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. Both were recognized as Brahman but as degraded ones. 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. I know some ekdas, and tads composed of only 150 to 200 households. All associations originated in large towns, are more active in towns than in villages, and are led by prominent members in towns. Although it has been experiencing stresses and strains and has had ups and downs on account of the enormous diversity between the royal and the tribal ends, it has shown remarkable solidarity in recent years. 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. The division had an elaborate internal hierarchy, with wealthy and powerful landlords and tax-farmers at the top and small landholders, tenants and labourers at the bottom. 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. 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. 4 0 obj
Systematic because castes exist and are like each other in being different (298). Significantly, a large number of social thinkers and workers who propagated against the hierarchical features of caste came from urban centres. Which caste is koli patel? Explained by Sharing Culture 2 0 obj
The members of a kings caste were thus found not only in his own kingdom but in other kingdoms as well. The Hindu population of Gujarat was divided first of all into what I have called caste divisions of the first order. 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. I am not suggesting that the principle of hierarchy was insignificant in the inter- or intra-caste relations in urban centres. This surname is most commonly held in India, where it is held by 2,496 people, or 1 in 307,318. Not only that, there were also third-order divisions (i.e., ekdas) in one or more second-order divisions, and finally one or more fourth-order divisions (i.e., tads) in one or more third-order divisions. There was another kind of ambiguity about the Brahman status or two other divisionsKayatia and Tapodhan. The number of tads in an ekda or go I might be two or more, and each of them might be an endogamous units. Our analysis of caste in towns has shown how it differed significantly from that in villages. Similarly, the Khedawal Brahmans were divided into Baj and Bhitra, the Nagar Brahmans into Grihastha and Bhikshuk, the Anavils into Desai and Bhathela, and the Kanbis into Kanbi and Patidar. manvar surname caste in gujarat. The two categories of castes have been deeply conscious of these differences between them and have been talking freely about them. 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.). A large proportion, if not the whole, of the population of many of such divisions lived in towns. 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. So far we have considered first-order divisions with large and widely spread populations. Kayatias and Tapodhans were considered such low Brahmans that even some non-Brahman castes did not accept food and water from them. Usually, it was a small population. manvar surname caste in gujaratbest imperial trooper team swgoh piett. The two together formed a single complex of continental dimension. The degree of contravention is less if the couple belong, let us say, to two different fourth-order divisions within a third-order division than if they belong to two different third-order divisions within a second-order division, and so on. 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. 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 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. The small town sections therefore separated themselves from the respective large town sections and formed a new ekda. For example, just as there were Modh Vanias, there were Modh Brahmans, and similarly Khadayata Vanias and Khadayata Brahmans, Shrimali Vanias and Shrimali Brahmans, Nagar Vanias and Nagar Brahmans, and so on. 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. There would be a wide measure of agreement with him on both these counts. The guiding ideas were samaj sudharo (social reform) and samaj seva (social service). In addition, they carried on overland trade with many towns in central and north India. %
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. 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. 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. 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. So instead of a great exporter of finished products, India became an importer of British, while its share of world export fell from 27% to two percent. I do not propose to review the literature on caste here; my aim is to point out the direction towards which a few facts from Gujarat lead us. This does not, however, help describe caste divisions adequately. The main occupation of Vankars was the weaving of cloth. This category has the following 18 subcategories, out of 18 total. 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. 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. 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. ADVERTISEMENTS: Division and Hierarchy: An Overview of Caste in Gujarat! Since Vankars were involved in production and business they were known as Nana Mahajans or small merchants. 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. In 1920 there were 2 Mehta families living in New Jersey. He stated: hereditary specialization together with hierarchical organization sinks into the background in East Africa (293). But there were also others who did not wield any power. For example, the Patanwadia population was spread continuously from the Patan area to central Gujarat, and the Talapada population from central Gujarat to Pal. In 1931, the Rajputs of all strata in Gujarat had together a population of about 35,000 forming nearly 5 per cent of the total population of Gujarat. I have, therefore, considered them a first-order division and not a second-order one among Brahmans (for a fuller discussion of the status of Anavils, see Joshi, 1966; Van der Veen 1972; Shah, 1979). 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. What I am trying to point out, however, is that greater emphasis on division (Pococks difference, Dumonts separation. 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. He stresses repeatedly the primacy of the principle of hierarchy-epitomized in the title of his book. The tad thus represented the fourth and last order of caste divisions. 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. The Vanias provide an example of such castes. 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. Gujarat did not have anything like the non-Brahmin movement of South India and Maharashtra before 1947. There was also another important correlation. The freedom struggle brought the Indian handloom sector back to the fore, with Mahatma Gandhi spearheading the Swadeshi cause. Nor were ekdas and tads entirely an urban phenomenon. 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. 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. 92. I do not, however, have sufficient knowledge of the latter and shall, therefore, confine myself mainly to Rajputs in Gujarat. Since these were all status categories rather than clear- cut divisions, I have not considered them as constituting third-order divisions. A block printed and resist-dyed fabric, whose origin is from Gujarat was found in the tombs of Fostat, Egypt. There was an emphasis on being different and separate rather than on being higher and lower. (Frequently, such models are constructed a priori rather than based on historical evidence, but that is another story). Frequently, a division among Vanias corresponded to a division among Brahmans. The three trading castes of Vania, Lohana and Bhatia were mainly urban. Our analysis of the internal organization of caste divisions has shown considerable variation in the relative role of the principles of division and hierarchy. 3.8K subscribers in the gujarat community. 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. The Anavil, numbering 30,000 to 40,000 in 1931, were found mainly in south Gujarat. What may be called the census approach influenced a great deal of scholarly work. Many primarily rural castes, such as Kolisthe largest castehave remained predominantly rural even today. The population of certain first-order divisions lived mainly in villages. 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). 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. 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. 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 method is to remove first the barriers of the divisions of the lowest order and then gradually those of one higher order after another. Although caste was found in both village and town, did it possess any special characteristics in the latter? The hypergamous tendency was never as sharp, pervasive and regular among the Vania divisions as among the Rajputs, Leva Kanbis, Anavils and Khedawals. It is important to note that the more literate and learned Brahmans lived in towns, more particularly in capital and pilgrim towns, which were, indeed, the centres of higher Hindu culture and civilization. But the hypergamous tendency was so powerful that each such endogamous unit could not be perfectly endogamous even at the height of its integration. It is not claimed that separation, or even repulsion, may not be present somewhere as an independent factor (1972: 346,n.55b). Although the number of inter-ekda marriages has been increasing, even now the majority of marriages take place within an ekda. Gujarat protests: Who are the Patidars, and why are they angry? 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). There was a continuous process of formation and disintegration of such units. 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. Once the claim was accepted at either level, hypergamous marriage was possible. When the rural population began to be drawn towards the new opportunities, the first to take advantage of them were the rural sections of the rural-cum-urban castes. <>/Metadata 3086 0 R/ViewerPreferences 3087 0 R>>
There was also a third category called Pancha, derived from the word punch (meaning 5) and denoting extremely low Vania. 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. The degree of contravention involved in an inter-divisional marriage, however, depends upon the order (i.e., first-order, second-order, etc.) Many of them claimed that they were Brahmans but this claim was not accepted by most established Brahmans. First, since the tads were formed relatively recently, it is easier to get information about their formation than about the formation of ekdas.