manvar surname caste in gujarat manvar surname caste in gujarat

The Rajput links entailed the spread of Rajput culture in each Koli division and provided a certain cultural homogeneity to all the divisions. A large number of priestly, artisan and service castes also lived in both villages and towns: Bramhans, barbers, carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, leather-workers, scavenges, water-carriers, palanquin-bearers, and so on. 91. There are other sub-castes like Satpanthis, who are mainly centered in Kutch district and have some social customs akin to Muslims . 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). Disclaimer 9. //]]>. Here, usually, what mattered was the first-order division, as for example Brahman, Vania, Rajput, Kanbi, carpenter, barber, leather-worker, and so on. 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. The arrival of the East India Company, however sounded the death knell for the Indian textile industry. 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. Among the first-order divisions with subdivisions going down to the fourth order, there are associations for divisions of all the orders. 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. 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. 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.). Visited Ahmedabad for the weekend to meet a friend but her family had a medical emergency. Sometimes a division corresponding to a division among Brahmans and Vanias was found in a third first-order division also. <> They wrote about the traditional Indian village, but not about the traditional Indian town. 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 urban centres in both the areas, it is hardly necessary to mention, are nucleated settlements populated by numerous caste and religious groups. It used to have a panch (council of leaders) and sometimes also a headman (patel). The small endogamous units, on the other hand, did not practise either. 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 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. Toori. 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. Real Estate Software Dubai > blog > manvar surname caste in gujarat. 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. I shall first provide an analysis of caste in the past roughly during the middle of the 19th century, and then deal with changes in the modern times. It is not claimed that separation, or even repulsion, may not be present somewhere as an independent factor (1972: 346,n.55b). 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. so roamed around clueless. The Khedawals, numbering 15,000 to 20,000 in 1931 were basically priests but many of them were also landowners, government officials, and traders. 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. Gujarat did not have anything like the non-Brahmin movement of South India and Maharashtra before 1947. %PDF-1.7 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. 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. There was an emphasis on being different and separate rather than on being higher and lower. There was also a third category called Pancha, derived from the word punch (meaning 5) and denoting extremely low Vania. However, it is well known that there were subtle arguments regarding the status of certain royal families being Rajput. Caste associations have been formed on the lines of caste divisions. There were about three hundred divisions of this order in the region as a whole. No one knows when and how they came into existence and what they meant socially. : 11-15, 57-75). I will not discuss the present situation in detail but indicate briefly how the above discussion could be useful for understanding a few important changes in modern times. 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. Image Guidelines 5. There was another kind of ambiguity about the Brahman status or two other divisionsKayatia and Tapodhan. Content Filtrations 6. Vankar is described as a caste as well as a community. 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. In the plains, therefore, every village had one or more towns in its vicinity. 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. But many Rajput men of Radhvanaj got wives from people in distant villages who were recognized there as Kolisthose Kolis who had more land and power than the generality of Kolis had tried to acquire some of the traditional Rajput symbols in dress manners and customs and had been claiming to be Rajputs. 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. The number of tads in an ekda or go I might be two or more, and each of them might be an endogamous units. The lowest stratum in all the three divisions had to face the problem of scarcity of brides. One important first-order division, namely, Rajput, does not seem to have had any second-order division at all. Most associations continue to retain their non-political character. 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. This does not, however, help describe caste divisions adequately. The tribal groups in the highland area, such as the Bhils and Naikdas, also did not have any urban component. 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. In some parts of Gujarat they formed 30 to 35 per cent of the population. 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. Let us now return to a consideration of the first-order divisions with subdivisions going down to the third or the fourth order. 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. Castes having continuous internal hierarchy and lacking effective small endogamous units, such as Rajputs, Leva Kanbis, Anavils and Khedawals, do not have active associations for lower-order divisions. The two together formed a single complex of continental dimension. 100 Most Popular Indian Last Names Or SurnamesWhy Don't Tamil People Have Last Names?-----A . Advances in manufacturing technologies flooded markets in India and abroad with cheap, mass-produced fabrics that Indian handlooms could no longer compete with. Moreover, the king himself belonged to some caste (not just to the Kshatriya Varna) and frequently a number of kings belonged to the same caste (e.g., Rajput). 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. A first-order division could be further divided into two or more second-order divisions. The existence of flexibility at both the levels was made possible by the flexibility of the category Rajput. The hierarchy, however, was very gradual and lacked sharpness. They adopted Rajput customs and traditions, claimed Rajput status, and gave daughters in marriage to Rajputs in the lower rungs of Rajput hierarchy. 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. The decline was further accelerated by the industrial revolution. (Frequently, such models are constructed a priori rather than based on historical evidence, but that is another story). What I am trying to point out, however, is that greater emphasis on division (Pococks difference, Dumonts separation. 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. Since after expansion of British textile markets and decline of Indian textile industry Vankars suffered a lot. 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. 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. 3 0 obj www.opendialoguemediations.com. Even the archaeological surveys and studies have indicated that the people of Dholavira, Surkotada. Content Guidelines 2. 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. 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. 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. 3.8K subscribers in the gujarat community. 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. Early industrial labour was also drawn mainly from the urban artisan and servant castes. 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. 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. Although the number of inter-ekda marriages has been increasing, even now the majority of marriages take place within an ekda. Frequently, The ekdas or gols were each divided into groups called tads (split). They worked not only as high priests but also as bureaucrats. Most inter-divisional marriages take place between boys and girls belonging to the lowest order in the structure of divisions. 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. Radhvanaj Rajputs were clearly distinguished from, and ranked much above local Kolis. 1 0 obj 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). 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. Frequently, each such unit had a patron deity, housed in a large shrine, with elaborate arrangements for its ownership. 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 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. They were found in almost every village in plains Gujarat and in many villages in Saurashtra and Kachchh. Systematic because castes exist and are like each other in being different (298). The latter continued to be the provincial capital during Mughal rule. He stated: hereditary specialization together with hierarchical organization sinks into the background in East Africa (293). window.__mirage2 = {petok:"uGhRfiuY26l2oZgRlfZRFSp4BWPIIt7Gh61sQC1XrRU-3600-0"}; The Vanias provide an example of such castes. The hypergamous tendency was never as sharp, pervasive and regular among the Vania divisions as among the Rajputs, Leva Kanbis, Anavils and Khedawals. I know some ekdas, and tads composed of only 150 to 200 households. to which the divisions of the marrying couple belong. All this trade encouraged development of trading and commercial towns in the rest of Gujarat, even in the highland area. Report a Violation, Caste Stratification: Changing Rural Caste Stratification, Caste in Rural India: Specificities of Caste in Rural Society. Leva Sheri and Kadva Sheri, named after the two major second-order divisions among the Kanbis. Both were recognized as Brahman but as degraded ones. 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. We have seen how one second-order division among Brahmans, namely, Khedawal, was marked by continuous internal hierarchy and strong emphasis on hypergamy on the one hand and by absence of effective small endogamous units on the other. It is possible that there were a few divisions each confined to just one large city and, therefore, not having the horizontal dimension at all. 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. Patidars or Patels claim themselves to be descendants of Lord Ram. 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. They have been grouped in Vaishya category of Varna system. For example, all Vania divisions were divided into a number of ekdas or gols. manvar surname caste in gujarat. 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. Castes pervaded by divisive tendencies had small populations confined to small areas separated from each other by considerable gaps. Till the establishment of democratic polity in 1947, hardly any caste association in Gujarat had manifest political functions. The most important example of primarily political caste association is the Gujarat Kshatriya Sabha. 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. Reference to weaving and spinning materials is found in the Vedic Literature. 4 0 obj Fortunately, they have now started writing about it (see Rao 1974). 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. 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).