Pasmanda ~ translated roughly from Persian as ‘those left behind’ ~ Muslims are the talk of the town in India’s electoral arena given political parties rely on community mobilization to bring in the votes. With the next General Election barely 18 months away, the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), which has reinvented itself from a so-called “Brahmin-Bania party” of three decades ago to the country’s largest political organisation with mass support across social categories, is attempting to conquer the final frontier, as it were ~ to make inroads into the Muslim community which has been ranged against it.
The tactic the BJP has adopted to do so is a piece of social engineering which, if it can manage to pull it off, would be quite something. For, the party has turned a laser focus on wooing Pasmanda Muslims who lie at the bottom of the heap of the societal structure of the Muslim community in India.
The status of the Pasmandas in Muslim society is, according to some sociologists, even lower than the main body of non-Ashraf or upper-class Muslims who have traditionally been occupied in menial jobs or are (“lower caste”) Hindu converts. They have been variously described as the “Dalits” and/or marginalised “OBCs” of the Indian Muslim community who, short of being considered “untouchable”, which would be against the core tenets of Islam, suffer all the disadvantages of their counterparts in Hindu society.
Having identified a sub-community within the larger Muslim community which may be less antagonistic towards it and more amenable to its messaging, the BJP has of late begun organising public meetings with Pasmanda Muslims across Uttar Pradesh.
The move has caused quite a flutter. Ms. Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which fancies itself as the natural destination for the depressed classes from all communities, especially in North India, has issued a public statement aimed at the Muslim community ~ “beware of the RSS-BJP given its track record”. She also termed the ruling dispensation’s Pasmanda Muslim outreach as one aimed only at “narrow political gains”. The BJP, however, is focussing on driving home the message that the gains for the Pasmanda Muslim community from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “sabka saath, sabka vikas” agenda which incorporates a slew of welfare schemes have been unprecedented.
As beneficiaries of both state and central schemes ~ benefits which were allegedly denied to them in the past ~ the Pasmandas should support the BJP to enhance their socio-economic standing as well as political representation, is the party’s narrative.
Reports indicate that the Pasmanda Muslim ‘experiment’ is being tried in Delhi’s forthcoming civic polls too ~ the Muslim community has a sizeable presence in areas such as Okhla, Matia Mahal, Seelampur, and Mustafabad, and, interestingly, all four Muslim candidates of the BJP are from the Pasmanda community. Mr. Modi’s call to his party colleagues at the BJP’s national executive meeting in Hyderabad to reach out to deprived and marginalised sections of the population in non-Hindu communities too is obviously being actioned.