Marginalized Citizens

West Bengal is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious state of India. Muslims, comprising about 27% of the state's total population, are the principal and largest minority of this multi-religious state. Sociologists and social anthropologists have studied the social organization of many Indian communities such as the Tribals and the Hindu castes but unfortunately such studies on the Muslims of West Bengal as well as India pertaining to their society, economy, culture and ethnicity are very insignificant causing ample loopholes in our perception and information on this very large minority from empirical point of view owing to lack of fieldwork. The present book is an attempt to examine the socio-economic and educational situations of the Other Backward Class (OBC) Muslims of West Bengal. Moreover, an especial attempt has also been made here to find out the factors contributing as blockage in their development and social change. As the book is an outcome of a doctoral research, it is mainly based on primary data. Moreover, various relevant published and unpublished literature have also been consulted besides authors' empirical observations of the people under study.