South Asian Studies Colloquium Series: Being Classy: Upward Mobility in an OBC Muslim Community, Carla Bellamy

This talk adds to the emergent picture of caste practices among Indian Muslim communities through a focus on caste-based discourses and practices in the contemporary OBC Muslim Chippa community. I will describe Muslim Chippa origin stories, marriage practices, and language strategies and discuss the ways in which these phenomena - and attitudes about them - allow Muslim Chippas to articulate and enact strategies of upward mobility and respectability. Central to these strategies is the idea of “Islam,” though not in its expected guise as a religion of equality. The upward mobility achieved by some members of the Muslim Chippa community provides insight into the larger question of whether Muslim caste identity is “religious” or linked to notions of purity and pollution that transcend religious communities.