Meenakshipuram Dalit Conversions

One people, many identities

When hundreds of dalits in Meenakshipuram in Tirunelveli district converted to Islam in 1981, it surprised the nation. So did the fallout in clashes between people of different communities andreligions. Why did they do so? What drove them to it? A furious, often irrationaldebate on conversions shook the country. Yet, through that chaotic period, and insubsequent years, the people of Meenakshipuram - against tremendous odds - puttheir lives back together, with dignity, in a manner that holds many lessons for allIndians. Eighteen years later, P. SAINATH visited the once infamous hamlet.Continuing the series of exclusive reports on the condition of dalits, especially in therural areas.Meenakshipuram & Panpozhi, Tirunelveli (Tamil Nadu):``ALL I did was install this handpump in our house,'' says Jayalakshmi. ``Next thing,people asked me: `are you converting?' You see, Muslim women didn't go much tofetch water from public taps. They used handpumps at home. So when ourhandpump came, I was asked if we were converting to Islam.''Jayalakshmi's is one of those dalit families here that did not change their faith in1981. That was when Meenakshipuram hit the headlines, with several dalits turningto Islam. It was the conversion story of the Eighties. And threw up perhaps the mostheated debate on conversions India has ever seen.The story, broken in April 1981 by the Indian Express, was graphic. It reported that``180 Hindu harijan families have changed their faith. Nearly 1,000 persons haveshifted their loyalty to Islam.'' Relatively better off dalits, it said, had sought equalsocial status with higher caste Thevars of the area. Instead, they were ill-treated.The story quoted dalits who alleged that they had been socially boycotted andpersecuted.The story pointed out that things erupted with the murder of two Thevars in nearbyMekkarai village. The police, suspecting the involvement of dalits, came down veryheavily on the whole community. ``...it is alleged,'' said the report, that ``some harijans(were) illegally detained for more than a month. Agitated over the attitude of thepolice and to gain status, the harijans turned to Islam.''The report quoted one dalit as saying he had been `forcibly converted'. It indicatedthe likely conversion of 50 more families by the month end. And reported the effortsof groups like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) to hold a ``re-conversionceremony'' for 50 of the new converts.The issue exploded in both the Tamil Nadu Assembly and in Parliament. Ministers inthe State and from the Centre trooped in to Meenakshipuram, bringing of course,countless journalists in their wake. Top leaders of most major political parties in thecountry paid a visit. So did a number of social workers and fact- finding committees.Some, with clearcut political links, produced `independent' inquiry reports widelypublicised by the press of the day. Many religious leaders also showed up.Ahmed Akbar was one of the dalits who converted. ``Barring Indira Gandhi, MGRand Karunanidhi,'' he told us, ``anybody who was important came here. Vajpayee,Makwana, R. M. Veerappan, Subramaniam Swamy...''The fallout of the caste and communal polarisation was more fierce outsideMeenakshipuram. Clashes in Tirunelveli found echoes within and beyond TamilNadu. Sometimes between Thevars and Muslims. Often between Thevars and dalits.In some places in tensions between mainly upper caste Hindus and Muslims. Thedebate on conversions that followed often ran more on rhetoric than reality; wasmore given to fury than to fact; and was one where rage mostly overwhelmedreason.Nearly two decades later, relations within and between different communities in thevillage tell us much more. Relatively speaking, Meenakshipuram is an island oftranquility in turbulent Tirunelveli. In a district notorious for caste violence, it remainsmostly serene. (Meenakshipuram is mainly a dalit hamlet in the village of Thenpottai.It is just next to Panpozhi village and is a few kilometres from Tenkasi.)A typical 1981 headline on Meenakshipuram ran: ``A whole village goes Islamic.''Actually, the dalits were evenly divided. Both Muslims and non-converted dalitsconfirm this.Subramanian is the priest at the Kaliamman temple patronised by dalits. (They werenever allowed to enter the Padaivituamman temple in Shencottah.) He's been incharge there for over 15 years. ``We used to have 300 families coming here,'' he toldme at the temple. ``Now the number is 150 because half became Muslims.'' Theestimate of the Jamaat chief of Meenakshipuram, Zafrulla Khan (himself a dalitconvert) matches that of Subramanian. ``It would be broadly correct to say about 50per cent converted,'' he told us.While the rest of the country raged over the ``mass'' conversions, Meenakshipuram'sdalits swiftly put their lives back in order. ``There is inter-marriage between people inthe different religions,'' says Jayalakshmi. Others, too, confirm this. ``It came up incurious ways,'' she says. In some families, father and son converted but not motherand daughter. ``So you have boys who are Muslims with sisters who are Hindus.''``There has been no change in our cultural interaction, though. After all we remainbrothers and sisters and cousins and uncles and nieces and nephews. How does thatchange if some of us change our religion?''Jayalakshmi and her husband Subramanian who is the Block Health Supervisor, didnot embrace Islam. Some of their close relatives did. ``I am neither happy norunhappy about their conversion or about our non-conversion,'' she says. ``I think wemade the correct decision for ourselves. Perhaps they made the right decision forthemselves. They come for our weddings. We go for theirs.''And there are also the complex inter-marriages. One reality is that their social statushas vastly improved. Another is that, though greatly eroded, the disabilities ofdalithood do not just vanish. Caste, to some degree, permeates every religion. Nor doclan and kinship structures melt with a change in faith. Even as these institutionschange or adapt, people still have to seek spouses within their old caste groups.That's another reason for marriages across lines of faith.Jayalakshmi's husband - who was away the day we arrived - led those dalits whoopposed the conversions. Yet, it was in their house that I met Ahmed Akbar,Thenpottai panchayat president. He was one of the converts, and was later a jamaatchief. It seemed odd we should interview him in the house of one of those who ledthe anti-conversion drive in the village. To Jayalakshmi and her son Ganesh Kumar, itseemed perfectly normal. We now understood better what she had said of peopleremaining uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, brothers and sisters. Ahmed Akbaris Jayalakshmi's brother.``On the whole, I believe our decision to convert was correct,'' says Akbar Ahmed.``I pass no judgment on others. Some of my relatives did not convert. They have theirfreedom, I have mine. Each had their options. All compulsion is wrong. People had aright to decide for themselves.''So why did those who convert, do so?``Terror and untouchability were the hallmark of our lives,'' says Ahmed Akbar. ``Thetwo-glass system was in full force here in tea shops. In most shops they would notserve us at all. We were harassed in every way.''One 1981 report spoke of some dalits here as ``by and large, sufficiently rich.'' Therewere educated dalits here. But in reality, most residents of the hamlet were eitherlandless labourers or marginal farmers. Ahmed Akbar, for instance, owned less thanhalf an acre. They did make ends meet, though, by tilling lands leased from theThiruvaduthurai Adinam Math in the adjacent village of Mekkarai. But they had topass through Panpozhi to reach those fields.That was tough. Very often, dalits were roughed up merely for being who they were.Sometimes, their offence was simply the wearing of a shirt.``The maravars (Thevars) heaped humiliation, even torture, on the scheduled castes,''says Jayalakshmi. ``The dalits of Meenakshipuram had it worse than those of uswithin Panpozhi.'' At least one inquiring government official of the time (reported inTheHindu) found this true. He recorded that dalits were not allowed to wearchappals while walking through non-dalit areas.Zafrullah Khan, a convert and now jamaat chief, sums it up. ``We had no respect atall. Even those with government jobs were ill- treated. When they got such jobs in thetowns, no one would give them houses on rent. We started to think: What are thereasons for this? Why does government behave the way it does? Why two glasses atthe shops? Why that same treatment in hotels? Why were our children mistreated atschool? Why were there even separate burial grounds or burning ghats? At thetemples, the same treatment. These were our reasons.''``In 1969, I was a panchayat member at Thenpottai. We had this meeting inCourtallam. I was not served water. I did not dare take water from the pot there.Outside, the shop owners refused me tea. What could I do? Also, anything that tookplace in this area, the police regularly picked up and thrashed our boys. We saw thestate of dalits in Tamil Nadu and then decided to convert. It was our last resort.Oppression and oppression alone was the reason. I do not want to single out Thevarsas those who behaved badly with us. All non-SC people, Brahmins onwards, behavedthe same way.''``Our older generation had often discussed conversion. But they were not united onit,'' says Ahmed Akbar. ``A few did convert some years ago. I had no desire to doso. I was simply stuck in my life as a cultivator working to survive. Then came themurder of the two Thevars. The police simply picked up everyone here. I too, thoughwe had nothing at all to do with it. I was sick that day. I was just bundled up andthrown into the van like an animal. That's how we were treated. Like animals. Someof my relatives had to pay a bribe of Rs. 1,000 to get me released. As I lay sick inthat station, that was my breaking point. I knew I had had enough. I was going toconvert.''Thirumalai Kumar, then a teenager, was reported in some accounts to haveconverted - and later `re-converted'. He now says: ``We wished to change, certainly.Sons and fathers were divided on this issue. I thought, yes. My father felt no. Finally,I respected his decision.''His memories of the time: ``The RSS came and put the sacred thread on many of us`You are not low caste' they now said. We will treat you as equals. Don't leaveHinduism.' Nobody worried about us when we were miserable within their Hinduism.No one protested when we suffered untouchability. But once the conversions tookplace, they were all worried about us. The RSS and others came running then.''His father, S. Shanmugavel, retired as Block Development Officer in 1992. He didnot convert. But, he says, ``the police were terrible. Their oppression was a majorcause for conversions.''He also sees that it gave the dalits a new bargaining power. ``I was manager in theTenkasi BDO's office at the time,'' he says. ``The then Brahmin BDO called me. Hesaid: `whatever facilities your village needs, Shanmugavel, tell me. I'll get it donestraightaway'. Till that day,'' he laughs, ``we had no overhead tank. No approachroad. No tap facilities. There was nothing in this village. Suddenly, everything wasbeing offered to us.''Why did the dalits who converted go to Islam? Why not Christianity? Or Buddhism?``Why Islam?'' asks Zafrullah. ``We knew other religions indirectly. But Hinduism weknew directly. Buddhism we knew nothing about except that Ambedkar hadconverted to it. Here in Tamil Nadu, we knew something of Christianity. We knew itwas riddled with caste. My father-in-law was a Christian.'' A few dalits had oncesought a way out through Christianity. Some of these, too, converted to Islam in1981.``We discussed the pros and cons of each faith after talking to the elders of thosegroups. We took the initiative for conversion. We went to the South India Isha-AthulSabai (SIIS) in Palayamkottai. We sought conversion. They asked endless questions.Why did we really want to convert? We had only one aim: equality.''A myth of the time was the eagerness of local Muslims to score over the Thevars viaconversions. It wasn't so simple at all. Class interests, too, made themselves felt.``Some Muslims in Panpozhi were against our being converted,'' says Ahmed Akbar.``They feared they would lose a good source of cheap labour if they had to treat usas equals.'' Some of them were landowners. The dalits, mainly landless.``The Muslims were unwilling to convert them,'' says Palai N. Shanmugham. Nowretired, he was for years a leading advocate of Tirunelveli. ``They were afraid toantagonise the Thevars.''``There was a time,'' says Ahmed Akbar, ``when some Muslims of Panpozhi alsopractised untouchability. They too, called us caste names. The separate glassessystem existed in their shops, too. But the Muslim elders in Tenkasi behaveddifferently. They changed things - after we went to those in the Islam Sabai. Suchattitudes have long ago died out in Panpozhi, too.''Muthupandian Thevar led his community's drive against the conversions in 1981. Hismost cherished memory of the time, he told us at his house in Meenakshipuram, was:``when Vajpayee came here. He stayed for three days in the area. There were 3,000people in the Arya Samaj procession when he came. He said: `what's happened hashappened. But from today on, there should not be a single new conversion'.''``The dalits thought they were suppressed and discriminated against,'' saysMuthupandian Thevar. ``I think there was some truth in that. Maybe in the nextgeneration there will be real equality. Yes, there was social oppression. But it is notthere now.''Where you speak to converts, non-converts or re-converts, dalits, Thevars orMuslims, on one point, there is broad agreement: social relations have improved andeveryone has benefited. To the extent it has had a sobering effect on the uppercastes, the Meenakshipuram incident seems to have hit untouchability itself. At leastin the vicinity.``Untouchability has gone down even in some nearby villages. Though, of course, itexists elsewhere in the district,'' says Ahmed Akbar. ``Today, here at least, there areno separate glasses for different castes. Those who with contempt called me castenames, now show me respect. Those who shouted, `dey, pallan', now call me bhai. Igo to the Thevars homes and eat there. They come to our homes and eat there.There are no caste tensions today.''Meenakshipuram's residents now get on with their lives. Families can exist withmembers being Hindus, Muslims, even possibly Christians. Their multiple identities donot come in the way of family and community ties. With all its problems - and they are many and complex - the village has come through its ordeal. Here, humanrelationships have survived caste and religious hatreds. Human ties have endured, achallenge to rage and unreason.

Beef Eating in Ancient India

D.N. Jha
Professor of History,
University of Delhi
email: dnjha@del2.vsnl.net.in

There has been much hullabaloo outside the academic circle over beefeating in ancient India as if it were the most important problemfacing the nation . The purpose behind raising a hue and cry overthe matter is obviously to politicise it by suggesting, explicitlyor implicitly, that the practice is prevalent only among the Muslimswho are even today looked upon as foreigners by communal politicalgroups and parties in India. Those who argue against this positionare dubbed as Marxists or communists, whom such groups and partieshave been claiming to combat, little realising that the argumentsfor the prevalence of the practice of beef eating in ancient Indiaare based on the evidence drawn from our own scriptures which arereplete with references to it.The textual evidence, in fact, begins to be available from theRigveda itself which is the earliest Indian religious text andfigures in popular perception as being of divine origin. H.H.Wilson , writing in the first half of the nineteenth century hadasserted that "the sacrifice of the horse or of the cow, the gomedhaor ashvamedha, appears to have been common in the earliest periodsof the Hindu ritual". The view that the practice of killing ofcattle at sacrifices and eating their flesh prevailed among theIndo-Aryans was, however, put forth most convincingly /forcefullyby Rajendra Lal Mitra in an article which was first published in theJournal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and subsequently formed achapter his book entitled The Indo-Aryans in 1891. Later in theearly forties P. V. Kane in his monumental work 'History ofDharmashastra' referred to specific Vedic and later Shastricpassages which speak of cow slaughter and beef eating.It is necessary to bear in mind that none of the above scholars hadanything to do with Marxism which the saffronised journalists andpublicists like Arun Shourie have been fighting through the columnsof the Asian Age. Wilson was the first occupant of the Chair ofSanskrit at Oxford in 1832 and was not as avowedly anti-Indian asmany other imperialist scholars. Mitra, a product of the Bengalrenaissance and a close associate of Rabindranaths elder brotherJyotindranath Tagore, made significant contribution to India'sintellectual life, and was described by Max Mueller as the bestliving Indologist of his time. Mahamahopdhyaya P.V. Kane was aconservative Marathi brahmin and the only Sanskritist to behonoured with the title of 'Bharat Ratna'.The Sangh Parivar (including, of course, Arun Shourie who feelsquite comfortable in his blissful ignorance!) have never turned itsguns towards their writings. One is tempted to imagine that itconsists of total ignoramuses who are made to carry a heavy burdenof civilisational illiteracy and stupid arrogance by their pontiffs.

THE TESTIMONY OF A 'DALIT' REVERT (CONVERT)

Politics Of Conversion

Rashid Salim Adil talks to Yoginder Sikand

'Islam Gave Me Self Respect' Rashid Salim Adil, a Delhi-based advocate,
social activist and politician, is a Dalit convert to Islam. Here he talks
to Yoginder Sikand on Dalits, social liberation and Islam.

What made you convert to Islam?

I see my conversion to Islam as the culmination of a long search for
liberation from the caste system and as the answer to my quest for
self-respect. I was born in a poor Chamar (Dalit) family, who are
hereditary leather-workers, in a small village near Delhi. We were
considered as untouchables by the uppercastes. My illiterate father had a
small shop which catered to the Dalits, and it was with great difficulty
that he managed to send me to school. I failed the high school
examinations, and came to Delhi looking for a job. It was in Delhi that I
was exposed to a totally different world of ideas. I was an atheist
initially, but later turned to religion. I first joined the Arya Samaj
enamoured by their slogan of social equality. The Aryas present themselves
as very radical, but if you closely examine their writings, and, even
more, their attitudes, you will discover that in matters of caste there is
little to distinguish them from the other Hindus. I soon gave up the
membership in the Arya Samaj and became a Buddhist. The passionate
Buddhist that I was, I took to reading all of Ambedkar's books and doing
an M.Phil. in Buddhist Studies, after which I took a degree in law. Later
while working as a law officer in the Delhi Development Authority, I
became actively engaged in the Buddhist movement among the Dalits. I
helped set up a number of Buddhist viharas (temples) in the slums.

It was in 1981, shortly after the conversion to Islam of several hundred
Dalit families in the village of Meenakshipuram in Tamil Nadu, that an
event took place that totally altered my perception of social realities in
India. One day, as I was going to office, I saw a team of bulldozers of
the Delhi Development Authority tearing down a Dalit Buddhist vihara which
had been illegally built on government land. However, they spared a Hindu
temple standing nearby from similar destruction, although it, too, was an
illegal construction. It struck me that the only reason that they
destroyed our vihara was because we are Dalits. Even after converting to
Buddhism, I realised, we were still treated as untouchables. Buddhism had,
it dawned on me, not helped us at all in our quest for empowerment. If it
had, do you think that they would have had the courage to raze the vihara
like that?

How did you veer round to the opinion that Islam could help you and
your people in your quest for empowerment?

When the Dalits of Meenakshipuram converted to Islam, there was a
sudden change in the attitude of the local so-called upper castes towards
them. Now they could enter village tea-shop, could wear shoes, something
that was not possible earlier. This was because the Hindus knew that the
Muslims would not let them carry on treating our people who had become
Muslims as they had been treating them before. In this way, Islam gave
these Dalits a new sense of identity and pride. The news about the
Meenakshipuram conversions spread like wild fire and soon even in the
North many Dalits began thinking about Islam. Judging by the panic that
struck the upper castes, and even the Indian State, I realised what a
powerful tool of emancipation Islam really was. I now began studying Islam
myself to see what it was in that religion that has drawn oppressed people
to its fold over the centuries, and I found what particularly attracted
them was Islam's stress on justice and equality and the sovereignty of God
alone. All man-made masters, all priests, pundits and moulvis, are denied
completely. And so, after a detailed study of Islam, I decided to convert.
I recited the kalima [the Islamic creed of confession] at the historic
Jamia Masjid in Old Delhi, on December 6, 1981, the 25th death anniversary
of Dr. Ambedkar, and was given my new Islamic name.

How was your conversion received by your people?

By that time I was quite active in the Dalit movement. Several Dalit
activists had come to congratulate me on my bold decision. My radical
Dalit colleagues agreed with me in private that the step I had taken was
the only way out for the Dalits to seek their liberation, but many of them
could not muster the courage to take the same decision. Some of them were
scared of what their relatives would say or do, or of how the upper castes
would react, and others feared losing their jobs if they were to become
Muslim. But deep down in their hearts they knew that the only solution to
the plight of the Dalits was through conversion to Islam.

But surely you must have faced some hostile reaction to your turning
Muslim?

Oh yes, I had more than my share of that! My wife and children too had
converted along with me. When my wife's parents came to know about this,
they instigated her against me, and our marriage ended in a divorce. Then,
of course, I had to face opposition from many upper castes who naturally
did not take too kindly to my conversion. A team of Arya propagandists
came to meet me to persuade me to renounce Islam and enter the Arya fold,
saying that the Arya Samaj, which they claim is true Hinduism, preaches
social equality and brotherhood. They did not know that I had been in the
Arya Samaj myself at one time, so when I quoted Sanskrit verses from their
scriptures that sanctify the caste and racial prejudice they were shocked.

Dalits are today looking at various alternative paths in their struggle
for liberation, religious conversion being only one option. Why do you
feel that conversion is so important for the Dalits?

Well, in order to address this question one would have to go way back
to the earliest periods of Indian history. You see, the Dalits were the
original inhabitants of this land, and some three thousand years ago, the
fair-skinned Aryans invaded India from the north-west, subduing the
original inhabitants, the Dravidians, and turning them into slaves. Now to
keep them subjugated, physical force had to be supplemented with
ideological and cultural force, and so you had the development of
Brahminism and all its scriptures and superstitions. The real basis of
Brahminism, which is really what Hinduism is all about, is the caste
system, based as it is on the supremacy of the Brahmins and the
degradation of the Dalits, treating them worse than animals. Cows, snakes
and monkeys are worshipped in Hinduism, while the Dalits are treated worse
than vermin. Thus, in order to be liberated from the caste system, the
Dalits first need to liberate themselves from Hinduism. That Brahminism
spells eternal mental slavery for the Dalits is something that all
thinking Dalits are well aware of. That is why Dr. Ambedkar himself
announced in 1935 that conversion was a must for Dalit liberation. He
himself renounced Hinduism, along with some 400,000 of his followers at a
mass ceremony in 1956.

But Ambedkar himself converted to Buddhism, not to Islam?

I consider this as the biggest blunder by Ambedkar. But in a sense he
was forced into it. You see, I am convinced that Ambedkar was aware that
the most effective means for Dalit liberation was through converting to
Islam. In this he was following in the tradition of Mahatma Jyotiba Phule,
who argued that by becoming Muslims, the Dalits could overcome the stigma
of untouchability that the upper castes branded them with. In 1935, in a
public address to his fellow Mahars, Ambedkar first spoke out on the need
for the Dalits to renounce Hinduism and to convert to another religion. He
said that the Dalits could choose from between Sikhism, Christianity or
Islam, but added that Islam seemed to offer the Dalits the best deal. He
commented on how Muslims are so closely united, and how the bond of
Islamic brotherhood has no parallels in any other religious community or
tradition. It is revealing to note that at this time he made no mention at
all of Buddhism.

Why then did he not convert to Islam himself?

I think he was gradually moving in that direction and then the
Partition took place in 1947, which made him change his plans. As I see
it, he was increasingly co-operating with Muslims on the political plane.
The Nizam of Hyderabad granted him a huge sum of money for his educational
projects and Muslims in East Bengal helped him get elected to the
Constituent Assembly in the face of stiff Hindu opposition. Ordinary
Muslim villagers went out of their way to support him in his struggles for
justice for the Dalits, as in the case of the well-known Mahar tank
agitation to allow Dalits use of village tanks. Ambedkar was also
increasingly co-operating with Jinnah and the Muslim League in opposing
upper caste hegemony. I think he was quite clear that if the Dalits
embraced Islam en masse, then the Muslims would have become the single
largest community. He clearly saw how this could empower the Dalits in
their struggle.

This is why some sections of the upper castes in the Congress and the
Hindu Mahasabha, conspired to drive Jinnah to the wall, and forced him to
come out with the demand for Pakistan by refusing to seriously consider
any measures for the protection of Muslim interests in a united India. In
doing this, they killed two birds with one stone. By creating Pakistan,
the upper castes got rid of a large chunk of the Muslim population, and
reduced the Muslims remaining in India to a persecuted minority. In
addition, by inflaming anti-Muslim prejudice and launching anti-Muslim
pogroms, the Dalits were clearly told what fate they would meet if they
dared to contemplate converting to Islam. Naturally, in this context,
Ambedkar had to change his strategy. Since converting to Islam was now
ruled out because that would have meant the mass slaughter of Dalits in
every village and town, Ambedkar took to Buddhism as the next best
alternative.

How do you see the Buddhist conversion movement today?

Very small number of Dalits, mainly among the Mahars of Maharshtra and
a section of the Chamars of western Uttar Pradesh have actually converted
to Buddhism. So, in that sense, it has not brought all the Dalits of India
within its fold. The biggest problem with conversion to Buddhism is that
because there was no pre-existing Buddhist community into which they could
merge themselves and lose their Dalitness, when Dalits went over to
Buddhism they could still be identified as Dalits. In this way, conversion
to Buddhism has not been able to rid the Dalits of their Dalit identity,
and as long as they are identified as Dalits they cannot escape from the
shackles of the caste system. Further, if you see what conversion to
Buddhism has actually meant for most Dalits, it appears that this has
entailed only a cosmetic change in some rituals. On the whole, however,
most Buddhists carry on with their pre-conversion Hindu practices and
beliefs. Little wonder then that Hindu chauvinist groups that are so
vehemently against Dalits converting to Islam argue that Dalits may, if
they like, become Buddhists, because in their view Buddhism is a branch of
Hinduism.

If conversion to Buddhism has not been successful in empowering the
Dalits, why do you feel Islam is the answer?

Islam and Brahminism are two diametrically opposite ideologies. This
comes out strikingly if you compare their views on social affairs.
Brahminism is based on extreme hierarchy, the caste system, the supremacy
of one priestly caste and the slavery of the Dalits. Rama, whom Hindu
chauvinists claim as their supreme god, lopped off the head of a Shudra
for spiritual austerities that would have taken him to heaven. Contrast
this with Islam, which is based on social equality, on the oneness of
humanity, of us all as children of Adam and Eve. No religion gives such
importance to justice and social equality as Islam does. So, in that sense
I see Islam as offering the Dalits a powerful means to challenge the
oppression of caste, providing a new social order, a sense of self-respect
and a feeling of being accepted as fully human for the Dalits, which
Hinduism, of course, cannot provide. In addition, there is this massive
Muslim population in India. If the Dalits were to convert to Islam, they
could easily be absorbed into the Muslim community, shedding off their
Dalit-ness, in the process empowered by joining the fold of a large
community.

But surely there is the problem of caste within the Indian Muslim
community?

Yes, Muslim society in India is characterised by caste-like features.
But this is entirely because of the result of living in a largely Hindu
environment. Since Islam is fiercely opposed to caste, as Islamic
movements for reform gather strength, these distinctions would gradually
give way. In my own case, for instance, I was able to marry into a Sayyed
family after my divorce. My children, too, have married Muslims who come
from so-called upper caste families. That has been no problem at all.

How, as a Muslim, do you see your role in the Dalit liberation project?
Do you see any role for Dalit-Muslim dialogue that is not predicated on
Dalit conversion to Islam?

I am closely involved with various Dalit groups. We have set up a
publishing house to bring out literature to show how Islam can offer the
Dalits a means to their salvation, freeing them from caste slavery.
Further, we have also set up a political party, the Sab Jan Party, All
People's Party, which is still in its infancy. Through this party we are
trying to bring all oppressed groups on a common plane.