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RELIGION AND CITIZENSHIP

Economic & Political Weekly EPW january 7, 2012 vol xlviI no 1 45

Religions, Democracy and Governance:Spaces for the Marginalised in Contemporary India

Gurpreet Mahajan, Surinder S Jodhka

This paper examines the dynamics of religion and

democratic politics by looking at political mobilisations

of marginalised groups in Punjab and Maharashtra. It

argues that even when religious identity remains the

bedrock of social life and individual experience,

democratic politics brings out new configurations and

alignments, in which neat boundaries of religiousdifference are occasionally blurred or overwritten by

other identities. The Indian experience also reveals that

religious groups are not homogeneous. While political

mobilisation tends to unite them as communities with

common interests, development policies have invariably

disaggregated them, reinforcing the internal divisions

and diversities within religious communities.

Gurpreet Mahajan ( [email protected]) is with the department

of political science, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Surinder

S Jodhka ( [email protected]) is with the department of social

systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

India’s Independence came with the Partition of the subconti-

nent. The creation of Pakistan – a separate homeland for the

Muslim population – and the communal violence that followed

the “transfer of populations” drew attention to the presence of

strongly etched religious identities and communities. If Partition

made it difcult to ignore the concerns and demands of these

communities, it also pointed to the violence that might ensue as

they sought recognition of these identities or protested their non-

recognition and made claims on that basis. A crucial issue facing

independent India, then, was how to deal with these communi-

ties and their concerns. It was clear that religion could not be re-

stricted simply to the private domain, but in what way should re-

ligion and religious communities be accommodated? This was

the crucial question upon which the unity of India and the viabil-

ity of her democratic system depended.

The Constituent Assembly deliberated at length on this

issue and eventually devised a f ramework that neither adopted

the American model of secularism, which separated religion

from politics completely, nor followed the path of many other

countries in the region, which endorsed and privileged a par-ticular religion. At the time of independence religious com-

munities, particularly minority communities, needed assurance

that they would be equal partners in the emerging democracy,

and would enjoy the freedom to pursue their religious and

cultural way of life. However, members of these communities

also had development-related concerns and these surfaced time

and time again, sometimes through popular ground-level mobi-

lisations and sometimes through initiatives by the government

in ofce.

While deliberating on matters of religion, the framers of the

Indian Constitution also noted the presence of caste and the role it

played in determining a person’s identity and position in society in

India. In particular, they noted the presence of caste-based dis-

crimination and exclusion within the Hindu community and tried

to eliminate this form of discrimination by abolishing the practice

of untouchability and opening all common public places, such as

drinking water wells, inns and restaurants to members of all castes

and communities. In addition, they reserved seats for members of

the erstwhile excluded populations, the scheduled castes (SCs), in

legislative assemblies. The Constitution also included an enabling

provision under Article 16 that permitted the State to reserve seats

for members of the SCs in government jobs. Since then, caste has

been an important basis for group mobilisations and focus of pub-lic policy. Initially, policies involving reservation of seats were in-

tended to target identied groups within the Hindu community,

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january 7, 2012 vol xlviI no 1 EPW Economic & Political Weekly46

since the practice of “untouchability” or forced exclusion was a

consequence of the caste system associated with the Hindu reli-

gion. In post-independence India, however, similar policies have

targeted “Other Backward Classes” (OBCs) – that is, different reli-

gious and community groups that are said to be socially and eco-

nomically deprived, including Muslims and Christians. Seats are

currently reserved in the eld of education, including higher

education, posts and jobs in the public sector for members of theSCs, scheduled tribes (STs) and identied OBCs (Sheth 2004;

Mahajan 2008a).

There are today groups within all the religious communities in

India that consider reservations to be a major asset that can give

them access to prized public goods in a situation of acute compe-

tition and scarcity of resources. Caste identities remain a critical

basis for mobilisation and offer an alternative basis for solidarity

both within a religious community and across different religious

communities. The institutionalisation of constitutional and secu-

lar democracy in a society marked by religious diversity and

caste hierarchy has therefore yielded a peculiar dialectic of

religion, caste and politics. This paper explores this relationship

through a study of two popular caste-based mobilisations in

Punjab and Maharashtra. More specically, it looks at mobilisa-

tions by the lower castes in different religious groups, the Hindu

majority as well as Sikh and Muslim minorities, to understand

the space granted to religion/religious organisations in the public

arena to articulate their interests and the modalities that gov-

ernments and the State have adopted to reach out and respond to

the development-related needs of the dif ferent communities and

marginalised groups. The eldwork for this study was mostly

carried out during April and November 2007.

Religion and Politics: Constitutional Framework

There were two choices before independent India. As a separate

homeland had been created for the Muslim population, it might

have been possible to make India the homeland for the Hindu

community. Alternatively, it could opt to become a secular demo-

cracy, equally hospitable to people of different communities. India

chose the latter path. There was a general consensus that the State

would have no established religion of its own and would treat

members of different communities as equal citizens. There were,

however, signicant differences of opinion about what equal treat-

ment would entail. It was agreed in the initial stages of the delib-

erations that each of the recognised religious communities (along

with the SCS and STS) would receive separate representation in

proportion to their share of the population. However, the division

of colonial India on the basis of religion and the communal con-

icts that followed made many wary of treating religious commu-

nities as the basic units for political participation. The discussions

eventually led the religious minorities to withdraw their demand

for separate representation (Bajpai 2000).

A consensus emerged that equal treatment for all religious

communities would be assured by protecting the religious liberty

of all. To ensure this, three kinds of fundamental rights were

given by the Constitution. Article 25 gave each individual equalliberty to “profess, propagate and practise” their religion. The

personal laws of different communities were also protected,

which meant that community institutions and codied commu-

nity laws would decide all matters relating to family, such as

marriage, inheritance, divorce, maintenance, adoption and the

custody of children. Assessing positively the work done by differ-

ent religious institutions in various spheres of social life, as for

instance, setting up educational institutions, fellowships, free

dispensaries, inns for travellers and provision for drinking water,

Article 26 of the Constitution gave all religious communities theright to “establish and maintain institutions for religious and

charitable purposes”. In addition, Articles 29 and 30 gave all mi-

norities the right to set up their own educational institutions to

protect their language and culture and to impart education of

their choice. To make this an effective option, the Constitution

included an enabling provision that allowed such institutions to

receive funds from the State (Mahajan 1998, 2008b).

Each of these rights was subject to a few restrictions, but

collectively they provided a fair degree of religious and cultural

liberty to all religious communities and offered some safeguards

against cultural assimilation. They also provided space to

religious communities, in particular the minorities, to continue

their own distinct cultural and religious practices. The scope of

some of the provisions, such as the right to establish educational

institutions given to all minority groups, has been interpreted

generously by the courts in independent India. Today, minority

educational institutions impart education at various levels, from

primary and high school (where the major concern is to protect

and promote one’s language and culture) to professional and

technical colleges (where protecting one’s culture is not the

main concern).

At a more substantive level, religion entered into the public

domain, as individuals who shared a religious identity couldcome together and form political organisations and associations.

Based on the view that members of a religion may have shared

concerns and even interests, they were at liberty to organise

themselves, campaign with existing political parties, or form

their own political party to pursue their demands and concerns.

Religious political parties claiming to speak on behalf of a com-

munity could, therefore, coexist with “secular” parties that were

not bound to the interests of any one religious community. Both

kinds of parties could voice the demands of a community, so long

as they did not encourage inter-community hatred or refer to a

candidate’s religion in order to seek votes for themselves.

A range of political organisations claiming to be the voice of

a given religious and cultural way of life existed even in pre-

independence India. In the post-independence period, different

regions saw the emergence of specic religion-based parties,

such as the Akali Dal in Punjab, the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra

and the Indian Union Muslim League in Kerala. The constitutional

framework provided the space for the emergence of religious par-

ties. But how are these parties different from the “secular” par-

ties and how has their presence structured the nature of demo-

cratic politics in the country? In particular, how has the presence

of such parties affected the ability of the marginalised sections to

access development goods? These questions are examined in thenext section by taking a closer look at the Akali Dal in Punjab and

Shiv Sena in Maharashtra.

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Religious Parties and Democratic Politics

Akali Dal

The Akali Dal was born in pre-independent India, in the movement

for freeing Sikh gurdwaras from the control of the mahants. Since

then, it has claimed to represent Sikh interests and aspirations, ini-

tially seeking a separate state for the Sikh community. However,

when this demand did not receive sufcient support from the peo-ple of the Punjab region and the central government too was averse

to according a separate state/geographical territory to a religious

community, it instead sought a separate state within the Indian Un-

ion – “Punjabi Suba” – on the ground of a shared linguistic identity

– a claim that the central government had already recognised

when it set up the States Reorganisation Commission.

If its demand for recognition of a linguistic identity gave the

Akali Dal a political platform to compete in electoral politics, the

creation of Punjabi Suba in 1966 gave its political career a rm

base. The Sikhs constituted almost 60% of the total population of

the newly constituted state, and this yielded a new set of oppor-

tunities to the Akali Dal and the local regional elite. Yet, even

though contemporary politics in the region revolves almost en-

tirely around the Sikhs, almost all the major national parties –

Congress, Jan Sangh/BJP and the communist parties – have been

present in Punjab and they continue to enjoy a reasonable degree

of electoral support from the people.

To understand the democratic and electoral politics of Punjab,

specically its capacity to reach out to the most marginalised

sections, the lower castes, two facts need to be noted. First,

Punjab has the highest percentage of sc population of all the

states of the union. Second, thanks to the success of the green

revolution, Punjab has been one of the most prosperous states inindependent India.

Yet, and contrary to the expectations of modernisation theorists,

economic well-being did not bring with it an eclipse of religious and

cultural identities. Instead identity-based mobilisations grew and

gained strong roots. Such mobilisations had occurred even in pre-

independence days and in the post-independent period they be-

came manifest in three forms: (a) the emergence of a political party

– the Akali Dal – that was closely associated with the Sikh religion

and politics; (b) the demand for a Punjabi Suba (literally implying a

state for the Punjabi linguistic community, though it was simultane-

ously to be a state where the Sikhs would constitute a majority);

and (c) a militant movement for autonomy, which eventually de-

manded secession (for an overview of the literature on the rise and

decline of the Khalistan movement, see Jodhka 1997, 2002).

In mobilising the Sikh religious and linguistic identity, the

Akali Dal tended to speak in the name of “the community”, often

overlooking the internal differences that existed within Punjab.

Its attempt to mobilise the people of Punjab along identity lines

provided limited gains. In the period before the creation of the

“Punjabi Suba”, it polled less than 13% in state assembly elec-

tions. However, its share of votes increased substantially after the

reorganisation of the state boundaries and the creation of Punjab

in its present form, varying from 20 to 32%. While identity politics certainly beneted the Akali Dal, the percentage share of

votes for the national Congress Party had always remained

higher than that of the Akali Dal, irrespective of who won the

elections. In its bid to compete with the Congress in the assembly

elections in 1972, the Akali Dal campaigned around the slogan of

“Sikh Panth in danger”. This attempt to mobilise the community

on religious lines received little support and its vote share in fact

declined. Sensing the mood of the people, and their desire to

have a government that focused on development concerns, such

as industrialisation and better irrigation facilities, in 1977 the Akali Dal placed the religious agenda in the background. Instead,

it raised other economic and political concerns, focusing on

greater autonomy for the region within the federal system and

advocating changes in centre-state relations. The new agenda

not only won the party popular support in the elections, it also

received the support of other non-Congress state governments

like the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Left Front, each of

which was seeking changes in centre-state relationships.

The compulsions of electoral politics dictate that all parties,

even those that claim to speak on behalf of a community that is a

majority in a region (as was the case of Akali Dal in Punjab), need

to reach out to different communities and take up issues of devel-

opment (or at least issues other than those relating to religion and

identity) if they wish to win successive elections. More impor-

tantly perhaps, even when a community is mobilised around iden-

tity issues, it does not necessarily vote as one. In other words, cul-

tural and religious homogeneity does not translate into political

homogeneity of the same order. Hence, even though identity may

be a unifying element, there is not a one-to-one correspondence

between the cultural/religious and the political. Thus identity pol-

itics does not occupy all the space for what might be termed “secu-

lar parties”. All through the 1980s, when identities were strongly

mobilised by the different factions of the Akali Dal, the CongressParty retained a signicant percentage of the total vote. Neverthe-

less, the presence of religious parties does make a difference to the

nature of democratic politics: it invariably makes identity issues

central to the political discourse, compelling all actors (political

parties) to address them, if not to foray into that area themselves.

Shiv Sena

A similar story unfolds when we turn to the Shiv Sena in Maha-

rashtra.1 In the 1980s, the party was able to extend its support

base beyond Mumbai and other urban centres by combining its

communal rhetoric (which reied religious community identities

and interests) with the need to address the lack of development in

the rural areas of Maharashtra. In other words, it successfully ex-

ploited local level contradictions to its own advantage, producing

a new kind of what Hansen described as “vernacularised Hin-

dutva” (Hansen 1996). This new rhetoric also appealed to the

lower middle classes in Bombay city, who were affected by rising

urban unemployment (Palshikar 2004). The strategy of the Shiv

Sena was to consolidate the Hindu vote through an anti-Muslim

tirade. However, it was more successful in weaning away the

middle castes from the Congress/Nationalist Congress Party, while

upper caste voters alternated between support for the Congress/

Nationalist Congress Party or the Shiv Sena/BJP, depending upontheir assessment of which would best serve their interests

(Palshikar and Deshpande 1999).

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Thus, even in this case, when the religious identity-based party

was able to set the political agenda, the dominant religious com-

munity did not act as a homogeneous entity in the electoral process.

The point again is that a religious majority does not readily trans-

late into a political majority, placing some constraints on reli-

gious and cultural majoritarianism. To some extent, these limits

occur because all communities are internally divided along the

lines of caste and gender, which are important because they ofteninuence the capacity of an individual to access resources and

opportunities. Hence, even when voters share religious and cul-

tural concerns, they may differ on other counts and such differ-

ences can be important in competitive electoral politics; indeed,

in India, all the political parties use the spaces provided by such

multiple identities to consolidate their electoral support. In this

respect, there is little difference between the political parties, be

they secular or religious. This becomes even more evident when

we turn to lower caste mobilisations among different religious

communities in Punjab and Maharashtra.

Caste-Based Organisations

As noted above, the active presence of different community iden-

tities provides the context for democratic politics and offers dif-

ferent kinds of opportunities for voicing and taking up the concerns

of the marginalised sections. While religion-based mobilisations

and political parties homogenise and attempt to speak of a single

community, caste identities offer modes of differentiation within

this community. Indeed, caste yields a different set of groups and

communities, allowing political parties of all hues to consolidate

themselves and challenge the hegemony that may be exercised

by a religious party in a region. Even more importantly, this creates

space for the marginalised to articulate their demands and beheard and counted in the political domain. The story of caste mo-

bilisations in Punjab and Maharashtra reveals two different ways

in which the marginalised have entered into the political dis-

course and political parties have attended to their concerns.

The Muslim OBC Movement in Maharashtra

Maharashtra is the third largest state of India and is second only

to Uttar Pradesh in terms of its total population. Cities like Mumbai

and Pune have made it one of the most urbanised regions in the

country. Its religious demography is similar to the national

demography, with an overwhelming Hindu majority (80.2%)

while Muslims (10.6%) and Buddhists (6%) are the main minor-

ity communities. Christians too have a presence in the state, con-

stituting around 1% of the total population. Though small in nu-

merical terms, Maharashtra is also home to the largest number of

Jains, Zoroastrians and Jews of any Indian state.

Politically Muslims have been quite marginal in Maharashtra al-

though they constitute more than 10% of the total population of

the state and have an even larger presence in the city of Mumbai

(previously Bombay) –17% – and their marginalisation seems to

have grown over the years. As is the case with most religious com-

munities, the Muslims of Maharashtra are internally heterogene-

ous and differentiated. The older communities like Bohras, Khojasand Memons were wealthy traders with extensive family networks

within and outside the country. In addition, some Muslims have

migrated to cities like Mumbai and Pune from north India.

However, a large proportion of Muslims in Maharashtra are local

Marathi-speaking groups, mostly from a relatively poor back-

ground and in traditional occupations. As a result, they identify

with the local backward caste communities. In other words, the

Muslims of Maharashtra can be divided into two categories, the

ajlafs (upper castes) and the ashras (lower/backward castes).

The ajlaf Muslims have been gradually moving away fromtraditional Muslim organisations and seeking to educate their

children in English medium private schools rather than Urdu

medium schools. Their realisation that they are socially and edu-

cationally backward (Hansen 2000: 261) has given rise to a new

set of mobilisations for recognition as OBCS along with the Hindu

OBCs, a recognition that would entitle them to apply for reserved

quotas in jobs, higher education and other such benets from

the State.

The Muslim OBC movement emerged shortly after the submis-

sion of the Second Backward Classes Commission Report in 1980.

The report, popularly known as the Mandal Commission report,

identied socially and economically backward groups across dif-

ferent religions. Accepting the possibility that there are caste-like

structures (Sikand 2004; Ahmad 1973) and ensuing forms of dep-

rivation and backwardness within all the religions, the commis-

sion identied certain groups among Muslims and Christians as

“backward”, and recommended special dispensations in the form

of reservation of seats for them in education and public jobs. The

possibility of Muslim groups being identied as backward and

thereby eligible for the benets of reservation and other forms of

afrmative action was something new and took much of the Muslim

community by surprise. As Mohammed Iqbal Ansari, president,

New All India Muslim OBC Organisation ( AIMOBCO) explained: After the Mandal Commission report was submitted and it created so

much of fury, we were forced to think about it…. Never had any Mus-

lim religious leader or group staged a ‘dharna’ or demonstration on

issues of economic and social development of the community. They

never take up [the] issue of education, jobs, loans, roads and electricity.

What they have touched upon are always emotional issues of religion,

such as Muslim Personal Law, triple Talaq, Babri Masjid, etc. There-

fore in all our meetings we used to say that if you have to think of your

development, you have to come out of the old ways of thinking.2

Emergence of Small Muslim Groups

It was with this understanding of the needs of the Muslim com-

munity that small groups began to emerge in Maharashtra. One

such group that emerged in 1983 was the Ansari Welfare Society

(later renamed the Muslim OBC Council), under the leadership of

Mohammed Parvez Iqbal, who is still actively involved with the OBC

Muslim movement and is known to everyone in his locality as the

right to information (RTI) man.3 Over the years, the Ansari Wel-

fare Society/Muslims OBC Council has organised jalsas (public

gatherings) with a view to enhancing awareness among Muslims

about the need to obtain caste certicates, and the advantages

that might accrue to them as OBCs. Jalsas of this kind were organ-

ised in Mumbai, Pune, Bhiwandi, Malegaon and several other

places. In Mumbai, the group usually met at the Gareeb NawazMadarsa, which is located in the central part of the city. Parvez

Iqbal was initially helped in this work by his friend, Fateh

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Mohammed A nsari,4 but later the society arranged a small work-

ing team of seven to 11 people, who distributed pamphlets and

visited several villages around Mumbai.

Small organisations of this kind grew over time. In 1984, for

example, Shabbir Ahmed Ansari from Jalna established the

Maharashtra Muslim OBC Organisation, which held a large rally

on 5 February. In 1986, as a result of this and similar mobilisations,

the right to issue caste certicates in Mumbai was transferred fromthe metropolitan magistrate to the collector or the tehsildar.5

This was a small but signicant gain, the benets of which could

accrue only if people were made aware of and persuaded to apply

for caste certication. Once again, the task was to raise aware-

ness about this benet among members of the Muslim commu-

nity. Shabbir Ahmed Ansari, along with Hasan Kamal, therefore

focused on mobilising castes and sub-castes amongst Muslims,

which was by no means an easy task. According to Hasan Kamal:

When we started travelling across Maharashtra, we found that Muslims

too were divided along professional lines and like Hindus their caste

was identied along their working pattern, e g, Malis in Hindus were

Baghbaan in Muslims, Dhuniyas were Naddafs, Badhais were Nazzafs,

etc. So when the Mandal Commission report was accepted, we thought

that if Muslims too were included in its fold, it could be part of the solu-

tion to the problems that large sections of the community face.6

Muslims as OBCs

The OBC Muslim movement received a fresh impetus with the

formation of Akhil Bhartiya Muslim Marathi Sahitya Parishad in

1989. Vilas Sonawane (one of the most important leaders in the

movement) told us that nearly 100 writers and poets attended its

rst conference in the same year.7

The decision of the then Prime Minister V P Singh to implement

the recommendations of the Mandal Commission by reservingseats for OBCs in all central government jobs gave a renewed

reason to mobilise the Muslim community and make them aware

of the opportunities that were now available to them. On 1 May

1994, Shabbir Ahmed Ansari, Vilas Sonawane, Hasan Kamal,

Faqruddin Bennur and many others launched the AIMOBCO in

Jalna. Shabbir Ahmed became its president and all the members

of the Akhil Bhartiya Muslim Marathi Sahitya Parishad became

members of the new organisation. Hasan Kamal and Vilas Sona-

wane described how:

To create caste awareness and identify different caste groups among

Muslims, we started travelling to different towns and organised small

and big meetings. But this attempt was vehemently opposed by theestablished political and religious leadership of the community every-

where. We were presented as conspirators against Islam.8

Almost all the leaders of the movement that we met conrmed that

they had had similar experiences, although these did not deter them

from continuing their work. “The ulemas spoke and wrote against

this move in all possible ways. From our side, we tried to clear all

suspicions and made them understand that this was a positive oppor-

tunity to get out of the age-old bondage with specic occupations.”9

The leaders used different strategies to overcome the oppo-

sition that came from within the community. For example, Hasan

Kamal explained that:Since we were being opposed by the Imams and Maulanas, we started

visiting the mosques and tried to convince them. Initially they did not

listen to us but we tried our best to satisfy them in all their queries,

both rationally and religiously… As a result, today there are more than

250 mosques all over Maharashtra (20 in Mumbai alone) where every

Friday in the sermon, after offering prayers, the Imams tell community

members to apply for their OBC certicate for education and employ-

ment of their children.10

In addition, Mohammed Iqbal Ansari told us that:

The other means that we used in those days were using public gures

for our purpose. Veteran actor Dilip Kumar (an OBC) and later Kader

Khan (a non-OBC) and poet and lyricist Hasan Kamal (a non-OBC)

became our voice.11

Their efforts were carried forward when Shabbir Ahmed Ansari

and Sonawane organised several conferences in different parts

of the state where leaders tried to tell the common Muslims

to understand the signicance of getting certied as OBCs.

Pamphlets and posters were distributed to make OBC Muslims

aware of the benets that they could avail from the government

after getting their caste status certied. Soon afterwards, in

1996, the rst national convention of the AIMOBCO was held in

New Delhi. It started to carry out surveys of organised occupa-

tional categories and assist others to become organised.12

Response of the Government

Following the AIMOBCO conferences, the Akhil Bhartiya Muslim

Marathi Sahitya Parishad continued campaigning through meet-

ings and rallies in different parts of Maharashtra and sending

delegations to meet relevant state ministers. As a result of all

these efforts, on 7 December 1994, the Maharashtra government,

under Sharad Pawar passed a Government R esolution (GR ) that

included 36 Muslim communities (out of 118 identied by the

AIMOBCO) for inclusion in the OBCs list.This resolution was the second great success of the movement,

but the task ahead was even more challenging; it had won recogni-

tion from the government but now faced a reluctant bureaucracy,

the people who were supposed to issue OBC certicates. In the course

of this study, Sarfaraz Arzoo (the editor of Hindustan Daily ) stated:

When the movement picked up, the bureaucracy started creating

obstacles in the way of issuing caste certicates. Caste certicate was

the ticket to prosperity. Therefore, they stopped helping at that stage

and started eliminating at the bottom level itself. This is now the big-

gest problem that the OBC movement in Mumbai faces.13

Given that normally Muslims do not mention their caste in any

ofcial document, claiming caste certicates was very difcult.

They therefore had to demand a separate process for certication

of OBC status for Muslims. The Maharashtra government conceded

this demand and, in October 1995, passed another GR which

made the process of certication simpler. “Now, if a Muslim

wishes to claim the benets of being an OBC, s/he needs only the

approval of the sarpanch or the approval of the local school”.14

Interestingly even the Shiv Sena-BJP government, which was

known for “Muslim bashing”, apparently continued to facilitate

the process of Muslim OBC certication. As Mohammad Iqbal

Ansari told us:

When in 1995, we sat on a hunger strike in front of the ofce of thecollector at Kolhapur, the CM of that time Manohar Joshi, ordered a

circular that ‘if a Muslim OBC is not able to produce his/her caste in the

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school certicate, then the tehsildar will make a home inquiry and

provide him/her so’.15

With the passage of time, members of the Muslim community

have become increasingly aware of the benets that can accrue

from claiming OBC status and today many more are applying for

the necessary caste certicates. The movement continues to play

a facilitating role in obtaining caste certicates. Different occu-

pational groups that are eligible for OBC status have alsoorganised themselves for the objective. They work through their

biradari (community) network. In one case, a directory has been

prepared by the Tamboli community of Sholapur, listing all their

members who are eligible to receive certicates.

Maharashtra is not the only state to witness the OBC Muslim

movement. It has gained momentum in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh,

Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil

Nadu. However, unlike many other states, it has grown and had a

measure of success in Maharashtra. As many of our respondents

told us, in part this is because successive governments in Mahar-

ashtra have been open to and accommodative of their demands.

Some went so far as to say that the state governments have never

acted “adversely to their demands”. For example, the state gov-

ernments have, from time to time, adjusted and altered the rules

by passing new GR s or modifying the existing ones. We were told

that to date almost 39 GR s have been passed with regard to the

OBC and dalit Muslim issues.16

This analysis of the mass mobilisation of marginalised groups

within the Muslim community to access resources and opportunities

reveals three signicant elements. First, the collective assertion had

a complex relationship with the religious institutions and leadership

of the community. The desire to obtain caste certication to access

benets granted by the government to identied OBC communitiesdid not initially win the support of the religious leadership. Because

the leaders of the movement felt that the religious leadership had

never attended to the development needs and concerns of members

of the community, they began to work outside the available religious

forums and organisations. Yet, they recognised that to succeed they

would have to gain the support of the religious professionals, both

because through them it would be possible to reach a much larger

section of the community and also to allay any misgivings individu-

als might have about asserting a caste identity.

Second, the emergence of an assertive OBC movement outside

the framework of recognised religious organisations and institu-

tions has not weakened the religious identity of its members, which

gains centre stage during periods of communal violence. While

taking up the issue of development and better access to public

goods, the OBC movement has not raised the question of women’s

subordination and continued marginalisation within the commu-

nity, although its concern for better education and other develop-

ment goods has yielded some indirect spin-offs for women.

Third, as discussed above, democratic politics could also create

space for the articulation of development concerns. As in the case

of other successful movements, political parties have tried to win

over some of the leaders of the Muslim OBC movement by giving

them tickets to contest elections and have tried to consolidatetheir votes by reaching out to sections of the “apparent other”.

This is certainly the case in India, where the existence of multiple

cleavages along lines of caste, community and language, mean that

no party can win by representing the interests of a single commu-

nity and each must reach out to other identities. As noted above, in

the case of the Shiv Sena and the BJP, political parties that openly

pursue an agenda of cultural/religious majoritarianism, margin-

alised occupational and caste groups among the Muslims never-

theless are a possible source of support.17 It is therefore not sur-

prising that when these political parties were in government, they facilitated the certication of caste within the Muslim community.

Since religious mobilisations and institutions usually voice

shared community needs and demands, they focus on religious

and cultural concerns. Development concerns, particularly issues

of access to such basic amenities as good education, jobs, health-

care, and social security benets, are raised and pursued in the

public arena by political parties and other social and political

organisations. Democracy, and especially competitive electoral

politics, pushes all parties to seek electoral support among all

religious groups and creates space for the articulation and pursuit

of development agendas in different ways. This becomes even

more evident when we turn to Punjab and consider the strategies

used in that state for extending the benets of reservations to

marginalised sections of lower caste vulnerable communities.

The Balmiki-Mazhabi Movement in Punjab

The SCs are the most marginalised sections of Punjabi society and,

like most other caste clusters, are internally differentiated.

Within the category, there are different communities with dis-

tinct social identities and experiences of economic development.

The ofcial list of SCs in Punjab enumerates 37 different commu-

nities, which political sociologists have tended to group into two

to three broad clusters. The rst cluster, comprising the MazhabiSikhs and the Balmikis/Bhangis, constitutes a total of 41.9%

(30.75% and 11.15% respectively) of the total SC population. The

second caste cluster is made up of the Ad Dharmis (15.74%) and

the Chamars/Ravidasis/Ramdasi Sikhs (25.85%), who together

constitute 41.59%. The remaining 33 caste groups constitute only

16.51% of the total SC population of Punjab.18

For various historical reasons, groups from the second cluster

of Punjabi SCs have been much more mobile and politically active

than the rest (Juergensmeyer 1988; Jodhka 2002) and have

experienced much more social mobility than the rst cluster of

caste groups.

In contrast, the Chuhrah cluster of the dalit castes (Balmikis and

Mazhabi Sikhs) has been far less mobile. In rural areas the Mazhabi

Sikhs have been closely associated with agriculture, mostly as

wage labourers or tied servants of the big landlords. Rarely did

they own any agricultural land and only a few cultivated land as

tenants in Punjab. As the ofcial data show, less than 5% of all dalits

are listed as cultivators and, given their status, the proportion of

Mazhabi Sikhs among this group would be even lower.

Balmikis

Many have migrated to urban areas because of the limited oppor-

tunities available to them in rural areas, in response to the grow-ing urban demand for scavengers, especially in middle class

localities. While employment, some with regular salaries and

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pensions, was therefore relatively easily available, urbanisation

did not necessarily bring social mobility. In practice, the pro-

portion of urban Balmikis engaged in scavenging work

increased after migration from the villages, where only a small

proportion worked as scavengers. Their local identities were of

kammi or sepi, meaning regular farm workers, a secular occu-

pation, even though their status was invar iably determined by

their position in the caste hierarchy. Given all these limitationson the mobility of Balmikis and Mazhabi Sikhs, their achieve-

ments in education have also been limited. The assurance of

employment in municipalities as scavengers had only discour-

aged the Balmiki families from pushing their children towards

education. As a leader of the Balmiki community told us in an

interview in Ludhiana:

Surprisingly those who get jobs in the government sector at a relatively

senior level from our community invariably come from rural areas.

Among the urban Balmikis there has traditionally been no aptitude

for education.19

According to Ram Rattan Ravan, another important leader of

the Balmiki community,

The Municipal Act has worked against our community. It blocked our

development and kept us attached to the traditional occupation of

scavenging. Our people started getting secure jobs without any educa-

tion and therefore they did not feel the need of making any effort to get

themselves or their children educated. In the city of Ludhiana where

we have several colleges and a university and all possible facilities for

education, only two students from the Balmiki community could quali-

fy to be doctor in more than 30 years. This mentality of depending on

the municipality service was rampant in our community and therefore

has been the biggest challenge for us. Our struggle is not only against

the other communities but also against our own traditions.20

In contrast, the Chamars had an inherent advantage over theChuhras. As R L Sabberwal, a retired ofcer of the Punjab govern-

ment and an ideologue of the Balmiki movement, explained to us:

The Chamars have had an advantage over us. Their involvement with

leatherwork and shoe-making naturally made them entrepreneurs

and traders. They were quick to exploit the new opportunities that

came with urbanisation and reservations. We have had no such tradi-

tion. Our occupation kept us backward.21

However, over the years things have begun to change for the

Balmikis as well. Secure employment as scavengers in the urban

municipality is increasingly becoming a thing of the past. The

newly emerging scavenging contractors pay very low wages.

With no education or specialised skills, the Balmiki youth do not

have many options. Even those who get educated are invariably

the rst generation of the educated in their families. It is not easy

for them to compete with the relatively more mobile Chamars

and Ad Dharmis for reserved quotas in government jobs.

The point that needs to be highlighted here is that group cohe-

siveness breaks down when we use development/capacities as

the criterion and examine the ability of a community to access

available resources. In religious terms the Sikhs are a majority in

the region but within that community there are specic sections

that are worse off on many development indicators. Within this

marginalised section too there are vast internal disparities anddifferences, which can offer alternate axis of mobilisation and

policy formulation.

Hence the question: how do we reach out to the most margin-

alised? How do their interests get factored into the political dis-

course? The story of Punjab reveals that competitive democratic

politics creates a peculiar situation where apparently “secular”

political parties like the Congress target the most marginalised

and try to wean them away from “religious” political parties

(namely, Akali Dal) by granting special benets to them.

The Politics of Reservation

The Mazhabi Sikhs who constitute nearly 31% of Punjab’s SC popu-

lation, were the single largest group of dalits in the state. Com-

pared to the dalit caste groups of the Chamar cluster, the Mazhabis

were far more enthusiastic about the Sikh religion and Akali poli-

tics. At the time of independence the Akali Sikh leadership played a

critical role in ensuring that the lower castes among the Sikhs were

included in the list of identied SCs for receiving the benets of

reservation. This was a signicant achievement for the Sikh leader-

ship, as lower castes in other religious communities (besides Hin-

duism) did not receive the benets of reservations.

Mazhabi Sikh support translated into an advantage to the A kalis

over the Congress Party. But Balmikis with a substantial presence

in urban Punjab mostly went along with the “Hindu” politics of the

Jan Sangh. It was against this backdrop that the Congress Party,

introduced sub-quotas within the seats reserved for the SCs by the

Constitution. On 5 May 1975, Chief Minister Giani Zail Singh sent

a letter to various departments directing them to offer “50% of all

the vacancies of the quota reserved for Scheduled Castes…to

Balmikis and Mazhabi Sikhs, if available, as a rst preference from

amongst the Scheduled Caste candidates.”22 However, this sub-

quota was to apply “in direct recruitments only and not in promo-

tion cases”.23 Learning from the Punjab experience, the state government of

Haryana too decided in 1995 to divide its SC population into two

blocks, A and B, limiting 50% of all the seats for the Chamars

(block B) and offering 50% of the seats to non-Chamars (block A)

on preferential basis.

This arrangement worked well until 2005 when the Punjab and

Haryana High Court responding to a writ petition by Gaje Singh, a

Chamar from the region, decreed the action of the two state gov-

ernments as illegal and in violation of the provisions of the Consti-

tution. The petitioner had cited the Supreme Court judgment disal-

lowing the sub-classication of SCs in the case of Andhra Pradesh;

the high court took note of this decision and terminated the sub-

classication within the reserved quota of seats.

When the termination of the classication of quotas was ordered

on 25 July 2006 by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, there was

a sense of anger and agitation among the Balmikis and Mazhabis of

Punjab. They were quick to organise themselves and formed a

group called the “Balmiki and Mazhabi Sikh Reservation Bachao

Morcha”.24 In the months that followed, the Balmiki community

organised bandhs and protests seeking the restoration of sub-

quotas within the existing regime of reservations for the SCs.

As elections to the state assembly were near, the Congress

government responded to the Balmiki-Mazhabi movement by framing a legislation to convert the “1975 directive” into an “Act”

and presented it in the state assembly on 17 September 2006, the

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last day of its session. The bill was passed unanimously by the

legislative assembly, and it became an Act on 5 October 2006,

after being approved by the governor.

Interestingly enough, it was not the Akali Dal (and its many

factions) that addressed the needs of the most marginalised sec-

tions. As and when particular formations of the Akali Dal raised

development concerns they focused on such matters as better

prices for agricultural produce, irrigation facilities and regionalautonomy. These matters affected the fate of the more dominant

castes – the Jats – in the region. In an attempt to break the con-

solidation of Sikh votes in favour of the Akali Dal, it was the Con-

gress Party that raised the issue of the Mazhabis receiving the

benets of good education and public posts available through the

system of reserved seats.

The awareness and subsequent group mobilisation of the

Balmiki-Mazhabis was consolidated and strengthened by the

policies pursued by the Congress Party in ofce. And, when the

sub-quotas in reservations were withdrawn due to the interven-

tion of the court, these mobilisations gained greater potency.

The link between these mobilisations and prevailing religious

organisations were weak, if not non-existent. The emerging lead-

ership of these marginalised communities did not turn to reli-

gious organisations for support; and even the existing religious

political party was not seen as an ally in this struggle. Nor did the

religious political parties take up the issue of sub-quotas for the

most marginalised sections within the category of Mazhabis.

R eligion, or the religious idiom, enters into the picture in a differ-

ent way. Separate celebrations are organised on important reli-

gious festivals/events by the Balmiki-Mazhabi leadership and

this is used as a way of bringing the people together and creating

awareness for their collective cause.

Conclusions

Looking at these two case studies, it is evident that democracy creates

spaces that can at times work to the advantage of marginalised sec-

tions or create opportunities that may help them to articulate and

pursue their development-related concerns. Democratic politics how-ever operates in complex ways. On the one hand, it provides space for

marginalised populations to mobilise and voice their demands, while

on the other it compels political parties to woo groups by raising and

attending to their demands. In the case of OBC Muslims in Maharash-

tra, their collective mobilisations compelled the attention of the

political leadership across the board, including the Shiv Sena, which

is otherwise hostile to the Muslim community. In Punjab, the develop-

ment needs of marginalised sections were raised by the secular politi-

cal parties in order to fracture the supposed unity of the Sikh commu-

nity and win electoral support from at least some sections of it.

Both cases illustrate that the development needs of marginal-

ised sections can only be addressed by disaggregating individual

religious communities. Religious identities remain important, but

religious groups are internally differentiated and unequal. The

role of religion cannot be discounted in the pursuit of collective

development needs, but there are occasions when a shared reli-

gious identity may distract from, and even camouage, the differ-

ences of power and access to opportunities that exist between

members of the same community. As a result, conceptions of a

religious community as a single collective whole are unlikely to

further the concerns of equality, development and governance.

Notes

1 Shiv Sena was founded on 19 June 1966 inBombay by Bal Thackeray, who has since beenits patriarch.

2 Personal interview, February 2007.

3 In the last few years he has led more than 100petitions under the right to information (RTI) inseveral departments on issues that were of concern to the Muslim community. He is a teacherin a government school by profession and hasalso published a booklet of rules and proceduresregarding the issue of caste certicates in Mumbai.

4 Since 2005 he has also been the vice president of the Pune-based AIMOBCO which is headed by Mohd Iqbal Ansari.

5 Interv iew with Parvez Iqbal, February 2007.

6 Personal Interview, February 2007.7 Personal Interview, February 2007.

8 Personal Interview, February 2007.

9 Personal Interview, February 2007.

10 Personal Interv iew, February 2007.



13 Personal interview, May 2007.

14 Personal interv iew, February 2007.

15 Personal interv iew, February 2007.

16 There are probably other reasons. But the reasonexpressed by Hasan Kamal was no less important:

The Muslims in Maharashtra were never very strong and rich. There were no Muslim land-lords in Maharashtra unlike other states, viz,Bihar, Uttar Pradesh. Therefore, there was no

fear from feudalism. Also, Maharashtra wit-nessed a strong cooperative movement and it was successful. So, we did not face much oppo-sition from within. But this was not the case in

the northern part of India. We, so many times,requested the community leaders and peoplethere to identify their caste, but there were noinitiatives (Personal interview March 2007).

17 Indeed, the Shiv Sena has over the years wooedand received the support of OBCs.

18 All these gures are based on 1991 Census and were collected from the ofce of t he depart mentof social welfare, Chandigarh, Government of Punjab.

19 Personal interview, August 2007.

20 Personal interview, August 2007.

21 Personal interv iew, August 2007.

22 Ofcial Directive, Government of Punjab was col-lected from the ofce of the department of social

welfare, Chandigarh, Government of Punjab.

23 Ofcial Directive, Government of Punjab was col-lected from the ofce of the department of social

welfare, Chandigarh, Government of Punjab.

24 The morcha was headed by Darshan RatanRawan, the president of the Adi Dharm Samaj.Some of the other active members were G K Shab-harwal (Rtd ADC) and Chandan Garewal (presi-dent of the Jalandhar Safai Mazdoor Union).

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