“Be Hell for Those Who Call Me Saiyyid”: Social Stratification among the South Asian Muslims and the Sufi Worldview

Historically, the Indian society has been and is still beset with hierarchical social divisions based on birth-ascribed ranks. Despite strict egalitarian principles of Islam, there existed racial and ethnic discrimination among the Muslims in South Asia, who were primarily divided into two social strata: the ashrāf (the so-called high-born) and the ajlāf (the so-called low-born). However, in the Sufi worldview, these social distinctions did not matter at all. The premodern Sufis of India, as elsewhere in the Islamicate, stressed on the notion of human equality, and preached it through their teachings, especially through poetic compositions. Many Sufis, including those who themselves  The title of the paper refers to a poetic verse of a renowned Qadiri-Shattari Sufi named Bullhe Shah (b. 1680-d. 1758), whose views on social stratification in the eighteenth-century Punjabi society have been discussed in the paper with reference to his poetic compositions.  Assistant Professor, Department of History, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. [The author wishes to acknowledge her gratitude to the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Islamabad for awarding Postdoctoral Fellowship Award for undertaking research project at Carolina Centre for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations (CCSMEMC), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), USA from December 2007 to September 2008. The present paper is based on the postdoctoral research project undertaken at UNC]. Print to PDF without this message by purchasing novaPDF (http://www.novapdf.com/) 44 Pakistan journal of History and Culture, Vol.XXXII, No.2 (2011) were Saiyyids, or the descendants of the Prophet (PBUH), discouraged all kinds of discriminations. The Sufis, in fact, tried to construct an alternative social universe through their distinct ethos. Some of them belonging to the so-called low castes, or were of humble origin and occupation were revered by the people, who addressed them as Shaykh or Khwaja, epithets symbolizing social prestige and political power. These Sufis did not drop off their caste names rather retained them, and by doing so imparted dignity to the socalled low professions. The Sufis and their adherents also tried to construct Sufi identities, which were acquired, unlike the ascribed identities which were considered inescapable in Indian social context.