Caste, Exclusion, and Human Rights: The Pasmanda Poverty Trap and Intra-Muslim Stratification as a Human Rights Crisis in India

Abstract Indian Muslims are frequently treated as a homogeneous minority, obscuring profound internal inequalities rooted in caste. More critically, this homogenisation has produced a substantial blind spot in human rights scholarship, policy, and advocacy: the systematic, state-reinforced exclusion of Pasmanda (backward, Dalit, and tribal) Muslims from constitutional and international human rights protections has gone largely untheorised in human rights terms. This study addresses that lacuna by reframing intra-Muslim caste stratification as a human rights problem – one that engages core norms of equality, non-discrimination, human dignity, and socio-economic rights enshrined in international instruments including ICCPR, ICESCR, ICERD, and the CEDAW. Systematically disaggregating Muslims into Ashraf (elite), Ajlaf (backward), and Arzal (Dalit-equivalent) categories using harmonised data from multiple National Sample Survey rounds (2004–2025), the Periodic Labour Force Survey (2023–24), Census 2011, and preliminary 2025 caste enumeration results, and employing multilevel regression, Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, and composite mobility indices, we find that Ashraf Muslims (2.1 % of the Muslim population) approach Hindu Upper Caste mobility (SMI: 71.2 vs. 78.4), while Pasmanda Ajlaf and Arzal – constituting 85 % of Muslims – lag behind even Hindu SC/ST communities (SMI: 42.3 and 31.8 vs. 46.9). Decomposition attributes 44–52 % of Pasmanda employment gaps to discrimination. Institutional analysis reveals systematic Ashraf capture of Muslim institutions (72–86 % of leadership positions). We conceptualise these dynamics as a ‘Pasmanda poverty trap’ – a self-reinforcing cycle of constitutional exclusion, elite capture, and labour market discrimination – and argue that this case offers three contributions to human rights scholarship: it extends the human rights discourse on caste beyond its Hindu-centric framing; it illuminates intra-minority hierarchy as a distinct human rights problem inadequately addressed by minority rights frameworks; and it demonstrates how intersectionality – particularly of caste, religion, and gender – produces compound human rights deprivations that single-axis frameworks cannot capture.