Subordinated castes were mobilized as vigilantes in pre-partition Hindu violence.

Evidence

By the mid-1940s, as the prospect of partition loomed, the subordinated castes in several states had been ‘assimilated’ into Hinduism. They began to participate in militant Hindu rallies; in Noakhali in Bengal, for instance, they functioned as an outlying vigilante army in the run-up to the bloodbath of partition. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 427