In most societies the acts of religious conversion do ruffle the feathers of those who take the task of policing group boundaries zealously. In India too the issue of proselytization has been a matter of immense anxiety for the majoritarian groups belonging to Hindu religion
Author: Khalid Anis Ansari
Khalid Anis Ansari is Senior Assistant Professor in Glocal Law School in UP. His doctoral work at the University of Humanistic Studies (UvH), Utrecht (the Netherlands) is on caste movements within Muslims of Bihar.
In Defence of the Pasmanda (Backward & Dalit Muslim) Movement: Three Fragments
I would contend that it is because of the legitimization of hierarchy by various canonical Islamic texts that the Muslims who arrived in India (Arabs, Afghans, Mongols, Turks, Persians, etc.) were not in the least bit surprised by caste: they were only too familiar with the hierarchies they found here. Rather, it could be argued, that they skilfully adapted to the caste order and even Islamized it.
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