Caste, religion and recognition: Trajectories of pasmanda muslim movements

Abstract

The Pasmanda movement (PM) in this chapter broadly refers to various struggles for recognition, and resistance against elite hegemony being waged by the Muslim middle and low castes in different parts of the country. Though spread out in many states, I restrict my analysis of the trajectories adopted by the movement (or movements) to two states of India, namely Bihar and Maharashtra. Both state governments recognise Muslim castes (and not community) as units of social and material deprivation and have gone ahead with bifurcating the OBC into subcategories ostensibly to evenly distribute the benefits of quota. The movement privileges the question of caste differentiation among the Muslims of India, thus shifting from the community-centred theorisations. To an extent, the movement reverberates the politics of Mandal and Backward Classes that seized north Indian politics in the 1990s and much of southern India even prior to Independence. This chapter is an attempt to provide structural analysis of the PM movement in the two states. It explores the variegated history, ideological debates on the question of caste and religion, the Pasmanda–Dalit coalescence as well as schism, the caste–class conundrum and the question of middle class, and finally the recognition versus redistribution dilemma through an analysis of a comparative study of the movements in the two states.