why not other similar marginalized and backward communities, who are also converts from the Hindu Dalit castes?

Dalit Muslims in India:

Caste among the Muslim community is similar to that found among the Hindus in many ways, but it is also different in some manners. There is a basic two fold stratification amongst the Muslims, the upper caste/class or the elites and the lower caste/class, who are the subaltern, common man among the Muslims. This division is on the basis of class differences, ownership of property, and caste categorization. Within this larger two fold division, those with foreign decent consider themselves to be pure, i.e. Ashrafs, while those who converted to Islam are contemptuously referred to as the Ajlafs or lowly. These two larger divisions have further been stratified into various caste groups and have a hierarchical stratification to it. The Sachar Committee Report however speaks of a four fold division among the Muslim community; these being-

• “The Ashrafs, who trace their origins to foreign lands such as Arabia, Persia, Turkistan, or Afghanistan
• The upper caste Hindus who converted to Islam,
• The middle caste converts whose occupational were ritually clean
• The converts from the erstwhile untouchable castes, Bhangi (scavenger), Mehtar (sweeper). Chamar (tanner), Dom and so on.” (Sachar 2006)

While these four categories can be broadly divided into two categories; the Ashrafs being those with foreign dissent and the upper caste converts, and the second being the lower castes converts into Islam. While a third category has also been mentioned in the report, i.e. the Arzals, who are the untouchables who converted to Islam, and who engage in unclean occupations such as cobbler, tanner, sweeper etc. hence, the Sachar committee report compares the caste system amongst the Muslims with that of the Hindu society as follows-

• Those without any social disabilities, the Ashrafs; and who have been compared to the general castes
• Those equivalent to Hindu OBCs, the Ajlafs, and
• Those equivalents to Hindu SCs, the Arzals. Those who are referred to as Muslim OBCs combine (2) and (3). (Sachar 2006)

The caste categorization among the Muslims, is on the basis of traditional family occupation, which is similar in characteristics as found among Hindus. The ordering of the social groups in hierarchy, and endogamy are other key features of caste system among the Muslims, and which is again found similarly among the Hindu communities.

Apart from the belief that Muslim caste system is an influence of the Hindu caste system, there have also been writings showing the existence of caste system amongst Muslims even when conversion of Hindus to islam had not started. “The ashraf-ajlaf division is not the invention of modern social scientists, for it is repeatedly mentioned in medieval works of ashraf scholars themselves” (Sikand, Caste in Indian Muslim Society n.d.).

In order to prove social superiority, the ashraf scholars often interpreted the quran in various manners to suit their purpose. Barani is one such Ashraf scholar, who has written extensively in creating Ashraf’s hegemonic power, their nobel virtues by birth and the ashrafs’ innate inferiority . in one of his writings Barani states that “the ‘low-born’, are hardly different in their severity than the classical Hindu law of caste as contained in the Manusmriti, the Brahminical law code” (Sikand, Caste in Indian Muslim Society n.d.)

Regarding the Ashraf-Ajlaf divide within the Muslim community, Irfan Ahmad speaks of the dichotomy that exists in this division. The entire Muslim community gets broadly divided into only two parts, and the further stratification within the community are not brought into picture. This partial and dichotomous view is that of the Ashrafs, while the point of view of Ajlafs remains ignored.

In comparing caste among Muslims with that among the Hindus, the concept of conversion to higher castes or complying to the hegemony of the higher caste is another phenomenon that also happens amongst the muslims, and which. This has been discussed by Syed Ali in his article Collective and Elective Ethnicity: Caste Among Urban Muslims in India, where he calls the phenomenon “Ashrafization” similar to the term Sanskritization, used to indicate the adoption of upper caste norms and practics by the lower cate groups in order to achieve a higher status.Here caste system as Weber sees, I.e. as a type of status formation can be observed. This status is maintained in the caste system by denying fluidity and mobility within the caste, and which the lower castes imagine to achieve through processes such as sanskritization.

The Muslim community has been compared with the Hindu system of caste groups on the basis of the three most important features of the caste system- (a) the concept of purity and pollution, (b) endogamy and (c) hereditary occupation, according to Khalid Anis Ansari. The idea of the Ashrafs being the pure ones, who are original followers of the religion, and decent of Prophet Mohammad and the Ajlafs of the impure ones, who are convert to Islam. Since the caste system here is not very defined, this line of pure-impure is again vague, and the upper caste converts also get included in the pure list, while the lower caste converts are the impure ones. Endogamy is a tool used by all religions to profess purity of bold within heredity, and same is found with the Muslims as well. Marriages outside their caste can happen only within certain caste groups only, and that too when the women belongs to a caste lower than the men. The third feature of hereditary occupation is again very starkly a feature of the dalit Muslim communities as well, where the traditional occupations of the person remains the same, and one can easily identify the caste groups from their occupations. The more dirty the occupation is, the lower is the strata of that caste. Also, the caste groups found among the Muslims is often very similar to the occupation based castes among the Hindus, such as Dhobis, mahtar (sweeper), halaalkhor (scavengers) which are similar in the Hindu community and known by names such as Dhobi, Chamar etc.

Islam and the caste divisions within, in historical context:

The beginning of Islam in India can be traced back to well over 1000 years. Islam being a religion that does not advocate any form of division of the society, is supposed to be a caste free society, but a look into the reality can break the utopian picture. Though very few materials have been openly published and discussed regarding the caste system that exists within Islam, and the gravity of it, nevertheless, there have been records of instances of discrimination and differentiation within the various castes of the community. What is less known is that incidents of untouchability, strict following of the caste norms, and marriage as a tool to strengthen and manifest the caste system is also a very common phenomenon amongst the Muslim community. The Dalit Muslim category is a much contested category, and which often does not get the support of the mainstream Muslim community; reasons behind this being the catch hold of power that has always existed in hands of the upper caste Muslims.

Yogender sikand mentions a tradition attributed to the Prophet, according to which Muhammad is said to have declared that ‘The vein is deceptive’, meaning that one’s social status does not depend upon once’s heredity. Apart from that, the Quran also speaks of differentiation on the basis of gender and tribe, but there is no mention of any form of hierarchical stratification.

Iqubal Ahmed in an interview with Yogender Singh, speaks of the spirit of Islam and on Dalit Muslim Unity and says that “what the Qur’an talks about is Islamic politics, politics conducted in accordance with the spirit of Islam. And this means a politics characterized, above all, by a spirit of justice, equality and social concern, and the equal treatment of all people, irrespective of caste, creed or social status.” (Y. Sikand 2010) Indeed the spirit of Islam is lost when some elite members of the community interpret and present the Quran and its teachings in the wrong light for the common man.

A line by irfan Ahmad very nicely explains it all; “Islam as an ideal and Islam as a lived are (very) different” (Ahmad 2003). It denotes that even though Islam as a religion does not advocate any kind of social stratification, the manner in which it has been portrayed by the Ulemas or the learned scholars of the Muslim community and the manner in which is understood and practiced by Muslims in general are very different. Since the Quran is written in Arabic, and Arabic not being the mother tongue for any Indian, very few Indian Muslims actually understand what is said by the quran. Also, the quran is within the reach of understanding of only the upper caste maulvis, who can read and write Arabic, and therefore have own the knowledge. This system of access to religious scripture and knowledge is very similar to the Hindu caste system

It is widely believed that caste among Muslims developed as a result of influence of the Hindu society upon the Muslims, during the process of mass conversion during the medieval times. Hence a caste like structure always existed amongst the community, with characteristics like caste-based occupation, and endogamy. Prof Yogender Singh Sikand in his article “Caste in India Muslim Society” speaks of the caste system that exists within the Muslim communities and which is very similar to the Hindu caste system. “While the severity of caste among the Indian Muslims is hardly as acute as among the Hindus, with the practice of untouchability being virtually absent, caste and associated notions of caste-based superiority and inferiority still do play an important role in Indian Muslim society. In most parts of India, Muslim society is based on the existence of numerous endogamous and generally occupationally specific caste groups that have their own caste appellations.” (Sikand, Caste in Indian Muslim Society n.d.).

Muslim community has a widely prevalent caste system existing within its folds, which is similar to the Hindu caste system, but also different in certain subtle ways. While the Hindu catse system is considered to be more rigid, and extreme in its forms of practices and exploitation, the caste system found in the Muslims community is thought to be more fluid in nature, thereby reducing its gravity and relevance in the social world.

The beginning of caste movement among the Muslims can be traced back to the 1990s, when. According to Yogender Yadav, a “Second Democratic upsurge” started as a result of coming up of the Mandal Commission report. Irfan Ahmed states that it was then that casteism began, according to the narratives of the upper caste Muslims (Ahmad 2003). It was felt that only because the Mandal commission speaks of reservation for the OBCs in the constitution, issues of Muslim backward classes was brought up into light with the intentions of reservation politics. The Pasmanda movement is the Dalit Muslims’ movement that counters caste over religious identity, and advocates for the category “Dalit Muslim”. The category “caste” that the Pasmanda movement invokes, counters the monolithic Muslim identity, with the intentions of mainstreaming the subaltern Muslim politics.

Need for recognition of the community:

There is no constitutional provision for the Dalit Muslim category yet, and which is depriving the community from benefitting from affirmative action’s of the state just as other marginalized and backward sections of the society get. The Sachar committee report for the first time spoke about the needs and problems of the Muslim community, and stated the caste categories that exist within the Muslim community, comparing it to the Hindu caste system. It was the Rangnath Mishra committee that recommended that the religious minorities like Muslim and Christians have categories similar to the Scheduled caste category in the Hindu system, and which need equal recognition and affirmative action as other SCs in other religions.

The Sachar Committee report states the need to identify the backwards classes amongst the Muslims as OBC, and receive affirmative action from the constitution, just as OBC from other communities receives. While categories such as SC and ST have been distinctly identified by the state, the ambiguity with the term OBC causes the category to become vague and therefore difficult to identify. While the Rangnath Mishra Committee report studies the socially and economically backward communities among various religious and linguistic minority communities, recommends measures for their welfare and suggests the necessary constitutional, legal and administrative modalities required for the same. It speaks of the existence of caste category within all religions in the Indian context.

Conclusion:

This newly emerging category called the Dalit Muslims is not only a new area of study, but is also a very contested one. Even though the concept of OBC Muslims was still a commonly understood phenomenon, and which encompassed all the backward castes of the community, Dali is even a newer category. The Dalit Muslims are as backward and marginalized from the mainstream community as any other Dalit category is, within their community.

While the caste system found among the Dalit Muslim can be said to be more subtle, less stark, it has an equally discriminatory and oppressive practices as in the Hindu Dalit community. Just because untouchability, or caste based discriminations are not as crude as one is used to hearing, in case of Dalit exploitation, the intensity of the issue often gets diluted. The different forms of marginalization faced by a dalit Muslim category are in the form of not receiving the space to raise their issues above the widely accepted issues of the Muslims. The domination of the elite Muslims in all spheres of life, and the negligibility of the community Dalit Muslim’s presence, despite their having a numerical majority within the Muslim community.

While I have quoted many scholars and studies in my report to show their views upon the existence and recognition of the category, there is very little data that support such facts. It gets very difficult to get a platform where this issue can be brought into light and discussed upon. It does give some idea as to what the problems and issues of this newly emerging category might be, but does not discuss the characteristic features of the Dalit Muslims, the particular caste groups that they are encompassing within the category etc. there is hence a need to have an academic approach to understand and study the category “Dalit Muslim” and create a srtong data base in academics for the same.

Bibliography

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Ansari, Khalid. “Rethinking the DalitMuslim Movement.” Economic and Political Weekly, 2009.

Kader, Salil. Social Stratification Among Muslims in India. June 15, 2004.

Puri, Balraj. “Indian Muslims since Partition.” Economic and Political Weekly, 1993: 2141-2149.

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