TOS 7. The two categories of castes have been deeply conscious of these differences between them and have been talking freely about them. In spite of them, however, sociologists and social anthropologists have not filled adequately the void left by the disappearance of caste from the census and the gazetteer. The number of tads in an ekda or go I might be two or more, and each of them might be an endogamous units. Real Estate Software Dubai > blog > manvar surname caste in gujarat. Although the name of a Brahman or Vania division might be based on a place name, the division was not territorial in nature. Systematic study of small caste divisions in villages as well as in towns still awaits the attention of sociologists and anthropologists. The tribal groups in the highland area, such as the Bhils and Naikdas, also did not have any urban component. The population of certain first-order divisions lived mainly in villages. The Rajputs relationship with the Kolis penetrated every second-order division among them, i.e., Talapada, Pardeshi, Chumvalia, Palia, and so on. I describe here three prominent units of the latter type, namely, Anavil, Leva Kanbi, and Khedawal Brahman. 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. 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. Jun 12, 2022. The highland Bhils seem to have provided brides to lower Rajputs on the other side of the highlands also, i.e., to those in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh (see, for example, Doshi, 1971: 7f., 13-15; Aurora 1972: 16, 32f.). In particular, the implications of the co-existence of lower-order divisions within a higher- order division in the same town or city should be worked out. Division and Hierarchy: An Overview of Caste in Gujarat! In fact, inter-tad marriages have increased so much that the tads have more or less lost their identity and such marriages are no longer considered as violating the rule of tad endogamy. 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. They have been grouped in Vaishya category of Varna system. 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.
Which caste is koli patel? Explained by Sharing Culture The small ekda or tad with its entire population residing in a single town was, of course, not a widespread phenomenon. The purpose is not to condemn village studies, as is caste in a better perspective after deriving insights from village studies. 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 because political authorities were hierarchized from little kingdom to empire and the boundaries of political authorities kept changing. Although the people of one tad would talk about their superiority over those of another tad in an ekda, and the people of one ekda over those of another in a higher-order division, particularly in large towns where two or more tads and ekdas would be found living together, there was no articulate ranking and hypergamy among them. Leva Kanbis, numbering 400,000 to 500,000 m 1931, were the traditional agricultural caste of central Gujarat. Another clearly visible change in caste in Gujarat is the emergence of caste associations. 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. The very low Brahmans such as Kayatias and Tapodhans were invited but made to eat separately from the rest of the Brahmans. He stated: hereditary specialization together with hierarchical organization sinks into the background in East Africa (293). Here, usually, what mattered was the first-order division, as for example Brahman, Vania, Rajput, Kanbi, carpenter, barber, leather-worker, and so on. Secondly, it is necessary to study intensively the pattern of inter-caste relations in urban centres as something differentat least hypotheticallyfrom the pattern in villages. Sometimes a division could even be a self-contained endogamous unit. To have a meaningful understanding of the system of caste divisions, there is no alternative but to understand the significance of each order of division and particularly the nature of their boundaries and maintenance mechanisms. Koli Patels are recognised as a Other Backward Class caste by Government of Gujarat. 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). Whatever the internal organization of a second-order division, the relationship between most of the Brahman second-order divisions was marked by great emphasis on being different and separate than on being higher and lower. No analytical gains are therefore likely to occur by calling them by any other name. They were involved in agriculture in one way or another. 4 0 obj
All this trade encouraged development of trading and commercial towns in the rest of Gujarat, even in the highland area. Although the ekda or tad was the most effective unit for endogamy, each unit of the higher order was also significant for endogamy. It is not easy to find out if the tads became ekdas in course of time and if the process of formation of ekdas was the same as that of the formation of tads. The chiefly families constituted a tiny proportion of the total population of any second-order division among the Kolis. There is a patterned widening of the connubial field along an area chalked out historically. Literally, ekda meant unit, and gol circle, and both signified an endogamous unit. 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. In many villages in Gujarat, particularly in larger villages, one or two first-order divisions would be represented by more than one second-order division. Tapodhans were priests in Shiva temples. Tirgaar, Tirbanda. The castes pervaded by hierarchy and hypergamy had large populations spread evenly from village to village and frequently also from village to town over a large area. Finally, while an increasing number of marriages are taking place even across the boundaries of first-order divisions, as for example, between Brahmans and Vanias, and between Vanias and Patidars, such marriages even now form an extremely small proportion of the total number of marriages. 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 following 157 pages are in this category, out of 157 total. Firstly, there were divisions whose population was found almost entirely in towns. 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. The humble Charkha (spinning wheel) and khadi became a dominant symbol of self-reliance, self-determination and nationalist pride. Unfortunately, although the Kolis are an important element in Gujarats population, their earlier ethnography is confusing, and there is hardly any modern, systematic, anthropological, sociological or historical study, so that the confusion continues to persist. Although caste was found in both village and town, did it possess any special characteristics in the latter? 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. ), as contrasted with the horizontal unity of the caste. The fact that Mahatma Gandhi came from a small third-order division in the Modh Vania division in a town in Saurashtra does not seem to be an accident. Image Guidelines 5. Together they provide a slice of Gujarati society from the sea- coast to the bordering highlands. 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. 3 0 obj
Once the claim was accepted at either level, hypergamous marriage was possible.
Mehta Name Meaning & Mehta Family History at Ancestry.com To illustrate, among the Khadayata or Modh Vanias, an increasing number of marriages take place between two or more tads within an ekda. Till the establishment of democratic polity in 1947, hardly any caste association in Gujarat had manifest political functions. They worked not only as high priests but also as bureaucrats. This meant that he could marry a girl of any subdivision within the Vania division. With the exclusion of caste (except scheduled caste) from the census since 1951 (practically since 1941, because the census of that year did not result in much reporting), writings on castes as horizontal units greatly declined. The castes of the three categoriesprimarily urban, primarily rural, and rural-cum-urbanformed an intricate network spread over the rural and urban communities in the region. The Rajput hierarchy had many levels below the level of the royal families of the large and powerful kingdoms: lineages of owners of large and small fiefs variously called jagir, giras, thakarat,thikana, taluka, and wanted-, lineages of substantial landowners under various land tenures having special rights and privileges; and lineages of small landowners. I have discussed above caste divisions in Gujarat mainly in the past, roughly in the middle of the 19th century. This list may not reflect recent changes. Frequently, social divisions were neatly expressed in street names. A comment on the sociology of urban India would, therefore, be in order before we go ahead with the discussion of caste divisions. Village studies, as far as caste is a part of them, have been, there fore, concerned with the interrelations between sections of various castes in the local context. //]]>. The sub- the manner in which the ideas of free marriages and castles society are used by both the old and the young in modern India and how a number of new customs and institutions have evolved to cope with these new ideas is a fascinating subject of study. The existence of ekdas or gols, however, does not mean that the divisiveness of caste ended there or that the ekdas and gols were always the definitive units of endogamy. Frequently, a division among Vanias corresponded to a division among Brahmans. Systematic because castes exist and are like each other in being different (298). That the sociological study of urban areas in India has not received as much attention as that of rural areas is well known, and the studies made so far have paid little attention to caste in urban areas. The Kanbis (now called Patidars) had five divisions: Leva, Kadya, Anjana, Bhakta, and Matia. After the commercial revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, Gujarat had a large number of tradition towns on its long sea-coast. For describing the divisions of the remaining two orders, it would be necessary to go on adding the prefix sub but this would make the description extremely clumsy, if not meaningless. Weaving and cloth trading communities of Western India particularly of Gujarat are called Vankar/Wankar/Vaniya. 100 Most Popular Indian Last Names Or SurnamesWhy Don't Tamil People Have Last Names?-----A . I would suggest that this feature of urban caste, along with the well known general tendency of urban culture to encourage innovation, provided the groundhowever diffuse that ground might have beenfor a favourable response to the anti-hierarchical ideas coming from the West. Leva Sheri and Kadva Sheri, named after the two major second-order divisions among the Kanbis. 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. That Rajputs were one of the divisions, if not the only division of the first-order, not having further divisions, has already been mentioned. The urban community included a large number of caste groups as well as social groups of other kinds which tended to be like communities with a great deal of internal cohesion. I have bits and pieces of information about relations between a considerable numbers of other lower-order divisions in their respective higher-order divisions. The main occupation of Vankars was the weaving of cloth. For example, all Vania divisions were divided into a number of ekdas or gols. Created Date: 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. The Brahmans and Vanias seem to have had the largest number of divisions as mentioned earlier, about eighty in the former and about forty in the latter. 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. To whichever of the four orders a caste division belonged, its horizontal spread rarely, if ever, coincided with that of another. For the sake of bravity and simplicity of presentation, I have not provided detailed documentation. There was apparently a close relation between a castes internal organization and the size and spatial distribution of its population. 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. Kayatias and Tapodhans were considered such low Brahmans that even some non-Brahman castes did not accept food and water from them. 4 GUJARAT 4273 SHODA . There is enormous literature on these caste divisions from about the middle of the 19th century which includes census reports, gazetteers, [] They then spread to towns in the homeland and among all castes. In a paper on Caste among Gujaratis in East Africa, Pocock (1957b) raised pointedly the issue of the relative importance of the principles of division (he called it difference) and hierarchy. All Brahman divisions did not, however, have a corresponding Vania division. The prohibition of inter-division marriage was much more important than the rules of purity and pollution in the maintenance of boundaries between the lower-order divisions. Even the archaeological surveys and studies have indicated that the people of Dholavira, Surkotada. This was unlike the situation among the Rajputs who did not make any attempt to form small endogamous units. Frequently, the urban population of such a division performed more specialized functions than did the rural one. Since after expansion of British textile markets and decline of Indian textile industry Vankars suffered a lot. * List of Scheduled Tribes in Gujarat; A. . Today, there are two kinds of Koli areas. Nevertheless, a breakdown of the population of Gujarat into major religious, caste and tribal groups according to the census of 1931 is presented in the following table to give a rough idea of the size of at least some castes. In central Gujarat, for example, one and the same division, freely arranging marriages within it, was known by several names such as Baraiya, Dharala, Khant, Kotwal, Pagi, Patelia, Talapada, Thakarada, and Thakor. Disclaimer 9. So in this way, the Maharashtra caste list is given to all cast Aarakshan belonging to the Scheduled Castes category for the state of MH. 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. Plagiarism Prevention 4. I hope to show that the integration of the study of caste in urban areas with that of rural areas is essential to a comprehensive understanding of caste and its implications for Indian society and culture. 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. On the other hand, there was an almost simultaneous spurt in village studies. The Hindu population of Gujarat was divided first of all into what I have called caste divisions of the first order. Fortunately, they have now started writing about it (see Rao 1974). 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. Prohibited Content 3. This surname is most commonly held in India, where it is held by 2,496 people, or 1 in 307,318. Pocock goes on to observe that diminution of emphasis upon hierarchy and increasing emphasis upon difference are features of caste in modern, particularly urban, India: there is a shift from the caste system to individual castes and this reflects the change that is taking place in India today (290). Most associations continue to retain their non-political character. 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.
In all there were about eighty such divisions. 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. They had an internal hierarchy similar to that of the Leva Kanbis, with tax-farmers and big landlords at the top and small landowners at the bottom. The point is that there was nothing like the endogamous unit but there were only several units of various orders with defined roles in endogamy. The Rajputs in Radhvanaj, the village I have studied in central Gujarat, had no great difficulty in establishing their claim to being Rajputs: they owned substantial amounts of land under a traditional Rajput tenure, dominated village politics and possessed certain other traditional Rajput symbols. 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. Since Vankars were involved in production and business they were known as Nana Mahajans or small merchants. They married their daughters into higher Rajput lineages in the local area who in turn married their daughters into still higher nearly royal rajput lineages in Saurashtra and Kachchh. 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. What is really required for a comprehensive understanding is a comparison of traditional with modern caste in both rural and urban areas (including, to be sure, the rural-urban linkages). I have not yet come across an area where Kolis from three or more different areas live together, excepting modern, large towns and cities. 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, just as there was a Shrimali division among Sonis (goldsmiths). A large number of priestly, artisan and service castes also lived in both villages and towns: Bramhans, barbers, carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, leather-workers, scavenges, water-carriers, palanquin-bearers, and so on.
Category:Social groups of Gujarat - Wikipedia Nowadays, in urban areas in particular, very few people think of making separate seating arrangements for members of different castes at wedding and such other feasts. This was dramatized in many towns at the mahajan (guild) feasts when all the members of the guild of traders would eat together. Patidars or Patels claim themselves to be descendants of Lord Ram. Real Estate Software Dubai > blog > manvar surname caste in gujarat. James Campbell (1901: xii), the compiler of gazetteers for the former Bombay presidency comprising several linguistic regions, wrote about Gujarat: In no part of India are the subdivisions so minute, one of them, the Rayakval Vanias, numbering only 47 persons in 1891. 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. The guiding ideas were samaj sudharo (social reform) and samaj seva (social service). 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. 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. The point is that the Rajput hierarchy, with the princely families at the top, merged at the lower level imperceptibly into the vast sea of tribal and semi-tribal people like Bhils and Kolis.
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. endobj
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. For example, there were Khedawal Brahmans but not Khedawal Vanias, and Lad Vanias but no Lad Brahmans.