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Civfanatic,Aashraf is an Arabic plural noun, those who are sharif, 'eminent or exalted'. In nineteenth century British India, this became a category of censuses and ethnographic descriptions referring to a fixed, 'caste'-like set meant to encompass higher status patrilineal groups of Muslims, comparable to Hindu twice-born varna and the emerging concept of 'Aryan', Indians whose higher status could be attributed to 'foreign' ancestry, often in the distant past.
British social surveys purported to locate and count the 'ashraf' and attribute to them a range of stereotypic characteristics. During the same period, however, the usage of the adjective sharif and the alternative plural noun shurafa took on an increasingly flexible usage of genteel respectability that referred at least as much to comportment and literary education as to descent and frequently applied to non-Muslims as well as Muslims. As an indication of status attributions, both words, ashraf and sharif, were matters of controversy and negotiation, as in marriage arrangements, legal jurisdiction, or access to government patronage.
In India, Iran and Central Asia, however, the word sharif extended to wider categories of respectability; descendants of the Prophet were called sayyid.
It was probably not until the nineteenth century that the distinction between high status Muslims and those of lower status emerged into a formal system of classification supposedly based on whether a group could claim ancestry outside India.
http://www.soas.ac.uk/southasianstudies/keywords/file24799.pdf
Please give all a break.
It is no use befooling the people.
We are educated these days and can see through the bogus contentions pandered!