In the Indian sub-continent, caste-based discrimination is not unique to Hindus.



Even among Kashmiri Muslims, distinctions based on descent are pretty common, and sometimes not very subtly.



Sayeeds often consider themselves superior. Some years ago, a barber happened to be at the wedding feast of a well-to-do family of the Sayeed descent.



When the meal was served, in traditional Wazwan style with four persons sharing a meal of many courses from the same large platter, three young men from Sayeed families found they would have to share their platter with the barber.



One by one, each of them got up, making one excuse or another, and sat elsewhere. The barber was an assertive sort and, as the meal began to be served, got up and announced that he would not eat unless those three boys shared his meal. There was a commotion as the three showed no signs of moving back.



A community leader got up and offered to share the barber's meal but the young man would not settle for anything less than those three young men sharing his meal. Finally, they had to return.



This little story was related to me by Dr Bashir Ahmed Dabla, the head of the sociology department at the University of Kashmir. It had occurred in the late 1980s but Dr Dabla was using it to illustrate the existence of the strong, although often denied, caste bias in Kashmiri Muslim society.



In fact washermen, milkmen and bakers in Kashmir even have backward caste status under the rules of government recruitment.



Most tourists to Kashmir never realise it but the families that run houseboats, whom tourists often presume to be Kashmiris, are actually commonly reviled by most other Kashmiris as Hanjis, the name of the boatmen's caste.



No doubt, those who visualised the Doordarshan serial Gul, Gulshan Gulfam, centred on the life of a houseboat owner's family, did not realise how little other Kashmiris identify with boatmen.



The word Hanji sounds as if its roots are in the word Majhi, which is commonly used in the Ganga plains for boatmen. One strain of Kashmiri lore even maintains that the Hanjis came to the valley from Kerala, with philosopher-preacher, Shankaracha-rya.



Since they were well-versed with fishing and boats, they took to the lakes and rivers of Kashmir like, well, fishermen to water.



The degree to which Kashmiris often carry their consciousness of their own and others caste backgrounds is sometimes amazing. Not just housewives around kitchen hearths but bright, well-educated young men will slip easily into descriptions of their own or other people's caste antecedents.



Even the veteran trade union leader and former member of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference general council, Ishtiaq Qadiri, told me one day without the slightest trace of embarrassment that he would not accept an invitation to dine with a milkman's family.



The result of such social ostracism is that some families with a Hanji background who have taken to other occupations often adopt the surname Dar, which denotes descent from a sub-caste of distinction among Brahmin Kashmiris.



Far more common among various other castes of Kashmiris is the adoption of the surname Sayeed. Indeed, if the number of Kashmiris who claim the Sayeed name are to be accepted at face value Of course, it would also mean that all these families, at some point in history, migrated from further west.



There is an irony in that too. For, among a people so conscious of the supposed superiority of a Brahmin background, the deference given to certain sorts of foreign origin is remarkable.



For instance, Khans, who generally have Pathan ante-cedents, are also highly regarded and many Kashmiris are almost as happy to have a match arranged with a Khan family as with a Sayeed.



These Pathan families are not only descended from those who settled here during the highly oppressive period of Afghan rule in the first half of the eighteenth century. Some of them were also settled here as officers during the British or Dogra period.



Some Kashmiris also take such surnames as Naqshbandi or Makhdoomi after the names of Sufi saints whom they hold in reverence, although Naqshband Sahib is foreign.



The name Sheikh is particularly interesting. When used before the person's name, as in the case of the Abdullah family, it denotes descent from Brahmins and often landlords. When used as a suffixed surname, it generally denotes the cleaner caste and so is generally looked down upon.



Certain Kashmiri caste names are similar to Parsi names, in that they denote the occupations of those with the name.



Kokru, for instance, is rooted in the word kokur, which means chicken in Kashmiri and the bearer of the name is likely to have descended from a family that ran a hatchery.