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Both Borradaile and Campbell were probably mixing up small endogamous units of various kinds. Once the claim was accepted at either level, hypergamous marriage was possible. It is noteworthy that many of their names were based on names of places (region, town, or village): for example, Shrimali and Mewada on the Shrimal and Mewar regions in Rajasthan, Modh on Modhera town in north Gujarat, and Khedawal on Kheda town in central Gujarat. Most associations continue to retain their non-political character. 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). endobj
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 hypergamous tendency was never as sharp, pervasive and regular among the Vania divisions as among the Rajputs, Leva Kanbis, Anavils and Khedawals. Castes pervaded by divisive tendencies had small populations confined to small areas separated from each other by considerable gaps. 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 . 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. 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. 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. History. ADVERTISEMENTS: Division and Hierarchy: An Overview of Caste in Gujarat! That Rajputs were one of the divisions, if not the only division of the first-order, not having further divisions, has already been mentioned. (surname) Me caste; Mer (community) Meta Qureshi; Mistri caste; Miyana (community) Modh; Motisar (caste) Multani Lohar; Muslim Wagher; Mutwa; N . professor melissa murray. The Kanbis (now called Patidars) had five divisions: Leva, Kadya, Anjana, Bhakta, and Matia. This was because political authorities were hierarchized from little kingdom to empire and the boundaries of political authorities kept changing. We shall return to this issue later. 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. Our analysis of the internal organization of caste divisions has shown considerable variation in the relative role of the principles of division and hierarchy. <>/Metadata 3086 0 R/ViewerPreferences 3087 0 R>>
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Hence started farming and small scale business in the British Raj to thrive better conditions ahead to maintain their livelihood. TOS 7. 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. Fortunately, they have now started writing about it (see Rao 1974). 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. To obtain a clear understanding of the second-order divisions with the Koli division, it is necessary first of all to find a way through the maze of their divisional names. This meant that he could marry a girl of any subdivision within the Vania division. The boundaries of caste division were fairly clear in the village community. 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. Most inter-divisional marriages take place between boys and girls belonging to the lowest order in the structure of divisions. www.opendialoguemediations.com. 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. 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). 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. manvar surname caste in gujarat. [CDATA[ I know some ekdas, and tads composed of only 150 to 200 households. 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. 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 recent years, however, there has been a tendency to emphasize hierarchy as the primary principle encompassing the principle of division. In the second-order divisions of the Vanias the small endogamous units functioned more effectively and lasted longer: although the hypergamous tendency did exist particularly between the rural and the urban sections in a unit, it had restricted play. Many of them claimed that they were Brahmans but this claim was not accepted by most established Brahmans. The urban centres in both the areas, it is hardly necessary to mention, are nucleated settlements populated by numerous caste and religious groups. 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. 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. Literally, ekda meant unit, and gol circle, and both signified an endogamous unit. While certain first-order divisions were found mainly in towns, the population of certain other first-order divisions was dispersed in villages as well as in towns, the population of the rural and the urban sections differing from one division to another. For example, all Vania divisions were divided into a number of ekdas or gols. so roamed around clueless. Srinivas has called the unity of the village manifested in these interrelations the vertical unity of the village (1952: 31f. Leva Sheri and Kadva Sheri, named after the two major second-order divisions among the Kanbis. Advances in manufacturing technologies flooded markets in India and abroad with cheap, mass-produced fabrics that Indian handlooms could no longer compete with. Because of these two major factors, one economic and the other political, Gujarat at the beginning of the 19th century had a large urban population, distributed over a large number of small towns. 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. These coastal towns were involved in trade among themselves, with other towns on the rest of the Indian sea coast, and with many foreign lands. The two categories of castes have been deeply conscious of these differences between them and have been talking freely about them. 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). Let me illustrate briefly. Such a description not only overlooks the diversity and complexity of caste divisions and the rural-urban Link- ages in them but also leads to placing them in the same category as Muslims, Christians, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists, and so on. Another clearly visible change in caste in Gujarat is the emergence of caste associations. 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. 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. Since these were all status categories rather than clear- cut divisions, I have not considered them as constituting third-order 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. This does not, however, help describe caste divisions adequately. In some other cases, mainly of urban artisans, craftsmen and specialized servants, such as Kansaras (copper and bronze smiths), Salvis (silk weavers), Kharadis (skilled carpenters and wood carvers), Chudgars (bangle-makers) and Vahivanchas genealogists and mythographers), the small populations were so small and confined to so few towns that they had few subdivisions and the boundaries of their horizontal units were fairly easy to define. In India Limbachiya is most frequent in: Maharashtra, where 70 percent reside, Gujarat . Kolis were the largest first-order division in Gujarat. 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.). 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. Caste divisions of the first-order can be classified broadly into three categories. The name, Talapada, meaning mdigenous, commonly used in the 19th century, is most clear, since it is clearly distinguished from the other division called Pardeshi, meaning foreign, who during the last one or two centuries immigrated here from the area around Patan in north Gujarat and were, therefore, also called Patan- wadias. An important idea behind the activities of caste associations is: service to ones caste is service to the nation. The Khedawals, numbering 15,000 to 20,000 in 1931 were basically priests but many of them were also landowners, government officials, and traders. For example, among the Vanias the most general rule was that a marriage of a boy could be arranged with any girl who was bhane khapati, i.e., with whom he was permitted to have commensal relations (roti vyavahar). There is a patterned widening of the connubial field along an area chalked out historically. I have not yet come across an area where Kolis from three or more different areas live together, excepting modern, large towns and cities. If the Varna divisions are taken into account, then this would add one more order to the four orders of caste divisions considered above. Here, usually, what mattered was the first-order division, as for example Brahman, Vania, Rajput, Kanbi, carpenter, barber, leather-worker, and so on. The Rajput links entailed the spread of Rajput culture in each Koli division and provided a certain cultural homogeneity to all the divisions. Before publishing your articles on this site, please read the following pages: 1. It is a coalescence of Kolis and Rajputs on the modern political plane based on the foundation of the traditional social and cultural symbiosis under the rubric of Kshatriya. 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. No one knows when and how they came into existence and what they meant socially. Hypergamy tended to be associated with this hierarchy. They worked not only as high priests but also as bureaucrats. Firstly, there were divisions whose population was found almost entirely in towns. As for the size of other castes, I shall make mainly relative statements. Koli Patels are recognised as a Other Backward Class caste by Government of Gujarat. I do not, however, have sufficient knowledge of the latter and shall, therefore, confine myself mainly to Rajputs in Gujarat. 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. Created Date: Hindu society is usually described as divided into a number of castes the boundaries of which are maintained by the rule of caste endogamy. 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. 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. %
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. To illustrate, among the Khadayata or Modh Vanias, an increasing number of marriages take place between two or more tads within an ekda. endobj
Some of the other such divisions were Kathi, Dubla, Rabari, Bharwad, Mer (see Trivedi 1961), Vaghri, Machhi, Senwa, Vanzara, and Kharwa. 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. Toori. There were similar problems about the status of a number of other divisions. The institutions of both bride and bridegroom price (the latter also called dowry) were rampant in castes with continuous internal hierarchydowry mainly at the upper levels, bride price mainly at the lower levels, and both dowry and bride price among status-seeking middle level families. The tad thus represented the fourth and last order of caste divisions. The ekdas have not yet lost their identities. These linkages played an important role in the traditional social structure as well as in the processes of change in modern India. 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. 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. While we do get evidence of fission of caste divisions of a higher order into two or more divisions of a lower order, the mere existence of divisions of a lower order should not be taken as evidence of fission in a division of a higher order. 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. As weaving is an art and forms one of the most important artisan community of India. Frequently, each such unit had a patron deity, housed in a large shrine, with elaborate arrangements for its ownership. 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). 100 Most Popular Indian Last Names Or SurnamesWhy Don't Tamil People Have Last Names?-----A . Kayatias and Tapodhans were considered such low Brahmans that even some non-Brahman castes did not accept food and water from them. But this is not enough. In the case of some of them the small population was so dispersed that a division such as that of barbers, blacksmiths, or carpenters, would be represented by only one or two households in each village and by a significant number of households in towns. 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 population of certain first-order divisions lived mainly in villages. Privacy Policy 8. 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. In any case, castes are not likely to cease to be castes in the consciousness of people in the foreseeable future. Systematic study of small caste divisions in villages as well as in towns still awaits the attention of sociologists and anthropologists. 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. This was about 22% of all the recorded Mehta's in USA. hu)_EYUT?:fX:vOR,4g4ce{\(wcUO %OW-Knj|qV]_)1?@{^ $:0ZY\fpg7J~Q~pHaMVSP5bLC}6+zwgv;f
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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. 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. Usually, the latter were distinguished from one another by prohibition. (Frequently, such models are constructed a priori rather than based on historical evidence, but that is another story). The Hindu population of Gujarat was divided first of all into what I have called caste divisions of the first order. There are thus a few excellent studies of castes as horizontal units. But there were also others who did not wield any power. The four major woven fabrics produced by these communities are cotton, silk, khadi and linen. There was an emphasis on being different and separate rather than on being higher and lower. 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 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. 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 Mehta family name was found in the USA, and the UK between 1891 and 1920. 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 migrants, many of whom came from heterogeneous urban centres of Gujarat, became part of an even more heterogeneous environment in Bombay. He stated: hereditary specialization together with hierarchical organization sinks into the background in East Africa (293). The patterns of change in marriage and in caste associations are two of the many indications of the growing significance of the principle of division (or separation or difference) in caste in urban areas in Gujarat. There was also a third category called Pancha, derived from the word punch (meaning 5) and denoting extremely low Vania. Reference to weaving and spinning materials is found in the Vedic Literature. Some ekdas did come into existence in almost the same way as did the tads, that is to say, by a process of fission of one ekda into two or more ekdas. This was dramatized in many towns at the mahajan (guild) feasts when all the members of the guild of traders would eat together. They were involved in agriculture in one way or another. The three trading castes of Vania, Lohana and Bhatia were mainly urban. Frequently, The ekdas or gols were each divided into groups called tads (split). Report a Violation, Caste Stratification: Changing Rural Caste Stratification, Caste in Rural India: Specificities of Caste in Rural Society. They have been grouped in Vaishya category of Varna system. 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). The Vanias provide an example of such castes. But the hypergamous tendency was so powerful that each such endogamous unit could not be perfectly endogamous even at the height of its integration. 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. In some parts of Gujarat they formed 30 to 35 per cent of the population. Similarly, in Saurashtra, the Talapadas were distinguished from the Chumvalias, immigrants from the Chumval tract in north Gujarat. For example, among the Khadayata Vanias there are all-Khadayata associations as well as associations for the various ekdas and sometimes even for their tads (see Shah, Ragini 1978). 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 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. The Kolis in such an area may not even be concerned about a second-order divisional name and may be known simply as Kolis. 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.