This article 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 Chhipa community (OBC, short for ‘Other Backward Class’, is an Indian-government designation). The article examines Muslim Chhipa origin stories, marriage practices and language strategies and shows the ways in which these phenomena—and attitudes about them—allow Muslim Chhipas 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 article also shows that Islam plays a different but ultimately complementary role in intra-Chhipa relations, allowing for continued caste pride. However, the upward mobility achieved by some suggests that caste practices and beliefs in Muslim communities remain linked to pan-South Asian notions of purity and pollution and, as such, perpetuate discrimination against dalit Muslims.

本文通过关注当代 OBC 穆斯林奇帕社区（OBC，“其他落后阶级”的缩写，是印度政府的名称）中基于种姓的话语和实践，增加了印度穆斯林社区中种姓实践的新兴画面。这篇文章考察了穆斯林奇帕族的起源故事、婚姻习俗和语言策略，并展示了这些现象——以及对它们的态度——使穆斯林奇帕族能够阐明和制定向上流动和受人尊敬的策略的方式。这些策略的核心是“伊斯兰教”的概念，尽管它并不以平等宗教的名义出现。文章还表明，伊斯兰教在奇帕族内部关系中扮演着不同但最终互补的角色，允许持续的种姓自豪感。然而，