In recent months, the Hindu Right has shown great concern for Pasmanda Muslims. In July 2022, at the National Executive Meeting in Hyderabad, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed for Pasmanda outreach. Broadly, Pasmanda is a category of Muslims that has an indelible Hindu heritage, largely belongs to the OBC, Dalit, and Adivasi social groups, and is considered comparatively backward to other Indian Muslims. Convinced about the Hindu Right’s deep-seated anti-Muslim prejudices, its critics are intrigued by its rather new-found compassion for Pasmandas. Some view it as the BJP’s divide-and-rule policy to deal with Muslims.
In India’s ideological struggle between secularists vis-a-vis Hindu nationalists, it appears as if the BJP is trying to give back to its ideological opponents, the secularists, in their own game. For quite some time, some secularists have been advocating Muslim-Dalit solidarity to deal with the growing influence of Hindu nationalists. This strategy has varied strands. One was represented by Kanshi Ram’s Bahujan politics, which was clearly meant to take on India’s Brahminical order. There were other political parties, especially of minority groups, which also sought to pursue similar strategies. The underlying goal has been to unravel Hindu consolidation across caste lines, and stitch an enduring political alliance based on shared victimhood.
In the electoral domain, very little is achieved by this strategy against the Hindu Right. Scholars who work the BJP’s electoral strategies have argued that the party has been far more successful in co-opting the Hindu Dalits compared to the efforts of its secular rivals. In a way, the Hindu Right is essentially replicating the divide-and-rule policy that secularists sought to deploy to undermine the Hindutva movement — particularly since the late 1980s. That is why, one of the ways the Hindu Right’s Pasmanda outreach could be seen is as paying back by the same coin to its ideological adversary, the secularists.
At the heart of this debate lies the big puzzle: the place of caste among Indian Muslims. It is a unique gift of Hindu society to Indian Islam and also to other religions such as Christianity and Sikhism. Therefore, its presence among Indian Muslims is robust evidence of inadequate Islamisation. While commenting on the presence of caste among Muslims, Ambedkar in his famous essay, Annihilation of Caste (1936), said that the key point is: in Hinduism, caste has religious consecration but that is not the case with Islam. That is why Ambedkar appealed to Dalits to embrace Islam if they wish to emancipate themselves from the Hindu caste order though he himself embraced Buddhism. Likewise, Periyar, while addressing an anti-untouchability conference in 1943, said: “Converting to Islam is the solution because it offers social unity and self-respect… Adi-Dravidas ought to leave Hinduism and join Islam..”
In a recent discussion in New Delhi, historian Romila Thapar suggested that Ambedkar should have spoken more forcefully about the castes among Muslims. Not just Ambedkar, but also Gandhi, Nehru or Maulana Azad should have spoken about castes among Indian Muslims in my view, which could have undermined the “separate homeland” movement premised on Muslim homogeneity.
Pasmanda Muslims constitute roughly more than 80% of the Indian Muslim population. Activists have pointed out discrimination faced by some groups of Pasmandas in mosques, kabaristan (graveyards), and various domains of social relationships, contrary to the teachings of Islam. There are also evidences of people of Pasmanda heritage who have occupied key positions in major Muslim institutions. For example, Maulana Abdul Qasim Nomani, served as Rector for years of Deobond, the most prominent Islamic seminary.
While the Hindu Right may have a political motive to attribute the backwardness of Pasmanda Muslims to Ashraf Muslims or upper caste Muslims (for instance Sheikhs, Sayeds, etc.) who trace their origins to outside India such as the Arab world or central Asia, the fact is that the issues of Muslim backwardness are multi-dimensional, and caste could be only one such factor or even the most prominent factor. Furthermore, Islam is the youngest of the Abrahamic religions compared to Judaism and Christianity, so it is natural that most Muslims even in the Arab world and elsewhere have non-Islamic ancestry, almost the way Indian Muslims are having Hindu heritage. Therefore, Indian Muslims having Hindu heritage represents more of a global pattern of Muslim evolutionary history rather than an exception, and need not be seen pejoratively.
For the Hindu Right, it is convenient to paint Pasmanda backwardness as a consequence of intra-Muslim community prejudices rather than an outcome of any form of discrimination arising out of the majority-minority framework of domination and hostility. But the Hindu Right is yet to formulate any systematic policy of intervention for the upliftment of Pasmandas. For instance, Danish Azad Ansari, a lone Muslim minister in BJP’s Uttar Pradesh government, remains more of an exception than a pattern, given that no such faces could be found in BJP governments say in Gujarat or Madhya Pradesh or Haryana, or even at the Centre. At this point, it looks like Hindutva’s response to Pasmanda issues is another stunted form of symbolism — almost the way symbolism was part of India’s secularism. But what the community needs is a substantive intervention to address its long-standing backwardness issues.
Shaikh Mujibur Rehman teaches at Jamia Millia Central University, New Delhi
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