3 0 obj Sometimes a division corresponding to a division among Brahmans and Vanias was found in a third first-order division also. Frequently, The ekdas or gols were each divided into groups called tads (split). 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.). 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. I know some ekdas, and tads composed of only 150 to 200 households. This category has the following 18 subcategories, out of 18 total. When divisions are found within a jati, the word sub-jati or sub-caste is used. This does not solve the problem if there are four orders of divisions of the kind found in Gujarat. However, it is well known that there were subtle arguments regarding the status of certain royal families being Rajput. 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. 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. I have not yet come across an area where Kolis from three or more different areas live together, excepting modern, large towns and cities. They also continued to have marital relations with their own folk. There was also another important correlation. History. For example, all Vania divisions were divided into a number of ekdas or gols. Almost every village in this area included at least some Leva population, and in many villages they formed a large, if not the largest, proportion of the population. In the village strict prohibition of inter-division marriage as well as the rules of purity and pollution and other mechanisms, of which the students of Indian village communities are well aware since the 1950s, maintained the boundaries of these divisions. As a consequence, the continuities of social institutions and the potentiality of endogenous elements for bringing about change are overlooked (for a discussion of some other difficulties with these paradigms, see Lynch 1977). 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. 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. r/ahmedabad From Mumbai. Srinivas has called the unity of the village manifested in these interrelations the vertical unity of the village (1952: 31f. 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. 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 Rajput links entailed the spread of Rajput culture in each Koli division and provided a certain cultural homogeneity to all the divisions. 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). 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). Jun 12, 2022 . Although some of them set up shops in villages they rarely became full-fledged members of the village community. This reflects the high degree of divisiveness in castes in Gujarat. 100 Most Popular Indian Last Names Or SurnamesWhy Don't Tamil People Have Last Names?-----A . An important idea behind the activities of caste associations is: service to ones caste is service to the nation. The ekdas have not yet lost their identities. 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. Hypergamy tended to be associated with this hierarchy. Most of the second-order divisions were further divided into third-order divisions. New Jersey had the highest population of Mehta families in 1920. ADVERTISEMENTS: Division and Hierarchy: An Overview of Caste in Gujarat! 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. Inclusion of a lower-order division in a higher-order one and distinction between various divisions in a certain order was not as unambiguous. Radhvanaj Rajputs were clearly distinguished from, and ranked much above local Kolis. 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. 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. It seems the highland Bhils (and possibly also other tribes) provided brides to lower Rajputs in Gujarat. Image Guidelines 5. 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 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. For the sake of bravity and simplicity of presentation, I have not provided detailed documentation. Content Guidelines 2. caste: [noun] one of the hereditary social classes in Hinduism that restrict the occupation of their members and their association with the members of other castes. 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. 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. 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. This was about 22% of all the recorded Mehta's in USA. Similarly, in Saurashtra, the Talapadas were distinguished from the Chumvalias, immigrants from the Chumval tract in north Gujarat. 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. 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. 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. How many sub-divisions existed in the various divisions of the various orders is a matter of empirical investigation. The freedom struggle brought the Indian handloom sector back to the fore, with Mahatma Gandhi spearheading the Swadeshi cause. The guiding ideas were samaj sudharo (social reform) and samaj seva (social service). In 1920 there were 2 Mehta families living in New Jersey. 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. 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. 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. Usually, the latter were distinguished from one another by prohibition. Nor were ekdas and tads entirely an urban phenomenon. //]]>. Before publishing your articles on this site, please read the following pages: 1. Vankar is described as a caste as well as a community. I am dealing here only with certain typical situations. The marital alliances of the royal families forming part of the Maratha confederacy, and of the royal families of Mysore in south India and of Kashmir and Nepal in the north with the royal families of Gujarat and Rajasthan show, among other things, how there was room for flexibility and how the rule of caste endogamy could be violated in an acceptable manner at the highest level. 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. The associations activities in the field of marriage, such as reform to customs, rituals and ceremonies, and encouragement of inter-divisional marriages, are also seen by the members as a service to the nationas the castes method of creating a casteless modern society. 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. We need to formulate some idea of the nature of the Indian urban society and its relation with the rural society in the past, at least at the beginning of the 19th century. No sooner had the village studies begun that their limitations and the need for studying caste in its horizontal dimension were realized. 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). 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. What may be called the census approach influenced a great deal of scholarly work. The handloom weavers of Gujarat, Maharastra and Bengal produced and exported some of the world's most desirable fabrics. I have done field work in two contiguous parts of Gujarat: central Gujarat (Kheda district and parts of Ahmedabad and Baroda districts) and eastern Gujarat (Panchmahals district). Together they provide a slice of Gujarati society from the sea- coast to the bordering highlands. Each ekda or gol was composed of a definite number of families living in certain villages and/or towns. Many primarily rural castes, such as Kolisthe largest castehave remained predominantly rural even today. Asking different questions and using different methods are necessary. The degree of contravention is highest if the couple belong to two different first-order divisions. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. All associations originated in large towns, are more active in towns than in villages, and are led by prominent members in towns. Their origin myth enshrined in their caste purana also showed them to be originally non-Brahman. The hierarchy, however, was very gradual and lacked sharpness. 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 Vanias provide an example of such castes. The Kolis in such an area may not even be concerned about a second-order divisional name and may be known simply as Kolis. 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. This account of the divisions is based on various sources, but mainly on Bombay Gazetteer (1901). The Rajput hierarchy had many levels below the level of the royal families of the large and powerful kingdoms: lineages of owners of large and small fiefs variously called jagir, giras, thakarat,thikana, taluka, and wanted-, lineages of substantial landowners under various land tenures having special rights and privileges; and lineages of small landowners. Marco Polo a Venetian merchant on his visit to India in 13th century Gujarat observed that "brocading art of Gujarat weavers is par excellent". 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. This was unlike the situation among the Rajputs who did not make any attempt to form small endogamous units. 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. Since Vankars were involved in production and business they were known as Nana Mahajans or small merchants. A recent tendency in sociological literature is to consider jatis as castes. Even the archaeological surveys and studies have indicated that the people of Dholavira, Surkotada. 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.