The census reports provide such figures until 1931, but it is well known that these pose many problems for sociological analysis, most of which arise out of the nature of castes as horizontal units. Hindu society is usually described as divided into a number of castes the boundaries of which are maintained by the rule of caste endogamy. Gujarat did not have anything like the non-Brahmin movement of South India and Maharashtra before 1947. //. The Khedawals, numbering 15,000 to 20,000 in 1931 were basically priests but many of them were also landowners, government officials, and traders. This category has the following 18 subcategories, out of 18 total. manvar surname caste in gujarat 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. 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. Inclusion of a lower-order division in a higher-order one and distinction between various divisions in a certain order was not as unambiguous. Weavers became beggars, manufacturing collapsed and the last 2000 years of Indian textile industry was knocked down. 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.). 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. But many Rajput men of Radhvanaj got wives from people in distant villages who were recognized there as Kolisthose Kolis who had more land and power than the generality of Kolis had tried to acquire some of the traditional Rajput symbols in dress manners and customs and had been claiming to be Rajputs. The degree of contravention is less if the couple belong, let us say, to two different fourth-order divisions within a third-order division than if they belong to two different third-order divisions within a second-order division, and so on. Here, usually, what mattered was the first-order division, as for example Brahman, Vania, Rajput, Kanbi, carpenter, barber, leather-worker, and so on. 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. He does not give importance to this possibility probably because, as he goes on to state, what is sought here is a universal formula, a rule without exceptions (ibid.). They also continued to have marital relations with their own folk. Since Rajput as a caste occurred all over northern, central and western India (literally, it means rulers son, ruling son), the discussion of Rajputs in Gujarat will inevitably draw us into their relationship with Rajputs in other regions. endobj Even the archaeological surveys and studies have indicated that the people of Dholavira, Surkotada. While the Rajputs, Leva Patidars, Anavils and Khedawals have been notorious for high dowries, and the Kolis have been looked down upon for their practice of bride price, the Vanias have been paying neither. Tirgaar, Tirbanda. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. For example, all Vania divisions were divided into a number of ekdas or gols. 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 . Many of these names were also based on place names. r/ahmedabad From Mumbai. Briefly, while the Varna model was significant in the total dynamics of the caste system to fit the numerous first-order divisions into the four-fold Varna model in any part of India is impossible, and, therefore, to consider varnas as caste divisions as such is meaningless. Gujarat- A state in India. In an area of the first kind there are no immigrant Kolis from elsewhere, and therefore, there is no question of their having second-order divisions. For example, there were two ekdas, each with a large section resident in a large town and small sections resident in two or three neighbouring small towns. Sometimes castes are described as becoming ethnic groups in modern India, particularly in urban India. Castes pervaded by divisive tendencies had small populations confined to small areas separated from each other by considerable gaps. More common was an ekda or tad having its population residing either in a few neighbouring villages, or in a few neighbouring towns, or in both. 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. In the city, on the other hand, the population was divided into a large number of castes and each of most of them had a large population, frequently subdivided up to the third or the fourth order. Caste Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster This does not, however, help describe caste divisions adequately. Usually, the affairs of the caste were discussed in large congregations of some fifty to hundred or even more villages from time to time. The change from emphasis on hierarchy to emphasis on division is becoming increasingly significant in view of the growth of urban population both in absolute number and in relation to the total population. The Hindu and Muslim kingdoms in Gujarat during the medieval period had, of course, their capital towns, at first Patan and then Ahmedabad. In the past the dispersal over a wide area of population of an ekda or tad was uncommon; only modern communications have made residential dispersal as well as functional integration possible. It is not claimed that separation, or even repulsion, may not be present somewhere as an independent factor (1972: 346,n.55b). It reflects, on the one hand, the political aspirations of Kolis guided by the importance of their numerical strength in electoral politics and on the other hand, the Rajputs attempt to regain power after the loss of their princely states and estates. This account of the divisions is based on various sources, but mainly on Bombay Gazetteer (1901). Created Date: According to the Rajputs I know in central Gujarat, the highest stratum among them consisted of the royal families of large and powerful kingdoms in Gujarat and neighbouring Rajasthan, such as those of Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Kachchh, Porbandar, Bikaner, Idar, Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Udaipur, and so on. 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. 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. 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. For example, if they belonged to two different second-order divisions, such as Shrimali and Modh, the punishment would be greater than if they belonged to two different ekdas within the Shrimali or the Modh division. I have not yet come across an area where Kolis from three or more different areas live together, excepting modern, large towns and cities. Most of them were, true to their name, rulers at various levels of the political hierarchy from the kingly level to the level of dominant caste in many villages. Jun 12, 2022. 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. 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. In no other nation has something as basic as one's clothing or an act as simple as spinning cotton become so intertwined with a national movement. Visited Ahmedabad for the weekend to meet a friend but her family had a medical emergency. 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. The purpose is not to condemn village studies, as is caste in a better perspective after deriving insights from village studies. All associations originated in large towns, are more active in towns than in villages, and are led by prominent members in towns. 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. The existence of flexibility at both the levels was made possible by the flexibility of the category Rajput. Britain's Industrial Revolution was built on the de-industrialisation of India - the destruction of Indian textiles and their replacement by manufacturing in England, using Indian raw materials and exporting the finished products back to India and even the rest of the world. <>/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>> In the second kind of area, indigenous Kolis live side-by-side with immigrant Kolis from an adjoining area. The members of a kings caste were thus found not only in his own kingdom but in other kingdoms as well. There is enormous literature on these caste divisions from about the middle of the 19th century which includes census reports, gazetteers, [] The larger castes and even larger subdivisions among them used to have their houses segregated on their own streets (called pol, sheri, khadki, vad, khancho). On the other hand, there was an almost simultaneous spurt in village studies. Apparently this upper boundary of the division was sharp and clear, especially when we remember that many of these royal families practised polygyny and female infanticide until middle of the 19th century (see Plunkett 1973; Viswa Nath 1969, 1976). And how flexibility was normal at the lowest level has just been shown. History. I have done field work in two contiguous parts of Gujarat: central Gujarat (Kheda district and parts of Ahmedabad and Baroda districts) and eastern Gujarat (Panchmahals district). Since after expansion of British textile markets and decline of Indian textile industry Vankars suffered a lot. They were involved in agriculture in one way or another. Hindu society is usually described as divided into a number of castes the boundaries of which are maintained by the rule of caste endogamy. Usually, it was a small population. Since these were all status categories rather than clear- cut divisions, I have not considered them as constituting third-order divisions. Any one small caste may look insignificant in itself but all small castes put together become a large social block and a significant social phenomenon. Although the ekda or tad was the most effective unit for endogamy, each unit of the higher order was also significant for endogamy. There was also a tendency among bachelors past marriageable age to establish liaisons with lower-caste women, which usually led the couple to flee and settle down in a distant village. The emphasis on being different and separate rather than on being higher and lower was even more marked in the relationship among the forty or so second-order divisions. 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. The Brahmans were divided into such divisions as Audich, Bhargav, Disawal, Khadayata, Khedawal, Mewada, Modh, Nagar, Shrigaud, Shrimali, Valam, Vayada, and Zarola. No sooner had the village studies begun that their limitations and the need for studying caste in its horizontal dimension were realized. While some hypergamous and hierarchical tendency, however weak, did exist between tads within an ekda and between ekdas within a second- order division, it was practically non-existent among the forty or so second-order divisions, such as Modh, Porwad, Shrimali, Khadayata and so on, among the Vanias. The three trading castes of Vania, Lohana and Bhatia were mainly urban. Sindhollu, Chindollu. Although caste was found in both village and town, did it possess any special characteristics in the latter? manvar surname caste in gujarat - Be Falcon 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. Hence as we go down the hierarchy we encounter more and more debates regarding the claims of particular lineages to being Rajput so much so that we lose sight of any boundary and the Rajput division merges imperceptibly into some other division. In some parts of Gujarat they formed 30 to 35 per cent of the population. Frequently, each such unit had a patron deity, housed in a large shrine, with elaborate arrangements for its ownership. An important idea behind the activities of caste associations is: service to ones caste is service to the nation. Disclaimer 9. The handloom weavers of Gujarat, Maharastra and Bengal produced and exported some of the world's most desirable fabrics. The co-residence of people belonging to two or more divisions of the lower orders within a division of a higher order has been a prominent feature of caste in towns and cities. The census operations, in particular, spread as they were over large areas, gave a great impetus to writings on what Srinivas has called the horizontal dimension of caste (1952: 31f;1966: 9,44,92,98-100,114-17). The most Mehta families were found in USA in 1920. Usually it consisted of wealthy and powerful lineages, distinguishing themselves by some appellation, such as Patidar among the Leva Kanbi, Desai among the Anavil, and Baj among the Khedawal. Gujarat (along with Bombay) has perhaps the largest number of caste associations and they are also more active and wealthy compared to those in other regions. 4 GUJARAT 4273 SHODA . Almost all the myths about the latter are enshrined in the puranas (for an analysis of a few of them, see Das 1968 and 1977). A recent tendency in sociological literature is to consider jatis as castes. Thus, while each second-order Koli division maintained its boundaries vis-a-vis other such divisions, each was linked with the Rajputs. But there was also another process. The hierarchy, however, was very gradual and lacked sharpness. Most inter-divisional marriages take place between boys and girls belonging to the lowest order in the structure of divisions. As regards the specific case of the Rajput-Koli relationship, my impression is that, after the suppression of female infanticide in the first half of the 19th century, the later prohibition of polygyny, and the recent removal of princely states and feudal land tenures among the Rajputs on the one hand, and the increasing sanskritization as well as Rajputization among the Kolis on the other, marriage ties between these divisions have become more extensive than before. If the first-order divisions are called jatis and castes, the second-order divisions would be called sub-jatis or sub-castes. There were about three hundred divisions of this order in the region as a whole. The marital alliances of the royal families forming part of the Maratha confederacy, and of the royal families of Mysore in south India and of Kashmir and Nepal in the north with the royal families of Gujarat and Rajasthan show, among other things, how there was room for flexibility and how the rule of caste endogamy could be violated in an acceptable manner at the highest level. The urban centres in both the areas, it is hardly necessary to mention, are nucleated settlements populated by numerous caste and religious groups. This stratum among the Kanbis coped with the problem mainly by practising remarriage of widows and divorced women. The essential idea in the category was power, and anybody who wielded powereither as king or as dominant group in a rural (even tribal) areacould claim to be Rajput. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Social_groups_of_Gujarat&oldid=1080951156, Social groups of India by state or union territory, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 4 April 2022, at 12:36. In any case, castes are not likely to cease to be castes in the consciousness of people in the foreseeable future. It was also an extreme example of a division having a highly differentiated internal hierarchy and practising hypergamy as an accepted norm. manvar surname caste in gujaratbest imperial trooper team swgoh piett. Some of the other such divisions were Kathi, Dubla, Rabari, Bharwad, Mer (see Trivedi 1961), Vaghri, Machhi, Senwa, Vanzara, and Kharwa. The Kanbis (now called Patidars) had five divisions: Leva, Kadya, Anjana, Bhakta, and Matia. The handloom weavers of Gujarat, Maharastra and Bengal produced and exported some of the world's most desirable fabrics. A first-order division could be further divided into two or more second-order divisions. www.opendialoguemediations.com. 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.