COMMENTARY
Sikhs, and in 1990 the V P Singh govern-
Scheduled Caste Status for
Dalit Muslims and Christians
A Comprehensive Clarification
Shireen Azam
The case of Dalit Muslims and
Christians for being qualified as
Scheduled Caste is obfuscated
by a host of denials or fallacious
arguments offered by their
religious elites and by successive
governments. Some answers are
offered in this article to eight
most frequently asked questions
concerning the Dalit Muslim case
for SC status.
Shireen Azam (shireen.azam@sant.ox.ac.uk) is
a DPhil candidate, University of Oxford, United
Kingdom.
14
A
n important case concerning some
of the most marginalised citi-
zens of our country is due to be
heard in the coming days. On 11 July, the
Supreme Court of India is supposed to
hear a bunch of petitions arguing for
Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians to
qualify for Scheduled Caste (SC) status.
This piece hopes to offer a compendium
of the main debates concerning this is-
sue. An intervention report has also
been submitted by the author to aid the
Supreme Court.
The Issue at Hand and Brief Context
The main petition in the matter is Ghazi
Saaduddin v State of Maharashtra Thr
Secretary. The Akhil Maharashtra Mus-
lim Khatik Samaj representing Khatik
Muslims will also be heard along with
this case, as will the petition of Ejaz
Ali—former Rajya Sabha member from
Patna who has been an important voice
for backward caste Muslims since the
1990s. Several matters on behalf of Dalit
Christians have been tagged in the mat-
ter as well. Some of the organisations
representing them are the United Front
for Dalit Christians, United Front for
Dalit Christian Rights, All India Chris-
tian Federation, among others. In addi-
tion to these, matters concerning indi-
vidual Dalit Christians and Muslims
have been tagged.
The Constitution of India came into
force on 26 January 1950. On 11 August
1950, a presidential order was passed,
which set limits to who could qualify to
be a member of the SCs: “notwithstand-
ing anything contained in paragraph 2,
no person which professes a religion dif-
fered from Hinduism shall be deemed to
be a member of a Scheduled Caste.” In
1956, the article was amended to include
JULY 8, 2023
ment brought in neo-Buddhists within
the SC category. Muslims and Christians
remain the only two major groups ex-
cluded from the SC status.
The SC status has been a remarkable
legislation in the story of independent
India. While the Constitution recognises
all persons as equal, the SC status cre-
ates an exception to make space for com-
munities who have been historically per-
secuted for millenia. It recognises the
caste system officially—allowing for res-
ervations in politics, and in government
employment and education. While these
provisions recognised caste as a disabili-
ty for traditionally untouchable castes,
the introduction of the Prevention of
Atrocity (POA) Act in 1990 did the cru-
cial task of framing caste as “power” of
the upper castes (Satyanarayana 2014).
Thus, today, the SC status allows for
both affirmative action as well as protec-
tion against atrocity. Of course, there is
much to be desired in the implementa-
tion of both these facets. However, the
status allows for what Gopal Guru (2011)
has called “minimum moral stamina” to
recognise and articulate oppression.
The petitions in the upcoming Supreme
Court case argue that the continuing ex-
clusion of Dalit Muslims and Dalit Chris-
tians from the SC status is violative of
Articles 14, 15, 16 and 25 of the Constitu-
tion of India. That is, it is against the
right to equality and non-discrimination
on the basis of religion, and violates the
freedom of religion. Prima facie their
case is obvious—if all religions have
equality in the Indian Constitution, why
do some not qualify for a protection
which has empowered the most margin-
alised persons in our country? And per-
haps even more importantly, how has
this apparent lapse of justice not been
vehemently debated and corrected for
75 years since independence?
The one-line answer to these questions
is fairly straightforward: that caste among
Muslims and Christians has been invisi-
bilised, both in state and policy dis-
course, and by the religious, political,
and intellectual elites who have repre-
sented them as minorities. There is also
vol lVIII no 27 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

a profound reason behind the state and
policy discourse which I have explored
in an earlier piece. The invisibilisation of
Muslims and Christians is more signifi-
cant to the upper castes’ handling of caste
than might be assumed. The “casteless”
state has done its best to deny caste—
but when it absolutely cannot, in the
case of Dalits and the SC category, it
has gained from keeping caste “Hindu”
(Azam and Samos 2022).
However, the simple case of these two
communities is obfuscated by a host of
denials or fallacious arguments—offered
by their religious elites and by consecu-
tive governments. Most recently, since
the Supreme Court case is due to be heard,
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) govern-
ment has opposed it vehemently in its af-
fidavits to the Court (among other things
even arguing that caste exploitation is
distinctly Hindu). Some articles have also
been published betraying similar political
motivations, wrapped in the shroud of
academic language but carefully built on a
castle of shaky premises and even false-
hoods (see Arvind Kumar 2023,1 and my
rebuttal).2 In the rest of the piece, I hope to
offer some answers to eight most frequent-
ly asked questions concerning the Dalit
Muslim case for SC status. While several of
these arguments apply to Dalit Christians
as well, I will focus on Muslims, consid-
ering the specialisation of my research.
Frequently Asked Questions: Dalit
Muslims and Scheduled Caste Status
How can Islam have caste? One of the
most common questions that comes up
with regard to Dalit Muslims is, if Islam
is an egalitarian religion, how can it
then have caste?
There is a conceptual problem here.
When people ask this, they are in fact re-
ferring to the theoretical idea of a reli-
gion, while the issue is of empirical real-
ity (even if it is infused with theoretical
ideas). This question assumes that reli-
gion is something fixed and that only the
text is the most important part of the re-
ligion, not the actual lived practices of
the followers of the religion. However,
lived religion is made of several ‘‘faith
structures’’3 which influence how reli-
gion is practised at a time and place.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW JULY 8, 2023
Caste is a comprehensive social and
economic structure that forms the basis
of Indian society. While the origins of
the caste lie in early Brahminical texts
that are now identified as ‘‘Hindu,’’ over
the centuries it has become part of the
social fabric of society of the Indian
region. Since caste is an organisational
principle, it has determined everything
about society for centuries: what occu-
pations people could follow, who could
take water from where, who could live
next to whom, who could marry whom,
and who is thought of as higher and lower.
India’s Muslims have been part of the
subcontinent’s history for more than a
millennium. It is clear from historical re-
cords that most Muslims of India are
converted from communities who were
already inhabiting the region. The rest
of the Muslim communities, which have
roots in Central Asia, came here centu-
ries ago and have been part of the sub-
continent’s society since then. While
conversion to Islam provides a new sys-
tem of belief and a theological commu-
nity, it cannot change the caste of the
person. The occupations of people, the
land they had or did not have, how their
neighbours evaluate their position and
hierarchy in society cannot change with
conversion. Conversion to Islam leads to
a change in the god they believe in, and
gives people a new religious text. This
can provide people with moral support.
But just like changing your god and Bible
cannot change your skin colour, it can-
not change people’s occupation, skills,
inheritance, networks, or health, which
is determined in India by caste.
Further, even though the Quran does
not legitimise caste, Islamic theology in
India has imbibed caste into its structure
over the years.4 Therefore, it can be said
that Indian Muslims follow a caste-
based Islam. Evidence of Indian Islam
having structures of caste can be seen in
the following examples.
(i) Ulemas or religious leaders of all ma-
jor Islamic theological schools like
Deobandi and Barelwi have supported
caste discrimination. For example, the
scholar Barbara Metcalf (1982) writes
that the ulema who set up the Deobandi
school were from the upper castes of
“ashraf” Muslims: that is from one of the
vol lVIII no 27
COMMENTARY
four castes of Sayyids, Shaikhs, Mughals
or Pathans (see Appendix, page 239).
Muhammad Qasim Nanautavi, one of
the main founders of the Deobandi
movement wrote that “God entrusted
religious learning to these four qaum.”
This continues to manifest even today,
most visibly in fatwas. For example, fat-
was have been issued saying that if an
upper caste Muslim girl marries a lower
caste Muslim boy, that marriage will be
invalid (Masood Alam Falahi’s book
Hindustan me Zaat Paat aur Musalman
for the entire list; also see Ali Anwar 2001).
Analysing the leaders of the Deobandi
schools, Metcalf wrote that the “ashraf
origin of the ulama accounts in large
part for their influence among members
of this class and, to some extent, for the
character of their teachings, as well.”
(ii) Key Islamic texts which are found in
every household in India condone caste:
an important text, Behashti Zevar, writ-
ten by the influential Maulana Ashraf
Thanvi, gives a detailed list of which
Muslim castes cannot marry each other
(a tailor is higher than a barber, a barber
or a weaver cannot marry a Pathan).
This book is commonly found in the
homes of Muslim families in large parts
of India, and often there is a custom to
give this to newly wed brides as a gift.
The book gives very clear instructions
on caste discrimination. Even though
the Quran does not have any such dic-
tums, these local texts inform the prac-
tice of Indian Islam. A famous Deobandi
scholar from Lucknow, Maulvi Muham-
mad Burhanuddin Sambhali, wrote that
people who engage in ‘‘lowly’’ (razil) oc-
cupations, such as tanners and fisher-
folk, should not enter mosques.
(iii) All key Islamic institutions are
headed by upper castes alone. In his
book Masawat Ki Jung, Ali Anwar (2001)
has demonstrated the over-representa-
tion of just two upper castes—Syeds and
Sheikhs—in several Muslim bodies in
Bihar. For example, out of 39 executive
members of the All India Muslim Per-
sonal Law Board, 36 were upper caste.
Another recent study by Julien Lev-
esque, Laurence Gautier, and Nicolas
Belorgey is notable. Mapping the “social
spaces” that Muslim leaders occupy, the
study offers some quantitative insight
15
COMMENTARY
into Muslim leadership. This study looks
at a larger geographical spread, narrow-
ing 164 Muslim leaders across India. It
notes that 70% of Muslim leaders belong
to upper castes. Further, the composi-
tion has not changed in the last 30 years.
Notable Muslim institutions like the Ali-
garh Muslim University do not institute
reservations for SCs or Muslim Dalits.
Dalit Muslims or even lower caste Mus-
lims cannot become religious heads in
important religious or community or-
ganisations because of caste biases to-
wards them, as demonstrated in Masood
Alam Falahi’s work.
Is there historical evidence to suggest
casteism has affected Muslim lives? Is
there large-scale evidence of it now?
Caste has persisted in the Indian region
through centuries. If caste was incom-
patible with Islam and Muslims, it would
have been eradicated because of 800
years of rule under Muslim rulers. Histo-
rians have shown that various Muslim
rulers ended up accepting caste hierar-
chies present in society. An example can
be found in Ain-i-Akbari, a record of
Akbar’s court by Abu Fazl. Not only does
it reproduce the idea of caste hierarchy
in Manusmriti—the division of Brahmins,
Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras—Ain-
i-Akbari also calls the professions of bar-
bers, tanners, and sweepers to be “de-
testable” (Habib 1995). Over the years,
the ruling classes of Muslims who ar-
rived from Central Asia modelled them-
selves as “upper castes,” as sharif/Asraf
or noble people.
Further, caste and conversion have
created a very complex rubric. When a
Brahmin converted to Islam, they would
start claiming status as the high-caste
Sayyid, now directly the blood descend-
ent of Prophet Muhammad (a pertinent
case is several Kashmiri “Bhatt” Brah-
min-to-Syed families). When a Rajput
would convert to Islam, they would take
on the ethnic title of “Pathan.” However,
when a Mochi converted to Islam, they
remained a Mochi.
Even the Rajput kingdom of Marwar
recognised Muslim caste. For example, a
census by the Bania home minister Mun-
hata Nainsi in the 16th century catego-
rised the Pathan as “upper caste,” while
16
the “julaha” (weaver, now called Momin-
Ansar) is categorised as lower castes
(Peabody 2001: 827). Privileges to upper
caste Muslims were sanctioned by the
state during the Mughal period. Arthur
Buehler writes that
by the latter part of the sixteenth century
there was a special post of niqabat created
and filled by a distinguished Sayyid who had
the authority to look into the authenticity of
Sayyid claims and who issued certificates
of genealogy to those who were legitimate.
(Buehler 2012: 241)
Coming to more recent history, British
census records extensively speak about
caste in Muslims. They show the pres-
ence of Ashrafs and Ajlafs in the north-
ern region and other divisions in the
southern regions like the Thangals and
Ossan in Kerala. The Scheduled Castes
List of 1936 includes various Muslim Dalit
castes like the Halalkhor, Lalbegi, Nat,
Dhobi in the United Provinces and Khatik
and Mallah in Bombay. Scholarship in
the last 10 years continues to show the
persistence of caste in Muslims. Some
important data points are as follows:
A study by the Giri Institute of Devel-
opment Studies, Lucknow, in 2015 exam-
ined 7,000 households in Uttar Pradesh
(UP) focusing on Muslim caste (Trivedi
et al 2016). It showed that Dalit Muslims
face untouchability both by Muslims and
Hindus. The study reports that, higher
caste Hindus and Muslims both admit to
practising untouchability against Dalit
Muslim castes. Dalit Muslim students
are made to sit separately in schools. At
least one-third of Dalit Muslims stated
that they are not allowed to bury their
dead in an upper-caste burial ground.
Forty-six percent of Dalit Muslims report-
ed having received food/water in upper-
caste Hindu houses. One-fifth of the re-
spondents felt that upper-caste Muslims
maintained a distance from them. Non-
Dalit Muslims confirmed these practices.
One-third of the people who said their
houses are visited by Dalit Muslims ad-
mitted that Dalit Muslims are not offered
food in the same utensils as they use.
A paper published in the Journal of
International Development by Chhavi
Tiwari, Srinivas Goli, Mohammad Zahid
Siddiqui and Pradeep Salve (2022) esti-
mates that 24% of the Muslim popula-
tion are Dalits. Rural poverty among
JULY 8, 2023
Dalit Muslims is 53%, as against 31% in
upper caste Muslims. Extent of landless-
ness among Dalit Muslims is 80%, as
against 44% in upper caste Muslims.
Even though upper caste Muslims too
are overall at a huge disadvantage as
compared to upper caste Hindus (a pov-
erty of 31% as opposed to only 14%),
Dalit Muslims are floundering at the ab-
solute bottom of the country.
While there is no doubt that more data
and studies are needed to fully grasp the
depth of this, one can find varying kinds
of evidence across the country on Dalit
Muslims. In Maharashtra, for example,
Khatiks (whose traditional occupation is
being butchers) are listed under SCs. In
my fieldwork in Maharashtra for my
PhD, I found that Hindu and Muslim
Khatiks share the same caste associa-
tion. For example, the Khatik panchayat
in Kolhapur comprises both religions.
This is nothing but the evidence of con-
tinuing bonds of caste. The fact that only
one gets entitlement to SC status is sheer
discrimination. Likewise, a detailed eth-
nographic study in the Shimoga district
of Karnataka supported by the Indian
Council of Social Science Research, New
Delhi, showed the plight of Dalit Mus-
lims in the region. The study argues that
subdivisions among Muslims have clear
caste overtones (George and Adiga 2017).
It brings out practices of endogamy, re-
strictions in social interactions, restric-
tions on the lines of purity and pollution
and occupational segregations. The au-
thors write that “the lived-realities of
the lower status group Muslims were
similar to that of Dalit Hindus and some-
times worse than Dalits in spheres like
political participation and access to civic
amenities.” The work of Hafsa Sayeed
Shah (2022) shows the far-reaching ef-
fects of caste in the Muslim-dominated
Kashmiri society as well.
Forget the rest of the society. Continu-
ation of untouchability against Dalit
Muslims persists even in government of-
fices. This is confirmed in reports of the
National Commission for Safai Karam-
charis. The reports confirm two impor-
tant things: one, that sanitation work in
India is steeped in untouchability even
today, and two, many Dalit Muslim com-
munities do sanitation jobs. Thus, even
vol lVIII no 27 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

the Indian government actively employs
Dalit Muslims for sanitation work, where
they are treated as untouchables. For ex-
ample, an advertisement published in the
newspaper Dainik Jagran (on 14 Septem-
ber 2022), by the Azamgarh Municipality
in UP announced openings for sanita-
tion jobs.5 These were “(i) sweeper,
(ii) sweeper-cum-watchman, (iii) sweep-
ress (sic), and (iv) dhobi.” The advertise-
ment mentioned that there are 26 posi-
tions, all of them reserved for only one
community: “Sweeper who don’t come
under the Scheduled Caste (Halalkhor).”
This is nothing but the Dalit Muslim
caste Halalkhor. This shows that various
governments employ Dalit Muslims to
do cleaning jobs. This is structural evi-
dence of how Muslim Dalit persons are
employed for cleaning jobs but not rec-
ognised as Dalits.
If you converted for equality, why are
you asking for recognition of caste
now? This is an interesting question—
one which often comes from the most
ironic avenues. For example, by the BJP-
led Government of India. In what should
be taken as a historic moment, the BJP
government argued in an affidavit sub-
mitted to the Supreme Court in Novem-
ber 2023, that untouchability is key to
Hinduism, and that Hindu society has
had an oppressive environment for hun-
dreds of years. Further, it also argued
that people who convert to Christianity
or Islam end up with better social and
economic positions than those who re-
main in Hinduism. Putting aside the
truth of these arguments for a moment,
it is important to note the significance
first—considering the Hindu right’s his-
toric stance on the caste system in the
last century—which has often hinged on
undermining its importance in the Hin-
du social order. On point 32, the govern-
ment’s affidavit argues:
In fact one of the reasons for which people
from Scheduled Castes have been converting
to religions like Islam or Christianity is so
that they can come out of the oppressive sys-
tem of Untouchability which is not prevalent
at all in Christianity of Islam. Therefore,
once they have come out and ameliorated
there (sic) social status by Converting them-
selves to Christianity or Islam they cannot
claim to be backward since backwardness
Economic & Political Weekly EPW JULY 8, 2023
based on Untouchability is only prevalent in
Hindu Society or its branches and not in any
other religion.
First of all, this is a welcome admis-
sion for some reasons: if the BJP govern-
ment holds that converting to Christian-
ity and Islam helps to come out of “the
oppressive system of Untouchability,” it
should immediately relax its draconian
anti-conversion rules in some of the
states ruled by them.
Second, is the difference between at-
tempt and reality. One cannot deny that
historical evidence and continuing nar-
ratives of several communities show that
they sought caste-emancipation and dig-
nity with conversion to Islam and Chris-
tianity. Just like Buddhist Dalits did in
more recent times. But as discussed in
the first point, the “stickniness” of the
caste system in India persists despite
change of religion.
While the BJP government bringing
this up is still understandable, it is most
surprising when this argument is brought
forth from a few Ambedkarite individu-
als sometimes (here it has to be said that
there is indeed a lot of support for Dalit
Muslims and Christians from Ambedka-
rite groups as well, as one would expect
given their commitment for justice of
the most marginalised, and also recog-
nition of intersectional oppression). We
cannot penalise communities for having
wanted to escape caste, and having
failed at that.
Why did Muslims not bring this up
earlier? Just like upper caste Hindus at-
tempted to suppress the ills of caste
among them, the elite upper caste Mus-
lims contributed to the erasure of the is-
sue of Dalit Muslims. Unfortunately, the
politics of religion took over the subcon-
tinent’s politics in the 20th century, with
the elite of both Hindus and Muslims at-
tempting to show greater numbers in the
British census and attempting to cover
up the divisions of caste in their society.
While B R Ambedkar was able to get
separate rights and recognition for the
untouchables among ‘‘Hindus,’’ there was
no such pioneering leader for Dalit Mus-
lims. This was despite the overwhelm-
ing mention of untouchability faced by
Dalit Muslim communities in the British
vol lVIII no 27
COMMENTARY
census reports, and even in literature of
the period. Dalit Muslims did not be-
come a point of discussion in the nation-
al politics of the age.
The 20th century has been marked by
the discourse of Muslims as a religious
minority alone. The Muslims who cam-
paigned for separate electorates in 1905,
which led to the Morley–Minto reforms,
were all upper caste Muslims. This was
at the time when the British were intro-
ducing various representative systems
where the numerical strength of social
groups suddenly became crucial. It was
in their interest to frame Muslims as a
religious minority alone.
In fact, one must remember that the
sudden concern for the untouchables in
the early and mid-20th century was pro-
mpted by the anxieties of Hindu upper-
caste men—because the British had agreed
to count the untouchables as a separate
class in the British census (Galanter
1978). The Muslim upper castes had pro-
jected a unified idea of Muslims and ar-
gued for the untouchables to not be
counted as Hindus. Hindu upper castes,
in turn, responded by speaking of reforms,
which was a way to stake the inclusion
of untouchables in the Hindu fold.
Interestingly, if caste among Muslims
was accepted, the partition of India
might have been avoided as the Muslim
League only represented the “Ashraf”
Muslim section and not the majority of
Muslims. A letter written in 1940 by the
All India Momin Conference leader Abdul
Qayyum Ansari from Bihar (from the
weaver caste of Julaha/Momin-Ansar)
and sent to Jawaharlal Nehru and
S Radhakrishnan questioned the posi-
tionality of Jinnah to represent Muslims,
making the caste question among Mus-
lims clear (letter reproduced in the ap-
pendix of Anwar 2001).
It is only in the 1990s —after the Man-
dal Commission report empowered lower
castes Muslims by bringing them under the
constitutional category of Other Backward
Classes (OBC) Muslims—that the issue of
Muslim caste was able to get traction.
Over the next two decades, the Pasman-
da leadership in UP and Bihar have been
able to get the issue somewhat into aca-
demic literature. The fact that this de-
mand did not dominate public discourse
17
COMMENTARY
earlier is a proof of the marginalisation
of these groups, and not the credibility
of their claim.
Why is there no mention of Dalit
Muslims in the Constituent Assembly?
It is true that while the rights of several
groups were being widely discussed in
the Constituent Assembly debates over
months, Muslim leaders did not bring
up the question of Dalit Muslims at all
(Tanweer Fazal explores this in his 2007
paper). In fact, Sikh assembly members
were the only minority group to address
the plight of Dalit Sikhs. While this silence
is indeed notable—it is not a confirmation
that the issue was not important. The
Constituent Assembly debates are a re-
pository of how ideals were imagined
but also a site to understand what got
left out.6 It shows that while there was a
Ambedkar from the Mahar caste, and
who ensured that the voice of several
groups were taken into consideration,
the Ambedkar from Halalkhor (a Dalit
Muslim caste) or Chuhra (Dalit Chris-
tian) caste could not even reach the as-
sembly to be heard. (Here, it has to be
clarified that Ambedkar’s ambit was way
beyond his or any other caste group as
he is responsible for the rights of wom-
en, as well as unflinching equality in the
Constitution. But human as he was, he
could not have potentially spoken for
every single group.)
The narration of history is not the nar-
ration of justice. We have legislation and
policy to be able to correct the oversights
of history. To give an example, the right
to privacy does not have a basis in these
debates either, and yet the Supreme
Court declared it a fundamental right in
2017. If the upper caste representatives
of Muslims in the Constituent Assembly
attempted to suppress the rights of Dalit
Muslims and Christians and made them
invisible to the other representatives, it
does not mean that the claims of these
Dalits are lost on the constitution forever.
SC category was always for Hindus
only/the SC category was never reli-
gion-neutral: This recent but rather
persuasive-seeming argument has been
made by the BJP government in its affida-
vit and in the paper I mentioned before.
18
Kumar (2023) made the argument that often framed within a “Hindu” frame-
the Government of India (Scheduled work. This is because of the political mo-
Castes) Order, 1936 was “never religion- tivations that the census generated, as
neutral,” and thus independent India’s explained in the last point as well as the
law in 2023 does not need to be. The 1936 absolute absence of lower caste Muslims
Scheduled Caste Order specified two and Christians in mainstream national
communities who could not qualify for politics. The framing of Dalits as Hindu
the status: (i) all Indian Christians, and is closely related to the development of
(ii) Buddhists from Bengal. While the ex- the Hindu category as well. In fact, the
clusion of Christians is widely reported by 20th century colonial era saw an attempt
such arguments, the exclusion of Bud- to define the “Hindu” from the point of
dhists is conveniently ignored—since view of the Brahmin (like in the Gait cir-
there is an attempt to frame them as cular 1911) and even “naturalised” the
“Hindu” (along with Sikhs, Jains and even caste order to a large extent, describing
Lingayats), and it does not fit into the it as consensual (Sunandan 2023; Satya-
Abrahamic versus “Indic” religion frame- narayana 2014). Both these examples
work. Citing these exclusions as some are representative of how the British
sort of proof of natural order also does not treated religion in India, what K N Su-
take into account that Muslim Dalit castes nandan has called as “colonial–Brah-
were well covered in the 1936 SC order. minical.” For example, the British-based
To rephrase an earlier point, the idea Hindu law primarily on the Dharmasas-
of precedent is only valid so far as the tras, which were Brahminical texts. Thus,
precedent was not unjust. And thus the the mention of the omission of Dalit
1936 order, while being an important Christians in the 1936 order has to be
part of history, is not a deliverance of seen within a historical trajectory.
justice. However, some arguments along Further, the argument that the SC sta-
this line do point out a larger issue which tus was never religion-neutral is ahis-
is important for us to address, namely torical. It does not take into account how
the history of how the SC category colonial frameworks decide who are un-
emerged in colonial India. It is true that touchable castes constantly ran into
terms like “untouchables,” “depressed Muslim and Christian castes. It also as-
classes,” and “SCs” in colonial India were sumes that religion could be so easily
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High frequency data sets in the form of Monthly Accounts of the Union Government
prepared by the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) have been added to the Finances
of Government of India module of the EPWRF India Time Series (ITS) online database,
that is, in addition to the regular annual budget series. This new sub-module facilitates
the scrutiny of the evolving intra-year progress made in the budgetary heads of receipts,
expenditures and deficits on a monthly basis, as given below:
● Total Receipts–broadly classified under Revenue Receipts (various components
of Tax Revenue and Non-tax Revenue) and Non-debt Capital Receipts (Recoveries
of Loans and Advances, Disinvestment, etc).
● Total Expenditure–comprising Revenue and Capital Expenditures, and as per the
erstwhile classification of Plan and Non-plan Expenditures.
● Deficit Indicators–Primary Deficit, Revenue Deficit and Fiscal Deficit.
● Sources of Financing Deficit–External Financing and different sources of Domestic
Financing, such as Market Borrowing, borrowing from Small Savings Fund, etc.
This monthly series is available from April 1997 onwards, as provided by the CGA.
Finances of Government of India module is one out of 32 modules of EPWRF ITS, which
covers a wide range of macroeconomic, financial and social sector indicators for India.
For more details, visit www.epwrfits.in or e-mail to: its@epwrf.in
JULY 8, 2023 vol lVIII no 27 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

demarcated that there is an “absolute,
irreconcilable difference between Hin-
duism and semitic religions” (Donald
and Singh 2023). For example, the 1936
SC list covered the caste of Lalbegis in UP
and Bihar. Today, Lalbegis are registered
as Muslims. Anthropologist Joel Lee pro-
vides substantial sources between 1870
and 1930 to illustrate that untouchable
sanitation workers called the Lal Begis
formed a socioreligious community dif-
ferent from the modern-day neatly de-
fined categories of Hindus and Muslims.
Caste, thus, needs to be understood as a
perpetual social phenomenon in the
subcontinent with its practices rather
than analysing it through the frame-
work of Indic versus Abrahamic or reli-
gious versus non-religious.
Is it not unfair to other Dalits who al-
ready qualify for SC status? Would not
the inclusion of more people in the SC
category be unfair to current holders of
this entitlement? It will be. Especially
considering that casteism is still rampant
in Indian society and hardly a day goes by
without a caste atrocity being reported—
not to speak of the structural injustices
our country is built on. Thus, it makes
sense that the inclusion of Dalit Chris-
tians and Muslims should take place
along with an expansion of the percent-
age of reservations that SCs are entitled
to. A few ways in which their percentage
could be calculated is: (i) an approximate
calculation could be done on the basis of
the 1931 British Census—as the Mandal
Commission did for OBCs (which it actu-
ally did by adding the population of for-
ward castes and working backwards),
sample surveys like NSSO or IHDS could
be used to estimate a starting figure.
(ii) Of course, the first two are merely
temporary measures, and a caste enu-
meration just as in the case of existing
SCs will provide the most accurate figure.
Colonial reports, anthropological surveys
in independent India (like the People of
India series), ethnographic scholarship
on different regions, as well as commis-
sioned studies by scholars of Muslim and
Christian caste can easily identify Dalit
castes among them. It also has to be re-
membered that as a fraction among mi-
norities, Dalit Muslims and Christians
Economic & Political Weekly EPW JULY 8, 2023
will not be numerically too significant to
impede on the SC category substantially.
But in terms of absolute lives of people
and children, this will be life-changing.
If Dalit Muslims exist, why do I not
see them or hear about them? If you
have ever used the word Kaminey,
you have participated in Muslim caste.
Kaminey comes from Kaamin, which is a
term referring to people who do “lowly”
jobs. If you have ever used the word
Dhobi—there are Muslim Dhobis who
have been historically treated as un-
touchables. Mochis of Punjab who work
with leather hide, Halalkhors of Bihar
and UP, who pick up dry excreta on their
heads, the Dhobis of Andhra Pradesh
who are washerpeople, the Khatiks of Ma-
harasthra who are butchers, are several
such castes who have the very same
name and work as Hindu castes. There
are other castes with specifically Muslim
names like Lalbegis. They exist, and
they exist around you, often having to
clean your dirt in the most oppressive
of circumstances.
I would like to end this plea with a
statement made by one of the persons I
interviewed from the Halalkhor com-
munity in Dalit Muslims. The Halalk-
hors have been sanitation workers for
centuries—conversion did not change
their work, but the state does not recog-
nise them as SCs making many of them
take up contractual work in exploitative
conditions. Arif Sheikh7 is treated as an
untouchable but he is not recognised as
a Dalit Muslim. He asks me: “We exist,
right? If we give vote, if we have an ID card,
then we exist, right?” It is up to public
discourse, and the Supreme Court of India,
to decide if it is going to affirm Sheikh’s
existence or is it going to affirm an ab-
stract idea of what caste (and religion) is.
NOTES
1 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/
02627280231161000#.ZF0BI8ggwNQ.twitter.
2 https://twitter.com/shireenazam/status/
1660690098214584320.
3 A term I borrow from a conversation with Sukhi
Kaur of Sikh Women’s Aid, UK, who used this to
speak about caste among Sikhs in the UK—dif-
ferentiating the “faith” from “faith structures.”
4 Moreover, as Imtiaz Ahmad’s work argues,
even as Islamic egalitarianism is much talked
about, it is not that Islamic scriptures are inca-
pable of condoning hierarchy and social strati-
fication (Ahmad 1978: 25).
vol lVIII no 27
COMMENTARY
5 Accessed by the author during archival research.
The author works on this in detail in one of their
PhD chapters.
6 For example, Kanika Gauba’s excellent work in
this journal on how the partition was “forgot-
ten” because of how the debates progressed,
https://www.epw.in/journal/2016/39/special-
articles/forgetting-partition.html.
7 Name anonymised.
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