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. 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. For the sake of bravity and simplicity of presentation, I have not provided detailed documentation. 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. 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. Census officials-turned-scholars, from Risley to Hutton, wrote many of the earlier general works on caste. They are divided into two main sub-castes: Leuva Patels and Kadva Patels, who claim to be descendants of Ram's twins Luv and Kush respectively. I have discussed above caste divisions in Gujarat mainly in the past, roughly in the middle of the 19th century. 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. In the plains, therefore, every village had one or more towns in its vicinity. The ekdas have not yet lost their identities. The Chumvalias and Patanwadias migrated possibly from the same tract and continued to belong to the same horizontal unit after migration. Nor were ekdas and tads entirely an urban phenomenon. 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. The guiding ideas were samaj sudharo (social reform) and samaj seva (social service). The main thrust of Pococks paper is that greater emphasis on difference rather than on hierarchy is a feature of caste among overseas Indians and in modern urban India. Use census records and voter lists to . Srinivas has called the unity of the village manifested in these interrelations the vertical unity of the village (1952: 31f. 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. 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. 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 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. The Rajputs, in association with Kolis, Bhils, and such other castes and tribes, provide an extreme example of such castes. Although caste was found in both village and town, did it possess any special characteristics in the latter? Early industrial labour was also drawn mainly from the urban artisan and servant castes. 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. 2 0 obj They took away offerings made to Shiva, which was considered extremely degrading. For example, there were Khedawal Brahmans but not Khedawal Vanias, and Lad Vanias but no Lad Brahmans. 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. But there was also another process. The significant point, however, is that there were small endogamous units which were not, like ekdas and tads, part of any higher-order division. 4 GUJARAT 4273 SHODA . 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. Sometimes castes are described as becoming ethnic groups in modern India, particularly in urban India. They have been grouped in Vaishya category of Varna system. 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. Data need to be collected over large areas by methods other than those used in village studies, castes need to be compared in the regional setting, and a new general approach, analytical framework, and conceptual apparatus need to be developed. 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. 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. Although the number of inter-ekda marriages has been increasing, even now the majority of marriages take place within an ekda. 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. All associations originated in large towns, are more active in towns than in villages, and are led by prominent members in towns. 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. 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. Since after expansion of British textile markets and decline of Indian textile industry Vankars suffered a lot. 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. 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. The village was a small community divided into a relatively small number of castes; the population of each caste was also small, sometimes only one or two households, with little possibility of existence of subdivisions; and there were intensive relationships of various kinds between the castes. The most Mehta families were found in USA in 1920. This category has the following 18 subcategories, out of 18 total. Gujarat did not have anything like the non-Brahmin movement of South India and Maharashtra before 1947. Indeed, a major achievement of Indian sociology during the last thirty years or so has been deeper understanding of caste in the village context in particular and of its hierarchical dimension in general. Content Guidelines 2. 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. Many second-order divisions were further divided into two or three status categories. 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. The most important of them was the Koli division, which was, the largest division and mainly included small landholders, tenants and labourers. 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. * List of Scheduled Tribes in Gujarat; A. . The Anavil, numbering 30,000 to 40,000 in 1931, were found mainly in south Gujarat. 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. Prohibited Content 3. The error is further compounded whenalthough this is less commonthe partial, rural model of traditional caste is compared with the present urban situation, and conclusions are drawn about overall change. The handloom weavers of Gujarat, Maharastra and Bengal produced and exported some of the world's most desirable fabrics. 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. Asking different questions and using different methods are necessary. Let us now return to a consideration of the first-order divisions with subdivisions going down to the third or the fourth order. 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. In addition, they carried on overland trade with many towns in central and north India. Let me illustrate briefly. The Kolis in such an area may not even be concerned about a second-order divisional name and may be known simply as Kolis. professor melissa murray. 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 highest stratum among the Leva Kanbi tried to maintain its position by practising polygyny and female infanticide, among other customs and institutions, as did the highest stratum among the Rajput. 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. Sometimes a division could even be a self-contained endogamous unit. Thus, at one end, there were first-order divisions, each of which was sub-divided up to the fourth-order, and at the other end there were first-order divisions which were not further divided at all. Tapodhans were priests in Shiva temples. 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 complex was provided a certain coherence and integrityin the pre- industrial time of slow communicationby a number of oral and literate traditions cultivated by cultural specialists such as priests, bards, genealogists and mythographers (see in this connection Shah and Shroff 1958). 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. Hence started farming and small scale business in the British Raj to thrive better conditions ahead to maintain their livelihood. The members of a kings caste were thus found not only in his own kingdom but in other kingdoms as well. Typically, a village consists of the sections of various castes, ranging from those with just one household to those with over u hundred. Radhvanaj Rajputs were clearly distinguished from, and ranked much above local Kolis. 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. Many of them claimed that they were Brahmans but this claim was not accepted by most established Brahmans. 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. 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. To give just one example, one large street in Baroda, of immigrant Kanbis from the Ahmedabad area, named Ahmedabadi Pol, was divided into two small parallel streets. 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. The Kanbis (now called Patidars) had five divisions: Leva, Kadya, Anjana, Bhakta, and Matia. The existence of flexibility at both the levels was made possible by the flexibility of the category Rajput. Weaving and cloth trading communities of Western India particularly of Gujarat are called Vankar/Wankar/Vaniya. The Khedawals, numbering 15,000 to 20,000 in 1931 were basically priests but many of them were also landowners, government officials, and traders. 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. 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. This account of the divisions is based on various sources, but mainly on Bombay Gazetteer (1901). 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. : 11-15, 57-75). 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. Broach, Cambay and Surat were the largest, but there were also a number of smaller ones. 4 0 obj 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). 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. 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. The weavers were forced into selling exclusively to the British at extremely low rates, pushing them into poverty. There was also a third category called Pancha, derived from the word punch (meaning 5) and denoting extremely low Vania. If this rule was violated, i.e., if he married a girl with whom the Vanias did not have commensal relations, the maximum punishment, namely, excommunication, was imposed. manvar surname caste in gujarat. This does not, however, help describe caste divisions adequately. 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). Privacy Policy 8. 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. Together they provide a slice of Gujarati society from the sea- coast to the bordering highlands. This list may not reflect recent changes. 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. 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).

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