Arain

If you are an agriculturalist, are you at the same time a martial agriculturalist or a non-martial one? Are you at the same time a custom observing one or a non-custom observing one? And of course, the question of customary practices is super controversial at the time among Indian Muslims more broadly, including in Punjab.

So what I saw these Eritrean Muslims doing is trying to develop a narrative of their caste that could recalibrate what they were being identified with in all of these multiple hierarchies.

So only calling this a caste hierarchy seemed to take away or at least to not communicate the critical significance of the Islamic genealogy that they were connecting themselves with.

So then a narrative of Islamic caste is my way of indicating that what they are trying to do is obviously relevant to the Muslim social order that they are in, but it is also quite powerful within the Punjabi-Adraryan socio-economic caste order.