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The existence of ekdas or gols, however, does not mean that the divisiveness of caste ended there or that the ekdas and gols were always the definitive units of endogamy. Inclusion of a lower-order division in a higher-order one and distinction between various divisions in a certain order was not as unambiguous. Frequently, each such unit had a patron deity, housed in a large shrine, with elaborate arrangements for its ownership. Since the beginning of the modern reform movement to encourage inter-caste marriages-most of which are in fact inter-tad or inter-ekda marriagesthe old process of fission into ekdas and tads has come to a halt, and it is, therefore, difficult to understand this process without making a systematic historical enquiry. % 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. 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. 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. 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. Frequently, The ekdas or gols were each divided into groups called tads (split). 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. The three trading castes of Vania, Lohana and Bhatia were mainly urban. 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. Although my knowledge is fragmentary, I thought it was worthwhile to put together the bits and pieces for the region as a whole. Another major factor in the growth of urban centres in Gujarat was political. Most associations continue to retain their non-political character. 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. Gujarat did not have anything like the non-Brahmin movement of South India and Maharashtra before 1947. The members of a kings caste were thus found not only in his own kingdom but in other kingdoms as well. 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). 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). Since these were all status categories rather than clear- cut divisions, I have not considered them as constituting third-order divisions. 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). It used to have a panch (council of leaders) and sometimes also a headman (patel). That Rajputs were one of the divisions, if not the only division of the first-order, not having further divisions, has already been mentioned. While some of the divisions of a lower order might be the result of fission, some others might be a result of fusion. The pattern of inter-divisional marriages shows how the idea of free marriage, which guides most of the inter-caste marriages, is restricted, modified, and graded according to the traditional structure of caste divisions. Fortunately, they have now started writing about it (see Rao 1974). They then spread to towns in the homeland and among all castes. 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. 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. The Kanbis (now called Patidars) had five divisions: Leva, Kadya, Anjana, Bhakta, and Matia. Systematic because castes exist and are like each other in being different (298). In 1920 there were 2 Mehta families living in New Jersey. so roamed around clueless. 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). There would be a wide measure of agreement with him on both these counts. I know some ekdas, and tads composed of only 150 to 200 households. r/ahmedabad From Mumbai. As for the size of other castes, I shall make mainly relative statements. Real Estate Software Dubai > blog > manvar surname caste in gujarat. 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. No one knows when and how they came into existence and what they meant socially. It owned corporate property, usually in the form of vadis (large buildings used for holding feasts and festivals, accommodating wedding guests, and holding meetings), huge utensils for cooking feasts, and money received as fees and fines. To take one sensitive area of purity/pollution behaviour, the concern for observance of rules of commensality has greatly declined not only in urban but also in rural areas. He stated: hereditary specialization together with hierarchical organization sinks into the background in East Africa (293). Toori. %PDF-1.7 Advances in manufacturing technologies flooded markets in India and abroad with cheap, mass-produced fabrics that Indian handlooms could no longer compete with. There are other sub-castes like Satpanthis, who are mainly centered in Kutch district and have some social customs akin to Muslims . 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. There was also another kind of feast, called bhandaro, where Brahmans belonging to a lesser number of divisions (say, all the few in a small town) were invited. 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. Till the establishment of democratic polity in 1947, hardly any caste association in Gujarat had manifest political functions. The bulk of the population was spread all over the villages as small landholders, tenants and labourers. The Khadayatas were divided into about 30 ekdas. So far we have considered first-order divisions with large and widely spread populations. 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. In 1931, their total population was more than 1,700,000, nearly one-fourth of the total population of Gujarat. The very low Brahmans such as Kayatias and Tapodhans were invited but made to eat separately from the rest of the Brahmans. 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. 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. Sometimes a division could even be a self-contained endogamous unit. 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. There was also a tendency among bachelors past marriageable age to establish liaisons with lower-caste women, which usually led the couple to flee and settle down in a distant village. [1], People of India Gujarat Volume XXI Part Three edited by R.B Lal, P.B.S.V Padmanabham, G Krishnan & M Azeez Mohideen pages 1126-1129, Last edited on 14 November 2022, at 23:04, Learn how and when to remove this template message, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vankar&oldid=1121933086, This page was last edited on 14 November 2022, at 23:04. In these divisions an increasing number of marriages are taking place against the grain of traditional hierarchy, i.e., girls of traditionally higher strata marry boys of traditionally lower strata. Far too many studies of changes in caste in modern India start with a general model of caste in traditional India which is in fact a model of caste in traditional rural India. Frequently, marriages were arranged in contravention of a particular rule after obtaining the permission of the council of leaders and paying a penalty in advance. Although the name of a Brahman or Vania division might be based on a place name, the division was not territorial in nature. Thus, while each second-order Koli division maintained its boundaries vis-a-vis other such divisions, each was linked with the Rajputs. Although caste was found in both village and town, did it possess any special characteristics in the latter? 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). In India Limbachiya is most frequent in: Maharashtra, where 70 percent reside, Gujarat . . Today majority of these community members are not engaged in their ancestral weaving occupation still some population of these community contribute themselves in traditional handloom weaving of famous Patola of Patan, Kachchh shawl of Bhujodi in Kutch, Gharchola and Crotchet of Jamnagar, Zari of Surat, Mashroo of Patan and Mandvi in Kutch, Bandhani of Jamnagar, Anjar and Bhuj, Motif, Leheria, Dhamakda and Ajrak, Nagri sari, Tangaliya Shawl, Dhurrie, Kediyu, Heer Bharat, Abhala, Phento and art of Gudri. For example, the Patanwadia population was spread continuously from the Patan area to central Gujarat, and the Talapada population from central Gujarat to Pal. A large proportion, if not the whole, of the population of many of such divisions lived in towns. 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. 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. Castes which did not sit together at public feasts, let alone at meals in homes, only 15 or 20 years ago, now freely sit together even at meals in homes. We shall return to this issue later. It is argued that the various welfare programmes of each caste association, such as provision of medical facilities, scholarships and jobs for caste members contribute, in however small a way, to the solution of the nations problems. Patidars or Patels claim themselves to be descendants of Lord Ram. //]]>. 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. 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. Apparently this upper boundary of the division was sharp and clear, especially when we remember that many of these royal families practised polygyny and female infanticide until middle of the 19th century (see Plunkett 1973; Viswa Nath 1969, 1976). All this trade encouraged development of trading and commercial towns in the rest of Gujarat, even in the highland area. 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. Our analysis of caste in towns has shown how it differed significantly from that in villages. Many of these names were also based on place names. The most important of them was the Koli division, which was, the largest division and mainly included small landholders, tenants and labourers. At the other end were castes in which the principle of division had free play and the role of the principle of hierarchy was limited. Tirgaar, Tirbanda. 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. 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). x[? -E$nvU 4V6_}\]}/yOu__}ww7oz[_z~?=|nNT=|qq{\//]/Ft>_tV}gjjn#TfOus_?~>/GbKc.>^\eu{[GE_>'x?M5i16|B;=}-)$G&w5uvb~o:3r3v GL3or}|Y~?3s_hO?qWWpn|1>9WS3^:wTU3bN{tz;T_}so/R95iLc_6Oo_'W7y; 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. 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. endobj Some of the other such divisions were Kathi, Dubla, Rabari, Bharwad, Mer (see Trivedi 1961), Vaghri, Machhi, Senwa, Vanzara, and Kharwa. For example, there was considerable ambiguity about the status of Anavils. <> This list may not reflect recent changes. 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. Sometimes a division corresponding to a division among Brahmans and Vanias was found in a third first-order division also. If the marriage took place within the Vania fold but outside the tad or ekda, as the case may be, the punishment varied according to the social distance between the tads or ekdas of the bride and the groom. 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. 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.). This list may not reflect recent changes. The population of certain first-order divisions lived mainly in villages. 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. 2 0 obj The castes pervaded by hierarchy and hypergamy had large populations spread evenly from village to village and frequently also from village to town over a large area. Many of them became the norm-setting elite for Gujaratis in the homeland. The two areas merge gradually, and my field work covered most of the spectrum. But the hypergamous tendency was so powerful that each such endogamous unit could not be perfectly endogamous even at the height of its integration. 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. More of them were located in the plains, than in the bordering highlands. Reference to weaving and spinning materials is found in the Vedic Literature. The ekdas have not yet lost their identities. 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. Since Vankars were involved in production and business they were known as Nana Mahajans or small merchants. 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. This stratum among the Kanbis coped with the problem mainly by practising remarriage of widows and divorced women. We shall return later to a consideration of this problem. However, it is well known that there were subtle arguments regarding the status of certain royal families being Rajput. Vankar is described as a caste as well as a community. window.__mirage2 = {petok:"uGhRfiuY26l2oZgRlfZRFSp4BWPIIt7Gh61sQC1XrRU-3600-0"}; This does not, however, help describe caste divisions adequately. 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. Visited Ahmedabad for the weekend to meet a friend but her family had a medical emergency. The tad thus represented the fourth and last order of caste divisions. hu)_EYUT?:fX:vOR,4g4ce{\(wcUO %OW-Knj|qV]_)1?@{^ $:0ZY\fpg7J~Q~pHaMVSP5bLC}6+zwgv;f f^v4[|vug+vO0h t7QNP}EYm+X[x~;O|z5tq ]-39aa{g-u5n:a56&`3y.f-a@a"0v-a@$%`Z]]Iqb56aR0g 30V9EM%K"#|6uN? =O|8alCcs):~AC<5 q|om57/|Sgc}2c#)U~WL}%T]s> z. Pages in category "Social groups of Gujarat" The following 157 pages are in this category, out of 157 total. Moreover, a single division belonging to any one of the orders may have more than one association, and an association may be uni-purpose or multi-purpose. Each ekda or gol was composed of a definite number of families living in certain villages and/or towns. 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. 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.). ), as contrasted with the horizontal unity of the caste. Significantly, a large number of social thinkers and workers who propagated against the hierarchical features of caste came from urban centres. Also, the horizontal spread of a caste rarely coincided with the territorial boundaries of a political authority. While we can find historical information about the formation of ekdas and tads there are only myths about the formation of the numerous second-order divisions. 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). Hindu society is usually described as divided into a number of castes the boundaries of which are maintained by the rule of caste endogamy. In any case, the population of any large caste was found in many kingdoms. The incidence of exchange marriages and of bachelors in the lowest stratum among the Anavils also was high. Both Borradaile and Campbell were probably mixing up small endogamous units of various kinds. 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. Kolis were the largest first-order division in Gujarat. One important first-order division, namely, Rajput, does not seem to have had any second-order division at all. 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. Srinivas has called the unity of the village manifested in these interrelations the vertical unity of the village (1952: 31f. The Brahmans were divided into such divisions as Audich, Bhargav, Disawal, Khadayata, Khedawal, Mewada, Modh, Nagar, Shrigaud, Shrimali, Valam, Vayada, and Zarola. 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. Another clearly visible change in caste in Gujarat is the emergence of caste associations. There was an emphasis on being different and separate rather than on being higher and lower. 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. They were found in almost every village in plains Gujarat and in many villages in Saurashtra and Kachchh. 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. Copyright 10. The fact that Mahatma Gandhi came from a small third-order division in the Modh Vania division in a town in Saurashtra does not seem to be an accident. The boundaries of caste division were fairly clear in the village community. Many primarily rural castes, such as Kolisthe largest castehave remained predominantly rural even today. I have discussed above caste divisions in Gujarat mainly in the past, roughly in the middle of the 19th century. When divisions are found within a jati, the word sub-jati or sub-caste is used. Hypergamy tended to be associated with this hierarchy. The Kolis in such an area may not even be concerned about a second-order divisional name and may be known simply as Kolis. 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. These prefixes Visa and Dasa, were generally understood to be derived from the words for the numbers 20 (vis) and 10 (das), which suggested a descending order of status, but there is no definite evidence of such hierarchy in action. 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 guiding ideas were samaj sudharo (social reform) and samaj seva (social service). There were also a number of first-order divisions, mainly of artisans, craftsmen and specialized servants, with small populations. While almost all the social structures and institutions which existed in villagesreligion, caste, family, and so onalso existed in towns, we should not assume that their character was the same. A recent tendency in sociological literature is to consider jatis as castes. Their origin myth enshrined in their caste purana also showed them to be originally non-Brahman. Weavers became beggars, manufacturing collapsed and the last 2000 years of Indian textile industry was knocked down. Leva Kanbis, numbering 400,000 to 500,000 m 1931, were the traditional agricultural caste of central Gujarat. 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 urban centres in both the areas, it is hardly necessary to mention, are nucleated settlements populated by numerous caste and religious groups. 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. www.opendialoguemediations.com. 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. 3 0 obj For example, there were two ekdas, each with a large section resident in a large town and small sections resident in two or three neighbouring small towns. The degree of contravention involved in an inter-divisional marriage, however, depends upon the order (i.e., first-order, second-order, etc.) 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 solve the problem if there are four orders of divisions of the kind found in Gujarat. In effect, the Vania population in a large town like Ahmedabad could have a considerable number of small endogamous units of the third or the fourth order, each with its entire population living and marrying within the town itself. (surname) Me caste; Mer (community) Meta Qureshi; Mistri caste; Miyana (community) Modh; Motisar (caste) Multani Lohar; Muslim Wagher; Mutwa; N . Usually, these divisions were distinguished from one another by prohibition of what people called roti vyavahar (bread, i.e., food transactions) as well as beti vyavahar (daughter, i.e., marital transactions). This was because political authorities were hierarchized from little kingdom to empire and the boundaries of political authorities kept changing. In the second kind of area, indigenous Kolis live side-by-side with immigrant Kolis from an adjoining area. 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. 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. 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.). The main reason was that Anavils did not practise priesthood as a traditional occupation, nor were they involved in traditional Sanskrit learning.