4/23/2019 For Indian Muslims, elections bring caste divide among Ashrafs, Pasmandas to the fore - Firstpost

FOR
INDIAN
MUSLIMS,
ELECTION
BRING
CASTE
DIVIDE
AMONG
ASHRAFS,
PASMAND
TO THE
The caste system constitutes the reality of Indian Muslims, as it does of Hindus. The
Muslims are broadly divided into the elite upper castes, or the Ashrafs, and the subaltern
lower castes, or the Pasmandas. The differences between these two broad categories of
castes come to the fore before every election. It is the grouse of the Pasmandas that
even though they overwhelmingly dominate India’s Muslim population, the mainstream
political parties largely eld the Ashrafs in the electoral fray. Even in the ongoing Lok
Sabha elections, political parties, including those espousing social justice, have mostly
elded Ashraf candidates.

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4/23/2019 For Indian Muslims, elections bring caste divide among Ashrafs, Pasmandas to the fore - Firstpost

Yet, caste hasn’t politically split

Muslims, because of Hindutva’s
propensity to target them on the
basis of their religious identity.
The threat to their existence prompts them to close ranks despite the caste divide. This
works to the advantage of Ashrafs, who — apart from exploiting the community’s fear of
Hindutva — harness the instrument of culture to maintain their political hegemony.
Unless lower caste Muslims are politically represented, they will continue to be
oppressed and discriminated against, contend Pasmanda leaders.

There is perhaps no better person than Khalid Anis Ansari to explain the stirrings among
the Pasmandas. Ansari is director, Dr Ambedkar Centre for Exclusion Studies and
Transformative Action, Glocal University, which is located in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh.
His PhD degree (which he received from the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht,
the Netherlands) is on caste movements among Indian Muslims. Apart from writing
extensively on the Pasmandas, he is actively engaged in politically organising them. In
this interview, he provides a glimpse into the Muslim world that remains largely
unknown.  Excerpts:

(Above: Khalid Anis Ansari, director — Dr Ambedkar Centre for Exclusion Studies and
Transformative Action, Glocal University)

The electoral battle in Uttar Pradesh is turning out to be one between the
Mahagathbandhan or the Grand Alliance, comprising the Bahujan Samaj Party, the
Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal, and the Bharatiya Janata Party. Has this
resolved the confusion among Muslims as to who they should vote for?

A lot depends on the candidates elded by different political parties. But broadly,
Muslims will be voting against the BJP and for the Mahagathbandhan unless the

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4/23/2019 For Indian Muslims, elections bring caste divide among Ashrafs, Pasmandas to the fore - Firstpost

Congress elds an exceptionally strong candidate who is perceived to be capable of

winning.

Mahagathbandhan is also seen to be representing caste/social justice and the BJP as

representing Hindutva/cultural nationalism. How does this binary impact the internal
differentiation among Muslims?

Muslim politics in North India is largely dominated by the upper caste Muslims, [who are
in sociological parlance referred to as] Ashrafs. They comprise [in the main] the Syeds,
Sheikhs, Pathans, Mughals and also castes like Rajputs who converted to Islam.  There is
a growing sense among the Pasmanda Muslims….

Isn’t 'Pasmanda' a Persian word that means “those who have fallen behind”?

Yes. The Pasmanda Muslim category includes backward, Adivasi and Dalit groups, and
constitutes about 85 percent of India’s Muslim population. They increasingly feel that
the Muslim political space is exclusionary, that it excludes a majority of Muslims, and that
those who bene t from the present political arrangement are the Ashraf Muslims.

Do you have data to back the Pasmanda Muslim’s perception?

Out of the 40 candidates selected by the Rashtriya Janata Dal-led Mahagathbandhan in

Bihar, seven are Muslim. Of these seven candidates, six are upper caste. The seventh is
the son of late Mohammed Taslimuddin, a political heavyweight in the Seemanchal
region and belonging to the locally dominant Kulhaiya caste, the social position of which
is ambiguous. The Kulhaiyas, an agricultural caste that has been otherwise included in
the Other Backward Classes category, often de ne themselves as Sheikhs.

The Ashrafs comprise around 3-4 percent of Bihar’s population, but their share in the
Mahagathbandhan’s tickets is 15 percent. The National Democratic Alliance has elded
two Muslim candidates, both are Ashrafs.

What about Uttar Pradesh?

Until 19 April, the Congress had announced nine Muslim candidates. Only one of them is
Pasmanda. Out of the Bahujan Samaj Party’s six Muslim candidates, only two are
Pasmanda. Only one out of four Samajwadi Party’s Muslim candidates is Pasmanda — a
woman who belongs to the regionally dominant Gujjar caste.

Hindu subaltern social groups have asserted themselves because of the politics of social
justice. How come the politics of social justice has bypassed the Muslims?

This is because of the grip the sharif [noble] high caste culture has on Muslims. The sharif
culture has four broad themes:

One, it has a disdain for manual labour. For instance, the Su s of South Asia rarely had
surnames indicating their occupations. This was not so of the Su s of West Asia – for
instance, the name of Fariduddin Attar makes it clear that he was a perfumer.

Two, the sharif culture uses language as a boundary maintenance mechanism. There has
always been an emphasis on Persian and increasingly, Urdu. As a child I noticed that
ladies in the family would place Urdu grammar books next to the Quran. So Urdu was
considered sacred.

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4/23/2019 For Indian Muslims, elections bring caste divide among Ashrafs, Pasmandas to the fore - Firstpost

Third, the sharif culture reveres the [caste of] Syeds, who are said to be the direct
descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. In the 16th century, the Mughals established
the of ce of Niqabat, which was tasked with authenticating the pedigree of Syeds. The
authenticity determined land grants and positions in the royal court.

The fourth theme is the emphasis on sharafat, which loosely implies piety, character
building and taste, that is to say how you dress, how you use language, and how you
behave.

Through what mechanism has the sharif culture acquired dominance?

This culture is reproduced through mosques, madrassas and other community

institutions. These are dominated by the Ashrafs. Most of the Pasmanda Muslims are
in uenced by these institutions. They have internalised this culture, which has de-
politicised them and restricts them to the politics of sawab, or reward in afterlife, and
dua, or prayers. This culture does not emphasise on social justice [to establish equality]
but on spiritualism. It says that all problems a Muslim faces will be resolved if he or she
were to become a good Muslim.

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4/23/2019 For Indian Muslims, elections bring caste divide among Ashrafs, Pasmandas to the fore - Firstpost

(Above: 'Sharif' culture is reproduced through mosques, madrassas and other

community institutions dominated by the Ashrafs. Image for representation only.
REUTERS)

There seems to be a political parallel between Hindutva and the sharif culture.

We say that while Hindutva is led by the Brahmin-wadis, the Ashraf politics is led by the
Syed-wadis. The Syeds are the Brahmins of Muslims, and they are contemptuous of
those lower in the social order.

Can you name some of the Muslim subaltern groups?

There are the Mansooris or cotton carders, the Qureshis or butchers, the Julahas or
weavers, the Sai s or carpenters, the Raeen or vegetable growers, the Halalkhors or
sweepers.

Why hasn’t there been a rise in the political consciousness of Muslim subaltern social
groups over the last three decades?

There has been a rise of consciousness among them, but they have not been able to
in uence major political parties so far. For instance, Ali Anwar, who is one of the icons of
Pasmanda politics in Bihar, wanted to contest from Madhubani. Pasmanda groups
initiated an online petition campaign to request RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav to eld Ali
Anwar from Madhubani. But the ticket was denied to him. It is very clear that none of
social justice parties will give space to the Pasmandas. They need to have their own
party.

Is it a possibility that the Pasmandas may not vote for the RJD?

No, that seems unlikely in this election.

Is it because the Ashraf leadership uses the fear of Hindutva to maintain their
hegemony?

Absolutely. Just as there is a majoritarian discourse, there is also a minoritarian

discourse. Every third or fourth day, you read newspaper articles on the victimisation of
Muslims. But these do not throw light on the internal power differential in the
community.

Who among the Muslim community have faced the brunt of Hindutva politics and
violence?

The Pasmandas, of course. What has changed over the last ve years? The social and
political marginalisation of the Pasmandas was always there. It has been very well
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4/23/2019 For Indian Muslims, elections bring caste divide among Ashrafs, Pasmandas to the fore - Firstpost

documented. Even with regard to communal violence, people like Asghar Ali Engineer
have documented that it is lower-caste Muslims who suffer the most. We have a new
type of violence – lynching. Almost all victims of lynching have been Pasmanda Muslims,
particularly those castes which handle cattle.

In other words, what you are saying is that when people talk of the victimisation of
Muslims, they forget or ignore the fact that only certain castes among Muslims are
victimised.

Yes, absolutely. The Ashrafs are over-represented in the power structure. Here are
gures for people to ponder: between the First and the Thirteenth Lok Sabha, around
7,500 MPs were elected. Of them, 400 were Muslim. Of all Muslim MPs, only 60 were
Pasmanda. The Ashrafs are just 2.01 percent of India’s population, but their
representation between the First and the Thirteenth Lok Sabha was 4.5 percent, or
double of their population.

So Muslim representation in the Lok Sabha is low only for the Pasmanda Muslims, right?

Yes, yes. The Ashraf groups have always been over-represented.

Critics will say that assailants don’t inquire about the caste of Muslims before attacking
them. On the other hand, their religious identity markers make it very clear that they are
Muslim.

I don’t entirely agree with that. The victimisation of Muslims has to be complicated by
the class and spatial distribution of vulnerability. Take the Muzaffarnagar violence of
2013. When the rioting mobs attacked Muslim colonies, they spared those of Muslim
Jats and Muslim Gujjars.  When you talk of violence, you have to see what spaces of
Muslims are attacked. Most of these are not elite, but subaltern spaces. These are
essentially slums where mostly lower caste Muslims reside. You also have to look at the
victims in terms of class. The Muslims who are attacked are mostly the poor who
migrated from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to Mumbai, Gandhinagar, Bhiwandi, etc — places
which witnessed horri c riots in the past.  While those who are attacked are mostly the
Pasmandas, the bene ciaries of the Muslim victimhood have been the Ashrafs.

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4/23/2019 For Indian Muslims, elections bring caste divide among Ashrafs, Pasmandas to the fore - Firstpost

(Above: Hindutva seeks to homogenise the Hindu community, but it has also, ironically,
led to the homogenisation of the Muslim community. Image for representation only.
REUTERS)

What do you mean when you say the “bene ciaries of the Muslim victimhood”?

The politicians, the civil society groups, the academia, the journalists, in fact, all those
who make their bread and butter through the Muslim victimhood are mostly upper-
caste Muslims or the Ashrafs.

Upper-caste Muslims face discrimination on account of their religion, don’t they?

Let me complicate your question by saying that there are different ‘forms of life’. Let us
ask what kind of discrimination upper caste Muslims encounter. There have been media
stories regarding the discrimination Muslims encounter in renting a place. I would like to
insist that people should go into the details of these cases. For instance, I also know of
Muslim housing societies in Delhi where their residents would not like people of other
communities to get a at. They wouldn’t want someone from communities which eat
pork or consume liquor, just as communities which don’t eat garlic would not want to
rent a place to someone who does.

It is about feeling comfortable with the people who you wish to live with. Yet the media
spins it as discriminatory. Yes, it is a form of discrimination. But the details of it
complicate the picture. As an analogy, many Brahmins, the most powerful caste cluster in
this country, often complain of being victimised and discriminated against.

Has Hindutva papered over the class-caste contradictions in the Muslim community?

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4/23/2019 For Indian Muslims, elections bring caste divide among Ashrafs, Pasmandas to the fore - Firstpost

Yes, it has. Hindutva seeks to homogenise the Hindu community, but it has also,
ironically, led to the homogenisation of the Muslim community. Hindutva has been
bene cial for both upper caste Hindus and upper caste Muslims.

Why haven’t the Pasmandas culturally pushed back against the Ashrafs?

There have been some articulations on this score. For example, Masood Alam Falahi
published Hindustan Mein Zaat-Paat aur Musalman in 2006. He analysed the fatwas
given by various Muslim sects to show that many of these were casteist in nature.

Can you give me an example?

The book Bahishti Zewar, which was written by Islamic scholar Maulana Ashraf Ali
Thanvi (1863-1943), has a chapter which lays out who a person can enter into a marital
relationship with. This chapter says that the Syed should not marry the Pathan; the
Pathan should not marry the Julaha, so on and so forth. In north India, this book is often
gifted to girls at the time of their marriage.

Does Pasmanda politics essentially revolve around political representation? I am asking

this question because upper caste Muslims don’t really control the levers of power in
India. For instance, they can’t extend patronage to others as, say, their Hindu
counterparts can.

In Muslim dominated institutions like the Jamia Millia Islamia, Aligarh Muslim University,
Maulana Azad Educational Foundation, even departments like Persian, Urdu, Arabic in
Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Ashrafs do construct a patron-client relationship with
the Pasmandas. Given that they are just 2.01 percent of India’s population, they have
hugely in uenced the Left and social justice discourses.

Why is it that Hindu OBC and Dalit leaders haven’t been able to reach out to Pasmanda
Muslims?

They are trying to reach out. There are issues. There is always a gap between the
discrimination and oppression of particular social groups and their actual political
articulation and sedimentation. This is true of all social movements. Look at women, who
have been oppressed from time immemorial. Yet the rst feminist articulation began to
emerge from around 1789 or so. Discrimination may go on silently, but its political
articulation and, ultimately, assertion takes time.

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4/23/2019 For Indian Muslims, elections bring caste divide among Ashrafs, Pasmandas to the fore - Firstpost

(Above: The victimisation of Muslims has to be complicated by the class and spatial
distribution of vulnerability. Image for representation only. REUTERS)

The oppression of Pasmandas goes way back in history, even before they were converted
to Islam about 800-900 years ago. The genealogy of their exploitation is as old and
ancient as any caste in India, but their articulation began somewhere in the 1930s with
the formation of community pressure groups like the All India Momin Conference.
However, it was with Ali Anwar’s book, Massavaat Ki Jang (Struggle for Equality), which
was published in 2006, that the rst robust articulation against the discrimination and
oppression of Pasmanda Muslims happened. A robust articulation of oppression has an
appeal for the concerned constituency and leads to its political consolidation.

The Pasmanda slogan of ‘Dalit-Pichhda ek samaan, Hindu ho ya Musalman (All Dalit-

Backwards are equal, whether they be Hindu or Muslim)’ visualises the notion of
horizontal solidarity of subordinated castes across religions. The Pasmanda discourse is
now being discussed vigorously in Dalit-Bahujan social spaces and it is only a matter of
time when its impact will be felt in political circles.

So what is the next step for the Pasmanda Muslims?

They have to launch a robust cultural critique on the question of egalitarianism within
Muslim traditions. To say classical Islam was for equality may not be entirely true. If you

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4/23/2019 For Indian Muslims, elections bring caste divide among Ashrafs, Pasmandas to the fore - Firstpost

look at early Islam, both egalitarian and strati cation or inegalitarian tendencies were
present.

For instance, you have the Prophet Muhammad saying in a famous sermon that all
Muslims are equal and that Arabs are equal to Persians, so on and so forth. At the same
time, we know that nasab (genealogy) and hasab (inherited merit) played a signi cant
role in the institution of power in classical Islam. In one of the Hadith, or the traditions of
the Prophet, it is clearly said that the khalifa [ruler] should be from the Quraysh tribe
[from which the Prophet Muhammad came]. The con ict between the Sunnis and the
Shias has also a lot to do with genealogy.

Then again, the reverence accorded to the Syeds across all Islamic societies is linked to
the distribution of power and resources. The romantic notions of Muslim traditions
being egalitarian need to be revisited. It is true that there is a lot of emphasis on equality
in the Quran, yet we need to look at how social practices and interpretations have
undermined these ideas.

The sharif culture needs to be interrogated, with evidence and narratives of

discrimination. During my PhD eld-work, I came across mosques where there were
separate tumblers or lotas for Halalkhor or the Dalit Mehtar caste among Muslims to do
their ablutions. In several mosques of Bihar, upper caste Muslims pray in the front rows,
while lower caste Muslims are con ned to the back. These kind of social practices need
to be challenged. This process has already started.

What political steps are being contemplated by the Pasmandas?

The step that the Pasmandas need to take is very clear from what is happening. The
Nishads have formed their own party in Uttar Pradesh. They have also formed the
Vikassheel Insan Party in Bihar. The Kushwahas in Bihar have formed the Rashtriya Lok
Samta Party. The Jatavs, obviously, have the Bahujan Samaj Party. The rst initiative of
all the marginalised sections is to form their own party and then seek a share [in power]
for themselves from the larger political parties. The Pasmandas, therefore, need to have
a party of their own. It is only when you ensure the defeat or victory of one party or the
other that you are taken seriously.

Is there a plan to start a party of the Pasmandas?

The members of the Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, a social organisation led by Ali Anwar,
and other community activists, intellectuals and entrepreneurs recently met in Delhi.
They came to consensus for a starting a party in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, to
begin with.

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