Social histories of exclusion and moments of resistance: The case of Muslim Julaha weavers in colonial United Provinces

Abstract

Locating the theorisation and practices of caste hierarchies within South Asian Islam with reference to high-caste Muslims (Ashrafs) versus Julaha weavers (Ajlafs), this article argues that class exploitation and class hegemony over the marginalised sections of Muslim society in North India were practised through caste stratifications, social hierarchies and land relations. The horizontal equality of ‘textual Islam’ was transformed into vertical social hierarchies in South Asia. While explaining the conditions of the disadvantageous socio-economic status that ensured their subordination, this article narrates instances of resistance and quests for equality undertaken by the Julaha weavers. The dialectics of these negotiations produced factors such as the stigma of status mandated by their caste, on the one hand, and the weavers’ integration within the capitalist colonial economy and politics, on the other. The article explores this history of hierarchies and the complex resistances offered to it, closely mediated by social and economic structures, prevailing ideologies and notions of colonial legality and mobility. The processes of the weavers challenging their social marginalisation, predicated on their economic status and their quest for new identities may look familiar to other communities which similarly used religion, caste and colonial law to resist and subvert hierarchies. Hence, the politicisation of the colonial public sphere affected the relations among the Indian Muslims in a new milieu. These arguments are significant in terms of rewriting the existing historiography that reinforces the binaries of nationalist–communalist or Hindu–Muslim politics.