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 summary I mentioned the next:

“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 students questioned the relevance of discussing the function of Muslim intellectuals and Indian Islam’s historical past at a time when they’re going through persecution in India. This concern was expressed even by American intellectuals engaged on India and different South Asian societies. While a Muslim scholar, Khalid Anis Ansari from Azim Premji University, made a presentation in regards to the presence of caste amongst Indian Muslims and the continuing oppression of Pasmanda Muslims by upper-caste Muslims, a number of students expressed disappointment – arguing that this isn’t the time to boost caste discrimination inside Indian Muslims because the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party are attempting to use that division.

However, I imagine it will be important – even amidst the present political environment  – to debate the function of Muslim intellectuals in Indian caste civilisation. This dialogue is vital to know the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi downside in addition to the Muslim minority downside, in order that the Muslim intelligentsia realises what the Shudra/OBC and Dalits discover problematic about their relationship and historical past.          

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After the BJP got here to energy in 2014, there was an intense debate in regards to the relationship between the OBCs and Muslims, because the OBCs are seen supporting the BJP electorally and communally. 

There can also be a view that the OBCs participated within the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992. It is true that with out OBC help, the BJP couldn’t and can’t win elections as they’re profitable now. Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered himself as an OBC from Gujarat; maybe that has additionally added to the BJP’s OBC mobilisation. Does it imply that the OBCs – because the historic Shudra agrarian and artisanal communities –  hate Muslims? There isn’t any proof to help the declare that the Shudras have some theoretical or cultural antipathy in direction of Muslims.  Whatever anti-Muslim writing there’s in India has come so removed from Brahmin or different Dwija writers and ideologues. The writings of V.D. Savarkar and M.S. Golwalkar are proof.  

This debate raises one other query which is equally vital – in regards to the relationship between the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi and Muslim? What was the historic function of Muslim rulers, writers and civil-spiritual intellectuals on the abolition or annihilation of caste after Islam as a faith took root in India? Did Muslims students and writers deal with caste and human untouchability – which existed a lot earlier than that faith arrived in India – as a system that would not be accepted on this planet Allah created? Because Islam believes that every thing – good and unhealthy – is the creation of Allah. According to their understanding, nothing comes into existence or goes out of existence with out Allah’s sanction. In that case, what in regards to the caste system and untouchability that constructed an un-universal inequality, oppression and human degradation?

Since this technique was round earlier than Islam arrived, how did Muslim clerics and students view it? We would have been in a position to perceive their view if solely they’d written one thing about it over the last 1,400-odd years of Islam’s existence in India. Unless students categorical themselves, both by writing or by preaching, even rulers is not going to know what to do with the system. However, it’s clear from recognized historical past that India’s Muslim rulers – together with the best of all, Akbar – didn’t open faculties for educating the Shudras/Dalits and Adivasis. Even in kingdoms like Hyderabad, the place Muslim rulers held state energy until 1948, there isn’t a proof that mass training was offered to the Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis till some social reformers demanded such training within the Urdu language for these communities. Even then, solely a handful of Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis have been taught primary studying and writing expertise in Urdu and Persian in Hyderabad state.

Persian and Urdu training was unfold extra among the many Dwija castes like Brahmin, Kayastha, Khatri, Bania and Ksatriya in the entire of India, who had a Sanskrit training background. Muslim rulers and students additionally maintained caste boundaries. Why? Is it as a result of the rulers and students got here from higher caste conversion, or is it as a result of Islam as a faith failed to know the evolution of the caste system and refused to check its relationship with divine creation and work out a scientific ideology to abolish that system? 

In Brahminic historical past, caste and untouchability have been practiced and written about as divinely ordained. The divine objects of the Shudra/Dalit/Adiavsis and the Dwijas differed in lots of facets. But Muslims believed in a single Allah. The query subsequently is: what’s the understanding of Muslim students in regards to the relationship between Allah and caste system? Was it created by Allah as a optimistic and humanly vital establishment or was it created by people?  

There is a particular understanding of the connection between women and men in relation to Allah’s creations. There can also be an understanding about slaves and masters and relations between races and Allah. At the time of Prophet Mohammad’s life, all these classes of human society have been current in all international locations. But caste and untouchability weren’t there in another nation besides in South Asia, extra so within the Indian subcontinent. 

After Islam got here to India, the one author who mentioned the caste query was Alberuni within 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’.” 

Alberuni additionally disagreed with the Brahmanical view of human purity and air pollution, which is the important thing notion for sustenance of human untouchability in India. Purity and air pollution had large implications to manufacturing. Way again within the 11th century, he mentioned that Islam doesn’t settle for such concepts of human purity and air pollution. What occurred to this understanding? Why did Muslim students fail to coach Muslim rulers on abolishing caste and untouchability by means of authorized firmans? The abolition of caste would have been potential even with out resorting to conversion. 

Many Muslim students at the moment are saying that conversion didn’t kill caste practices inside Indian Islamic society. What would have been a greater means of abolishing caste practices? If such concepts have been placed on the report by Muslim students, Muslim kings could have agreed to make adjustments.

The truth is that Muslim students didn’t do any mental work to create anti-caste consciousness amongst themselves and in addition among the many Other – the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis. Instead, until the post-Mandal realisation that with out reservation the Pasmandas too wouldn’t progress happened, they didn’t speak in regards to the caste system in any respect.  

Unlike among the many Shudra/OBC/Dalits, there was no targeted religious denial of training for Muslim decrease castes. Yet there’s a caste distinction between the higher caste converts and the Shudra/Dalit converts. Where does the issue lie? In Hindu Brahminsm, there’s a said scriptural and sensible compelled denial of the suitable to training to the productive castes. The Shudra/Dalits didn’t struggle due to divine worry, which was injected by means of the karma and punarjanma (rebirth cycles) theories. But what sustained caste in Indian Islam?

Among Indian Muslims, there have been scores of English-educated intellectuals from the early days of the liberty battle. Such trendy English educated Shudra/Dalits have been few and much between. Until Ambedkar emerged, no person identified the roots of caste from amongst them in a scientific method. Muslim students claimed the presence of scientific enquiry of their mental historical past. The Brahminic intellectuals, whether or not trendy English educated or classical Sanskrit or Persian educated, refused to check the roots of caste and work out abolitionist options as a result of that may go towards the ethics of Brahmanism.  

Among Muslims, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817–1898) promoted English training across the similar time when Brahmins, Banias, Kayastas and Khatris began studying English and finding out in England within the 19th century. Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Allama Iqbal (each of whom have been upper-caste converts) and plenty of different Muslims have been 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 neighborhood had the mental assets to undertake research on the caste system. Even after Ambedkar put the query of caste on the nationwide map, not a single Muslim mental studied caste from the standpoint their very own faith and proposed a severe resolution to the query. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was completely silent about it in his writings.

This historic background brings us to the query: who’s at fault? How can the Shudra-OBCs/Dalits who had no instructional assets like Muslim intellectuals discover a resolution to Muslim backwardness, poverty, unemployment and casteism amongst them? Even now, Muslim intellectuals don’t interact themselves with the a lot greater downside of caste and untouchability. Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi intellectuals want to boost these questions.                                                

Kanca Ilaiah Shepherd is political theorist, social activist and author. His books embrace God As Political Philosopher: Buddha’s Challenge Brahminism, Why I’m Not a Hindu and Buffalo Nationalism.