‘Seeking Allah’s Hierarchy’: Local politics, economic relations, and ‘caste’ among Malabar Muslims

What comes to mind first when one hears of caste in India? Generally, the institution of caste is associated with Hindu social life, and such a social structure is often assumed to be nonexistent among Muslims. Many Muslims tend to deny the prevalence of “caste” within their communities. Does this suggest that Muslim social life in India is devoid of caste-like hierarchies? Even when some Muslims acknowledge the existence of “caste” in their social life, they often attribute it to the influence of Hindu society. Somewhat similar views were held by PC Saidalavi, author of Seeking Allah’s Hierarchy: Caste, Labor, and Islam in India, until 2013, when his advisor, Arshad Alam at Jawaharlal Nehru University, nudged him to investigate the existence of “caste” among Muslims of Malabar in South India.

The question of caste in Islam

More often, Islam’s egalitarian principles are invoked by Muslims to avoid deeper engagement with the question of caste within their communities. Some argue that although caste exists among Muslims in India, there is no caste in Islam. Such a position, however, seeks to detach religion from its social contexts and cultural rootedness, limiting its scope to the theological realm, suggests Saidalavi. In his reflections on the field encounters, Saidalavi noticed...

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