Source: TW
While many Kashmiri Muslims claim to be “Brahmin converts”, this is almost certainly not true for the vast majority. It was very easy to adopt a fake caste name in Kashmir.
The example below shows Kashmiris of the boatmen caste had appropriated the upper-caste surname Dar/Dhar.
There may be some foundation for these theories; but the krams are now mixed, and confusion is increasing owing to the fashion of the lower castes who arrogate the krams of the respectable families. Thus the Dums, the gardeners, and the butchers have begun to call themselves Ganais, much to the annoyance of the true Ganais. And the boatmen, a most disreputable community, have appropriated the kram name of Dar. The social system is very plastic, and prosperity and a very little wealth soon obliterate a humble origin.
This is almost certainly why claims of Muslims belonging to a certain Hindu upper caste should be taken with a massive pinch of salt. There’s no way to verify these claims. I think this is probably the case for almost all Pakistani Punjabi/Potohari “Rajputs”.
Rajputs in Punjab are best described as Jats who gained political or military clout over their neighbors, so adopted Raja, Rai, Rana titles that eventually got turned into formal Rajput claims between Mughal and British periods.
It just becomes extremley easy to do when your region is almost entirely Muslim and there are no Brahmins to “guard against” social mobility, and no Kshatriyas or Vaishyas to outcaste you to maintain ritual purity. If you’re going by every single Kashmiri Muslim today who has a Bhat, Dhar, Pandit tier surname, you’d think Kashmir was like a 30% Brahmin or something society lol.
Ibbeston’s comments on the situation of caste fluidity in Punjab and the NWFP are worthy to read here
For Ibbetson, then, both the Punjab and the northwest frontier regions were open societies where the difference between the ‘Jat’ and the ‘Rajput’ was not a matter of blood or fixed ethnological fact, nor a response to universal Brahman scriptural mandates inherited from the ancient past. In his view, such differentiations were a fluid representa- tion of status as claimed by men of power. Furthermore, ’tribe’ and not ‘caste’ was for Ibbetson the universal fact of rural life in the Punjab; Nesfield says much the same in his account of caste in the …
Sayyids as “Musalman brAhmaNas” -
Thereafter the Baihaqi Sayyids gradually rose in power and position and played an active, and often a decisive, role in the affairs of Kashmir. One of their clan, named Sayyid Mubarak, ruled over Kashmir for a short period of two months in A.D. 1578. The account of the Sayyids of Baihaq is treated at such length in the chronicle that some scholars. have said that it is a history of the Sayyids than that of the Sultans of Kashmir. His lavish praise of the Sayyids makes us presume that he was very close to them, perhaps a beneficiary of that house. He does not hesitate to lay bare the contempt which the Sayyids had for the local Kashmiri population. This became the cause of constant friction and acrimony between them and the local chiefs. From contemporary sources we learn that the Sayyids had to make strenuous efforts to become acceptable to the Kashmiris. Srivara writes that although they claimed their descent from the house of the Prophet, they did not receive adequate veneration from the Kashmiri Hindus who had been converted to Islam. Therefore, in order to make the converted Hindus understand their high status, the Sayyids told them that they were ‘Musalman Brahmans’ as against ‘Hindu Brahmans’.1
- Srivara calls them chhij, and the rest of the Hindus converted to Islam as mlechhas. See Zaina Rajatarangini, ed. Raghunath Singh, Varanasi, 1977, Pt. I, Stt. 4:77.
Generality
Persian proverb - “The first year I was a weaver (Julaha), the next year a Sheikh. This year if prices rise, I shall be a Syed.”
Once a population converted to Islam entirely, this is how caste claims often worked.