manvar surname caste in gujarat

For example, the Patanwadia population was spread continuously from the Patan area to central Gujarat, and the Talapada population from central Gujarat to Pal. . The number of tads in an ekda or go I might be two or more, and each of them might be an endogamous units. Advances in manufacturing technologies flooded markets in India and abroad with cheap, mass-produced fabrics that Indian handlooms could no longer compete with. manvar surname caste in 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. 3 0 obj The advance made in recent years is limited and much more needs to be done. The small town sections therefore separated themselves from the respective large town sections and formed a new ekda. The two former ekdas continued to exist with diminished strength. A block printed and resist-dyed fabric, whose origin is from Gujarat was found in the tombs of Fostat, Egypt. What I am trying to point out, however, is that greater emphasis on division (Pococks difference, Dumonts separation. Division and Hierarchy: An Overview of Caste in Gujarat! 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. It seems the highland Bhils (and possibly also other tribes) provided brides to lower Rajputs in Gujarat. These marriage links do not seem to have allowed, among the Kolis, formation of well organized, small, endogamous units (ekadas, gols) as were found among some other castes. Content Guidelines 2. The village was a small community divided into a relatively small number of castes; the population of each caste was also small, sometimes only one or two households, with little possibility of existence of subdivisions; and there were intensive relationships of various kinds between the castes. 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 . Hypergamy tended to be associated with this hierarchy. There were about three hundred divisions of this order in the region as a whole. 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. There were Brahman and Vania divisions of the same name, the myths about both of them were covered by a single text. Radhvanaj Rajputs were clearly distinguished from, and ranked much above local Kolis. <>/Metadata 3086 0 R/ViewerPreferences 3087 0 R>> They were involved in agriculture in one way or another. 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. Roughly, while in the plains area villages are nucleated settlements, populated by numerous castes, in the highland area villages are dispersed settlements, populated by tribes and castes of tribal origin. These divisions have, however, been kept out of the present analysis for reasons which have become well known to students of Hindu society since the 1950s. I know some ekdas, and tads composed of only 150 to 200 households. If the first-order divisions are called jatis and castes, the second-order divisions would be called sub-jatis or sub-castes. Usually, the latter were distinguished from one another by prohibition. I have discussed above caste divisions in Gujarat mainly in the past, roughly in the middle of the 19th century. www.opendialoguemediations.com. 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. Many of them claimed that they were Brahmans but this claim was not accepted by most established Brahmans. 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. A new view of the whole, comprising the rural and the urban and the various orders of caste divisions, should be evolved. 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. The primarily rural and lower castes were the last to form associations and that too mainly after independence (1947). 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. When Mr. H. Borradaile in A.D. 1827 collected information regarding the customs of Hindus, no less than 207 castes which did not intermarry, were found in the city of Surat alone. It was also an extreme example of a division having a highly differentiated internal hierarchy and practising hypergamy as an accepted norm. 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. 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. For example, among the Vanias the most general rule was that a marriage of a boy could be arranged with any girl who was bhane khapati, i.e., with whom he was permitted to have commensal relations (roti vyavahar). The patterns of change in marriage and in caste associations are two of the many indications of the growing significance of the principle of division (or separation or difference) in caste in urban areas in Gujarat. The division had an elaborate internal hierarchy, with wealthy and powerful landlords and tax-farmers at the top and small landholders, tenants and labourers at the bottom. The Brahmans and Vanias seem to have had the largest number of divisions as mentioned earlier, about eighty in the former and about forty in the latter. Caste divisions of the first-order can be classified broadly into three categories. The guiding ideas were samaj sudharo (social reform) and samaj seva (social service). Since after expansion of British textile markets and decline of Indian textile industry Vankars suffered a lot. Indian textiles especially of Gujarat have been praised in several accounts by explorers and historians, from Megasthenes to Herodotus. 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. We shall return to the Rajput-Koli relationship when we consider the Kolis in detail. 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. 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 the plains, therefore, every village had one or more towns in its vicinity. 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. 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. Copyright 10. Indeed, a major achievement of Indian sociology during the last thirty years or so has been deeper understanding of caste in the village context in particular and of its hierarchical dimension in general. The prohibition of inter-division marriage was much more important than the rules of purity and pollution in the maintenance of boundaries between the lower-order divisions. This meant that he could marry a girl of any subdivision within the Vania division. Briefly, while the Varna model was significant in the total dynamics of the caste system to fit the numerous first-order divisions into the four-fold Varna model in any part of India is impossible, and, therefore, to consider varnas as caste divisions as such is meaningless. 92. Patidars or Patels claim themselves to be descendants of Lord Ram. There was apparently a close relation between a castes internal organization and the size and spatial distribution of its population. 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. //]]>. No sooner had the village studies begun that their limitations and the need for studying caste in its horizontal dimension were realized. Image Guidelines 5. 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. 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. In spite of them, however, sociologists and social anthropologists have not filled adequately the void left by the disappearance of caste from the census and the gazetteer. Frequently, the shift from emphasis on co-operation and hierarchy in the caste system to emphasis on division (or difference or separation) is described as shift from whole to parts, from system to elements, from structure to substance. Sometimes a division corresponding to a division among Brahmans and Vanias was found in a third first-order division also. Our analysis of caste in towns has shown how it differed significantly from that in villages. Kolis were the largest first-order division in Gujarat. Some of the other such divisions were Kathi, Dubla, Rabari, Bharwad, Mer (see Trivedi 1961), Vaghri, Machhi, Senwa, Vanzara, and Kharwa. The Vanias provide an example of such castes. 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. 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. In some parts of Gujarat they formed 30 to 35 per cent of the population. 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. 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. When divisions are found within a jati, the word sub-jati or sub-caste is used. The error is further compounded whenalthough this is less commonthe partial, rural model of traditional caste is compared with the present urban situation, and conclusions are drawn about overall change. The Rajputs, in association with Kolis, Bhils, and such other castes and tribes, provide an extreme example of such castes. One may say that there are now more hypogamous marriages, although another and perhaps a more realistic way of looking at the change would be that a new hierarchy is replacing the traditional one. Similarly, in Saurashtra, the Talapadas were distinguished from the Chumvalias, immigrants from the Chumval tract in north Gujarat. 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. Until recently, sociologists and anthropologists described Indian society as though it had no urban component in the past. Ideally, castes as horizontal units should he discussed with the help of population figures. In the case of some of them the small population was so dispersed that a division such as that of barbers, blacksmiths, or carpenters, would be represented by only one or two households in each village and by a significant number of households in towns. endobj The chiefly families constituted a tiny proportion of the total population of any second-order division among the Kolis. 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. Created Date: Nevertheless, a breakdown of the population of Gujarat into major religious, caste and tribal groups according to the census of 1931 is presented in the following table to give a rough idea of the size of at least some castes. The ekdas have not yet lost their identities. 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. What is really required for a comprehensive understanding is a comparison of traditional with modern caste in both rural and urban areas (including, to be sure, the rural-urban linkages). Pocock goes on to observe that diminution of emphasis upon hierarchy and increasing emphasis upon difference are features of caste in modern, particularly urban, India: there is a shift from the caste system to individual castes and this reflects the change that is taking place in India today (290). Village studies, as far as caste is a part of them, have been, there fore, concerned with the interrelations between sections of various castes in the local context. Many primarily rural castes, such as Kolisthe largest castehave remained predominantly rural even today. In any case, the population of any large caste was found in many kingdoms. Similarly, the Vanias were divided into such divisions as Disawal, Kapol, Khadayata, Lad, Modh, Nagar, Nima, Porwad, Shirmali, Vayada, and Zarola. The members of a kings caste were thus found not only in his own kingdom but in other kingdoms as well. 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. ADVERTISEMENTS: Division and Hierarchy: An Overview of Caste in Gujarat! A recent tendency in sociological literature is to consider jatis as castes. All Brahman divisions did not, however, have a corresponding Vania division. 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 handloom weavers of Gujarat, Maharastra and Bengal produced and exported some of the world's most desirable fabrics. Our analysis of the internal organization of caste divisions has shown considerable variation in the relative role of the principles of division and hierarchy. To illustrate, among the Khadayata or Modh Vanias, an increasing number of marriages take place between two or more tads within an ekda. Although I have not, during my limited field work, come across hypergamous marriages between Rajputs and Bhils, ethnographic reports and other literature frequently refer to such marriages (see, for example, Naik 1956: 18f; Nath I960. As soon as there is any change in . The very low Brahmans such as Kayatias and Tapodhans were invited but made to eat separately from the rest of the Brahmans. All of this information supports the point emerging from the above analysis, that frequently there was relatively little concern for ritual status between the second-order divisions within a first- order division than there was between the first-order divisions. It used to have a panch (council of leaders) and sometimes also a headman (patel). The boundaries of caste division were fairly clear in the village community. The migrants, many of whom came from heterogeneous urban centres of Gujarat, became part of an even more heterogeneous environment in Bombay. Co-residence of people, belonging to two or more divisions of a lower order within a higher order was, however, a prominent feature of towns and cities rather than of villages. Gujarat- A state in India. TOS 7. 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. 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 census reports provide such figures until 1931, but it is well known that these pose many problems for sociological analysis, most of which arise out of the nature of castes as horizontal units. 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.). Before publishing your articles on this site, please read the following pages: 1. There was also another important correlation. For example, all Vania divisions were divided into a number of ekdas or gols. No one knows when and how they came into existence and what they meant socially. As weaving is an art and forms one of the most important artisan community of India. 1 0 obj Thus, while each second-order Koli division maintained its boundaries vis-a-vis other such divisions, each was linked with the Rajputs. Data need to be collected over large areas by methods other than those used in village studies, castes need to be compared in the regional setting, and a new general approach, analytical framework, and conceptual apparatus need to be developed. 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. In all there were about eighty such divisions. Real Estate Software Dubai > blog > manvar surname caste in gujarat. In India Limbachiya is most frequent in: Maharashtra, where 70 percent reside, Gujarat . 2 0 obj 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. Frequently, The ekdas or gols were each divided into groups called tads (split). This reflects the high degree of divisiveness in castes in Gujarat. [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. Since these were all status categories rather than clear- cut divisions, I have not considered them as constituting third-order divisions. 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. The Rajput links entailed the spread of Rajput culture in each Koli division and provided a certain cultural homogeneity to all the divisions. Hindu society is usually described as divided into a number of castes the boundaries of which are maintained by the rule of caste endogamy. The idea of inter-caste marriage is, moreover, linked with the idea of creating such a society involves a compromise with, if not subtle negation of, the ideal. 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. 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. Firstly, there were divisions whose population was found almost entirely in towns. 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. Vankar is described as a caste as well as a community. 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. Besides the myths, the members of a second-order division, belonging to all ekdas, shared certain customs and institutions, including worship of a tutelary deity. This stratum among the Kanbis coped with the problem mainly by practising remarriage of widows and divorced women. Weavers became beggars, manufacturing collapsed and the last 2000 years of Indian textile industry was knocked down. : 11-15, 57-75). 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. Kuntasi, Lothal and Somnath of Gujarat regions in Harrapan civilization were familiar with weaving and the spinning of cotton for as long as four thousand years ago. The 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. This does not, however, help describe caste divisions adequately. 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. In most parts of Gujarat it merged into the various second-order divisions of the Koli division and possible also into the widespread tribe of Bhils. 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). Content Filtrations 6. Leva Kanbis, numbering 400,000 to 500,000 m 1931, were the traditional agricultural caste of central Gujarat. They worked not only as high priests but also as bureaucrats. Significantly, a large number of social thinkers and workers who propagated against the hierarchical features of caste came from urban centres. This does not solve the problem if there are four orders of divisions of the kind found in Gujarat. The freedom struggle brought the Indian handloom sector back to the fore, with Mahatma Gandhi spearheading the Swadeshi cause. Jun 12, 2022 . A large proportion, if not the whole, of the population of many of such divisions lived in towns. New Jersey had the highest population of Mehta families in 1920. The Hindu population of Gujarat was divided first of all into what I have called caste divisions of the first order. 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. Homo Hierarchicus. 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 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. 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. Reference to weaving and spinning materials is found in the Vedic Literature. What may be called the census approach influenced a great deal of scholarly work. Jun 12, 2022. 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.

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