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. manvar surname caste in gujaratbest imperial trooper team swgoh piett. 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. Let me illustrate briefly. 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. To illustrate, among the Khadayata or Modh Vanias, an increasing number of marriages take place between two or more tads within an ekda. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. manvar surname caste in gujarat. to which the divisions of the marrying couple belong. A large proportion, if not the whole, of the population of many of such divisions lived in towns. When divisions are found within a jati, the word sub-jati or sub-caste is used. 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. 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. Frequently, each such unit had a patron deity, housed in a large shrine, with elaborate arrangements for its ownership. 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. Since these were all status categories rather than clear- cut divisions, I have not considered them as constituting third-order divisions. For example, there were Khedawal Brahmans but not Khedawal Vanias, and Lad Vanias but no Lad Brahmans. He stresses repeatedly the primacy of the principle of hierarchy-epitomized in the title of his book. 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 incidence of exchange marriages and of bachelors in the lowest stratum among the Anavils also was high. The Chumvalias and Patanwadias migrated possibly from the same tract and continued to belong to the same horizontal unit after migration. We have analyzed the internal structure of two first-order divisions, Rajput and Anavil, which did not have any second-order divisions, and of several second-order divisionsTalapada and Pardeshi Koli, Khedawal Brahman, and Leva Kanbiwhich did not have any third-order divisions. 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. 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. Sometimes a division corresponding to a division among Brahmans and Vanias was found in a third first-order division also. This meant that he could marry a girl of any subdivision within the Vania division. 4 0 obj 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). 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. 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. In other words, it did not involve a big jump from one place to another distant place. This list may not reflect recent changes. 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. 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. 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.). 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. Firstly, there were divisions whose population was found almost entirely in towns. Most associations continue to retain their non-political character. A great deal of discussion of the role of the king in the caste system, based mainly on Indological literature, does not take these facts into account and therefore tends to be unrealistic. This account of the divisions is based on various sources, but mainly on Bombay Gazetteer (1901). Real Estate Software Dubai > blog > manvar surname caste in gujarat. 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. We shall return later to a consideration of this problem. If the Varna divisions are taken into account, then this would add one more order to the four orders of caste divisions considered above. 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. All associations originated in large towns, are more active in towns than in villages, and are led by prominent members in towns. The hypergamous tendency was never as sharp, pervasive and regular among the Vania divisions as among the Rajputs, Leva Kanbis, Anavils and Khedawals. As soon as there is any change in . 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. Hence started farming and small scale business in the British Raj to thrive better conditions ahead to maintain their livelihood. The earliest caste associations were formed in Bombay in the middle of the 19th century among migrants belonging to the primarily urban and upper castes from Gujarat, such as Vanias, Bhatias and Lohanas (see Dobbin 1972: 74-76, 121-30, 227f, 259-61). 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. The two former ekdas continued to exist with diminished strength. Kayatias and Tapodhans were considered such low Brahmans that even some non-Brahman castes did not accept food and water from them. 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. Both were recognized as Brahman but as degraded ones. 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. 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. We need to formulate some idea of the nature of the Indian urban society and its relation with the rural society in the past, at least at the beginning of the 19th century. 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. In 1931, their total population was more than 1,700,000, nearly one-fourth of the total population of Gujarat. There was another kind of ambiguity about the Brahman status or two other divisionsKayatia and Tapodhan. . The Rajput links entailed the spread of Rajput culture in each Koli division and provided a certain cultural homogeneity to all the divisions. The main occupation of Vankars was the weaving of cloth. rogers outage brampton today; levelland, tx obituaries. Vankar is described as a caste as well as a community. In 1920 there were 2 Mehta families living in New Jersey. In all there were about eighty such divisions. After the commercial revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, Gujarat had a large number of tradition towns on its long sea-coast. Usually, it was a small population. Hindu society is usually described as divided into a number of castes the boundaries of which are maintained by the rule of caste 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. r/ahmedabad From Mumbai. They have been grouped in Vaishya category of Varna system. Thus, while each second-order Koli division maintained its boundaries vis-a-vis other such divisions, each was linked with the Rajputs. From the 15th century onwards we find historical references to political activities of Koli chieftains. Significantly, a large number of social thinkers and workers who propagated against the hierarchical features of caste came from urban centres. 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. Many of them became the norm-setting elite for Gujaratis in the homeland. Fortunately, they have now started writing about it (see Rao 1974). The small ekda or tad with its entire population residing in a single town was, of course, not a widespread phenomenon. But this is not enough. Similarly, the Vanias were divided into such divisions as Disawal, Kapol, Khadayata, Lad, Modh, Nagar, Nima, Porwad, Shirmali, Vayada, and Zarola. 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. 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 most important of them was the Koli division, which was, the largest division and mainly included small landholders, tenants and labourers. There were Brahman and Vania divisions of the same name, the myths about both of them were covered by a single text. 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 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 ekdas have not yet lost their identities. Marco Polo a Venetian merchant on his visit to India in 13th century Gujarat observed that "brocading art of Gujarat weavers is par excellent". Ideally, castes as horizontal units should he discussed with the help of population figures. In the plains, therefore, every village had one or more towns in its vicinity. The very low Brahmans such as Kayatias and Tapodhans were invited but made to eat separately from the rest of the Brahmans. As could be expected, there were marriages between fairly close kin, resulting in many overlapping relationships, in such an endogamous unit. 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. The same problems would arise in the reverse direction if, as many scholars have done, the term caste cluster, caste complex or caste category is used for divisions of a higher order and the term caste or jati is used for divisions of a lower order. 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). The Khedawals, numbering 15,000 to 20,000 in 1931 were basically priests but many of them were also landowners, government officials, and traders. The Mehta family name was found in the USA, and the UK between 1891 and 1920. 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. 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. Kuntasi, Lothal and Somnath of Gujarat regions in Harrapan civilization were familiar with weaving and the spinning of cotton for as long as four thousand years ago. That the role of the two principles could vary at different levels within a first-order division has also been seen. 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. 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 . Real Estate Software Dubai > blog > manvar surname caste in gujarat. The social relations between and within a large number of such segregated castes should be seen in the context of the overall urban environment, characterized as it was by co-existence of local Hindu castes with immigrant Hindu castes and with the non-Hindu groups such as Jains, Muslims, Parsis and Christians, a higher degree of monetization, a higher degree of contractual and market relations (conversely, a lesser degree of jajmani-type relations), existence of trade guilds, and so on. 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. Here, usually, what mattered was the first-order division, as for example Brahman, Vania, Rajput, Kanbi, carpenter, barber, leather-worker, and so on. TOS 7. The main point is that we do not completely lose sight of the lowest boundary among these three hypergamous divisions as we do among the Rajputs. It is not claimed that separation, or even repulsion, may not be present somewhere as an independent factor (1972: 346,n.55b). 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. 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. 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. Gujarat did not have anything like the non-Brahmin movement of South India and Maharashtra before 1947. Thus, the result was the spread of the population of a caste division towards its fringes. 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. Before publishing your articles on this site, please read the following pages: 1. One important first-order division, namely, Rajput, does not seem to have had any second-order division at all. This does not, however, help describe caste divisions adequately. The Brahmans were divided into such divisions as Audich, Bhargav, Disawal, Khadayata, Khedawal, Mewada, Modh, Nagar, Shrigaud, Shrimali, Valam, Vayada, and Zarola. The Kolis seem to have had only two divisions in every part of Gujarat: for example, Talapada (indigenous) and Pardeshi (foreign) in central Gujarat and Palia and Baria in eastern Gujarat (significantly, one considered indigenous and the other outsider). 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. stream 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. Once the claim was accepted at either level, hypergamous marriage was possible. 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. Let us now return to a consideration of the first-order divisions with subdivisions going down to the third or the fourth order. I am dealing here only with certain typical situations. As weaving is an art and forms one of the most important artisan community of India. 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. For example, just as there was a Shrimali division among Sonis (goldsmiths). 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. The Rajputs relationship with the Kolis penetrated every second-order division among them, i.e., Talapada, Pardeshi, Chumvalia, Palia, and so on. 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. As a consequence, the continuities of social institutions and the potentiality of endogenous elements for bringing about change are overlooked (for a discussion of some other difficulties with these paradigms, see Lynch 1977).