window.__mirage2 = {petok:"uGhRfiuY26l2oZgRlfZRFSp4BWPIIt7Gh61sQC1XrRU-3600-0"}; Kolis were the largest first-order division in Gujarat. stream The two areas merge gradually, and my field work covered most of the spectrum. 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. : 11-15, 57-75). The Chumvalias and Patanwadias migrated possibly from the same tract and continued to belong to the same horizontal unit after migration. 1 0 obj 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. The tribal groups in the highland area, such as the Bhils and Naikdas, also did not have any urban component. The indigenous Kolis in the highland area of Pal in eastern Gujarat were called Palia, but there was another smaller population of KoUs, who were locally called Baria but were actually Talapada immigrants from central Gujarat. Advances in manufacturing technologies flooded markets in India and abroad with cheap, mass-produced fabrics that Indian handlooms could no longer compete with. The most important of them was the Koli division, which was, the largest division and mainly included small landholders, tenants and labourers. 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. 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. That the role of the two principles could vary at different levels within a first-order division has also been seen. 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. 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. It used to have a panch (council of leaders) and sometimes also a headman (patel). During Mughal Empire India was manufacturing 27% of world's textile and Gujarati weavers dominated along with Bengali weavers in Indian textile trade industry overseas. 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. In any case, castes are not likely to cease to be castes in the consciousness of people in the foreseeable future. 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. Indian textiles especially of Gujarat have been praised in several accounts by explorers and historians, from Megasthenes to Herodotus. 92. 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. ), as contrasted with the horizontal unity of the caste. This was about 22% of all the recorded Mehta's in USA. 4 GUJARAT 4273 SHODA . For example, just as there was a Shrimali division among Sonis (goldsmiths). Third, although two or more new endogamous units came into existence and marriage between them was forbidden thereafter, a number of pre-existing kinship and affinal relationships continued to be operative between them. The bulk of the population was spread all over the villages as small landholders, tenants and labourers. They then spread to towns in the homeland and among all castes. 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. Firstly, there were divisions whose population was found almost entirely in towns. A large proportion, if not the whole, of the population of many of such divisions lived in towns. Once the claim was accepted at either level, hypergamous marriage was possible. 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. The population of certain first-order divisions lived mainly in villages. A block printed and resist-dyed fabric, whose origin is from Gujarat was found in the tombs of Fostat, Egypt. Copyright 10. 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. There is enormous literature on these caste divisions from about the middle of the 19th century which includes census reports, gazetteers, [] No one knows when and how they came into existence and what they meant socially. 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. 3 0 obj All associations originated in large towns, are more active in towns than in villages, and are led by prominent members in towns. Nor do I claim to know the whole of Gujarat. While fission did occur, fusion could also occur. endobj The understanding of changes in caste is not likely to be advanced by clubbing such diverse groups together under the rubric of ethnic group. 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. They were thus not of the same status as most other second-order divisions among Brahmans. Systematic study of small caste divisions in villages as well as in towns still awaits the attention of sociologists and anthropologists. 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. 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. Vankar is described as a caste as well as a community. Homo Hierarchicus. In 1920 there were 2 Mehta families living in New Jersey. While some hypergamous and hierarchical tendency, however weak, did exist between tads within an ekda and between ekdas within a second- order division, it was practically non-existent among the forty or so second-order divisions, such as Modh, Porwad, Shrimali, Khadayata and so on, among the Vanias. 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. . The Kanbis (now called Patidars) had five divisions: Leva, Kadya, Anjana, Bhakta, and Matia. Gujarat did not have anything like the non-Brahmin movement of South India and Maharashtra before 1947. 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. If the Varna divisions are taken into account, then this would add one more order to the four orders of caste divisions considered above. Since these were all status categories rather than clear- cut divisions, I have not considered them as constituting third-order divisions. Frequently, the urban population of such a division performed more specialized functions than did the rural one. 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. The emphasis on being different and separate rather than on being higher and lower was even more marked in the relationship among the forty or so second-order divisions. The essential idea in the category was power, and anybody who wielded powereither as king or as dominant group in a rural (even tribal) areacould claim to be Rajput. 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 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. 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 were about three hundred divisions of this order in the region as a whole. In the second-order divisions of the Leva Kanbis, the Anavils and the Khedawals, while the hypergamous tendency was strong, attempts were continually made to form small endogamous units: although the strength of the hypergamous tendency did not allow these units to function effectively, they nevertheless checked its free play to some extent. The three trading castes of Vania, Lohana and Bhatia were mainly urban. If the first-order divisions are called jatis and castes, the second-order divisions would be called sub-jatis or sub-castes. For example, there was considerable ambiguity about the status of Anavils. New Jersey had the highest population of Mehta families in 1920. Kayatias and Tapodhans were considered such low Brahmans that even some non-Brahman castes did not accept food and water from them. Although my knowledge is fragmentary, I thought it was worthwhile to put together the bits and pieces for the region as a whole. After the commercial revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, Gujarat had a large number of tradition towns on its long sea-coast. Together they provide a slice of Gujarati society from the sea- coast to the bordering highlands. In other words, it did not involve a big jump from one place to another distant place. Frequently, social divisions were neatly expressed in street names. 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 latter continued to be the provincial capital during Mughal rule. Both were recognized as Brahman but as degraded ones. Visited Ahmedabad for the weekend to meet a friend but her family had a medical emergency. This was because political authorities were hierarchized from little kingdom to empire and the boundaries of political authorities kept changing. 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 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. 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. Since Rajput as a caste occurred all over northern, central and western India (literally, it means rulers son, ruling son), the discussion of Rajputs in Gujarat will inevitably draw us into their relationship with Rajputs in other regions. 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. The two former ekdas continued to exist with diminished strength. Radhvanaj Rajputs were clearly distinguished from, and ranked much above local Kolis. They adopted Rajput customs and traditions, claimed Rajput status, and gave daughters in marriage to Rajputs in the lower rungs of Rajput hierarchy. 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. 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. The decline was further accelerated by the industrial revolution. 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. However, on the basis of the meagre information I have, I am able to make a few points. Both Borradaile and Campbell were probably mixing up small endogamous units of various kinds. Traditionally, the Brahman division was supposed to provide the priests for the corresponding divisions. Thus, the result was the spread of the population of a caste division towards its fringes. Plagiarism Prevention 4. Image Guidelines 5. That Rajputs were one of the divisions, if not the only division of the first-order, not having further divisions, has already been mentioned. The chiefly families constituted a tiny proportion of the total population of any second-order division among the Kolis. 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. The advance made in recent years is limited and much more needs to be done. They wrote about the traditional Indian village, but not about the traditional Indian town. In some parts of Gujarat they formed 30 to 35 per cent of the population. In a paper on Caste among Gujaratis in East Africa, Pocock (1957b) raised pointedly the issue of the relative importance of the principles of division (he called it difference) and hierarchy. The handloom weavers of Gujarat, Maharastra and Bengal produced and exported some of the world's most desirable fabrics. Here, usually, what mattered was the first-order division, as for example Brahman, Vania, Rajput, Kanbi, carpenter, barber, leather-worker, and so on. rogers outage brampton today; levelland, tx obituaries. Although they claimed to be Brahman they were closely associated with agriculture. The main point is that we do not completely lose sight of the lowest boundary among these three hypergamous divisions as we do among the Rajputs. 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. I hope to show in this paper how the principle of division is also a primary principle competing with the principle of hierarchy and having important implications for Indian society and culture. 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. 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. The members of a kings caste were thus found not only in his own kingdom but in other kingdoms as well. He stated: hereditary specialization together with hierarchical organization sinks into the background in East Africa (293). As Ghurye pointed out long ago, slow consolidation of the smaller castes into larger ones would lead to three or four large groups being solidly organized for pushing the interests of each even at the cost of the others. 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. There were Brahman and Vania divisions of the same name, the myths about both of them were covered by a single text. 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. Thus, while each second-order Koli division maintained its boundaries vis-a-vis other such divisions, each was linked with the Rajputs. This category has the following 18 subcategories, out of 18 total. Sometimes castes are described as becoming ethnic groups in modern India, particularly in urban India. Weavers became beggars, manufacturing collapsed and the last 2000 years of Indian textile industry was knocked down. 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. Before publishing your articles on this site, please read the following pages: 1. 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. Sometimes a division could even be a self-contained endogamous unit. 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. To illustrate, among the Khadayata or Modh Vanias, an increasing number of marriages take place between two or more tads within an ekda. Until recently, sociologists and anthropologists described Indian society as though it had no urban component in the past. 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. professor melissa murray. Another clearly visible change in caste in Gujarat is the emergence of caste associations. 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. 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. They have been grouped in Vaishya category of Varna system. This does not solve the problem if there are four orders of divisions of the kind found in Gujarat. Let me illustrate briefly. 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 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. 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.). Early industrial labour was also drawn mainly from the urban artisan and servant castes. 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. Sindhollu, Chindollu. Some of the other such divisions were Kathi, Dubla, Rabari, Bharwad, Mer (see Trivedi 1961), Vaghri, Machhi, Senwa, Vanzara, and Kharwa. 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. (Frequently, such models are constructed a priori rather than based on historical evidence, but that is another story). As for the size of other castes, I shall make mainly relative statements. to which the divisions of the marrying couple belong. 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). Fortunately, they have now started writing about it (see Rao 1974). Dowry not only continues to be a symbol of status in the new hierarchy but is gradually replacing bride price wherever it existed, and dowry amounts are now reaching astronomical heights. In many villages in Gujarat, particularly in larger villages, one or two first-order divisions would be represented by more than one second-order division. The freedom struggle brought the Indian handloom sector back to the fore, with Mahatma Gandhi spearheading the Swadeshi cause. Prohibited Content 3. 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. 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.

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