Does caste as a social category exist among the non-Hindu communities in India? Illustrate your answer with suitable examples. (Answer in 250 words)

- Does caste as a social category exist among the non-Hindu communities in India? Illustrate your answer with suitable examples. (Answer in 250 words)
Introduction
Yes, it does. Caste as a social form — hereditary, endogamous, ranked and occupation-linked — is found across India's non-Hindu communities. What conversion removed was the theology of hierarchy, not the hierarchy.

Body
1. The criteria to apply: hereditary membership, endogamy, ranked order, restrictions on commensality and association with a traditional occupation. Dumont makes ritual purity and pollution essential, which would confine caste to Hinduism; Bailey, Leach and Beteille treat caste as a structural form that can occur wherever those features do.
2. The evidence, community by community: among Muslims the threefold division of Ashraf, Ajlaf and Arzal — Sayyid and Pathan above, the occupational Ansari weavers, Qasai and Dhobi below, and the Halalkhor lowest — with endogamy, hereditary craft and in places separate mosques and burial grounds, documented by Imtiaz Ahmad and now politically expressed as Pasmanda assertion. Among Christians, Syrian Christians of Kerala rank above Latin and Dalit converts, and separate churches and cemeteries persist in Tamil Nadu. Among Sikhs, Jat, Khatri, Ramgarhia, Mazhabi and Ramdasia are endogamous, with separate gurdwaras and the Ravidassia separation of 2009. Jains are divided into Oswal, Porwal and Agarwal endogamous groups, and the Cochin Jews were divided into Black and White.
3. The answer with its qualifications: hierarchy in these communities lacks scriptural sanction, is contested internally, and is less elaborate in commensal terms than the Hindu order.
4. What it implies: caste is reproduced by endogamy, occupation and land rather than by doctrine.

Conclusion
Its origin therefore cannot be purely religious. The point is not academic: the 1950 Presidential Order still denies Scheduled Caste status to Muslim and Christian Dalits, and that exclusion assumes exactly what the evidence denies.