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.). Tapodhans were priests in Shiva temples. Similarly, although the number of marriages between the second-order divisions in the Vania division, i.e., between Khadayata, Modh, Shrimali, Lad, Vayada, etc., has been increasing, the majority of marriages take place within the respective second-order divisions. The most Mehta families were found in USA in 1920. One of the clearly visible changes in caste in Gujarat is the increasing number of inter-divisional or so-called inter-caste marriages, particularly in urban areas, in contravention of the rule of caste endogamy. Since Vankars were involved in production and business they were known as Nana Mahajans or small merchants. 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. 2 0 obj
Usually, a single Koli division had different local names in different parts of Gujarat, but more about this later. 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. 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 small endogamous units, on the other hand, did not practise either. The lowest stratum in all the three divisions had to face the problem of scarcity of brides. 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). Kayatias and Tapodhans were considered such low Brahmans that even some non-Brahman castes did not accept food and water from them. This meant that he could marry a girl of any subdivision within the Vania division. 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. www.opendialoguemediations.com. 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. 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. A few examples are: Brahman (priest), Vania (trader), Rajput (warrior and ruler), Kanbi (peasant), Koli (peasant), Kathi (peasant), Soni goldsmith), Suthar (carpenter), Valand (barber), Chamar (leatherworker), Dhed (weaver) and Bhangi (scavenger). The two considered themselves different and separateof course, within the Kanbi foldwhere they happened to live together in the villages in the merger zone between north and central Gujarat and in towns. Toori. 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. manvar surname caste in gujaratbest imperial trooper team swgoh piett. 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 four major woven fabrics produced by these communities are cotton, silk, khadi and linen. They co-existed in the highlands with tribes such as the Bhils, so much so that today frequently many high caste Gujaratis confuse them with Bhils, as did the earlier ethnographers. They took away offerings made to Shiva, which was considered extremely degrading. All of this information supports the point emerging from the above analysis, that frequently there was relatively little concern for ritual status between the second-order divisions within a first- order division than there was between the first-order divisions. I know some ekdas, and tads composed of only 150 to 200 households. 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. We shall return later to a consideration of this problem. 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. so roamed around clueless. The Levas, Anavils and Khedawals provide examples of castes whose internal organization had a strong emphasis on the principle of hierarchy and a weak emphasis on that of division. An important idea behind the activities of caste associations is: service to ones caste is service to the nation. Gujarati migrations to the nearby metropolis of Bombay the first new centre of administration, industry, commerce, education, and western culture, followed the same links. 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. to which the divisions of the marrying couple belong. Many of them became the norm-setting elite for Gujaratis in the homeland. For example, just as there was a Shrimali division among Sonis (goldsmiths). The three trading castes of Vania, Lohana and Bhatia were mainly urban. Vankar is described as a caste as well as a community. They adopted Rajput customs and traditions, claimed Rajput status, and gave daughters in marriage to Rajputs in the lower rungs of Rajput hierarchy. I have discussed above caste divisions in Gujarat mainly in the past, roughly in the middle of the 19th century. 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. Let me illustrate briefly. The Hindu population of Gujarat was divided first of all into what I have called caste divisions of the first order. (surname) Me caste; Mer (community) Meta Qureshi; Mistri caste; Miyana (community) Modh; Motisar (caste) Multani Lohar; Muslim Wagher; Mutwa; N . %
The Hindu and Muslim kingdoms in Gujarat during the medieval period had, of course, their capital towns, at first Patan and then Ahmedabad. The lowest stratum among the Khedawals tried to cope with the problem of scarcity of brides mainly by practising ignominious exchange marriage and by restricting marriage of sons in a family to the younger sons, if not to only the youngest. Koli Patels are recognised as a Other Backward Class caste by Government of Gujarat. 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. Most associations continue to retain their non-political character. Pages in category "Social groups of Gujarat" The following 157 pages are in this category, out of 157 total. While fission did occur, fusion could also occur. In any case, the population of any large caste was found in many kingdoms. The Vanias provide an example of such castes. 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. It was also an extreme example of a division having a highly differentiated internal hierarchy and practising hypergamy as an accepted norm. 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. Both Borradaile and Campbell were probably mixing up small endogamous units of various kinds. 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. As could be expected, there were marriages between fairly close kin, resulting in many overlapping relationships, in such an endogamous unit. 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. For example, a good number of villages in central Gujarat used to have both Talapada and Pardeshi Kolis and Brahmans belonging to two or three of their many second-order divisions. The Khedawals, numbering 15,000 to 20,000 in 1931 were basically priests but many of them were also landowners, government officials, and traders. Gujarat did not have anything like the non-Brahmin movement of South India and Maharashtra before 1947. This was unlike the situation among the Rajputs who did not make any attempt to form small endogamous units. I do not, however, have sufficient knowledge of the latter and shall, therefore, confine myself mainly to Rajputs in Gujarat. Till the establishment of democratic polity in 1947, hardly any caste association in Gujarat had manifest political functions. To take one sensitive area of purity/pollution behaviour, the concern for observance of rules of commensality has greatly declined not only in urban but also in rural areas. 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). One of the reasons behind underplaying of the principle of division by Dumont as well as by others seems to be the neglect of the study of caste in urban areas (see Dumonts remarks in 1972: 150). 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 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. 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. A large proportion, if not the whole, of the population of many of such divisions lived in towns. And even when a Brahman name corresponded with a Vania name, the former did not necessarily work as priests of the latter.The total number of second-divisions in a first-order division differed from one first-order division to another. 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. 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. These prefixes Visa and Dasa, were generally understood to be derived from the words for the numbers 20 (vis) and 10 (das), which suggested a descending order of status, but there is no definite evidence of such hierarchy in action. 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. One may say that there are now more hypogamous marriages, although another and perhaps a more realistic way of looking at the change would be that a new hierarchy is replacing the traditional one. The Brahmans were divided into such divisions as Audich, Bhargav, Disawal, Khadayata, Khedawal, Mewada, Modh, Nagar, Shrigaud, Shrimali, Valam, Vayada, and Zarola. 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 co-residence of people belonging to two or more divisions of a lower order within a division of a higher order has been a prominent feature of caste in towns and cities. 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. 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. This tendency reaches its culmination in the world of Dumont. 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 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. endobj
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. The migration of the Kolis of north Gujarat into central Gujarat and those of the latter into eastern Gujarat was a process of slow drift from one village to another over a period of time. The degree of contravention involved in an inter-divisional marriage, however, depends upon the order (i.e., first-order, second-order, etc.) First, since the tads were formed relatively recently, it is easier to get information about their formation than about the formation of ekdas. There is enormous literature on these caste divisions from about the middle of the 19th century which includes census reports, gazetteers, [] 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. Significantly, a large number of social thinkers and workers who propagated against the hierarchical features of caste came from urban centres. This surname is most commonly held in India, where it is held by 2,496 people, or 1 in 307,318. Caste associations have been formed on the lines of caste divisions. 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 purpose is not to condemn village studies, as is caste in a better perspective after deriving insights from village studies. Even if we assume, for a moment, that the basic nature of a structure or institution was the same, we need to know its urban form or variant. Of particular importance seems to be the fact that a section of the urban population was more or less isolatedsome may say, alienatedfrom the rural masses from generation to generation. Sometimes a division could even be a self-contained endogamous unit. Simultaneously, there is gradual decline in the strength of the principle of hierarchy, particularly of ritual hierarchy expressed in purity and pollution. Sometimes a division corresponding to a division among Brahmans and Vanias was found in a third first-order division also. This does not, however, help describe caste divisions adequately. The Rajputs, in association with Kolis, Bhils, and such other castes and tribes, provide an extreme example of such castes. A comment on the sociology of urban India would, therefore, be in order before we go ahead with the discussion of caste divisions. TOS 7. window.__mirage2 = {petok:"uGhRfiuY26l2oZgRlfZRFSp4BWPIIt7Gh61sQC1XrRU-3600-0"}; I am dealing here only with certain typical situations. 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. A fundamental difficulty with these paradigms of change, as indicated by the above analysis, is that they are based on a partial conception of the systematic or structural whole in the past partially because it does not cover the urban situation and the complexity of horizontal units. 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. 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). 3.8K subscribers in the gujarat community. In some parts of Gujarat they formed 30 to 35 per cent of the population. Both were recognized as Brahman but as degraded ones. 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. It has already been mentioned that every first-order division was not divided into second-order divisions, and that every second-order division was not divided into third-order divisions, and so on. This list may not reflect recent changes. 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. It will readily be agreed that the sociological study of Indian towns and cities has not made as much progress as has the study of Indian villages. The incidence of exchange marriages and of bachelors in the lowest stratum among the Anavils also was high. Even the archaeological surveys and studies have indicated that the people of Dholavira, Surkotada. The small ekda or tad with its entire population residing in a single town was, of course, not a widespread phenomenon. All this trade encouraged development of trading and commercial towns in the rest of Gujarat, even in the highland area. Here, usually, what mattered was the first-order division, as for example Brahman, Vania, Rajput, Kanbi, carpenter, barber, leather-worker, and so on. They were thus not of the same status as most other second-order divisions among Brahmans. New Jersey had the highest population of Mehta families in 1920. These marriage links do not seem to have allowed, among the Kolis, formation of well organized, small, endogamous units (ekadas, gols) as were found among some other castes. . 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.