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Rethinking the Pasmanda Movement
Abstract
The century-old Pasmanda Movement, which rejects the notion of a monolithic Muslim identity, received a new lease of life in the 1990s with the advent of the Mandal reservations. Yet, by focusing solely on caste, the revival has already run out of steam. The PM has to engage in both the political and the social if it is to realise its liberatory promise.
... The term Pasmanda, a combination of the Persian words pas ('left') and mandā ('behind'), was employed by journalist turned politician Ali Anwar in the late 1990s in Bihar to launch a critique on the pervasiveness of caste among Indian Muslims (Ansari 2009). Anwar used the term Pasmanda to refer to Muslims who did not belong to the upper castes of Sayyid, Shaikh, Pathan and Mughal, and had been socially and politically marginalised in India (Anwar 2001). ...
... Among the varied terms and categories, 'Pasmanda' has stuck in most scholarship and media. The political activism of Ali Anwar in the late 1990sand to a lesser extent that of Ejaz Aliis broadly described as the 'Pasmanda Movement' (K. A. Alam 2009;Ansari 2009). 6 Through media advocacy, publications, representation to the state, and to a lesser extent, public rallies, the movement raised the question of caste inequality among Muslims in a polity which was only concerned with their religious identity. ...
... Following the advent of the Pasmanda movement, scholarship on Muslim caste questioned the idea of a monolithic Muslim community and complicated the category of the religious minority (Ansari 2009;Krishnan 2010;Sikand 2001). Upper-caste Muslims, it was reiterated, comprised a minority of the country's Muslim population but monopolise the intellectual, religious, and political leadership of Indian Muslim (Alam 2009). ...
The topic of Muslim caste has been getting space in media discourse andnational politics recently through the concept of ‘Pasmanda’ – a termwhich refers to lower-caste Muslims. As the term gets wider purchase, itis important to question the concept and the category. What is the relationship of the category of Pasmanda with Muslim caste? Which struggles of Muslim lower castes is the term Pasmanda able to lendvoice to, and what are the tensions encompassing the category.
Through ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, Iexamine a newly established organisation called the Pasmanda Adhikār Manch to explore how different single-caste associations come togetherunder the Pasmanda banner. The caste-associations of the Halalkhor, Shah, and Nanpuz communities have the difficult task of countering the invisibilisation of Muslim caste not only by the state, but by their owncaste brethren. They have limited room to demand anything from thestate, considering that it hardly acknowledges the existence of theircaste groups and is suspicious of their political claims as Muslims. Coming together under the Pasmanda umbrella helps provide a widerplatform for assertion of Muslim caste. However, the category comes with limitations that threatens to undo its purpose.
... The importance of the Pasmanda debate within Muslim politics has been recognized by scholars (Alam, 2003(Alam, , 2007(Alam, , 2022Fazal, 2020;Ansari, 2009Ansari, , 2018Ansari, , 2023Levesque & Niazi, 2023). However, the BJP's proactive outreach towards Pasmanda Muslims being new, not much academic work has been done to analyze it. ...
The article explores the positioning of the political elite of a marginalized minority community in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The co-option of Pasmanda elites within the BJP has seemingly transformed the nature of Pasmanda politics. The article argues that the non-ideological assertion of the Pasmanda elites leaves little room for politics of autonomy. These elites are drawn from the newly-educated, self-interested, middle class amongst the Pasmanda. They draw a distinction between the political, social and cultural needs of the community. They attempt to invoke politics for developmental gains, keeping aside the cultural and social predicaments of the Muslim community within the hegemonic Hindutva politics of the BJP. The old agenda of democratizing Muslim politics has been replaced by promoting the individual interest of the new Pasmanda elite. For the BJP, Pasmanda is a tool that enables inclusive political posturing.
... Ahmad's analysis of social stratification and caste (1973), family, kinship, and marriage (1976), and ritual and religion (1981), illustrates these hierarchies. Ashraf-Ajlaf dichotomy is predominant in the North Indian context (Ahmad, 1967) where the Pasmanda, literally "the oppressed," a class-cum-caste movement challenges the notion of monolithic Muslim identity (Ansari, 2009). A discourse of hegemonic social organization of Muslims has also found inroads into the domain of Mappila studies, dividing them based on endogamy and occupation. ...
This article explores how different forms of capital act in configuring power relations among differently positioned Mappila Muslim men. As such forms of capital as education and family status are influential in these relations, I consider ulama (religious scholars) and umara (community leaders) masculinities as analytical categories. While the former opens up access to non-hegemonic men to a rather hegemonic position upon accumulating religious knowledge, the latter restricts ascendancy to men from high-status families. Nevertheless, emergence of new elite men from non-hegemonic locations in the contemporary context of their upward social mobility challenges their hegemony, urging them to embody new forms of capital valued in the changing contexts.
... What Indians do to one another are variously described as "communalism", "regionalism" and "casteism" but never racism' (Chakrabarty, 1994). Given the key claim made in this paper -that racialisation and racial projects can be found in any situation where relations of domination, subordination, exploitation and monopolisation of resources are present -it is hardly surprising that among the Indian Muslims too, the lower status Pasmanda Muslims are racialised and subjected to discrimination by the dominant Ashrafs (Ahmad, 1973;Alam, 2007;Ansari, 1960Ansari, , 2009Bashir and Wilson, 2017). ...
In this article, the concepts of ‘racialisation’, ‘racial projects’, and ‘racisms’ are deployed to analyse the social construction of distinctive groups and the dynamics of group conflicts in India where the white vs. non-white binary as the key element of race relations does not exist. My main argument is that in India the racialisation of specific groups constructs racial categories that intersect with class relations, to produce inequalities and struggles over material and non-material resources. A related argument is that despite the seemingly seamless braiding of race and class, it is in fact class that plays a more significant role in producing as well as sustaining racialised social inequality.
... Most of the anti-caste scholarship have mainly theorised upon caste among Hindus or pasmanda Muslims in India (on pasmanda question, see Ansari, 2009;Falahi, 2009[AQ: 5]). The analysis of the domination of Ashrāfiyā class vis-à-vis Dalits and other unprivileged castes and classes in Pakistan has been missing from these theoretical debates. ...
This paper attempts the historiographical analysis of the caste as it reflects in Sindhi progressive literature and rural politics. In an attempt to reframe the homogenous and harmonious image of Sindhi society, the Progressives popularised certain slogans, phrases, and historical events as the metaphors of the nationalist and class struggle. Tracing from the early Partition phase (the 1940s), this paper interrogates the progressive's orientalist literary trajectory that reframes caste metaphors and constructs the Sindhi nationalist narrative. It is contended that the reframing of some key historical events of Dalits and peasants seems uncritical and apologetic of caste-friction, create an illusion of neutrality and at times even sanction casteism as a functional aspect of Sindhi society. The 'progressive' literature condones caste hierarchies and flattens the question of caste adding to the hegemonic relations between the historically dominant and the subordinated caste groups. This diminishes the possibility of deploying the framework of caste-as-class for understanding caste, organizing Dalits reckoning their agency as it may shape their immanent narratives, and subverting caste hierarchies.
... For example, The Pasmanda Movement (PM) in Bihar organized by Dalit and backward caste Indian Muslims who constitute 85% of the Muslim population in India, and 10% of the Indian population, interrogates the notion of a monolithic Muslim identity. It has forged solidarities with corresponding caste communities regardless of religion, and questions the caste-based politics of upper caste Muslim leaders (Ansari 2009). Therefore, in this paper, we recognize the need to interrogate castes as they are interrelated with religion and class ideologies, and at the same time, reshaped by these different social positions. ...
Life skills have become the foci of many girls’ education initiatives because they are assumed to empower girls to negotiate oppressive gender norms constraining their lives. Often these programmes give a singular attention to gender norms, despite other interlocking oppressive structures and norms. Although postcolonial feminist perspectives in education have often stressed on intersectional analyses, little attention has been given to caste in such scholarship in India. In this paper, we draw on data from a three-year qualitative study of a girls’ life skills programme in Rajasthan, India, employing a postcolonial feminist framework. We engage with Dalitbahujan feminist perspectives in education (Paik, S. 2014. Dalit Women's Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination. London: Routledge.) to decolonize our frameworks and illustrate how the life skills programme produced contradictory outcomes to address gender oppression, such as ensuring girls' bodily integrity, while re-inscribing caste norms. This intersectional analysis of caste, gender, and modernity expands on a postcolonial feminist critique of life skills
Pasmanda’ is arguably the most explosive term that the more recent anti-caste discourse in India has produced. It is assembled from the Persian words pas (‘back’) and manda (‘left behind’), thus describing somebody ‘at the back’ (of society), who ‘has been left behind’. Like ‘Dalit’, ‘Pasmanda’ is essentially a political term, which means that it only comes into being and develops significance if people decide to acquire it and to identify themselves as different and as discriminated—in this case as lower-caste and ‘Dalit Muslims’. ‘Pasmanda’ is hence intrinsically reliant on being communicated and mediated so as to enable its acceptance among the signified and to normalise the creation of a respective reality through a newly collectivising identity. This essay approaches ‘Pasmanda’ as ‘a term to think with’, in tracing the very possibility, among deprived and discriminated groups, to openly communicate, negotiate, and mediate this identity that challenges claims of religious (comm)unity and demands for national loyalty. This possibility varies greatly even across north India. As I examine ‘Pasmanda’ through three different local prisms, the term thus also becomes a dialectical index for the political conditions of its realisation: the conditions of its emergence and, however increasingly precarious, its thriving (in the state of Bihar) as much as the conditions for its suppression (in the capital Delhi) and even of its complete absence (in the state of Gujarat)—i.e. of the conditions that render Pasmandas non-existent. A different form of regional comparison thus emerges.
This paper attempts the historiographical analysis of the caste as it reflects in Sindhi progressive literature and rural politics. In an attempt to reframe the harmonious image of Sindhi society, the Progressives popularised certain slogans, phrases and historical events as the metaphors of the nationalist and class struggle. Tracing from the early Partition phase (the 1940s), this paper interrogates the progressive's orientalist literary trajectory that reframes caste metaphors and constructs the Sindhi nationalist narrative. It is contended that the reframing of some key historical events of Dalits and peasants seem uncritical and apologetic of caste friction, create an illusion of neutrality and at times even sanction casteism as a functional aspect of Sindhi society. The 'progressive' literature condones caste hierarchies and flattens the question of caste adding to the pre-existing hegemonic relations between the historically dominant and the subordinated caste groups. This diminishes the possibility of deploying the framework of caste-as-class for understanding caste, organising Dalits reckoning their agency as it may shape their immanent narratives and subverting caste hierarchies.
This paper attempts the historiographical analysis of the caste as it reflects in Sindhi progressive literature and rural politics. In an attempt to reframe the harmonious image of Sindhi society, the Progressives popularised certain slogans, phrases and historical events as the metaphors of the nationalist and class struggle. Tracing from the early Partition phase (the 1940s), this paper interrogates the progressive’s orientalist literary trajectory that reframes caste metaphors and constructs the Sindhi nationalist narrative. It is contended that the reframing of some key historical events of Dalits and peasants seem uncritical and apologetic of caste friction, create an illusion of neutrality and at times even sanction casteism as a functional aspect of Sindhi society. The ‘progressive’ literature condones caste hierarchies and flattens the question of caste adding to the pre-existing hegemonic relations between the historically dominant and the subordinated caste groups. This diminishes the possibility of deploying the framework of caste-as-class for understanding caste, organising Dalits reckoning their agency as it may shape their immanent narratives and subverting caste hierarchies.
What has been the pattern of interaction between state and Muslim community in India since independence? There have been considerable studies concerning the partisan role of Indian state vis-à-vis Muslim community. Over the years the issue of increasing marginalisation in the Muslim community has been linked with state politics of exclusion. Within this broader context, this paper would broadly reflect on the nature of discourse of exclusion and inclusion within the Muslim community and its impact in terms of formulating strategies and responses towards politics of inclusion/exclusion in India among the Muslim elites/leadership. It argues that the lack of participation of community in the development process of the country, which in effect negatively affects the choices and capabilities of the community to partake into the ‘developmental goods’ partly emerges from the notion of ‘Muslim politics’, which pays heavy premium on the ‘politics of identity’ and ‘security’ and its imagination of Indian state system.
This paper is an attempt to investigate the discursive bases of the categorical and identity-based choices available to the Dalits under the Ashrafia hegemony, and the resultant denial of Dalitness prevalent among the Dalits and the Sindhi civil society in, Pakistan. Informed by the Ambedkarian (subaltern) perspective, I analyse the conversational interviews conducted with the Dalit activists (mostly Scheduled Castes), and with their Ashrafia class counterparts. Interrogating the superior status of Sayed caste(s), I contend that the the denial of casteism, the opposition to the use of the ‘Dalit’ identity marker and the negation of the Dalitness seemed to have as much to do with the belief in Ashrafia values as it had with the normative sanction of the Savarna. values.Both the Savarna and the Ashrafia values seemed to seek legitimacy from the dominant ethnocentric forms of the politicized Sufism. Political Sufism merges the Savarna and Ashrafia norms by means of the syncretic narrative based on interfaith harmony and the civilisational rhetoric. Ashrafisation (also Savarnisation) and the reverence towards Sayeds were the key self-perpetuating hegemonic processes underlying the attempts by the Dalits and the civil society activists to dissipate cognitive dissonance underlying the existing Dalitness and the Ashrafia hegemony. I, therefore, conclude that the practices and the narratives prevalent in Sindhi civil society undermined the Dalit agency to come up with their own counter-hegemonic and emancipatory narrative(s).
This paper is an attempt to investigate the discursive bases of the categorical and identity-based choices available to the Dalits under the Ashrafia hegemony, and the resultant denial of Dalitness prevalent among the Dalits and the Sindhi civil society in, Pakistan. Informed by the Ambedkarian (subaltern) perspective, I analyse the conversational interviews conducted with the Dalit activists (mostly Scheduled Castes), and with their Ashrafia class counterparts. Interrogating the superior status of Sayed caste(s), I contend that the the denial of casteism, the opposition to the use of the ‘Dalit’ identity marker and the negation of the Dalitness seemed to have as much to do with the belief in Ashrafia values as it had with the normative sanction of the Savarna. values.Both the Savarna and the Ashrafia values seemed to seek legitimacy from the dominant ethnocentric forms of the politicized Sufism. Political Sufism merges the Savarna and Ashrafia norms by means of the syncretic narrative based on interfaith harmony and the civilisational rhetoric. Ashrafisation (also Savarnisation) and the reverence towards Sayeds were the key self-perpetuating hegemonic processes underlying the attempts by the Dalits and the civil society activists to dissipate cognitive dissonance underlying the existing Dalitness and the Ashrafia hegemony. I, therefore, conclude that the practices and the narratives prevalent in Sindhi civil society undermined the Dalit agency to come up with their own counter-hegemonic and emancipatory narrative(s).
This paper is an attempt to investigate the historical trajectory of Ashrafia hegemony in Sindh, the province of Pakistan. I begin with the analysis of biopolitics of caste, class and religion organised around Hindu–Muslim binarism and unity as it unfolded during and after the partition of the Indian subcontinent. I particularly analyse the demographic shifts, the official categorisation of populations, and the communal and ethnonationalist claims that led to the specific kind of interpretation of religion, caste and class. Informed by the Ambedkarian subaltern perspective and based on the analysis of ethnographic data and vernacular literature, I explain that nationalist ideologies framed in the narratives of political Islam and Sufism tend to organise politics around Hindu–Muslim otherness, as in case of Pakistani nationalism, and Hindu–Muslim harmony, as in case of Sindhi nationalism. Based on that understanding, I argue that Ashrafia advantage, by and large, is the product of pre-existing historical hegemonic relations than any conscious strategy, and or directly imposed domination. Since both the Ashrafia narratives primarily imagine people through religious binaries, they lack the counter-hegemonic elements that could confront casteism that lies at the intersection of class and religion. None of the narratives, being performative projections of the ideal religious society, brought casteism in their focus while dealing with the structural inequalities, social hierarchies and the issues of political representation of the Dalit class. It resulted in the unwarranted legitimacy for Ashrafia hegemony, Jati Hindu domination and Dalit subordination. This re-hierarchised caste groups and continue to (re)distribute the caste capital by (re)producing Sayedism, Dalit exclusion and caste-class oligarchies.
Questioning ‘Dalit Muslims’ as an authentic social group, the authors enumerate the challenges inherent in presupposing that clearly delineated social groups exist and challenge the efficacy of designating such groups as discernible and cohesive. An interdisciplinary critique that draws on history, religion and social sciences, reveals a pervasive, yet ambiguous, group consciousness shaped by two prevalent discourses: social stratification among Muslims in India; and emerging activist platforms claiming to represent a Dalit Muslim polity. The ways in which ‘Dalit Muslims’ are reified as a presumably singular social group are highlighted (and disputed) in order to further scholarly debate regarding dynamics of group formation and definition. The analysis shows that, given similar social, economic and political experiences of some segments of the population, ‘Dalit Muslims’ may be treated (cautiously) as a social category for purposes of discussion. Nevertheless, despite enduring discourses about social hierarchy and socio-political activism, and a generalized have-nots versus elite rhetoric that underlies assertions of community coherence and demands for amelioration, no established, homogeneous group appropriate for either scholarly investigation or policy planning can be identified. Rather, diversity, status ambiguity and ongoing change processes provide the most cogent characterization of Dalit Muslim communities in India today.
This article calls for a re-evaluation of basic concepts
such as caste and status groups for making sense of the social
organisation of Muslims in Malabar. Muslim social groups, while
disseminating notions of egalitarian claims of Islam, rationalise
social divisions and discriminatory practices among themselves
largely in terms of Islamic juristic concepts of purity, knowledge,
piety and morality. Due to increasing Islamisation, these notions
have been reconstructed to sustain social divisions among Muslims.
Therefore, it is argued here that social divisions among Muslims in
Malabar today do not derive primarily from acculturative influences
of Hinduism. The article concludes that since sociological concepts
such as caste, ethnicity and status groups as used in South Asia have
failed to capture this Islamic cultural mediation, these phenomena
need to be further researched.
This article draws on quantitative and qualitative data from the Banaras (Varanasi) silk weaving cluster in North India to show how informal institutions based on family and community interact with the relations of production to enable flexible specialization while reproducing or accentuating inequality. The family-based apprenticeship system produces a supply of highly skilled workers but contributes to labour surplus by lowering the costs of entry and making exit difficult. Surplus labour ensures that productivity gains resulting from technical improvements do not accrue to weavers as higher wages. A community of artisans called the naqsheband (designers) produces fabric patterns that are central to the industry's market. Geographical clustering results in quick diffusion of these designs and free imitation is the key to innovation. But this entails hyper-competition, conservative changes, a culture of secrecy and quickly dissipating monopoly rents. The Banaras case enables us to understand how collective efficiencies as well as inefficiencies are created by the same institutions.
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