Dalit Muslims and the State: Pasmanda Movement and Struggle for ‘Scheduled Castes Status’

Abstract

This paper attempts to understand the state’s role in providing Scheduled Castes (SC) status for Arzal or Dalit Muslims, and the struggle of Pasmanda Muslims through the Pasmanda movement for inclusion in the SC list. While doing so, it traces the trajectory of marginalization of Dalit Muslims by the state. It argues that since the inception of SC status in independent India, it was reserved only for the Hindu religion. Later on, it was amended twice: first, in 1956 for the inclusion of Sikh, and second, for neo-Buddhist in 1990. It did not include Dalit from the Muslim community. It also attempts to map the effort of Pasmanda Muslims for SC status. In this context, the paper tries to comprehend the role of the Pasmanda movement along with the struggle of social organizations. Consequently, the paper argues that these organizations fight for SC status; however, unable to make any significant intervention at the policy level. This paper also argues that there is a dissensus and intra-community contestation among Muslims regarding the Pasmanda movement and the demand of SC status for Dalit Muslims.

Exclusion of Pasmanda Muslims and Dalit Christians from the Scheduled Caste Quota

“…The conclusions of NCRLM (2007) have sparked further debates on the legality and constitutionality of the Presidential Orders of 1950, 1956 and 1990 that have, according to several scholars (Ahmad, 2007; Alam, 2022: Anwar, 2005; Hasan, 2009; Mandal, 2021; Rahman, 2019; Sikand, 2007), arbitrarily laid down the criterion of religion, while notifying/modifying the SC list in the 1950s. Ahmad (2007: 104) has claimed that ‘on what grounds the presidential order of 1950 decided, in opposite to the explicit wording of the Constitution, remains an enigma and has not been adequately researched’.…”

“…Recently, political leaders and social activists have been making claims of SC status in the name of the continued existence of untouchability, of which they claim to be victims. They argue that this would provide them extra ammunition regarding the SCs/STs (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989 (PoA), according to Alam (2022). The PoA was amended in 2015, under the current political dispensation, after mass protests against attempts to weaken it through judicial intervention.…”

BODIES AGAINST MODERNITY: Politics of Slum Rehabilitations in India

“…Under the Brahmanical social structure, Dalits were treated as subordinate to other castes and systematically barred by Brahmin and landed non‐Brahmin castes from benefiting from their own labour (Viswanath, 2014). This caste‐based social order prevailed among Hindus and Muslims, where ‘Muslim Dalits are/were also involved in a similar [unclean occupation as Hindu Dalits]’ (Alam, 2022). As Guru and Sarukkai (2019: 3) suggest, this precolonial society in India was in fact also ‘ordered like the body’, with certain castes and genders seen as subordinate to others.…”