Finally, while an increasing number of marriages are taking place even across the boundaries of first-order divisions, as for example, between Brahmans and Vanias, and between Vanias and Patidars, such marriages even now form an extremely small proportion of the total number of marriages. If the Varna divisions are taken into account, then this would add one more order to the four orders of caste divisions considered above. 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. Advances in manufacturing technologies flooded markets in India and abroad with cheap, mass-produced fabrics that Indian handlooms could no longer compete with. 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. Most associations continue to retain their non-political character. 100 Most Popular Indian Last Names Or SurnamesWhy Don't Tamil People Have Last Names?-----A . 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. Jun 12, 2022. The two former ekdas continued to exist with diminished strength. I have not yet come across an area where Kolis from three or more different areas live together, excepting modern, large towns and cities. The tribal groups in the highland area, such as the Bhils and Naikdas, also did not have any urban component. The lowest stratum in all the three divisions had to face the problem of scarcity of brides. All associations originated in large towns, are more active in towns than in villages, and are led by prominent members in towns. They were thus not of the same status as most other second-order divisions among Brahmans. 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. Privacy Policy 8. 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. This tendency reaches its culmination in the world of Dumont. The members of a kings caste were thus found not only in his own kingdom but in other kingdoms as well. However, on the basis of the meagre information I have, I am able to make a few points. In 1931, their total population was more than 1,700,000, nearly one-fourth of the total population of Gujarat. These and many other artisans, craftsmen and servants reflected the special life-style of the town. Systematic because castes exist and are like each other in being different (298). Thus, while each second-order Koli division maintained its boundaries vis-a-vis other such divisions, each was linked with the Rajputs. Category:Social groups of Gujarat - Wikipedia According to the Rajputs I know in central Gujarat, the highest stratum among them consisted of the royal families of large and powerful kingdoms in Gujarat and neighbouring Rajasthan, such as those of Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Kachchh, Porbandar, Bikaner, Idar, Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Udaipur, and so on. 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. Until recently, sociologists and anthropologists described Indian society as though it had no urban component in the past. ADVERTISEMENTS: Division and Hierarchy: An Overview of Caste in Gujarat! 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. The degree of contravention is highest if the couple belong to two different first-order divisions. 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. The hierarchy, however, was very gradual and lacked sharpness. No sooner had the village studies begun that their limitations and the need for studying caste in its horizontal dimension were realized. I have bits and pieces of information about relations between a considerable numbers of other lower-order divisions in their respective higher-order divisions. 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). In all there were thirty to forty such divisions. He stated: hereditary specialization together with hierarchical organization sinks into the background in East Africa (293). 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.). They have been grouped in Vaishya category of Varna system. Which caste is Vaya surname? : r/gujarat - reddit.com 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. Real Estate Software Dubai > blog > manvar surname caste in gujarat. No one knows when and how they came into existence and what they meant socially. I know some ekdas, and tads composed of only 150 to 200 households. We shall return to the Rajput-Koli relationship when we consider the Kolis in detail. 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). 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. There is a patterned widening of the connubial field along an area chalked out historically. The Hindu population of Gujarat was divided first of all into what I have called caste divisions of the first order. <>/ExtGState<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/Annots[ 9 0 R] /MediaBox[ 0 0 612 792] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> The Kolis in such an area may not even be concerned about a second-order divisional name and may be known simply as Kolis. Leva Kanbis, numbering 400,000 to 500,000 m 1931, were the traditional agricultural caste of central Gujarat. A first-order division could be further divided into two or more second-order divisions. 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. 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. The bulk of the population was spread all over the villages as small landholders, tenants and labourers. 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. Image Guidelines 5. A comment on the sociology of urban India would, therefore, be in order before we go ahead with the discussion of caste divisions. %PDF-1.7 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. www.opendialoguemediations.com. 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. [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. 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. 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. Since Vankars were involved in production and business they were known as Nana Mahajans or small merchants. 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. I have discussed above caste divisions in Gujarat mainly in the past, roughly in the middle of the 19th century. In 1920 there were 2 Mehta families living in New Jersey. The Hindu and Muslim kingdoms in Gujarat during the medieval period had, of course, their capital towns, at first Patan and then Ahmedabad. The urban centres in both the areas, it is hardly necessary to mention, are nucleated settlements populated by numerous caste and religious groups. . 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. State Id State Name Castecode Caste Subcaste 4 GUJARAT 4001 AHIR SORATHA 4 GUJARAT 4002 AHIR 4 GUJARAT 4003 ANSARI 4 GUJARAT 4004 ANVIL BRAHMIN 4 GUJARAT 4005 ATIT BAYAJI BAKSHI PANCH 4 GUJARAT 4006 BAJANIYA 4 GUJARAT 4007 BAJIR . A recent tendency in sociological literature is to consider jatis as castes. Although the number of inter-ekda marriages has been increasing, even now the majority of marriages take place within an ekda. I do not, however, have sufficient knowledge of the latter and shall, therefore, confine myself mainly to Rajputs in Gujarat. They took away offerings made to Shiva, which was considered extremely degrading. Many primarily rural castes, such as Kolisthe largest castehave remained predominantly rural even today. 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 migration of the Kolis of north Gujarat into central Gujarat and those of the latter into eastern Gujarat was a process of slow drift from one village to another over a period of time. 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 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. There would be a wide measure of agreement with him on both these counts. 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. As could be expected, there were marriages between fairly close kin, resulting in many overlapping relationships, in such an endogamous unit. The most Mehta families were found in USA in 1920. Traditionally, the Brahman division was supposed to provide the priests for the corresponding divisions. All this trade encouraged development of trading and commercial towns in the rest of Gujarat, even in the highland area. In contrast, there were horizontal units, the internal hierarchy and hypergamy of which were restricted to some extent by the formation of small endogamous units and which had discernible boundaries at the lowest level. 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. We shall return to this issue later. // 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. Kolis were the largest first-order division in Gujarat. In each of these three divisions the top stratum was clear. 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. Many of them claimed that they were Brahmans but this claim was not accepted by most established Brahmans. Division and Hierarchy: An Overview of Caste in Gujarat! 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. The chiefly families constituted a tiny proportion of the total population of any second-order division among the Kolis. In the meanwhile, it is important to note that there does not seem to have been any attempt to form small endogamous units (ekdas, gols) at any level among the Rajputs unlike attempts made as we shall see, among some other hypergamous castes in Gujarat. 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. They are described by the ruling elite as robbers, dacoits, marauders, predators and the like. Unfortunately, although the Kolis are an important element in Gujarats population, their earlier ethnography is confusing, and there is hardly any modern, systematic, anthropological, sociological or historical study, so that the confusion continues to persist. As regards the rest of Gujarat, I have used various sources: my work on the caste of genealogists and mythographys and on the early 19th century village records; the available ethnographic, historical and other literature; and observations made while living m Gujarat. 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. To have a meaningful understanding of the system of caste divisions, there is no alternative but to understand the significance of each order of division and particularly the nature of their boundaries and maintenance mechanisms. 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). Further, the castes there are unable to take cognizance of each other in terms of hierarchy or of occupation, and it is in this situation that they can be said to exist by virtue of their differences (296) it is the systematic recognition of difference which is most apparent. * List of Scheduled Tribes in Gujarat; A. . Both were recognized as Brahman but as degraded ones. It seems the highland Bhils (and possibly also other tribes) provided brides to lower Rajputs in Gujarat. 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. Hence started farming and small scale business in the British Raj to thrive better conditions ahead to maintain their livelihood. There was another kind of ambiguity about the Brahman status or two other divisionsKayatia and Tapodhan. The advance made in recent years is limited and much more needs to be done. Simultaneously, there is gradual decline in the strength of the principle of hierarchy, particularly of ritual hierarchy expressed in purity and pollution. The handloom weavers of Gujarat, Maharastra and Bengal produced and exported some of the world's most desirable fabrics. In any case, castes are not likely to cease to be castes in the consciousness of people in the foreseeable future. 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. The unit might possess some other corporate characteristics also. In the second-order divisions of the Vanias the small endogamous units functioned more effectively and lasted longer: although the hypergamous tendency did exist particularly between the rural and the urban sections in a unit, it had restricted play. Although they claimed to be Brahman they were closely associated with agriculture. 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. Some of the other such divisions were Kathi, Dubla, Rabari, Bharwad, Mer (see Trivedi 1961), Vaghri, Machhi, Senwa, Vanzara, and Kharwa. While some of the divisions of a lower order might be the result of fission, some others might be a result of fusion. For example, the Patanwadia population was spread continuously from the Patan area to central Gujarat, and the Talapada population from central Gujarat to Pal. 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). 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. 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. Indian textiles especially of Gujarat have been praised in several accounts by explorers and historians, from Megasthenes to Herodotus. 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. Let us now return to a consideration of the first-order divisions with subdivisions going down to the third or the fourth order. 92. Frequently, social divisions were neatly expressed in street names. 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. 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. 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). Broach, Cambay and Surat were the largest, but there were also a number of smaller ones. 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. 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 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. 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. There are thus a few excellent studies of castes as horizontal units. We have analyzed the internal structure of two first-order divisions, Rajput and Anavil, which did not have any second-order divisions, and of several second-order divisionsTalapada and Pardeshi Koli, Khedawal Brahman, and Leva Kanbiwhich did not have any third-order divisions. These linkages played an important role in the traditional social structure as well as in the processes of change in modern India. The tad thus represented the fourth and last order of caste divisions. Report a Violation, Caste Stratification: Changing Rural Caste Stratification, Caste in Rural India: Specificities of Caste in Rural Society. Koli Patels are recognised as a Other Backward Class caste by Government of Gujarat. Homo Hierarchicus. There were about three hundred divisions of this order in the region as a whole. This was dramatized in many towns at the mahajan (guild) feasts when all the members of the guild of traders would eat together. ), as contrasted with the horizontal unity of the caste. 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. 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. It is not claimed that separation, or even repulsion, may not be present somewhere as an independent factor (1972: 346,n.55b). Although caste was found in both village and town, did it possess any special characteristics in the latter? 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. The degree of contravention involved in an inter-divisional marriage, however, depends upon the order (i.e., first-order, second-order, etc.) In the plains, therefore, every village had one or more towns in its vicinity. 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.