There are 13 Muslim communities in the state that qualify for inclusion in the backward classes list, and that would be constitutional
By PS Krishnan
The identification of socially and educationally backward classes, or Other Backward Classes (OBCs) at the national and state levels has faced obstacles for various reasons. Chief among them, obviously, is the desire and efforts of advantageously placed classes to retain their advantages to the maximum extent possible and their unwillingness to let the backward classes have their due share. Another important reason is the ignorance among elite classes of the way in which the traditional Indian social system, i.e. the Indian caste system, works and how it helps to ensure advantages in all fields to the elite classes and imposes deprivations on the backward classes. This ignorance is even greater in respect of India’s Muslim society.
Equality and fraternity are among the basic tenets of the social ideology of Islam. The religion is against the concept of privileges based on birth. However, human beings and social groups being what they are, there has been a failure in measuring up to this great ideal, and social stratification has emerged in all Muslim societies, including the Indian. Sociological studies have brought out the reality of social stratification in Muslim society as contra-distinct from the Islamic social ideology. Its origins are traced to periods even prior to the Muslims’ arrival in India.
Long before Muslim conquerors invaded north India, Islam spread especially in the south and the Deccan through traders and Sufis. The lower castes of India have a long history of resistance against the low status and restrictions imposed on them. This history is marked by the Bhakti movements in various parts of India, including Basaveswara’s Virasaiva movement in Karnataka and Shankardeb’s Vaishnava movement in Assam. The same lower castes and “untouchable� castes, which were the main constituent of these movements, also moved to Islam wherever the opportunity arose. In this context, the following observation of Swami Vivekananda is noteworthy: “The Mohammedan conquest of India came as a salvation to the down-trodden, to the poor. That is why one-fifth of our people have become Mohammedans. It was not the sword that did it. It would be the height of madness to think it was all the work of sword and fire.� It is widely accepted that 90-95 percent of Muslim Indians are descendants of Hindus converts and the great majority of them are from the lower castes, the Shudras and the “untouchables�.
When Islam entered north India in the 12th century, India had already developed its own form of social stratification in form of the caste system. One important issue, for a clear understanding of the Muslim society of India, is the manner in which the Indian caste system has affected the Muslim society in different regions of India. While the egalitarian social ideology of Islam helped mitigate its incidence and intensity, it was not possible to entirely eliminate it. I have examined the pattern of stratification that has emerged in different regions of India and also in the adjoining countries of Bangladesh and Pakistan. My study, which is based on my experience and the writings of numerous scholars, shows that a number of caste identities have been obliterated in Muslim society, while some caste-like identities continue to exist. The extent to which surviving caste-like identities continue to exist in Muslim society varies from region to region. These social realities underlie the inclusion of a number of socially and educationally backward classes of Muslims in Central as well as state backward classes lists. But this process has partially been impeded in some states by complementary factors, as in Andhra Pradesh (AP). On the one hand, the Muslim civil society leadership put all its weight behind efforts to get the entire Muslim community listed as a socially and educationally backward class. Even when these efforts kept failing over the past four decades in Andhra Pradesh, they were persisted with. A complementary perceptive distortion came from two AP state commissions, which equated the egalitarian ideology of Islam and equality in the mosque with equality in the day-to-day sphere, an assumption that is sociologically not valid. Equality in theory and inequality in practice coexist in different spheres in the Muslim society. Only two communities of Muslims have been included in the AP backward classes list — the Dudekulas and related groups in 1970, and the Mehtars in 1972.
Here it is important to notice the difference between Muslim societies in north India and in south India. In north India, the groups who moved to Islam were mainly artisans and other occupational castes. Conversion led to no change in their occupational pattern and other social features and they have retained their social identity and in many cases the former community name that was based on the their traditional occupation. This facilitated the identification of each such group as backward and resulted in the correct inclusion of the bulk of the Muslim population in north Indian states like UP, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, leaving out only those groups who were not socially backward.
In the south, on the other hand, the converted came mainly from castes that are now known as Scheduled Castes or are listed among the backward classes, so that the Muslim community in the south has taken the shape of a community of agricultural and miscellaneous labourers and poor peasants, though there are sections of merchants, traders and the like. Against this background, the “bottom-upwards approach� adopted in the northern states is inappropriate for south India. Kerala found the solution for this by identifying the Mappilas as a backward class, and so did Tamil Nadu by similarly identifying the Labbais. Both these communities are agglomerations of a number of converted “untouchable� and other lower backward castes, which managed to lose their caste identities but could not break out of their social backwardness.
My study of the district manuals and district gazetteers of both the pre-Independence and post-Independence periods, as well as pre-independence census reports, have uncovered the fact that the Sheikhs of Andhra Pradesh occupy the same social slot as the Labbais in Tamil Nadu and the Mappilas in Kerala. The title of Sheikh should not mislead us. In north India and most other parts, Sheikh denotes an elite social category comprising a small percentage of the Muslim population along with other elite groups like Syed, Pathan, Mughal, etc. But the Sheikhs of Andhra Pradesh are different. They form a good majority of the Muslim population of Andhra Pradesh and are an agglomeration of a number of previously “untouchable� and lower backward castes as are the Labbais and Mappilas elsewhere. In addition, there are a number of other distinct social groups in Andhra Pradesh’s Muslim society that have been referred to and described not only in the district manuals, gazetteers and census reports, and in the classic treatises of E. Thurston and Syed Siraj-ul-Hasan, but also in the 2003-published People of India series of the Anthropological Survey of India. The last is a modern classic with considerably updated information on each community or social group in every state of India.
Based on these studies, and on my personal knowledge, I have, in addition to the Dudekulas and Mehtars, identified 13 more communities of Muslims that qualify for inclusion in the backward classes list, and 10 groups that cannot be so included, in keeping with constitutional provisions and Supreme Court and High Court judgements. The 13 backward Muslim groups are: Attar Saibulu/Attarollu, Borewale, Chakketakare, Dhobi Muslim, Faqir/Fhakir Budbudki, Garadi Muslim, Gosangi Muslim, Guddi Eluguvallu, Hajjam/Nai Muslim, Labbai/Labbi, Quresh (Muslim butchers)/Muslim Katika, Shaik/Sheikh, and Siddi. The 10 non-backward groups are: Syed, Mughal, Pathan, Irani, Arab, Bohra, Khoja, Cutchi-Memon, Jamayat, and Navayat, who along with their sub-groups account for less than 15-20 percent of Andhra Pradesh’s Muslim population.
With this, the way has been opened to remove the gaping gap in the identification of backward classes of Muslims in Andhra Pradesh, in accordance with the Constitution and the pronouncements of the Supreme Court, especially in the Mandal (Indra Sawhney) case, and of the Andhra Pradesh High Court, especially in its Muslim Community Reservation (Archana Reddy) case.
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Krishnan is an adviser to the HRD ministry on reservations and authored Krishnan Report which formed the basis of reservation for Muslims of AP. This article first appeared on tehelka.com
Link:
AP reservation for Muslims: Important documents.