Casteism among Muslims Was Promoted For The Sake Of Conversion
Parallel
Caste System Was Created To Help Neo Converts Retain Their Social Hierarchy
Main
Points:
1. Delhi
Sultanate promoted caste system.
2. Northern
India has stong caste sense among Muslims.
3. Casteism
among Muslims is less visible in the eastern India.
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By
New Age Islam Staff Writer
10 January
2023
The
dais at BJP's Pasmanda Conference in Lucknow on October 16, 2022. Photo: By
arrangement.
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Casteism is
a reality among the Muslims of India and it has roots in the mediaeval Indian
society. It was so deep rooted in Indian society that no prominent political or
religious leader had the courage to discuss it or start a movement to abolish
caste system among Muslims. It was introduced perhaps because of the conversion
strategy of the Muslims in medieval India. They created castes parallel to the
castes among Hindus to allow the converts to retain their social hierarchy in
society. A Brahmin became a Shaikh, a Khatri became a Khan and so on. Artisans
formed the working class like Julaha, Churihara, Bhatiara, Rayeen etc.
There is an adage in northern India:
Sab Jaat
Se Hara
Naam Pada
Bhatiara
(The
lowliest of all castes is Bhatiara)
This was in
violation of the policy adopted by the early caliphs. No concession was made
even to kings if they converted to Islam. Delhi Sultanate promoted casteism
among Muslims more strictly. They did not employ Muslims of lower castes in the
court or in the administration. This made a clear division among Muslims.
The most
brazen demonstration of this casteism was observed after the establishment of
Aligarh Muslim University by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. The Ashraf (the elite
Muslims) had pressurised him to not allow lower caste Muslims to enrol in the
university but Sir Syed had opposed their casteist proposal. Such deep was
casteism entrenched among the elite Muslims of India during the 19th century
and before. Even today, casteism among Muslims is practiced. This has serious
bearing on political empowerment of Muslims. In northern India, Muslims of
upper caste do not generally vote Muslim candidates belonging to lower castes.
This leads to the defeat of Muslim candidates. Therefore, those who say that
casteism among Muslims should not be discussed at this juncture belong to the
same section who want social hierarchy to continue among Muslims.
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Why
Didn't India's Muslim Rulers and Thinkers Confront the Inequities of the Caste
System?
By
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
08/JAN/2023
Last month,
the South Asian Institute of Columbia University organised a seminar on
‘Afterlives of Babri Masjid: Thirty Years Later’. I made a presentation at that
seminar on ‘Post-Babri Anti-Caste Movement: A New Awakening in India’.
In my
abstract I said the following:
“The anti-caste movement of post-independent India has changed the track
of Indian democratic discourse in the post-Babri context. I wrote Why I am Not
a Hindu and Post-Hindu India in that context only. Though the anti-caste
movement included the minorities in its agenda, the Muslims did not participate
in that discourse. Muslim intellectuals remained caste blind, leaving the
Dalit/OBC/Adivasis to defend themselves. Over a period of 30 years, the
Dalit/OBC/Adivasis realised that caste and untouchability have destroyed their
intellectual and organisational abilities to fight against Brahminism.
Organised religions like Indian Islam and Christianity virtually left them to
the mercy of highly English-educated and globalised Brahminic forces. This
situation helped the post-Babri Hindutva forces attract them into their fold
and gradually turn them into their vote bank. But at the same time a huge
anti-caste ideology was developed by the post-Mandal Dalit/OBC/Adivasi
intellectuals and political activists by foregrounding Ambedkar, Phule, Periyar
and so on. This situation has created an anti-caste global ideological
mobilisation. However, the future of Indian democracy and the question of a
caste-free egalitarian India is still uncertain.”
After my
presentation, some scholars questioned the relevance of discussing the role of
Muslim intellectuals and Indian Islam’s history at a time when they are facing
persecution in India. This concern was expressed even by American intellectuals
working on India and other South Asian societies. While a Muslim scholar,
Khalid Anis Ansari from Azim Premji University, made a presentation about the
presence of caste among Indian Muslims and the ongoing oppression of Pasmanda
Muslims by upper-caste Muslims, a few scholars expressed disappointment –
arguing that this is not the time to raise caste discrimination within Indian
Muslims as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party are
trying to exploit that division.
Also Read: Caste System among Indian Muslims, Slave Dynasty and
Historian Ziauddin Barni
However, I
believe it is important – even amidst the current political atmosphere – to discuss the role of Muslim intellectuals
in Indian caste civilisation. This discussion is important to understand the
Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi problem as well as the Muslim minority problem, so that
the Muslim intelligentsia realises what the Shudra/OBC and Dalits find
problematic about their relationship and history.
After the
BJP came to power in 2014, there has been an intense debate about the
relationship between the OBCs and Muslims, as the OBCs are seen supporting the
BJP electorally and communally.
There is
also a view that the OBCs participated in the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992.
It is true that without OBC support, the BJP could not and cannot win elections
as they are winning now. Prime Minister Narendra Modi presented himself as an
OBC from Gujarat; perhaps that has also added to the BJP’s OBC mobilisation.
Does it mean that the OBCs – as the historical Shudra agrarian and artisanal
communities – hate Muslims? There is no
evidence to support the claim that the Shudras have some theoretical or
cultural antipathy towards Muslims.
Whatever anti-Muslim writing there is in India has come so far from
Brahmin or other Dwija writers and ideologues. The writings of V.D. Savarkar
and M.S. Golwalkar are evidence.
Also Read: Caste System Was Promoted By Delhi Sultanate in India
This debate
raises another question which is equally important – about the relationship
between the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi and Muslim? What was the historical role of
Muslim rulers, writers and civil-spiritual intellectuals on the abolition or
annihilation of caste after Islam as a religion took root in India? Did Muslims
scholars and writers treat caste and human untouchability – which existed much
before that religion arrived in India – as a system that could not be accepted
in the world Allah created? Because Islam believes that everything – good and
bad – is the creation of Allah. According to their understanding, nothing comes
into existence or goes out of existence without Allah’s sanction. In that case,
what about the caste system and untouchability that constructed an un-universal
inequality, oppression and human degradation?
Since this
system was around before Islam arrived, how did Muslim clerics and scholars
view it? We would have been able to understand their view if only they had
written something about it during the last 1,400-odd years of Islam’s existence
in India. Unless scholars express themselves, either by writing or by
preaching, even rulers will not know what to do with the system. However, it is
clear from known history that India’s Muslim rulers – including the greatest of
all, Akbar – did not open schools for educating the Shudras/Dalits and
Adivasis. Even in kingdoms like Hyderabad, where Muslim rulers held state power
till 1948, there is no evidence that mass education was provided to the
Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis until some social reformers demanded such education in
the Urdu language for those communities. Even then, only a handful of
Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis were taught basic reading and writing skills in Urdu and
Persian in Hyderabad state.
Persian and
Urdu education was spread more among the Dwija castes like Brahmin, Kayastha,
Khatri, Bania and Ksatriya in the whole of India, who had a Sanskrit education
background. Muslim rulers and scholars also maintained caste barriers. Why? Is
it because the rulers and scholars came from upper caste conversion, or is it
because Islam as a religion failed to understand the evolution of the caste
system and refused to study its relationship with divine creation and work out
a scientific ideology to abolish that system?
In
Brahminic history, caste and untouchability were practiced and written about as
divinely ordained. The divine objects of the Shudra/Dalit/Adiavsis and the
Dwijas differed in many aspects. But Muslims believed in one Allah. The question
therefore is: what is the understanding of Muslim scholars about the
relationship between Allah and caste system? Was it created by Allah as a
positive and humanly necessary institution or was it created by humans?
There is a
definite understanding of the relationship between men and women in relation to
Allah’s creations. There is also an understanding about slaves and masters and
relations between races and Allah. At the time of Prophet Mohammad’s life, all
those categories of human society were present in all countries. But caste and
untouchability were not there in any other nation except in South Asia, more so
in the Indian subcontinent.
After Islam
came to India, the only writer who discussed the caste question was Alberuni in
the 11th century. Namit Arora writes,
“The four-fold Varna system made a deep impression on Alberuni.
He notes that members of each Varna are forbidden to dine with members
of other Varnas. Below them are ‘people called Antyaja, who render
various kinds of services’ and live outside the towns and villages of the four Varnas.
Then there are people called Hadi, Doma, Chandala and Badhatau, who ‘are not
reckoned amongst any caste [and] are occupied with dirty work, like the
cleansing of the villages and other services… In fact, they are considered
illegitimate children; for according to general opinion they descend from a
Shudra father and a Brahmin mother as the children of fornication; therefore,
they are degraded outcasts’.”
Also Read: Debate: Forget Past Choices of Thinkers, What Can Muslims Do Now to Tackle Caste?
Alberuni
also disagreed with the Brahmanical view of human purity and pollution, which
is the key notion for sustenance of human untouchability in India. Purity and
pollution had huge implications to production. Way back in the 11th century, he
said that Islam does not accept such ideas of human purity and pollution. What
happened to this understanding? Why did Muslim scholars fail to educate Muslim
rulers on abolishing caste and untouchability through legal Farmans? The
abolition of caste would have been possible even without resorting to
conversion.
Many Muslim
scholars are now saying that conversion did not kill caste practices within
Indian Islamic society. What would have been a better way of abolishing caste
practices? If such ideas were put on the record by Muslim scholars, Muslim
kings may have agreed to make changes.
The fact is
that Muslim scholars did not do any intellectual work to create anti-caste
awareness among themselves and also among the Other – the
Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis. Instead, till the post-Mandal realisation that without
reservation the Pasmandas too would not progress came about, they did not talk
about the caste system at all.
Unlike
among the Shudra/OBC/Dalits, there was no focused spiritual denial of education
for Muslim lower castes. Yet there is a caste distinction between the upper
caste converts and the Shudra/Dalit converts. Where does the problem lie? In
Hindu Brahminsm, there is a stated scriptural and practical forced denial of
the right to education to the productive castes. The Shudra/Dalits did not
fight because of divine fear, which was injected through the karma and Punarjanma
(rebirth cycles) theories. But what sustained caste in Indian Islam?
Among
Indian Muslims, there were scores of English-educated intellectuals from the
early days of the freedom struggle. Such modern English educated Shudra/Dalits
were few and far between. Until Ambedkar emerged, nobody diagnosed the roots of
caste from among them in a scientific manner. Muslim scholars claimed the presence
of scientific enquiry in their intellectual history. The Brahminic
intellectuals, whether modern English educated or classical Sanskrit or Persian
educated, refused to study the roots of caste and work out abolitionist
solutions because that would go against the ethics of Brahmanism.
Among
Muslims, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817–1898) promoted English education around the
same time when Brahmins, Banias, Kayastas and Khatris started learning English
and studying in England in the 19th century. Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Allama
Iqbal (both of whom were upper-caste converts) and many other Muslims were
educated in English in England. Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia
taught the Muslim youth in English medium from their early days. The Indian
Muslim community had the intellectual resources to undertake studies on the
caste system. Even after Ambedkar put the question of caste on the national
map, not a single Muslim intellectual studied caste from the point of view
their own religion and proposed a serious solution to the question. Maulana
Abul Kalam Azad was totally silent about it in his writings.
This
historical background brings us to the question: who is at fault? How can the
Shudra-OBCs/Dalits who had no educational resources like Muslim intellectuals
find a solution to Muslim backwardness, poverty, unemployment and casteism
among them? Even now, Muslim intellectuals do not engage themselves with the
much bigger problem of caste and untouchability. Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi
intellectuals need to raise these questions.
-----
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is political theorist,
social activist and writer. His books include God As Political Philosopher:
Buddha’s Challenge Brahminism, Why I am Not a Hindu and Buffalo Nationalism.
Source: Why
Didn't India's Muslim Rulers and Thinkers Confront the Inequities of the Caste
System?
URL:
https://newageislam.com/islam-sectarianism/casteism-muslims-conversion/d/128839
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