[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The Ashraf-Ajlaf Divide[/FONT]
Scholarly writings on caste among Indian Muslims generally note the division that is often made between the so-called 'noble' castes or ashraf and those labeled as inferior, or razil, kamin or ajlaf. The ashraf-ajlaf division is not the invention of modern social scientists, for it is repeatedly mentioned in medieval works of ashraf scholars themselves. To these writers, Muslims of Arab, Central Asian, Iranian and Afghan extraction were superior in social status than local converts. This owed not just to racial differences, with local converts generally being dark-skinned and the ashraf lighter complexioned, but also to the fact that the ashraf belonged to the dominant political elites, while the bulk of the ajlaf remained associated with ancestral professions as artisans and peasants which were looked down upon as inferior and demeaning.
In order to provide suitable legitimacy to their claims of social superiority, medieval Indian ashraf scholars wrote numerous texts that sought to interpret the Qur'an to suit their purposes, thus effectively denying the Qur'an's message of radical social equality. Pre-Islamic Persian notions of the divine right of kings and the nobility, as opposed to the actual practice of the Prophet and the early Muslim community, seem to have exercised a powerful influence on these writers. A classical, oft-quoted example in this regard is provided by the Fatawa-i Jahandari, written by the fourteenth century Turkish scholar, Ziauddin Barani, a leading courtier of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, Sultan of Delhi. This text is the only known surviving Indo-Persian treatise exclusively devoted to political theory from the period of the Delhi Sultanate.
The Fatawa-i Jahandari shows Barani as a fervent champion of ashraf supremacy and as vehemently opposed to the ajlaf. In appealing to the Sultan to protect the ashraf and keep the ajlaf firmly under their control and submission he repeatedly refers to the Qur'an, from which he seeks to derive legitimacy from his arguments. His is not a rigorous scholarly approach to the Qur'an, however, for he conveniently misinterprets it to support the hegemonic claims of the ashraf, completely ignoring the Qur'an's insistence on social equality. In the process, he develops a doctrine and social vision for the ideal Muslim ruler, which, in their implications for what Barani calls the 'low-born', are hardly different in their severity than the classical Hindu law of caste as contained in the Manusmriti, the Brahminical law code. As Barani's translator, Mohammad Habib, writes, 'Barani's God, as is quite clear from his work, has two aspects-first, he is the tribal deity of the Musalmans; secondly, as
between the Musalmans themselves, He is the tribal deity of well-born Muslims'.[1] Barani was not a lone voice in his period, however, for he seems to echo a widely shared understanding of ashraf supremacy held by many of his ashraf contemporaries, including leading 'ulama and Sufis.
Barani's disdain for the 'low' born is well illustrated in his advice to the Sultan about education of the ajlaf. While the Qur'an and the traditions attributed to the Prophet repeatedly stress the need for all Muslims, men and women, rich and poor, to acquire knowledge, Barani insists that the Sultan should consider it his religious duty to deny the ajlaf access to knowledge, branding them as 'mean', and 'despicable'. Thus, he advises the Sultan:
Teachers of every kind are to be sternly ordered not to thrust precious stones down the throats of dogs or to put collars of gold round the necks of pigs and bears-that is, to the mean, the ignoble and the worthless, to shopkeepers and to the low-born they are to teach nothing more than the rules about prayer, fasting, religious charity and the haj pilgrimage, along with some chapters of the Qur'an and some doctrines of the faith, without which their religion cannot be correct and valid prayers are not possible. But they are to be taught nothing else, lest it bring honour to their mean souls.[2]
As Barani sees it, if the ajlaf were allowed access to education, they might challenge ashraf hegemony. Therefore, he sternly warns the Sultan:
They are not to be taught reading and writing, for plenty of disorders arise owing to the skill of the low born in knowledge. The disorder into which all affairs of the religion and the state are thrown is due to the acts and words of the low born, who have become skilled. For, on account of their skill, they become governors (wali), revenue-collectors ('amils), auditors (mutassarif), officers (farman deh) and rulers (farman rawa). If teachers are disobedient, and it is discovered at the time of investigation that they have imparted knowledge or taught letters or writing to the low born, inevitably the punishment for their disobedience will be meted out to them.[3]
In order to bolster his assertion that the Sultan should ensure that the ajlaf remain subservient to the ashraf, Barani seeks appropriate religious sanction. Thus, he asserts:
[.] to promote base, mean, low-born and worthless men to be the helpers and supporters of the government has not been permitted by any religion, creed, publicly accepted tradition or state-law.[4]
He then goes on to elaborate a theory of the innate inferiority of the ajlaf, the superiority of the ashraf and the divine right of the Sultan to rule, based on a distorted interpretation of Islam. Thus, he writes that the 'merits' and 'demerits' of all people have been 'apportioned at the beginning of time and allotted to their souls'. Hence, people's acts are not of their own volition, but, rather, an expression and result of of 'Divine commandments'. God Himself, Barani claims, has decided that the ajlaf be confined to 'inferior' occupations, for He is said to have made them 'low born, bazaar people, base, mean, worthless, plebian, shameless and of dirty birth'. God has given them 'base' qualities, such as 'immodesty, wrongfulness, injustice, cruelty, non-recognition of rights, shamelessness, impudence, blood-shedding, rascality, jugglery and Godlessness' that are suitable only for such professions. Furthermore, these base qualities are inherited from father to son, and so the
ajlaf must not attempt to take up professions reserved by God for the ashraf even if they are qualified to do so, for this would be a grave violation of the Divine Will. Likewise, Barani claims, God has bestowed the ashraf with noble virtues by birth itself, and these are transmitted hereditarily. Hence, they alone have the right and responsibility of taking up 'noble' occupations, such as ruling, teaching and preaching the faith.[5]
Since God is held to have made the ajlaf innately despicable and base, to promote them would be a gross violation of the divine plan. 'In the promotion of the low and low-born brings', Barani argues, ' there is no advantage in this world, for it is impudent to act against the wisdom of Creation'. Hence, he insists that if the Sultan confers any post in his court or government service to the ajlaf, the 'court and the high position of the king will be disgraced, the people of God will be distressed and scattered, the objectives of the government will not be attained, and, finally, the king will be punished on the day of Judgment'. In this regard, he refers to a tradition attributed to the Prophet, according to which Muhammad is said to have declared, 'The vein is deceptive'. Although this tradition might be interpreted to suggest that one's social status does not depend on one's heredity, Barani offers a novel explanation of the tradition to suggest precisely the opposite conclusion, that 'the good vein and the bad vein draw towards virtue and vice', and that 'in the well-born and the noble only virtue and loyalty appear, while from the man of low birth and bad birth only wickedness and destruction originate'. Likewise, he provides a novel interpretation of a Qur'anic verse (xlix: 13) to support his claim of ashraf superiority. He quotes the Qur'an as saying that God honours the pious, a statement that has generally been read to suggest that superiority in God's eyes depends on one's piety and not birth, to arrive at precisely the opposite conclusion. The verse, he says, implies that '[.] it ought to be known that in the impure and impure-born and low and low-born, there can be no piety'.[6]
As Barani's writings on the ajlaf so clearly suggest, many medieval ashraf scholars shared a common understanding of the 'low-born' as born to serve the ashraf. Accordingly, to leigitimize this claim they interpreted the Qur'an as sanctioning a sternly hierarchical social order, with the subordinate status of the ajlaf ascribed to the Divine Will. As H.N.Ansari, a contemporary Indian Muslim scholar and an activist of a 'low' caste Muslim organization, remarks, this represented a profoundly 'un-Islamic' reading of the Qur'an, which stresses the equality of all Muslims and lays down piety as the only criterion for merit in God's eyes. Yet, Ansari adds, men like Barani exercised a powerful influence in their times with their wrong interpretations of the Qur'an, resulting in the 'complete betrayal of the Qur'anic precepts of brotherhood'.[7]
To imagine, as some writers today assert, a solidly egalitarian Muslim community pitted against a sternly hierarchical Hindu community in medieval India is thus hardly convincing. Nor, for that matter, is the explanation of the existence of caste and social hierarchy among Muslims as a result of the baneful impact of hierarchical Hinduism on egalitarian Islam. Although the impact of the wider Hindu society on the beliefs and practices of the Muslims is obvious, in the face of hierarchical notions of religion and the normative social order as reflected in the writings of Barani, it is obvious that the Muslim elite played an equally central role in promoting and preserving social hierarchy by seeking to provide it with suitable 'Islamic' sanction. The effort to legitimize caste in 'Islamic' terms was given further impetus by the 'ulama through the notion of kafa'a, to which we now turn.
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