Encyclopedia of Indian Religions

Series Editor
Arvind Sharma
Zayn R. Kassam
Yudit Kornberg Greenberg
Jehan Bagli
Editors

Islam, Judaism, and

Zoroastrianism

With 23 Figures and 2 Tables

Editors
Zayn R. Kassam Yudit Kornberg Greenberg
Pomona College Religious Studies Rollins College Jewish Studies Program
Claremont, CA, USA Winter Park, FL, USA

Jehan Bagli
World Zoroastrian Organization
Toronto, ON, Canada

ISBN 978-94-024-1266-6 ISBN 978-94-024-1267-3 (eBook)

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Caste 167

were now administratively separate. From 1914, Azdī al-Baṣrī edited by W. N. Lees. Bibliotheca Indica,
principals were all members of the Indian Educa- Calcutta, p 16
3. Harley AH (1944) Colloquial Hindustani. K. Paul,
tion Service; students of the Madrasah could now Trench Trubner, London
sit for Calcutta University degrees, although it 4. Harley AH (1924) A manual of Sufism: Al-Futuhātu'l-
remained an autonomous institution. In practice, Ilāhiyatu fi Naf'i 'Arwahi'dh-Dhawati 'l-'Insāniyati. By
since it set the curriculum and conducted the Zaynu'd-Din Abu Yahya Zakariya' b. Muhammad al-
Madrasah Board Examinations, the Calcutta
'Ansāri ash-Shafi'i. s.n., London
5. Rahman M (1977) History of Madrasah education: with
C
Madrasah headed a large network of government- special reference to Calcutta Madrasah and W. B. Edu-
funded or recognized madrasahs; there were cation Board. Rais Anwer Rahman & Bros, Calcutta
214 in 1915. Several madrasahs were directly
under Calcutta’s supervision, including Hooghly
(founded 1817), from where Amir ‘Ali, the future
Muslim modernist thinker and scholar, graduated Caliph
in 1867. In 1947, as Bengal was again being
partitioned, the Madrasah’s assets were to be ▶ ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd-al-‘Azīz
divided, with most going to the Dhaka Madrasah
(founded 1874). Technically, the Calcutta Madra-
sah was wound up. However, the new Indian
Caliphate
minister of education, Abul Kalam Azad
(1888–1958), favored its reopening. In 1949,
▶ Khilāfat Movement
a new West Bengal Madrasah Education Board
▶ ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd-al-‘Azīz
was formed; in 1950, Said Ahmad Akbarabadi
became first post-partition Principal. He was
followed by a succession of Muslim Principals
until the Government of West Bengal Cantwell Smith
reconstituted the Madrasah as a university in
2008, which is now headed by a vice-chancellor. ▶ Smith, Wilfred Cantwell
The vice-chancellor and Shaikh-ul-Jamia is Prof.
Syed Samsul Alam. New buildings are being
constructed on a 200-acre site. It is now the
youngest state-aided university in West Bengal Caste
as well as the oldest state-funded educational
institution in India. The institution’s history from Joel Lee
1780 to 1977 is related in Rahman (1977) [5]. Williams College, Williamstown, MA, USA

Synonyms
Cross-References
Birādari; jāti; ẕāt
▶ Dars-i-Niẓāmiya

Definition
References
A principle of social organization wherein endog-
1. Sprenger A (1851) Life of Mohammad (2 volumes). amous, descent-based status groups relate to each
Presbyterian Mission Press, Allahabad
2. Azdī al-Baṣrī, Muḥammad b. 'Abdallah al- (1854) “The
other within a graded hierarchy. Caste also
Fotooh al Sham”: being an account of the Moslim denotes the group that constitutes the basic unit
conquests in Syria: by Muḥammad b. 'Abdallah al- of social formations structured by this principle.
168 Caste

Introduction caste practice. What is misconceived is the idea

that the social form is exclusively Hindu, when
Caste – the principle of social organization wherein the historical and sociological record provides
endogamous, descent-based status groups relate to ample evidence of Christians, Sikhs, and Muslims
each other within a graded hierarchy – is one of the finding ways to render this peculiar “division of
defining features of Muslim community life in labourers” [9] their own.
much of South Asia. While this is no surprise on In actual social life, Muslim castes, like Hindu
the subcontinent, the prominence of caste in South (or Christian or Sikh) castes, are determined by
Asian Islamic life has been almost entirely birth, and function, depending on context, as sta-
obscured in global representations of the region tus groups, marriage circles, and units of sociabil-
by several factors. One is the nonrecognition of ity and commensality. Especially among the
Muslim caste by the postcolonial states of India, subordinate Muslim castes, castes are closely
Pakistan, and their neighbors; to be ignored by the associated with occupations. Hierarchical rela-
census and related technologies of modern gover- tions between castes are traditionally marked in
nance is in significant ways to be rendered invisible public life by differential norms of deference,
to the world. A second is the tendency, in popular commensality (privileged castes often eat together
and scholarly accounts, of treating particular Ara- but not with subordinate castes), connubiality
bian and North African cultural forms as though (privileged castes occasionally intermarry with
they characterized all Islamic societies. The priority one another, but almost never with subordinate
given to relatively egalitarian relations among castes), giving and receiving food and other sub-
desert-dwelling patrilineal tribes, in narratives stances, segregation of residential quarters and
purporting to provide a sociology of Islam [e.g., burial grounds, and, historically and in some
34], has had the effect of eclipsing representations places even now, practices of untouchability. At
of other Muslim associational forms, making social the same time, horizontal solidarity among Mus-
structures in much of the Muslim world appear lim castes, and the notional equality of Muslims as
marginal or not properly Islamic. religious subjects, is publicly affirmed in religious
Perhaps, the most decisive factor in the non- events such as congregational prayer in mosques
appearance of Muslim caste in global representa- [4, 10, 46]. Such solidarity contrasts with the
tions of South Asia is the popular and scholarly situation among Hindu castes, since Dalits or
discourse that conceptually sequesters caste and “untouchables” remain excluded from a majority
untouchability within the confines of Hinduism. of Hindu temples [62] and Hindu festivals that
This is partly a legacy of the late colonial state’s include Dalits often emphasize and display caste
self-interested construal of caste as an essentially distinctions [19, 23, 50].
religious phenomenon manifest primarily in
Hindu beliefs and ritual practices, rather than as
an integral component of a political economy – in Debates in the Anthropological/
which Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs all Sociological Literature
took part, and on which the profitability of empire
depended – manifest in rules of landownership, Until recently, much of the debate in the anthro-
resource access, the organization of space, and the pological and sociological literature on caste in
control of unfree labor [20, 43, 65]. To be clear: South Asian Islam centered on how to interpret its
the association between caste and Hinduism in the relation to Hindu caste structurally (in the present)
global imagination is not unwarranted – caste and and genealogically (in the past). That is, the ques-
untouchability are indeed central to a highly tions were whether social stratification among
developed normative vision of ideal social struc- Muslims should be seen as caste, and whether it
ture in the brahminical discursive tradition derives from Hindu sources or has other origins.
claimed by modern Hinduism, and Hindu beliefs On the first question, very few argue that Mus-
and rituals do indeed support many an everyday lim social organization either bears no
Caste 169

relationship to, or is identical to, the system of thesis, is unable to resist the hegemony of the
Hindu castes [28]. Rather, Muslim social stratifi- social ideology of the Hindu majority, and thus
cation is acknowledged to share distinctive struc- adopts caste, albeit in a somewhat diluted form.
tural features with Hindu caste (most notably With minor variations, the Hindu influence theory
hierarchy, endogamy, and occupational speciali- is advanced in much of the social science literature
zation), while differing in several other respects that takes up the subject [8, 10, 16, 22, 42, 56].
[4, 8, 10, 14, 22]. In these accounts, three differ- The second position is that Muslim caste, while C
ences are routinely cited. First, caste among Mus- largely a result of Hindu influence, acquires cred-
lims is relatively less elaborated than among ibility and religious sanction through interpreta-
Hindus; restrictions on commensality and connu- tions of Islamic law or fiqh. This viewpoint takes
biality are looser in the Muslim caste. Second, the into consideration norms of social distinction
organization of society along caste lines lacks elaborated in Hanafi and Shafi’i fiqh – Hanafi
ideological mooring in the central texts of the being followed by a large majority of South
high Islamic tradition, whereas it is a prominent Asian Muslims, Shafi’i by Laccadive and some
feature of the high Hindu textual tradition. Thus, Tamil Muslims – that jurists deployed at certain
South Asian Muslims face greater difficulties in historical moments in an effort to justify caste
providing religious justification for caste behavior practices in terms of Islamic orthopraxy [4, 10,
than their Hindu counterparts. Third, the criteria 27, 57, 58]. Imtiaz Ahmad thus concludes that
for ranking castes are different for Muslims and “caste among the Muslims in India owes itself
Hindus. For Muslims, the significance of purity directly to Hindu influences, but it has been
and pollution is less relevant, and the idiom of reinforced by the justification offered for the idea
nobility of birth has more purchase [4]. Yet this of birth and descent as criteria of status in Islamic
point is also contested; while it is admitted that law” [4].
Muslims theoretically lack an ideology of purity One of the key concepts in Islamic jurispru-
and pollution, in practice pollution taboos, justi- dence that animates this argument is that of equal-
fied by notions of pāk-ṣāf (purity), hygiene, and ity or parity between marriage partners (kafā’ or
shame, are observed in Muslim society in several kufū). While the Islamic legal tradition recognizes
regions of South Asia [8, 14, 16, 44]. a range of criteria for determining kufū – piety and
On the second question, whether and to what intelligence as well as economic status, lineage,
degree hierarchy in South Asian Muslim social and the distinction between slaves and nonslaves
structure derives from Hindu sources, the anthro- – the criteria that historically dominate in South
pological literature is divided between three opin- Asian Islamic legal interpretation are also those
ions. The prevailing position in both scholarly and that establish caste: birth, social standing, and
popular accounts is well represented by an early occupation [57, 58]. Thus influential Muslim
exponent, Ghaus Ansari: jurists, including the founder of the Barelvi school
When Islam came to stay in India. . . a gradual Aḥmad Raẓā Khān and the renowned Deobandi
process. . . led to acculturation on both sides, a writer Ashraf ‘Alī Thānawī, in their legal interpre-
process in which Muslims absorbed comparatively tations effectively rendered caste endogamy
more traits from their Hindu neighbours than the
Hindus did from the Muslims. . . The caste system Islamic. At the same time, other jurists argued
in operation among Muslims is merely a borrowed the opposite, that piety alone is the Qur’ānic
social phenomenon acquired from the Hindu caste basis for parity in marriage and that traditions
system. [10] cited in support of hierarchical social distinction
Louis Dumont, in an influential recapitulation are spurious [11, 27, 57, 58].
of this position, argues that Muslim caste (as well The third position represented in the anthropo-
as caste among Christians and Lingāyats) is a logical literature is that Muslim caste in South
“replica” of the “circumambient Hindu system” Asia owes its basic form to the hierarchical soci-
or the “Hindu environment” [22]. The non- eties from which high-status Muslims migrated
hierarchical ideology of Islam, according to this into the subcontinent, although this structure
170 Caste

subsequently was modified to accommodate local Caste Categories

circumstances in South Asia. Proponents of this
view cite ethnographic evidence of structural fea- What are the caste categories actually in play in
tures of caste – notably endogamy, hierarchy, and everyday social life in Islamic South Asia? Social
occupational specialization – in a broad range of structures vary considerably from region to region,
Muslim societies outside South Asia [36, 45]. and few generalizations hold true for the entire
Yemeni society, for example, is noted for its hier- subcontinent. In Tamil Nadu, social divisions
archical arrangement of endogamous groups – among Muslims do not correspond to those in the
Sayyids, members of tribes, occupational service Deccan or North India; some argue that they do not
castes such as butchers and barbers, and the al- take the form of caste. That is, Tamil Muslim social
Akhdam (slaves, servants), a class of sweepers groups – Rawther, Labbai, Marakayar, and Kayalar
sometimes described as “untouchable” [17, 35]. – while for the most part endogamous, are noted for
In turning outside South Asia to look for ana- their high degree of egalitarian inter-relations
logues to Muslim caste, proponents of this theory [51–53]. The social organization of Muslims of
heed the suggestion of Fredrik Barth and Gerald the Malabar Coast, too, is regionally distinctive
Berreman that caste be understood as a structural [21]. Yet for much of South Asia, from the Swat
phenomenon eminently suitable to comparative Valley in northwest Pakistan through the Punjab
analysis, rather than as an ideological product and the Gangetic plains to Bengal, as well as south-
unique to Hindu civilization [14, 15]. ward into the Deccan, key elements of an overarch-
Problems in much of the social science litera- ing caste structure remain the same or similar
ture include vagueness in the conceptualization of across regions.
key explanatory processes such as “influence” and In this structure, the two broadest status cate-
“acculturation,” as well as a lack of engagement gories are the ashrāf, or noble, and the ajlāf, or
with historiography. Moreover, postcolonial cri- low-born. Paradigmatically, the ashrāf trace their
tiques of anthropological knowledge have ancestry to Muslim migrants to South Asia from
destabilized assumptions that underlie and frame previously Islamized lands – the Arabian Penin-
some of the earlier social scientific debate on caste sula, Anatolia, Persia, Central Asia, and Afghan-
in South Asian Islam, and, indeed, in Hinduism. istan – while the ajlāf are understood to be the
Rather than unchanging civilizational unities descendants of subcontinental converts to Islam
whose social philosophies are reducible to single [10, 13, 57, 63]. Prestige is attached to immigrant
principles (hierarchy, egalitarianism), Islam and ancestry, particularly Arabian ancestry, on
Hinduism have been demonstrated to be histori- account of those regions’ long and early associa-
cally contingent, internally differentiated, imag- tion with Islamic history. Yet, as sociologists point
ined communities with diverse and contested out, the clarity and grounds of the ashrāf/ajlāf
sociological patterns. distinction are considerably weakened by the
In more recent scholarship, a different set of widely acknowledged fact that numerous groups
questions has been raised about how contestations among the ashrāf actually descend from native
over caste practice are shaping Islamic ethics and converts who either (1) retained the prestige asso-
producing new forms of Islamic sociality. ciated with the caste to which they belonged prior
Accounts of Dalit or “low caste” Muslims com- to conversion, (2) were ennobled upon conversion
bating caste stigma by deploying Islamic argu- in the context of royal service in a Muslim-ruled
ments for female inheritance and the dignity of polity, or (3) achieved their status through a multi-
manual labor against high-status coreligionists, or generational process of social ascent that has been
by infusing postcolonial political categories with called Ashrafization and Islamization [4, 5, 65].
Islamic content (in the Pasmanda Movement), The degree to which the ashrāf/ajlāf distinction is
point to the emergence of new conceptions of employed in social life is debated [5, 10, 28, 46]; it
Islamic community authored not by elite but by has even been argued that the career of these terms
subaltern Muslims [7, 37, 44, 54]. in sociological discourse owes more to British
Caste 171

colonial policy than to empirically observable Temuri, Turkmān, and Uzbeg [10]. Pathāns, gen-
social relations [5]. Yet, whatever the terms erally known by the title Khan, claim descent
employed, a broad notional cleavage between from the tribes of Afghanistan and northwest
the high-born and the base, the immigrant of ped- Pakistan that migrated into Hindustan during the
igree and the convert of humble origins, is widely Sultanate and Mughal periods. Pathān subdivi-
acknowledged [4, 6, 8, 10, 14, 46]. sions include, among others, the Afrīdi, Durrāni,
Four major social groups – Sayyid, Sheikh, Ghauri, Kakar, Lodi, Rohila, and Yusufzai [10] . C
Mughal, and Pathān – fall within the ashrāf cate- Whether the categories of Sayyid, Sheikh,
gory in the broad swath of northern South Asia Mughal, and Pathān are best understood as castes
outlined above. Sayyids, in South Asia as else- or not is debated. The most empirically attentive
where in the world, claim genealogical descent scholarship maintains that these categories repre-
from the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter sent congeries of castes, while subdivisions within
Fāṭima and her husband ‘Alī, and enjoy varying them function as castes [5, 46]. In Uttar Pradesh,
degrees of social and institutional privilege on for example, it is common Urdu usage to describe
account of the charisma they thus embody. As each of the four ashrāf categories as a ẕāt, which
bearers of charismatic religious authority premised contains within it several birādaris [46]. Both of
on genealogical purity, and as a social group these Persian-Urdu terms, as well as the Sanskrit-
granted exceptional social and legal privileges in derived jāti or jāt, are often glossed as caste in
precolonial South Asian society and polity, Sayyids scholarship and popular discourse. Birādari
have been compared to Brahmins [40]. The foun- means brotherhood. The near homonyms (in
dations of Sayyid and Brahmin charisma differ some regions their pronunciation is indistinguish-
significantly, however, as do many of their roles able) jāt and ẕāt both denote species, kind, or type;
in social life; thus the analytical utility of the ẕāt, in addition, indicates soul, self, nature, or
homology has been questioned [4, 28]. Prominent essence [29, 60]. Among the ashrāf in Uttar
Sayyid subdivisions include ‘Abidi, Askari, Pradesh, the birādari functions as the endoga-
Hasani, Husaini, Naqvi, Rizvi, and Zaidi [10]. mous marriage circle while the ẕāt is a broader
The term Sheikh denotes several categories of unit of affiliation [5, 46].
persons in Islamicate societies. In the context of Alongside the ashrāf, Muslim Rajputs consti-
South Asian Sufism, individual religious guides tute another high status category in Indian Muslim
or pī rs are often designated by the term. Distinct social structure in the broad swath of South Asia
from this usage is the sociological status category outlined above. Muslim Rajputs identify them-
of Sheikh. Sheikhs, is this sense, are a descent selves as descendants of indigenous, land-
group that claims ancestry either from the Quraish owning, dominant castes who converted to Islam
tribe to which the Prophet Muhammad belonged during the Sultanate and Mughal periods [2, 3, 10,
or from one of the companions of the Prophet [5, 61]. Their claim to privilege rests on the landed
10]. This category, more than any other, is noted dominance of their caste and the prestige of Raj-
for its capacity to absorb upwardly mobile castes puts as a status group in Hindu social structure,
of converted indigenous Muslims who conceal rather than on pedigree in Islamic terms. A num-
their origins in order to uphold the genealogical ber of Rajput clans have both Hindu and Muslim
premise of ashrāf identity [5]. Prominent Sheikh branches, which sometimes continue to inter-
subdivisions include Fāruqi, Qidwai, Quraishi, marry, while Rajput groups such as the Khānzadas
Siddiqi, and Usmāni [10]. of Awadh, the Meos of Mewat, Lalkhānis and
Mughals trace their descent from the imperial Bhale Sultans are entirely Muslim [2, 3, 10, 61].
dynasty of that name as well as their armies, Relative to the ashrāf and Muslim Rajputs, the
retainers, and nobility, who migrated from Central Muslim castes that constitute the ajlāf occupy a
to South Asia primarily between the sixteenth and subordinate position in South Asian Muslim
eighteenth centuries. Some prominent Mughal social structure that in some ways correlates to
subdivisions include Chaghtāi, Qizilbāsh, Tājik, that of the Hindu “Backward Castes.” Indeed,
172 Caste

both in popular understanding and sociological cemeteries segregated from those of other Mus-
writing, the low-prestige Muslim castes are lims, and given food and water by social superiors
widely acknowledged to be descendants of con- from above so as to avoid physical contact [6, 8,
verts from subordinate Hindu castes, with whom 10, 11, 44, 56]. In Pakistan, Nepal and India, Dalit
they often continue to share occupation and, often, Muslims continue to face practices of untouch-
cultural traditions [4, 10, 11, 46]. Unlike the ability from some coreligionists today, though
ashrāf groupings, the ajlāf castes are notionally collective efforts at reform have also succeeded
tied to occupational specialization, though the in curtailing many of the more egregious demon-
degree to which members of these castes continue strations of caste contempt [30–33, 44, 64].
to pursue their traditional occupations varies
greatly according to state, region, and caste.
Also unlike the four broad ashrāf groupings, Early History of Caste in South Asian
each of which contains several distinct endoga- Muslim Society
mous units, the ajlāf categories are themselves
endogamous units. In other words, while for the With few exceptions the career of caste, as such,
ashrāf, birādaris are subsets of ẕāts, among the within Muslim society has not been a central
ajlāf the ẕāt and the birādari are coterminous [46]. preoccupation in the historiography of South
The ajlāf, described in some sociological liter- Asian Islam. Nonetheless, aspects of the phenom-
ature as the “clean occupational castes” [10], enon are discernible in the existing literature.
include barbers (Nāi, Hajjām), butchers (Qassāb, The early period of Muslim settlement in India,
Qassāi), carpenters (Badhai), washers of clothes primarily of Arab traders in Sindh and the western
(Dhobi), greengrocers (Kunjra, Kabariya, Rāin), coast of the subcontinent, is notable for the grad-
tailors (Darzi), blacksmiths (Lohār), various ual formation of descent-based communities such
castes of performers (Bhānḍ, Naṭ, Mirāsi), gra- as the Moppala and Labbai, resulting from the
ziers (Gaḍḍi, Ghosi), oil-pressers (Teli), dyers migrants’ intermarriage with indigenous women.
(Rangrez), cotton-carders (Dhuniya), weavers But it is only with the establishment of the Delhi
(Julāha), and many others [7, 10, 11]. The single Sultanate in the thirteenth century and the fluores-
most numerically preponderant Muslim occupa- cence of its chroniclers, Sufi writers, and political
tional caste, according to the census data of late philosophers in the fourteenth that strong evi-
colonial India, is that of the weavers or Julāhas. dence of an emerging South Asian Muslim social
Another broad status category, arẕāl, is some- structure emerges.
times used – pejoratively by privileged caste Mus- In their Persian chronicles, the court élite of the
lims, analytically in sociological writing – to Delhi Sultans document the rise and fall of the
distinguish the “unclean occupational castes” of political fortunes of various descent-based, and
South Asian Muslim society from the ashrāf and sometimes occupationally specific, Muslim
the ajlāf [7, 10, 11, 18, 57, 58]. The arẕāl castes groups, or individuals from such groups. Military
descend from Muslim converts from the slaves not only ascended to positions of regional
“untouchable” castes; since the 1990s, these authority but also, in the foundational case of
groups increasingly identify themselves as Dalit the Mamluk dynasty, provided the polity its
Muslims [7, 44, 57, 58]. Sweepers and scavengers supreme monarchs [38, 39]. Occupationally
(Halālkhor, Lāl Begi, Sekra, Bhangi), shoe specific, socially subordinate groups such as
makers (Chamār, Mochi), and grave diggers weavers (Julāha) before the reign of Iltutmish
(Gorkan) are among the members of this category. (r. 1211–1236) and gardeners and barbers
Well into the postcolonial period, the arẕāl castes, (Hajjām) during the reign of Muhammad bin
especially Muslim sweepers, were in many parts Tughluq (r. 1324–1351) attained positions as gov-
of South Asia refused entrance to mosques, ernors, imperial advisors, and the like, only to be
excluded from commensality with either ashrāf disgraced and removed from service by their
or ajlāf groups, compelled to bury their dead in patrons’ successors. The promotion of plebeian
Caste 173

groups in imperial service likely reflects a strategy relative social dominance clearly gained from
employed by some sultans to balance the power of conversion in terms of political patronage and
the nobility. This policy rarely led to the long-term enrollment in royal service [2, 3, 13, 26, 61]. For
empowerment of subordinate groups [38, 39]. example, Mughal emperor Jalāl al-Dīn Akbar
In the Sufi literature of the period, as well, the (r. 1556–1605) is said to have approved the
subordinate social status of some descent-based granting of Sayyid status to Brahmin converts to
occupational groups among Muslims – butchers Islam [13]. For the numerically preponderant sub- C
and weavers, for example – finds mention even as ordinate castes that converted to Islam en masse,
the inclusion of individuals from such groups in Sufis and Sufi institutions were central to the
Sufi sodalities is noted with approval [41]. Sufi process of conversion [12, 24–26, 40]. Scholar-
masters in their discourses illustrate and affirm the ship is divided, however, over whether converts
inherent virtue of Sayyids and the base nature of sought in Islam liberation from an oppressive
slaves [41]. The authors of both the courtly chron- condition in the Hindu caste order [12, 27, 53],
icles and the Sufi literature, a Delhi literati or whether, scarcely affected by caste, it was their
consisting of aristocratic migrants from Iran, labor as forest clearers and cultivators that gradu-
Afghanistan, and Transoxiana fleeing Mongol ally drew them into the economy, pageantry, and
advances in their homelands, were steeped in a ultimately the religion of Sufi institutions [24–26].
venerable Persian tradition of hierarchical politi-
cal theory [38, 39]. This is most notably the case
with Żiyā’ al-Dīn Baranī, the fourteenth century Caste in South Asian Muslim Society in
court chronicler of Delhi’s Firoz Shah Tughluq (r. the Colonial and Post-colonial Periods
1351–1388). Baranī’s Fatawa-i Jahāndiri advises
kings against teaching literacy to the low-born, While the dramatic structural changes brought
while his Tārikh-i Firozshāhi is replete with about in politics, economy, and society in the Brit-
didactic illustrations of the perils of admitting ish colonial period affected different classes of
the base – which he specifies as including occu- South Asian Muslims in different ways, it remains
pation-based descent groups like weavers – into unclear what effect they had on the overall hierar-
imperial service [27, 38, 57, 58]. In its prescrip- chy of Muslim social structure. With the disman-
tions for institutionalized hierarchy in an Islamic tling of the Mughal political structure, the ashrāf
polity, Baranī’s work follows Persian antecedents lost a system of patronage and employment that
such as Nasīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Akhlāq-i Nāṣiri, had been a traditional source of their dominance.
which in turn draw from pre-Islamic, Sassanian Artisanal Muslim castes like the Julāhas suffered
models of society, in which the king enforces a the devastation of their traditional occupations with
four-tiered, occupational division of society [47]. the subjection of the cloth trade to colonial condi-
Historians and anthropologists often credit the tions [55]. Conversion to Islam by “untouchable”
conversion en bloc of entire castes, or regional castes continued on a large scale, particularly in the
subsets of castes, to Islam during the Sultanate Punjab, in the colonial period. Hierarchical rela-
and Mughal periods with the introduction or tions between the ashrāf, the Muslim occupational
expansion of caste in South Asian Muslim society castes, and converted “untouchables,” however,
[4, 40]. In most cases, these castes retained their remained in place. The Islamic reform movements
tradition of endogamy and thus remained distinct of the late nineteenth century did not make caste
groups after their conversion to Islam. For élite divisions among Muslims a primary target for
groups such as Muslim Rajputs, records of this reform [27, 49]. By the early twentieth century,
process are available in the form of genealogies though, caste began to be seen by some reformers,
and dynastic chronicles [61]. For most subordi- notably Muḥammad Iqbāl (1876–1938), as an
nate castes, only oral traditions are available. obstacle to pan-Islamic unity [63].
The relationship between caste and conversion A number of subordinate Muslim castes under-
is debated. Certain castes already in a position of took efforts to Islamize or Ashrafize in the late
174 Caste

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Development

Among the most important figures associated with

Chishtī Order the initial development and diffusion of the
Chishtī order were Quṭb al-Dīn Bakhtiyār Kākī
Erik S. Ohlander
(d. 1235), who was active in the key political
Department of Philosophy, Indiana University-
center of Delhi; Farīd al-Dīn “Ganj-i Shakar”
Purdue University Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, IN,
(d. 1265; popularly known as Bābā Farīd), who
USA
established an important khānaqāh (residential
lodge for Sufis) at Ajudhan (Pakpattan); and
Ḥamīd al-Dīn Suwālī Nāgawrī (d. 1274), who
Synonyms
was active in rural Rajasthan. In the generation
which followed, the Chishtī tradition began to
Chishtiyya
witness a measure of consolidation in the figure
of the celebrated Chishtī master of Delhi, Muḥam-
Definition mad b. Aḥmad b. ʿAlī Badāʾūnī (d. 1325), better
known as Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ. An appointed
The Chishtī order was one of the earliest Sufi successor (khalī fa) of the aforementioned Bābā
ṭarīqa lineages to take hold in Muslim South Farīd, the disciples and associates of Niẓām al-
Asia. Dīn Awliyāʾ would go on to play a significant role
in the spread of the order throughout Muslim
India, with the fourteenth century witnessing
Overview a proliferation of provincial Chishtī centers. The
following century witnessed the rise to promi-
Taking its name from the small town of Chisht nence of the Ṣābirī branch of the order, which
located east of Herat in present-day Afghanistan, from its center in Rudauli produced a number of
the Chishtī Sufi order is typically understood to Chishtī teachers of note such as the celebrated Sufi