Edited sentence: A feeling of poverty compared to the prosperous Hindu elite and middle class was politically important.Indian Muslims were primarily divided ethnically between the Ashraf, descendants of Afghan and Middle Eastern arrivals, and the Ajlaf, who were descended from native converts.Most Indian Muslims were ajlaf and spoke regional languages such as Punjabi, Bengali and Gujarati.Muslims throughout India were mainly agrarian.The ashraf comprised landowning, administrative and professional echelons of society and are known to be the principal pioneers of Muslim separatism as they would have been impacted most by Hindu domination.The ashraf were distinguished by their urbane culture and they included the Sayeds, Sheikhs, Mughals and Pathans.The highest percentage claiming foreign ancestry was in the UP (where 41.1 percent declared foreign roots in the 1931 census) with Urdu as their language.They were mainly peasants, merchants and craftsmen such as weavers