NEXT TIME well-meaning visitors, including those from Pakistan, come inquiring after the state of Indian Muslims they may consider refining the query to seek out the precise caste of Muslims they are anxious to hear of.

It is commonplace that Indian Muslims were never a monolithic or homogeneous group. Ideologically alone they today straddle the entire political spectrum. Muslims find themselves close to the traditionally upper caste Congress Party and a few are members of the Hindu revivalist Bharatiya Janata Party. They are aligned also to the various socialist camps and communist movements that exist across the country, unmindful of the atheism their leaders espouse.

Indian Muslims have their own politico-religious groups too that range from the Muslim League, now mostly confined to Kerala, to mass organisations like Jamaat-i-Islami and Jamiatul Ulema-i-Hind. There are smaller variants also such as the Majlis-i-Ittehad ul Muslimeen of Hyderabad.

But now the revival of quota politics has triggered a fresh debate about the little-known Dalit Muslims and other backward castes among them. The issue has threatened the hold the Brahmin-like Muslim leadership has so far exercised on the community. The new debate is part of a process in which certain backward castes and the Dalits, as also the tribespeople, the oldest inhabitants of the country, are the chosen beneficiaries of affirmative action in jobs and access to higher education.

However, while affirmative action on offer for Dalits covers Sikhs and Buddhists among them, apart from those from the Hindu system of beliefs, Muslim and Christian Dalits have been left out of its definition in the belief that they comprise a religious category. Some of the most common castes of Muslim Dalits are mehtars, lal begis and halaalkhors, all involved in menial work of carrying human refuse and dead animals at par with their Hindu counterparts.

While the Christian community has approached the courts to seek equal rights for its flock of Dalits, Muslim ulema, mostly from the upper castes, are largely inclined to ignore or hide the disturbing reality for two reasons. First they fear that sweeping affirmative action would enable a large chunk of a captive constituency to slip out of their loosening clasp. And, secondly, the idea of Muslim castes would blow the lid off a widely propagated belief that all their followers are somehow socially equal.

Often enough, Muslim ulema quote Allama Iqbal’s lines to claim equality in their ranks — Ek hi saf mein khade ho gaye Mahmood o Ayaaz. But Dalit Muslim representatives point out that once the prayers got over, Ayaaz still remained an obedient slave and Sultan Mahmood his ruler.

Some Muslim leaders who oppose selective affirmative action for the downtrodden castes of the faithful are clamouring for quotas for the entire Muslim community. Their demand is seen even by liberal standards as communally provocative and self-seeking. Upper caste Muslims sense that they would be the biggest beneficiaries of any en masse quota for the entire community, and scarcely anyone else.

If recent articles in the more liberal Urdu newspapers are an indication the existing hiatus is only widening between the haves and the have-nots among India’s Muslims. At the heart of the resentment against the upper caste ulema is a spate of religious edicts or fatwas in which lower-caste Muslims, both men and women, have been publicly humiliated. In one case, a father-in-law was ordered to marry his son’s wife and the son asked to divorce her because the father-in-law has alleged to have raped the woman. Urdu newspapers thus offer a platform to the lower castes to vent their anger. In some areas lower-caste Muslim representatives are aspiring to become the prayer leaders, unsettling the orthodox order.

Organisations like Vaikalpik Dalit Muslim Kendra, the All India Pasmanda Muslim Samaj, the Delhi Archdiocesan Justice and Peace Commission, the Satyashodhak Samaj, the All India Christian Council and the All India Catholic Union are joining hands to assert their claim on the caste quotas.

Justice Party president Udit Raj says that ‘choosing one’s faith is a basic human right’ that all Dalits should also enjoy.

“India is a democracy,” says Raj, who became a Buddhist and converted many more to leave the Hindu caste pail, “and all its citizens, especially the weaker sections, should never be denied the right of choice of their faith and the state should not discriminate among its citizens on the basis of religious affiliation.”

Late last year a conference was organised in New Delhi by the Prime Minister’s High Level Committee, headed by retired Justice Rajinder Sachar, which has been appointed to prepare a report on the socio-economic conditions of India’s Muslims.

The conference brought together activists and leaders associated with various Muslim Dalit and other backward communities from different parts of India to deliberate on the problems affecting these groups, who, together, form the majority of the Indian Muslim population.

It was pointed out that while Islam does not recognise caste distinctions, Indian Muslim society is based on various caste and ethnic communities.

To take them as a single unit and to deny these internal differences would only perpetuate structures of marginalisation. The conference criticised mainly upper caste Muslim spokesmen, who claim that raising the problems of the low-caste Muslim communities is an ‘anti-Islamic’ conspiracy to divide the Muslims.

The conference sought job and education reservations exclusively for those Muslim communities recognised as Dalits, tribespeople and backward castes. One such demand came from P. S. Krishnan, former chairman of the Backward Classes Commission, who pointed out that caste was a pan-Indian, rather than simply a Hindu, institution. The mere fact of a Muslim or Christian backward caste belonging to a non-Hindu faith, he argued, made no difference to his or her poverty and the discrimination that he or she faces.

He criticised the state for not making publicly available data on the socio-economic conditions of the Muslims of the country, particularly of the numerous OBC Muslim communities, who rank among the poorest sections of Indian society. In fact, he questioned the necessity of the Sachar Commission itself, pointing out that the state has in its possession adequate data on Muslim socio-economic conditions. Despite this, he said, the state has done little at all for the Muslim backwards, as indeed for other marginalised castes.

So next time you ask about the welfare of Indian Muslims, please be clear that most of the community is struggling not only against a less than friendly Indian state but also against their own leaders who seem to have colluded all this while against the flock to nurture their own narrow interests.