This category has the following 18 subcategories, out of 18 total. These divisions have, however, been kept out of the present analysis for reasons which have become well known to students of Hindu society since the 1950s. In some parts of Gujarat they formed 30 to 35 per cent of the 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. 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. This was about 22% of all the recorded Mehta's in USA. But the hypergamous tendency was so powerful that each such endogamous unit could not be perfectly endogamous even at the height of its integration. Reference to weaving and spinning materials is found in the Vedic Literature. 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 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. Hence started farming and small scale business in the British Raj to thrive better conditions ahead to maintain their livelihood. I have done field work in two contiguous parts of Gujarat: central Gujarat (Kheda district and parts of Ahmedabad and Baroda districts) and eastern Gujarat (Panchmahals district). Gujarat- A state in India. 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. 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. The larger castes and even larger subdivisions among them used to have their houses segregated on their own streets (called pol, sheri, khadki, vad, khancho). 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). Some of the other such divisions were Kathi, Dubla, Rabari, Bharwad, Mer (see Trivedi 1961), Vaghri, Machhi, Senwa, Vanzara, and Kharwa. The lowest stratum in all the three divisions had to face the problem of scarcity of brides. To whichever of the four orders a caste division belonged, its horizontal spread rarely, if ever, coincided with that of another. Many of these names were also based on place names. Real Estate Software Dubai > blog > manvar surname caste in gujarat. 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. Division and hierarchy have always been stressed as the two basic principles of the caste system. Once the claim was accepted at either level, hypergamous marriage was possible. The sub- the manner in which the ideas of free marriages and castles society are used by both the old and the young in modern India and how a number of new customs and institutions have evolved to cope with these new ideas is a fascinating subject of study. Literally, ekda meant unit, and gol circle, and both signified an endogamous unit. Caste associations in Gujarat were formed mainly among upper castes to provide welfare (including recreation), to promote modern education, and to bring about reforms in caste customs. 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. This last name is predominantly found in Asia, where 93 percent of Limbachiya reside; 92 percent reside in South Asia and 92 percent reside in Indo-South Asia. Census officials-turned-scholars, from Risley to Hutton, wrote many of the earlier general works on caste. 91. Today, there are two kinds of Koli areas. Simultaneously, there is gradual decline in the strength of the principle of hierarchy, particularly of ritual hierarchy expressed in purity and pollution. In India Limbachiya is most frequent in: Maharashtra, where 70 percent reside, Gujarat . Frequently, social divisions were neatly expressed in street names. The main reason was that Anavils did not practise priesthood as a traditional occupation, nor were they involved in traditional Sanskrit learning. Nevertheless, a breakdown of the population of Gujarat into major religious, caste and tribal groups according to the census of 1931 is presented in the following table to give a rough idea of the size of at least some castes. Real Estate Software Dubai > blog > manvar surname caste in gujarat. Early industrial labour was also drawn mainly from the urban artisan and servant castes. We shall return to this issue later. Within each of these divisions, small endogamous units (ekdas, gols, bandhos) were organized from time to time to get relief from the difficulties inherent in hypergamy. All Brahman divisions did not, however, have a corresponding Vania division. There would be a wide measure of agreement with him on both these counts. From the 15th century onwards we find historical references to political activities of Koli chieftains. 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. 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. The hypergamous tendency was never as sharp, pervasive and regular among the Vania divisions as among the Rajputs, Leva Kanbis, Anavils and Khedawals. 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. 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. While the Rajputs, Leva Patidars, Anavils and Khedawals have been notorious for high dowries, and the Kolis have been looked down upon for their practice of bride price, the Vanias have been paying neither. Since Vankars were involved in production and business they were known as Nana Mahajans or small merchants. Weaving and cloth trading communities of Western India particularly of Gujarat are called Vankar/Wankar/Vaniya. However, on the basis of the meagre information I have, I am able to make a few points. to which the divisions of the marrying couple belong. 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. 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). This surname is most commonly held in India, where it is held by 2,496 people, or 1 in 307,318. This does not solve the problem if there are four orders of divisions of the kind found in Gujarat. 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. 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. 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). In any case, castes are not likely to cease to be castes in the consciousness of people in the foreseeable future. For example, the Patanwadia population was spread continuously from the Patan area to central Gujarat, and the Talapada population from central Gujarat to Pal. 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. 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. As weaving is an art and forms one of the most important artisan community of India. 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. For example, among almost every Vania division there was a dual division into Visa and Dasa: Visa Nagar and Dasa Nagar, Visa Lad and Dasa Lad, Visa Modh and Dasa Modh, Visa Khadayata and Dasa Khadayata, and so on. 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. Here, usually, what mattered was the first-order division, as for example Brahman, Vania, Rajput, Kanbi, carpenter, barber, leather-worker, and so on. 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 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. Similarly, the Vanias were divided into such divisions as Disawal, Kapol, Khadayata, Lad, Modh, Nagar, Nima, Porwad, Shirmali, Vayada, and Zarola. 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. Hence as we go down the hierarchy we encounter more and more debates regarding the claims of particular lineages to being Rajput so much so that we lose sight of any boundary and the Rajput division merges imperceptibly into some other division. A recent tendency in sociological literature is to consider jatis as castes. They adopted Rajput customs and traditions, claimed Rajput status, and gave daughters in marriage to Rajputs in the lower rungs of Rajput hierarchy. Bougies repulsion) rather than on hierarchy was a feature of caste in certain contexts and situations in traditional India, and increasing emphasis on division in urban Indian in modern times is an accentuation of what existed in the past. Since after expansion of British textile markets and decline of Indian textile industry Vankars suffered a lot. The Chumvalias and Patanwadias migrated possibly from the same tract and continued to belong to the same horizontal unit after migration. Pages in category "Social groups of Gujarat" The following 157 pages are in this category, out of 157 total. Visited Ahmedabad for the weekend to meet a friend but her family had a medical emergency. 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. 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. Although caste was found in both village and town, did it possess any special characteristics in the latter? The Hindu and Muslim kingdoms in Gujarat during the medieval period had, of course, their capital towns, at first Patan and then Ahmedabad. In 1931, their total population was more than 1,700,000, nearly one-fourth of the total population of Gujarat. 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. 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. 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. Content Guidelines 2. After the commercial revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, Gujarat had a large number of tradition towns on its long sea-coast. 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. The point is that the Rajput hierarchy, with the princely families at the top, merged at the lower level imperceptibly into the vast sea of tribal and semi-tribal people like Bhils and Kolis. 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. Disclaimer 9. We shall return to the Rajput-Koli relationship when we consider the Kolis in detail. 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. Far from it, I am only suggesting that its role had certain limitations and that the principle of division was also an important and competing principle. It was also an extreme example of a division having a highly differentiated internal hierarchy and practising hypergamy as an accepted norm. 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. professor melissa murray. 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). 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 primarily urban castes and the urban sections of the rural-cum- urban castes were the first to take advantage of the new opportunities that developed in industry, commerce, administration, the professions and education in urban centres. Systematic study of small caste divisions in villages as well as in towns still awaits the attention of sociologists and anthropologists. Moreover, some leading Anavils did not wish to be bothered about Brahman status, saying that they were just Anavil. At one end there were castes in which the principle of hierarchy had free play and the role of the principle of division was limited. 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. 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. There were Brahman and Vania divisions of the same name, the myths about both of them were covered by a single text. 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 two former ekdas continued to exist with diminished strength. No analytical gains are therefore likely to occur by calling them by any other name. 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. In all there were about eighty such divisions. A first-order division could be further divided into two or more second-order divisions. In central Gujarat, at least from about the middle of the 18th century, the population of the wealthy and powerful Patidar section of the Kanbis also lived in townsan extremely interesting development of rich villages into towns, which I will not describe here. 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. New Jersey had the highest population of Mehta families in 1920. 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). Plagiarism Prevention 4. That the role of the two principles could vary at different levels within a first-order division has also been seen. Frequently, the shift from emphasis on co-operation and hierarchy in the caste system to emphasis on division (or difference or separation) is described as shift from whole to parts, from system to elements, from structure to substance.
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