“There is no caste in Islam.” Anthropologist PC Saidalavi frequently received this response to his enquiries about hierarchies among Muslims in the Malabar region of Kerala. Indeed, egalitarianism is a core tenet of the religion — the idea that all humans are equal in God’s eyes distinguishes Islam from earlier belief systems in Arabian society.
And yet, casteism is rife among Muslims in South Asia. Saidalavi mentions multiple such instances from Malabar. As recently as 2019, an Islamic scholar compared barbers (lower in the caste hierarchy) to children from adulterous relationships, claiming that both were ineligible to lead prayers even though his stance had no religious basis. Earlier, barbers were not allowed to wear footwear or dress well. They mostly received payment in kind rather than cash, making them dependent on their dominant-caste patrons.
So, why did many barbers tell Saidalavi that caste was not a part of Islam despite enduring discriminatory practices? He explores this dichotomy, among other facets of Islam and caste, in his book Seeking Allah’s Hierarchy: Caste, Labor and Islam in India.
Like many of his interlocutors, the author had never thought about caste as ‘even a remote possibility for social organisation among Muslims in India’. He began exploring the subject after his PhD supervisor suggested it. It finally hit home when he wanted to get married — his mother peremptorily rejected a potential match due to concerns about her caste.
Saidalavi’s study leads him to conclude that equating social stratification among Muslims with the Hindu caste system is an oversimplification. As he puts it, while caste is a system of hierarchical inequality based on birth, how it operates across communities and economic, political, social, and cultural contexts is unique. Factors such as piety, wealth, lineages traceable to more than three or four generations, and antassu (dignity) also shape social relations among Muslims in Malabar, and distinguish them from Hindu notions of caste. In recent decades, Muslims on society’s lower rungs have invoked these values in their efforts to upend hierarchies.
To bolster his arguments, the author explores how different social scientists construe concepts like ‘caste’, ‘values’, and ‘dignity’, how different communities narrate origin myths about the arrival of Islam in Kerala, and how barbers reshaped economic and social norms in their quest for respectability.
In the 1970s, barbers began unionising and set up shops, putting the onus on customers to visit them rather than the other way round. They sought to replace the patronage system with payment for their work and discontinue tasks considered demeaning, such as shaving body hair. This ushered in radical changes, which Saidalavi illustrates with an anecdote from the Covid-19 pandemic. As barbershops shut down due to the lockdown and social distancing rules, customers started visiting barbers’ homes. This marked a full circle from the earlier imposition on barbers to go to patrons’ homes, and would have been unthinkable a couple of decades ago.
The book’s exploration of stratification among Muslims in Malabar and how it differs from the caste system is succinct and compelling. However, while this distinction helps understand and theorise hierarchy, it could be counterproductive in other contexts.
Many Muslims negate the caste system to deny the existence of prejudice and discrimination against those considered inferior while paying lip service to the Islamic ideal of equality. Although the underlying values and rationale might be different, Islamic society has replicated the Hindu caste system’s foundational pillars: endogamy and discrimination. Whether the motivation is perceived purity (as in the Hindu caste system) or piety, it ascribes value to a human being based on qualities largely inherent at birth and immutable. Even when a barber acquires the utmost religiosity, some would not marry him solely because of the community he was born into.
The book’s most interesting sections explore people’s attempts to rise above their social station through marriage. Hakeem, a well-to-do member of the barber community, wanted to marry a Mappila woman. He repeatedly failed to find a match, but refused to wed in his community or marry a recent convert to Islam. Saidalavi says that Hakeem regarded marriage as a means to expand his standing and network. It is notable that to achieve this, he focused on marrying a woman from a dominant caste rather than, say, someone accomplished or wealthy. Thus, even in his attempt to transcend his caste background, he abided by the caste system’s value judgements.
While it might be pragmatic to acknowledge casteism among Muslims in everyday discourse, it does not invalidate Saidalavi’s argument, made in an academic context. Moreover, he acknowledges that Indian Muslims can be as hierarchical as Hindus and that terming these stratifications as caste is ‘politically most potent’ as it builds upon the legacy of India’s anti-caste movements.
A long-standing critique of ethnographic studies is that they involve members of dominant communities documenting marginalised communities. This mode of knowledge production can reinforce the very power differentials such studies might have sought to examine. Saidalavi mentions his dominant-caste position in the book, but it would have been interesting to learn more about whether this critique informed his research methods and how he negotiated these power hierarchies.
Further, many academics from marginalised castes have pointed out that studies on casteism usually focus on the oppressed rather than the oppressors. While the author explores how those at the top of the pyramid shape and enforce caste hierarchies, most of his interviewees are from the barber caste. It thus follows a pattern of research that draws on insights from marginalised castes rather than dominant ones.
In the preface, the author acknowledges his identity as ‘a Muslim, a Mappila, a male, and a researcher’ and that it had a ‘direct bearing’ on his fieldwork. It would have been insightful if he had elaborated on how his positionality impacted his research, the deliberations that went into designing his study, and how he could have approached it differently.
These absences, however, do not take away from Saidalavi’s scholarship. Seeking Allah’s Hierarchy is an illuminating exploration of the social dynamics among Muslims in Malabar. It advances our understanding of the interplay between a religion that espouses egalitarianism and a deeply hierarchical society.
Syed Saad Ahmed is a Boston Congress of Public Health Thought Leadership Fellow 2024. He speaks five languages and has taught English in France.
