Posted on Feburary 10, 2001

Forming almost a fifth of the Indian population, the Scheduled Castes or the Dalits, a conglomeration of numerous caste groups considered as ritually 'polluting' and, therefore, untouchable, by caste Hindus, are victims of the most sternly hierarchical social order that human beings have ever devised. Buttressed by religious sanction, the caste system consigned the Dalits to a sub-human status, relegating them to the bottom of the social order as slaves or worse. Since the social and economic oppression of the Dalits has been so closely intertwined with the Hindu religion, over the centuries many Dalits have sought to escape from the shackles of the caste system by converting to other religions, particularly to Islam, Buddhism, Christianity and Sikhism. Consequently, a considerable majority of India's Muslims, Buddhists, Christians and Sikhs today consist of descendants of Dalit and other 'low' caste converts.

 Recent decades have witnessed a remarkable upsurge in radical Dalit assertiveness. The Dalit struggle has been simultaneously waged on various fronts. Large numbers of Dalits have converted to Buddhism in the last half century, following in the footsteps of undoubtedly the most charismatic modern Dalit leader, Dr.Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, who, along with 300,000 of his followers, abandoned Hinduism for Buddhism at a mass conversion ceremony held at the town of Nagpur in 1956. On the economic front, a new generation of Dalits has emerged, beneficiaries of the spread of modern education and jobs reserved specially for them in various government undertakings and departments, part of the Indian state's commitment to affirmative action on behalf of the Dalits and various tribal peoples. On the political front, from being treated as a passive 'vote-bank' of the Congress Party, the Dalits are today experimenting with political parties of their own, the most striking example of which is the recent and dramatic emergence of the Bahujan Samaj Party in northern India, led by Kanshi Ram, a Dalit of the Chamar (leather-worker) caste, which enjoyed a brief spell in power in India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. Alongside all this is a growing interest in developing an alternate Dalit-centred literature and culture that champion what are seen as the traditional Dalit values of harmony and egalitarianism, placed in sharp opposition to the hierarchy and inequality that are so central to Brahminism.

 This resurgence growth of Dalit awareness and consciousness is an all-Indian phenomenon, albeit marked by regional and caste-specific differences. Its influence has not been limited to those defined according to the law as Scheduled Castes, though. Rather, the Dalit struggle for human rights has had a profound impact on other communities as well, most particularly the large category of castes, the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), who form over half the Indian population, as well as the Christians and Muslims, most of whom who share, in terms of social and economic indicators, much in common with the Dalits.
 This article looks at the growing consciousness and assertiveness of a large conglomerate of Muslim castes, some of whose leaders are now seeking to advance for them a new identity as 'Dalit Muslims'. It also looks at the politics, programmes and broader agendas that advocates of this new identity seek to put forward on behalf of a large section of India's Muslim population. We deal here with the origins and development of a particular Muslim organisation, the 'All-India Backward Muslim Morcha' [AIBMM] to see how this new identity seeks to position itself in the context of the debate over Muslim identity in India as well as how it relates itself to the wider multi-religious Dalit community.

The 'Dalit Muslims': Who Are They?

 Most Indian Muslims are descendants of ' untouchable and 'low' caste converts, with only a small minority tracing their descent to Arab, Iranian and Central Asian settlers and invaders. Although Islam is fiercely egalitarian in its social ethics, insisting on a radical equality of all believers, Indian Muslim society is characterised by numerous caste-like features, consisting of several caste-like groups (jatis, biraderis). Muslims who claim foreign descent, such as the Sayyeds, Shaikhs, Mughals and Pathans, claim a superior status for themselves as ashraf or 'noble'. Descendants of indigenous converts are commonly referred to as ajlaf or 'base' or 'lowly'. In the centuries of Muslim rule in India, the ashraf and 'high' caste Hindu converts played a key role in the state administration, as advisors, ministers, governors, army officials, and estate managers, as well as Sufis and 'ulama. On the other hand, despite their conversion to Islam, the social and economic conditions of the mass of the ajlaf Muslims hardly changed, and they remained tied down to their traditional occupations as artisans, peasants and labourers.
 As among the Hindus, the various jatis among the ajlaf maintain a strong sense of jati identity. The emergence of democratic politics is, however, bringing about a radical change in the manner in which this sense of identity is articulated. Aware of the importance of numbers in order to acquire political power and the economic benefits that accrue from it, the Dalit movement has sought to establish a wider sense of Dalit identity that transcends inter-caste divisions and differences among the Dalits. This wider Dalit identity does not seek to deny individual jati identities. Rather, it takes them into account but seeks to subsume them within the wider collective Dalit identity, based on a common history of suffering as well as common racial origins as indigenous people. This seems to have been a crucial factor in the emergence of a specific 'Dalit Muslim' identity that the AIBMM seeks to articulate. Aware that collective effort and collaboration has been able to win for the Dalits several concessions from the state, 'lower' caste Muslim ideologues and activists in the AIBMM, as we shall see, are now in the process of fashioning a new 'Dalit Muslim' identity, seeking to bring all the 'lower' caste Muslims under one umbrella, defined by their common identity as Muslim as well as Dalit.

The All-India Backward Muslim Morcha:

The AIBMM was set up in 1994 by Ejaz Ali, a young Muslim Kunjra (vegetable-seller caste) medical doctor from Patna, the capital of Bihar. Bihar, India's poorest state, is notorious for its acute caste problem and for its frequent anti-Dalit pogroms. Consequently, the Dalits in Bihar have been among the first to take to militant forms of struggle. The Muslims of Bihar, who form over fifteen per cent of the state's population, are also characterised by sharp caste divisions. The plight of Bihar's Dalit Muslims, whom the AIBMM estimates at forming almost ninety per cent of the state's Muslim population and consisting of twenty-nine different caste groups, is particularly pathetic. Most Bihari Dalit Muslims work as daily wage labourers, manual workers, artisans and petty peasants, barely managing to eke out an existence. The emergence of the AIBMM in Bihar needs to be understood in this context, and in the backdrop of the growing salience of caste-based mobilisation among both the 'lower' and 'upper' caste Hindus as well as Muslims.

 According to Ali, the plight of the overwhelming majority of the Muslims of Bihar, as well as an acute awareness of the limitations of the traditional Muslim leadership, suggested to him the need for the establishment of the AIBMM to struggle for the rights of the Dalit Muslims. He regards the destruction of the Babri mosque at Ayodhya in 1992 as a landmark event in this regard, seeing the traditional, and largely 'upper' caste, Muslim leadership as having only further complicated matters by playing into the hands of Hindu militants and as 'misleading' the Muslim masses for their own petty gains. As he puts it:
The way the traditional Muslim leaders reacted to the Babri Masjid issue made me think that there was an urgent need for the Dalit Muslims to come up with their own leaders, championing bread-and-butter concerns rather than emotional and symbolic issues. I do not say that the Babri issue was not important, but I do insist that it was not the primary issue for us. Our first concern should be about jobs and education for our people, and it is only after tackling these that other, secondary issues can be taken up. All along, however, the traditional Muslim leadership has been championing merely symbolic issues, be it the cause of Urdu, the minority character of the Aligarh Muslim University, Muslim Personal Law or the Babri Masjid. What we are calling for is a new leadership that has a new sense of the priorities of the community, which, for the Dalit Muslims, are primarily the real, this-worldly issues of sheer physical survival.

 In less than a decade of its founding, by early 2001 the AIBMM had emerged as an umbrella group of over forty organisations claiming to represent various different Dalit Muslim castes. It now has branches in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Delhi, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, in addition to Bihar, where it has its headquarters.  It has also established contact with Muslim backward caste organisations in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, in south India. Ejaz Ali functions as its all-India convenor, and there are state convenors in each of the states where it has branches.

Aims and Objectives of the AIBMM:

The foremost priority for the AIBMM is to get recognition from the Indian state for the over 100 million 'Dalit Muslims' as Scheduled Castes so that they can avail of the same benefits that the Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist Scheduled castes enjoy, including reserved government jobs, reserved seats in state legislatures and in the Indian Parliament, special courts to try cases of atrocities against them as well as social and economic development programmes meant specially for them. In a leaflet describing its objectives, it describes this as its 'single aim'. The AIBMM insists that its demand for Scheduled Caste status for 'Dalit Muslims' is fully in consonance with the spirit of the Indian Constitution. Recognising the fact that demands for special legal status for Muslims have been viewed in the past as 'separatist' and 'anti-national' and even -pro-Pakistan', the AIBMM is careful to project its demands as aimed at integrating the 'Dalit Muslim' into the 'national mainstream' by enabling them to progress economically and socially, along with other deprived sections of the Indian population.

 According to Indian law as it stands at present, only those Dalits who claim to be Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists can be considered to be members of the Scheduled Castes and thereby eligible for the special benefits that the state has made available to these castes. The AIBMM sees this as violating the basic character of the Indian Constitution, in particular Articles 14, 15 and 16. Article 14 lays down that 'The state shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India'. Article 15 (I) states that 'The state shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them', while according to Article 16(1), 'There shall be equality of opportunity for all citizens in matters relating to employment or appointment to any office under the state'. Article 16(1) has a clause attached to it which states that 'Nothing shall prevent the state from making any special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes'. By denying these special rights to Dalit Muslims (in addition to Dalit Christians) and reserving them for only those Dalits who claim to be Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists, the AIBMM claims that the present law stands in glaring violation of the letter and spirit of the Constitution, in particular to its principles of non-discrimination, equality and freedom of religion. It thus seeks to amend the law, to bring it in accordance with the Constitution, according to which the state should not discriminate between different groups on the basis of religion.

 The issue of linking religious affiliation to Scheduled caste status is a long and complex one, in which issues of power and communal politics seem to be inextricably involved. Special facilities for the benefit of the Dalits owe their origin to the 1935 Government of India Act, according to which a list or schedule was drawn up, containing the names of castes considered to be low in the social hierarchy for whom special facilities were extended in order to partially compensate them for centuries of deprivation and to enable them to advance economically and educationally. Many of these castes had members who claimed different religious affiliation, not all of them being Hindu. Several castes, such as the Banjaras, Dhobis, Nats, Lalbegis, Halalkhors, Jogis, Pasis, Mochis, Kahtiks, Julahas, Darzis and the Rangrezes consisted of both Hindus as well as Muslims. However, in 1950, a Presidential Order was passed, amending Article 341 of the Indian Constitution that enables the President of India to notify a particular caste as Scheduled Caste. According to the amended law only those Dalits who claimed to be Hindus could be considered members of a Scheduled caste and hence eligible for the special benefits that such castes enjoy. Furthermore, a non-Hindu Dalit would be considered for such benefits if he or she converted to Hinduism or declared himself or herself to be a Hindu, this itself being a violation of Article 25 (1) of the Indian Constitution, which lays down the right to the free practice of religion. With one stroke of the pen, millions of Muslim, Christian, Sikh and Buddhist Dalits were struck off the Scheduled Caste list. Increasing Hindu numbers and preventing Dalit conversions to non-Hindu religions seem to be among the probable reasons behind the amendment. Owing to massive struggles launched by Dalit Sikhs and Dalit Buddhists, the law was later amended to allow for Scheduled Caste status to be extended to Dalits professing Sikhism (in 1956) and, later, Buddhism (in 1990). The two other major Dalit groups, the Dalit Muslims and the Dalit Christians, are still denied the rights available to other Dalits. While various Christian groups have been prominent in protesting against this discrimination, it is only recently, with the emergence of the AIBMM, that the Dalit Muslims have also begun to mobilise to fight for what they see as the rights that have been denied to them by law, branding this as a gross violation of the secular principle which is one of the pillars of the Indian Constitution.

Besides being considered 'anti-secular', the law as it stands today is also condemned by the AIBMM as a gross violation of human rights. Furthermore, it is seen as a ploy to keep the more than one hundred million Dalit Muslims in perpetual thraldom, a conspiracy in which both the Hindu as well as Muslim 'upper' caste elite are seen as being involved in. Extending Scheduled Caste status to Dalit Muslims has, as the AIBMM sees it, now become an urgent necessity, and not simply to bring the law in line with the spirit and explicit commands of the Indian Constitution. Because they have been denied Scheduled Caste status and the benefits that accrue from such status, the Dalit Muslims are said to lag far behind the Hindu Dalits, who have been able to make considerable progress in all fields because of the special facilities that the state has provided for them.

In order to press for inclusion of Dalit Muslims in the Scheduled caste list, the AIBMM has organised signature campaigns, conferences and protest marches and has met with leaders of various Indian political parties to gain their support for their demand. It also seeks to propagate its message through leaflets and booklets and through the columns of the Patna-based Urdu daily Sangam, edited by its national convenor, Ejaz Ali.  The AIBMM has been able to get various political parties to tentatively agree to its demands, though this is yet to result in an amending of the law. It was due to its efforts that it in July 2000 the Legislative Assembly of Bihar passed a resolution asking for Scheduled Caste status for Dalit Muslims, which has been sent to the President of India for his approval. Two months earlier, it had been able to get a bill introduced in the Indian Parliament (Lok Sabha) making the same demand, which, however, the Indian government is yet to consider.

A New Indian Muslim Leadership and Changing Discourse of Community Identity:

The AIBMM prides itself in having coined the term 'Dalit Muslims', and in this it seeks to radically refashion notions of Muslim community identity. Deconstructing the notion of Muslims as a homogenous bloc, it brings to the fore the existence of caste among the Indian Muslims, which it sees as one of the primary features of Indian Muslim society. In articulating a separate Dalit Muslim identity it finds itself at odds with the traditional, largely 'high' caste Muslim leadership, which, in seeking to speak for all Muslims, sees the question of caste that the AIBMM so stridently stresses as divisive. Leading Muslim spokesmen have, not surprisingly, accused the AIBMM of seeking to create divisions within the Muslim community and of spreading 'casteism', and thus playing into the hands of militant Hindus.  They have asserted that the division of Muslim on the basis of caste is itself anti-Islamic, and hence to argue for special rights for Dalit Muslims, as opposed to other Muslims, is against Islam, even going to the extent of accusing the AIBMM of 'being funded by foreign elements to weaken Islam'.  The AIBMM has also been alleged to be merely a political front floated by  Ali's father-in law, Ghulam Sarwar, former speaker of the Bihar Legislative Assembly, in order to further his own political interests, a charge that Ali vehemently denies.

 Ali sees as Islam as having historically played a key role in the emancipation of the Dalits, a role which, he says, was watered down over time. Islam spread tin India principally through the agency of the Sufis, he says, whose teachings of love, brotherhood and social equality attracted many Dalits to the new faith, shackled as they were by the chains of the caste system and the Brahminical religion. Seeing the early Muslims eating from the same dish and praying together in the same mosque, the Dalits entered the Muslim fold in droves. It was not by the sword but through the love and compassion that the Sufis exhibited in their behaviour towards the poor, principally the Dalits, that large numbers of Hindus converted to Islam. With the establishment of Muslim political power in various parts of India, however, he says, this radical egalitarianism of the early Sufis gave way to more institutionalised forms of religious expression. 'High' caste Hindus, in order to save their properties or to secure high positions in Muslim-ruled territories, converted to Islam, bringing with them notions of caste superiority that are so foreign to pristine Islam. Doctrines were developed that sought to legitimise caste inequalities by seeking Qur'anic sanction for them. Gradually, he says, the 'spirit of Islam' was replaced by the 'rituals of Islam'.

 One of the crucial tasks before the Dalit Muslims, as Ali sees it, is to rescue Islam from the clutches of those who claim to speak in its name, the 'high' caste Muslim leadership. Thus, he calls for a revival of  'the true spirit of Islam', which fiercely condemns all caste and racial divisions. This would entail a radical questioning of widely prevalent norms and customs and a total transformation of attitudes. The practice of untouchability, which Islam roundly condemns, is still observed, Ali writes, to varying degrees, by 'upper' caste Muslims, who look down upon 'lower' caste Muslims as inherently inferior. While Islam calls for Muslims to share in the plight of their fellow believers and to work for their social emancipation, the Muslim 'upper caste feudal lords' are said to be 'deaf, dumb and blind to the suffering of backward Muslims'.

 Ali is bitterly critical of the traditional, largely 'high' caste, Muslim leadership, both 'ulama as well as 'lay'. Over the centuries of Muslim rule, he says, the ruling class among the Muslims displayed no concern for the plight of the Dalit Muslims, who remained tied down to their traditional occupations, mired in poverty and ignorance. The only concern of the ruling class Muslims, he writes, was to perpetuate their own rule, and for this they entered into alliances with 'upper' caste Hindus, keeping the Dalits, both Hindus as well as Muslims, cruelly suppressed under their firm control. 'While they built large palaces for themselves', he says, 'they did not establish even one primary school for the poor'. This disdain for the Dalits, he writes, carried down right through the period of Muslim and then British rule, and continues till this very day.  He accuses the contemporary Muslim 'high' caste leadership of playing the 'minority card' and practising the politics of 'minorityism' to garner power for themselves while claiming to speak on behalf of all Muslims, the vast majority of whom are Dalits. They, he says, refuse to recognise the acute problem of caste within the community because 'they do not want to lose their jagirdari (power and privileges)'. Yet, the cling to their caste titles, such as 'Sayyed', 'Shaikh' and 'Khan', simply to 'produce an impression of supremacy and to demoralise the backward caste Muslims'. In their attitudes towards the latter they are hardly different from the way Hindu 'upper' castes treat their own Dalits, having never shown any genuine concern for their social and economic advancement. He talks of the 'vice-like grip' that the Sayyeds, those who claim descent from the Prophet Muhammad, are said to hold the Dalit Muslims in, adding that 'the Islamic concepts of equality, non-discrimination and fraternity [are] a hoax in the Indian context'. He sees the Indian Muslim community as a whole as having 'all the ingredients of the Brahminical order'. The 'upper' caste Muslim leadership, he writes, demand special privileges, such as reservations in government services, for the entire Muslim community as a whole, but this is, he says, 'harmful to the backward caste Muslims', for not only are such benefits for an entire religious community un-constitutional, but also would, if granted, benefit only the elite. The 'upper caste' Muslim leadership, he says, thrives on championing such 'communal' 'non-issues' as the protection of the Muslim Personal Law or the Babri mosque, which have only helped militant Hindu 'upper' caste forces, resulting in terrible violence unleashed against Muslims and communal riots in which the major victims are the Dalits, both Hindu as well as Muslim. By playing on such 'non-issues' they have also been able to garner vast amounts of money from Muslim countries for themselves, he alleges. 'The time has now come', he says, for the 'upper' caste Muslims to 'stop thinking of the entire Muslim community as they have been clearly reduced to their [own] caste leadership, which they were doing from the very beginning (sic.) under the pseudo-umbrella of Muslim unity'.

 Given the stress that Islam places on radical social equality, on the one hand, and what he sees as the failure of the traditional Muslim leadership in championing the rights and interests of the backward caste Muslims, on the other, Ali calls for a 'power shift' from 'Arab-origin Ashrafs'  to the 'oppressed Muslims'. Denying that his struggle is aimed at the 'upper caste Muslims, he says that it is directed principally at the government, to force it to grant Scheduled Caste status to the Dalit Muslims. A new, Dalit Muslim leadership is called for, for it alone can champion the rights of the oppressed among the Muslims. Hitherto, he writes, all Muslim movements in India, having been led by 'elite' Muslims, have brought no gains to the really oppressed, in whose name these struggles were waged. Rather, they have all been undertaken with the hidden motive of advancing the interests of the elites. By taking up the interests of the Dalit Muslims, he writes, the AIBMM is not seeking to divide the Muslim community on caste lines, as some have accused him of doing. Rather, he says, championing the cause of the oppressed is what Islam itself calls for, a radical concern for the poor and the weak, which 'is repeatedly stressed in the Holy Qur'an and in the Hadith'. The Prophet Muhammad's early followers, he notes, were largely poor and dispossessed people, and because he spoke out on their behalf, he was fiercely opposed by the rich Quraish of Mecca. Islam, he says, then insists on a passionate commitment to the poor. Hence the accusations against the AIBMM of allegedly dividing the Muslims by taking up the cause of the poor Muslims alone are baseless. If special facilities were to be provided by the state to the Dalit Muslims, they would be able to advance economically and socially. As a result, inter-marriages between them and the 'upper' caste Muslims would increase, and gradually the caste system within the Muslim community would begin to disintegrate, this being seen as working towards the fulfilment of Islam's vision of a casteless society. By denying the existence of caste within the Muslim community, he says, the traditional Muslim leadership is only helping to perpetuate it. Further, as the law stands today, Ali notes, a non-Hindu Dalit can, on declaring himself or herself to be a Hindu, be eligible for availing of benefits that are associated with Scheduled caste status. He writes that there have been several cases of Muslim Dalits passing themselves off as Hindu Scheduled Castes for this purpose. If the religious clause attached to Article 341 is not removed, he says, there is a possibility of many more such cases happening in the future, thus threatening a real reduction in Muslim numbers. Muslim leaders must wake up to this looming threat, for the very existence of the Muslim community faces a grave threat from this possibility.

Nothing less than a 'jihad' needs to be waged to fight for extending Scheduled Caste status to Dalit Muslims, but this jihad is to be fought by the Dalit Muslims, along with non-Muslim secular and progressive forces, in the face of the stiff opposition that is expected from many 'upper' caste Muslims as well as 'upper' caste Hindus. The struggle would need the help of non-Muslim Dalits as well, for if the Dalit Muslims gain Scheduled Caste status, they could join hands with Dalits from other religions and become one strong force, almost half the Indian population. They could, together, even capture political power, bring their interests and demands to the centre of the Indian political agenda and put an end to atrocities against them. The other Dalits need to be convinced that the inclusion of the religious clause in Article 341 is a 'powerful plot to destroy the strength of the indigenous Dalits', dividing them among themselves on the basis of religion. It is, moreover, a clever ploy to drive a wedge between Hindus and Muslims. Hence, removal of the religion clause is seen as a necessary step both to cement a broader inter-religious Dalit unity as well as to bridge the divide between Muslims and Hindus.

  Ali sees the new Muslim leadership that he envisages as being drawn primarily from among the 'backward' Muslims, who form the vast majority of the Muslim population in India, for they alone can truly speak for their people. The 'upper caste' leadership are left to represent their own people. Since the primary concerns of the backward caste Muslims are sheer physical survival, jobs, wages and the like, this new leadership would seek to bring about a 'revolution of priorities'. Instead of taking up 'communal' issues that would further exacerbate Hindu-Muslim differences by playing into the hands of fiercely anti-Muslim Hindu zealots, which only works to further their interests of the Hindu and Muslim elites, this new leadership would focus on issues such as 'employment, food, housing and elementary education', issues which affect the daily lives of all poor people irrespective of religion. In this way, Hindu-Muslim antagonisms would fade away, the Dalits of all religions, the primary victims of the politics of communal hatred, would unite, and the conditions of the poor would improve.

 Since the Dalit Muslims share similar concerns of sheer survival with Dalits of other religions, the new Muslim leadership would seek to build bridges between the Muslim Dalits and those of other faiths. All Dalits, irrespective of religion, belong to the same 'nation' (qaum), Ali says. Mere change of religion cannot wipe away the common blood that runs in their veins. The Dalit 'nation', representing the indigenous inhabitants of India who today follow various different religions, has been fractured into various antagonistic groups, but they must be united. The first step in this direction is to remove the religious clause attached to Article 341 that seeks to divide the Dalits on the basis of religion and to prevent them from coming together on a common plank. The 'divided Dalit nation', he writes, will be united once again when all Dalits, irrespective of religion, are granted the same status as Scheduled Castes. Hence, in order to re-unify the Dalit 'nation' so that the Dalits emerge as a powerful collective force, all Dalits must unite to support the AIBMM's demand for Scheduled Caste status to the Dalit Muslims (as well, interestingly, to the Dalit Christians, who, too, are denied such status). By joining hands with Dalits of other faiths and jointly struggling to improve their existential conditions, Ali writes, the Dalit Muslims would be able to join the ' national mainstream' of Indian society. The 'elite' Muslims, he opines, have all along had a 'vested interest' in 'maintaining exclusivism' among the Muslims, preventing them from establishing ties with others, so that they could pursue their own interests in the guise of promoting the cause of the community as a whole. It was this exclusivist mind-set, he says, that led to the creation of Pakistan, which actually benefited only the Muslim elite, but only further exacerbated the problems of the Dalit Muslims. With a new Muslim leadership coming to the fore drawn from the Dalit Muslims, the community would turn its back to the communal antagonisms of the past rooted in a long tradition of exclusivism and separatism. The Dalit Muslims would begin to collaborate with other Dalits, with whom they have 'a great commonality of interests', pursuing the same occupations and facing the same economic and social problems. In this way, a joint struggle for social justice and inter-communal harmony can be launched for all Dalits, irrespective of religion.

Conclusion:
The emergence of the AIBMM must be seen as a product of the growing strength and influence of the Dalit movement as a whole in recent years. The AIBMM can be credited with the coining of the term 'Dalit Muslim', seeking to bring all the various 'low' caste groups, who together form the vast majority of the Indian Muslim population, on to a common platform. By seeking to deconstruct the notion of a homogenous Muslim community, the AIBMM has brought to the fore the existence of caste and caste--based discrimination among the Muslims. Not surprisingly, it has countered serious opposition from large sections among the traditional Muslim leadership, consisting largely of 'upper' caste Muslims.

 The growth of the AIBMM is important in several important respects. For one, it is perhaps for the first time that the existential concerns of the poorest classes among the Muslims have been sought to be put firmly at the top of the community's agenda. A new leadership, consisting of Dalit Muslims themselves, is being actively sought to be promoted, one that seeks to bring about a radical shift in the priorities of the community, from what it sees as 'symbolic' 'non-issues' that have only served to further exacerbate Hindu-Muslim antagonisms and serve the interests of both the Hindu as well as Muslim elites, to issues that affect most intimately the sheer survival and life chances of the poorest of the poor. Demanding Scheduled Caste status for the Dalit Muslims may, in itself, not be a very radical step, given the present climate of privitisation in the country, where government jobs are being sharply curtailed and public expenditure and subsidies drastically reduced. However, its wider implications are certainly more momentous in their probable consequences. The demands of the AIBMM, limited as they may well be, might actually help facilitate a radical shift in the very terms of Muslim political discourse. Its stress on secularism and human rights, which it sees as being grossly violated by the present law related to Scheduled Caste status, its call for 'integration' of the Muslims into the 'national mainstream', its radical disavowal of communal politics, and its appeal for building bridges and working in collaboration with other Dalits in order to reunify the 'Dalit nation' and working for inter-communal harmony might well provide a key to what has so far seemed the intractable communal problem in India.