manvar surname caste in gujarat

Each unit was ranked in relation to others, and many members of the lower units married their daughters into the higher units, so that almost every unit became loose in the course of time. In 1920 there were 2 Mehta families living in New Jersey. The very low Brahmans such as Kayatias and Tapodhans were invited but made to eat separately from the rest of the Brahmans. The associations activities in the field of marriage, such as reform to customs, rituals and ceremonies, and encouragement of inter-divisional marriages, are also seen by the members as a service to the nationas the castes method of creating a casteless modern society. Many of them became the norm-setting elite for Gujaratis in the homeland. Before publishing your articles on this site, please read the following pages: 1. There were similar problems about the status of a number of other divisions. I do not propose to review the literature on caste here; my aim is to point out the direction towards which a few facts from Gujarat lead us. During Mughal Empire India was manufacturing 27% of world's textile and Gujarati weavers dominated along with Bengali weavers in Indian textile trade industry overseas. As Ghurye pointed out long ago, slow consolidation of the smaller castes into larger ones would lead to three or four large groups being solidly organized for pushing the interests of each even at the cost of the others. The Rajputs relationship with the Kolis penetrated every second-order division among them, i.e., Talapada, Pardeshi, Chumvalia, Palia, and so on. In central Gujarat, at least from about the middle of the 18th century, the population of the wealthy and powerful Patidar section of the Kanbis also lived in townsan extremely interesting development of rich villages into towns, which I will not describe here. Usually, these divisions were distinguished from one another by prohibition of what people called roti vyavahar (bread, i.e., food transactions) as well as beti vyavahar (daughter, i.e., marital transactions). Marriages were usually confined to neighbouring villages, so that marriage links were spread in a continuous manner from one end of the region to another. Frequently, social divisions were neatly expressed in street names. <>/ExtGState<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/Annots[ 9 0 R] /MediaBox[ 0 0 612 792] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> It seems the highland Bhils (and possibly also other tribes) provided brides to lower Rajputs in Gujarat. 91. Third, although two or more new endogamous units came into existence and marriage between them was forbidden thereafter, a number of pre-existing kinship and affinal relationships continued to be operative between them. %PDF-1.7 In the village strict prohibition of inter-division marriage as well as the rules of purity and pollution and other mechanisms, of which the students of Indian village communities are well aware since the 1950s, maintained the boundaries of these divisions. The Kayasthas and Brahma-Kshatriyas, the so- called writer castes, employed mainly in the bureaucracy, and the Vahivancha Barots, genealogists and mythographers, were almost exclusively urban castes. The bulk of the population was spread all over the villages as small landholders, tenants and labourers. Patel is a surname of the Koli caste of Gujarat in India which have most importance in the politics of Gujarat and Koli Patels of Saurashtra was most benefited under the rule of Indian National Congress party. hu)_EYUT?:fX:vOR,4g4ce{\(wcUO %OW-Knj|qV]_)1?@{^ $:0ZY\fpg7J~Q~pHaMVSP5bLC}6+zwgv;f f^v4[|vug+vO0h t7QNP}EYm+X[x~;O|z5tq ]-39aa{g-u5n:a56&`3y.f-a@a"0v-a@$%`Z]]Iqb56aR0g 30V9EM%K"#|6uN? =O|8alCcs):~AC<5 q|om57/|Sgc}2c#)U~WL}%T]s> z. All the small towns sections in each of the ekdas resented that, while the large town section accepted brides from small towns, they did not reciprocate. This list may not reflect recent changes. Literally, ekda meant unit, and gol circle, and both signified an endogamous unit. No one knows when and how they came into existence and what they meant socially. The Hindu population of Gujarat was divided first of all into what I have called caste divisions of the first order. Far too many studies of changes in caste in modern India start with a general model of caste in traditional India which is in fact a model of caste in traditional rural India. Let us now return to a consideration of the first-order divisions with subdivisions going down to the third or the fourth order. Content Guidelines 2. Frequently, the shift from emphasis on co-operation and hierarchy in the caste system to emphasis on division (or difference or separation) is described as shift from whole to parts, from system to elements, from structure to substance. Their origin myth enshrined in their caste purana also showed them to be originally non-Brahman. Almost every village in this area included at least some Leva population, and in many villages they formed a large, if not the largest, proportion of the population. Since these were all status categories rather than clear- cut divisions, I have not considered them as constituting third-order divisions. We will now analyze the internal structure of a few first-order divisions, each of which was split into divisions going down to the fourth order. Leva Kanbis, numbering 400,000 to 500,000 m 1931, were the traditional agricultural caste of central Gujarat. Broach, Cambay and Surat were the largest, but there were also a number of smaller ones. One important first-order division, namely, Rajput, does not seem to have had any second-order division at all. Systematic study of small caste divisions in villages as well as in towns still awaits the attention of sociologists and anthropologists. There were Brahman and Vania divisions of the same name, the myths about both of them were covered by a single text. State Id State Name Castecode Caste Subcaste 4 GUJARAT 4001 AHIR SORATHA 4 GUJARAT 4002 AHIR 4 GUJARAT 4003 ANSARI 4 GUJARAT 4004 ANVIL BRAHMIN 4 GUJARAT 4005 ATIT BAYAJI BAKSHI PANCH 4 GUJARAT 4006 BAJANIYA 4 GUJARAT 4007 BAJIR . Hence started farming and small scale business in the British Raj to thrive better conditions ahead to maintain their livelihood. Rajput hypergamy seems to have provided an important mechanism for integration of the lower caste and tribal population into the Hindu society over the entire length and breadth of northern, western, central and even eastern India. Even the archaeological surveys and studies have indicated that the people of Dholavira, Surkotada. Similarly, in Saurashtra, the Talapadas were distinguished from the Chumvalias, immigrants from the Chumval tract in north Gujarat. As soon as there is any change in . This tendency reaches its culmination in the world of Dumont. This bulk also was characterized by hierarchy, with the relatively advanced population living in the plains at one end and the backward population living along with the tribal population in the highlands at the other end. On the other hand, there was an almost simultaneous spurt in village studies. An important idea behind the activities of caste associations is: service to ones caste is service to the nation. For example, in a Rajput kingdom the families of the Rajput king and his nobles resided in the capital town, while the Rajput landlords and cultivators resided in villages. Created Date: The degree of contravention involved in an inter-divisional marriage, however, depends upon the order (i.e., first-order, second-order, etc.) The following 157 pages are in this category, out of 157 total. There were also a number of first-order divisions, mainly of artisans, craftsmen and specialized servants, with small populations. Kayatias and Tapodhans were considered such low Brahmans that even some non-Brahman castes did not accept food and water from them. I am not suggesting that the principle of hierarchy was insignificant in the inter- or intra-caste relations in urban centres. No sooner had the village studies begun that their limitations and the need for studying caste in its horizontal dimension were realized. Use census records and voter lists to . Usually, a single Koli division had different local names in different parts of Gujarat, but more about this later. Hypergamy was accompanied by sanskritization of at least a section of the tribal population, their claim to the Kshatriya Varna and their economic and political symbiosis with the caste population. I should hasten to add, however, that the open-minded scholar that he is, he does not rule out completely the possibility of separation existing as independent principle. In all there were about eighty such divisions. Hindu society is usually described as divided into a number of castes the boundaries of which are maintained by the rule of caste endogamy. Sometimes a division could even be a self-contained endogamous unit. I do not, however, have sufficient knowledge of the latter and shall, therefore, confine myself mainly to Rajputs in Gujarat. The main aim of this paper is to discuss, on the basis of data derived mainly from Gujarat, these and other problems connected with the horizontal dimension of caste. Similarly, the Khedawal Brahmans were divided into Baj and Bhitra, the Nagar Brahmans into Grihastha and Bhikshuk, the Anavils into Desai and Bhathela, and the Kanbis into Kanbi and Patidar. Thus, at one end, there were first-order divisions, each of which was sub-divided up to the fourth-order, and at the other end there were first-order divisions which were not further divided at all. [CDATA[ x[? -E$nvU 4V6_}\]}/yOu__}ww7oz[_z~?=|nNT=|qq{\//]/Ft>_tV}gjjn#TfOus_?~>/GbKc.>^\eu{[GE_>'x?M5i16|B;=}-)$G&w5uvb~o:3r3v GL3or}|Y~?3s_hO?qWWpn|1>9WS3^:wTU3bN{tz;T_}so/R95iLc_6Oo_'W7y; Castes having continuous internal hierarchy and lacking effective small endogamous units, such as Rajputs, Leva Kanbis, Anavils and Khedawals, do not have active associations for lower-order divisions. It owned corporate property, usually in the form of vadis (large buildings used for holding feasts and festivals, accommodating wedding guests, and holding meetings), huge utensils for cooking feasts, and money received as fees and fines. Thus, finding any boundary between Rajputs and Kolis in the horizontal context was impossible, although there were sharp boundaries between the two in the narrow local context. They have been grouped in Vaishya category of Varna system. Gujarati migrations to the nearby metropolis of Bombay the first new centre of administration, industry, commerce, education, and western culture, followed the same links. In any case, the population of any large caste was found in many kingdoms. Co-residence of people, belonging to two or more divisions of a lower order within a higher order was, however, a prominent feature of towns and cities rather than of villages. It is not claimed that separation, or even repulsion, may not be present somewhere as an independent factor (1972: 346,n.55b). The Rajputs, in association with Kolis, Bhils, and such other castes and tribes, provide an extreme example of such castes. This surname is most commonly held in India, where it is held by 2,496 people, or 1 in 307,318. caste: [noun] one of the hereditary social classes in Hinduism that restrict the occupation of their members and their association with the members of other castes. endobj I have bits and pieces of information about relations between a considerable numbers of other lower-order divisions in their respective higher-order divisions. Far from it, I am only suggesting that its role had certain limitations and that the principle of division was also an important and competing principle. * List of Scheduled Tribes in Gujarat; A. . Since after expansion of British textile markets and decline of Indian textile industry Vankars suffered a lot. In recent years, however, there has been a tendency to emphasize hierarchy as the primary principle encompassing the principle of division. But during the 18th century, when the Mughal Empire was disintegrating, a large number of small kingdoms came into existence, and each had a small capital town of its own. professor melissa murray. These and many other artisans, craftsmen and servants reflected the special life-style of the town. The hierarchy, however, was very gradual and lacked sharpness. Moreover, some leading Anavils did not wish to be bothered about Brahman status, saying that they were just Anavil. The Kolis in such an area may not even be concerned about a second-order divisional name and may be known simply as Kolis. Caste divisions of the first-order can be classified broadly into three categories. History. Although some of them set up shops in villages they rarely became full-fledged members of the village community. Among the Kanbis, while there was hypergamy within the Leva division and possibly, similar hypergamy within the Kadva division, there was no hierarchy or hypergamy between the two second-order divisions. This was unlike the situation among the Rajputs who did not make any attempt to form small endogamous units. There are other sub-castes like Satpanthis, who are mainly centered in Kutch district and have some social customs akin to Muslims . Tapodhans were priests in Shiva temples. I hope to show in this paper how the principle of division is also a primary principle competing with the principle of hierarchy and having important implications for Indian society and culture. The primarily urban castes linked one town with another; the primarily rural linked one village with another; and the rural-cum-urban linked towns with villages in addition to linking both among themselves. When Mr. H. Borradaile in A.D. 1827 collected information regarding the customs of Hindus, no less than 207 castes which did not intermarry, were found in the city of Surat alone. There was another kind of ambiguity about the Brahman status or two other divisionsKayatia and Tapodhan. The above brief analysis of change in caste in modern Gujarat has, I hope, indicated that an overall view of changes in caste in modern India should include a careful study of changes in rural as well as in urban areas in relation to their past. There is enormous literature on these caste divisions from about the middle of the 19th century which includes census reports, gazetteers, [] They are described by the ruling elite as robbers, dacoits, marauders, predators and the like. Plagiarism Prevention 4. For example, the Khadayata Brahmans worked as priests at important rituals among Khadayata Vanias. For example, among Vanias in a large town like Ahmedabad many of the thirty or forty second-order divisions (such as Khadayata, Modh, Porwad, Shrimali, and so on) were represented. It has been pointed out earlier that an emphasis on the principle of division existed in the caste system in urban centres in traditional India. Further, during this lengthy process of slow amalgamation those who will marry in defiance of the barriers of sub-caste, will still be imbued with caste mentality (1932: 184). The existence of flexibility at both the levels was made possible by the flexibility of the category Rajput. Besides the myths, the members of a second-order division, belonging to all ekdas, shared certain customs and institutions, including worship of a tutelary deity. The Mehta family name was found in the USA, and the UK between 1891 and 1920. Although my knowledge is fragmentary, I thought it was worthwhile to put together the bits and pieces for the region as a whole. While we can find historical information about the formation of ekdas and tads there are only myths about the formation of the numerous second-order divisions. If the first-order divisions are called jatis and castes, the second-order divisions would be called sub-jatis or sub-castes. The two areas merge gradually, and my field work covered most of the spectrum. It used to have a panch (council of leaders) and sometimes also a headman (patel). Second, there used to be intense intra-ekda politics, and tads were formed as a result of some continuing conflict among ekda leaders and over the trial of violation of ekda rules. In other words, it did not involve a big jump from one place to another distant place. There was considerable elaboration in urban areas of what Ghurye long ago called the community aspect of caste (1932: 179) and frequently, this led to juxtaposition rather than hierarchy between caste divisions of the same order. The method is to remove first the barriers of the divisions of the lowest order and then gradually those of one higher order after another. The Kayatias main occupation was to perform a ritual on the eleventh day after death, during which they took away offerings made to ghosts: this was the main cause of their extremely low status among Brahmans. There are thus a few excellent studies of castes as horizontal units. If the marriage took place within the Vania fold but outside the tad or ekda, as the case may be, the punishment varied according to the social distance between the tads or ekdas of the bride and the groom. To illustrate, among the Khadayata or Modh Vanias, an increasing number of marriages take place between two or more tads within an ekda. Each ekda or gol was composed of a definite number of families living in certain villages and/or towns. In addition, they carried on overland trade with many towns in central and north India. Koli Patels are recognised as a Other Backward Class caste by Government of Gujarat. Nor were ekdas and tads entirely an urban phenomenon. Content Filtrations 6. There were about three hundred divisions of this order in the region as a whole. Data need to be collected over large areas by methods other than those used in village studies, castes need to be compared in the regional setting, and a new general approach, analytical framework, and conceptual apparatus need to be developed. Then there were a number of urban divisions of specialized artisans, craftsmen and servants, as for example, Sonis (gold and silver smiths), Kansaras (copper and bronze smiths), Salvis (silk weavers), Bhavsars (weavers, dyers and printers), Malis (florists), Kharadis (skilled carpenters and wood carvers), Kachhias (vegetable sellers), Darjis (tailors), Dabgars (makers of drums, saddles and such other goods involving leather), Ghanchis (oil pressers), Golas ferain and spice pounders and domestic servants), Dhobis (washermen), Chudgars (banglemakers), and Tambolis (sellers of area nuts, betel leaves, etc.). Hypergamy tended to be associated with this hierarchy. In India Limbachiya is most frequent in: Maharashtra, where 70 percent reside, Gujarat . The hypergamous tendency was never as sharp, pervasive and regular among the Vania divisions as among the Rajputs, Leva Kanbis, Anavils and Khedawals. For example, the Patanwadia population was spread continuously from the Patan area to central Gujarat, and the Talapada population from central Gujarat to Pal. Weaving and cloth trading communities of Western India particularly of Gujarat are called Vankar/Wankar/Vaniya. The unit might possess some other corporate characteristics also. Sometimes castes are described as becoming ethnic groups in modern India, particularly in urban India. In the meanwhile, it is important to note that there does not seem to have been any attempt to form small endogamous units (ekdas, gols) at any level among the Rajputs unlike attempts made as we shall see, among some other hypergamous castes in Gujarat. These divisions have, however, been kept out of the present analysis for reasons which have become well known to students of Hindu society since the 1950s. The idea of inter-caste marriage is, moreover, linked with the idea of creating such a society involves a compromise with, if not subtle negation of, the ideal. The boundaries of caste division were fairly clear in the village community. Moreover, the king himself belonged to some caste (not just to the Kshatriya Varna) and frequently a number of kings belonged to the same caste (e.g., Rajput). This was dramatized in many towns at the mahajan (guild) feasts when all the members of the guild of traders would eat together. Indeed, a major achievement of Indian sociology during the last thirty years or so has been deeper understanding of caste in the village context in particular and of its hierarchical dimension in general. The main reason was that Anavils did not practise priesthood as a traditional occupation, nor were they involved in traditional Sanskrit learning. Our analysis of the internal organization of caste divisions has shown considerable variation in the relative role of the principles of division and hierarchy. As regards the rest of Gujarat, I have used various sources: my work on the caste of genealogists and mythographys and on the early 19th century village records; the available ethnographic, historical and other literature; and observations made while living m Gujarat. When the rural population began to be drawn towards the new opportunities, the first to take advantage of them were the rural sections of the rural-cum-urban castes. This last name is predominantly found in Asia, where 93 percent of Limbachiya reside; 92 percent reside in South Asia and 92 percent reside in Indo-South Asia. Most of the other eighty or so second-order divisions among Brahmans, however, seem to be subdivided the way the Vania second-order divisions were subdivided into third-order and fourth-order divisions. A first-order division could be further divided into two or more second-order divisions. The incidence of exchange marriages and of bachelors in the lowest stratum among the Anavils also was high. A recent tendency in sociological literature is to consider jatis as castes. I will not discuss the present situation in detail but indicate briefly how the above discussion could be useful for understanding a few important changes in modern times. The Hindu and Muslim kingdoms in Gujarat during the medieval period had, of course, their capital towns, at first Patan and then Ahmedabad. The Vanias provide an example of such castes. This was dramatized at huge feasts called chorasi (literally, eighty-four) when Brahmans belonging to all the traditional 84 second-order divisions sat together to eat food cooked at the same kitchen. The humble Charkha (spinning wheel) and khadi became a dominant symbol of self-reliance, self-determination and nationalist pride. It is easy to understand that the pattern of change would be different in those first-order divisions (such as Rajput) or second-order divisions (such as Leva Kanbi) which did not have within them subdivisions of lower orders and which practised hypergamy extensively. Since the beginning of the modern reform movement to encourage inter-caste marriages-most of which are in fact inter-tad or inter-ekda marriagesthe old process of fission into ekdas and tads has come to a halt, and it is, therefore, difficult to understand this process without making a systematic historical enquiry. 4 0 obj While some of the divisions of a lower order might be the result of fission, some others might be a result of fusion. Although I have not, during my limited field work, come across hypergamous marriages between Rajputs and Bhils, ethnographic reports and other literature frequently refer to such marriages (see, for example, Naik 1956: 18f; Nath I960. That there was room for flexibility and that the rule of caste endogamy could be violated at the highest level among the Rajputs was pointed out earlier. By the beginning of British rule in the early 19th century, a considerable number of these chieftains had succeeded in establishing petty chiefdoms, each composed of one, and occasionally more than one, village, in all parts of Gujarat. We have seen how one second-order division among Brahmans, namely, Khedawal, was marked by continuous internal hierarchy and strong emphasis on hypergamy on the one hand and by absence of effective small endogamous units on the other. so roamed around clueless. The Kanbis (now called Patidars) had five divisions: Leva, Kadya, Anjana, Bhakta, and Matia. Real Estate Software Dubai > blog > manvar surname caste in gujarat. There is enormous literature on these caste divisions from about the middle of the 19th century which includes census reports, gazetteers, castes-and- tribes volumes, ethnographic notes and monographs and scholarly treatises such as those by Baines, Blunt, Ghurye, Hocart, Hutton, Ibbet- son, OMalley, Risley, Senart, and others. Today majority of these community members are not engaged in their ancestral weaving occupation still some population of these community contribute themselves in traditional handloom weaving of famous Patola of Patan, Kachchh shawl of Bhujodi in Kutch, Gharchola and Crotchet of Jamnagar, Zari of Surat, Mashroo of Patan and Mandvi in Kutch, Bandhani of Jamnagar, Anjar and Bhuj, Motif, Leheria, Dhamakda and Ajrak, Nagri sari, Tangaliya Shawl, Dhurrie, Kediyu, Heer Bharat, Abhala, Phento and art of Gudri. There was apparently a close relation between a castes internal organization and the size and spatial distribution of its population. We had seen earlier that in the first-order division, such as that of the Rajputs, there were no second-order divisions, and no attempt was made to form small endogamous units: hypergamy had free play, as it were. Although the name of a Brahman or Vania division might be based on a place name, the division was not territorial in nature. Many primarily rural castes, such as Kolisthe largest castehave remained predominantly rural even today. As weaving is an art and forms one of the most important artisan community of India. The Khedawals, numbering 15,000 to 20,000 in 1931 were basically priests but many of them were also landowners, government officials, and traders. Limitations of the holistic view of caste, based as it is mainly on the study of the village, should be realized in the light of urban experience. The highest stratum among the Leva Kanbi tried to maintain its position by practising polygyny and female infanticide, among other customs and institutions, as did the highest stratum among the Rajput. manvar surname caste in gujaratbest imperial trooper team swgoh piett. Britain's response was to cut off the thumbs of weavers, break their looms and impose duties on tariffs on Indian cloth, while flooding India and the world with cheaper fabric from the new steam mills of Britain.