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. 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. A block printed and resist-dyed fabric, whose origin is from Gujarat was found in the tombs of Fostat, Egypt. 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. The purpose is not to condemn village studies, as is caste in a better perspective after deriving insights from village studies. This bulk also was characterized by hierarchy, with the relatively advanced population living in the plains at one end and the backward population living along with the tribal population in the highlands at the other end. For the sake of bravity and simplicity of presentation, I have not provided detailed documentation. 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. The two together formed a single complex of continental dimension. 4 GUJARAT 4273 SHODA . The main occupation of Vankars was the weaving of cloth. 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 larger castes and even larger subdivisions among them used to have their houses segregated on their own streets (called pol, sheri, khadki, vad, khancho). 1 0 obj 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. These and many other artisans, craftsmen and servants reflected the special life-style of the town. The number of tads in an ekda or go I might be two or more, and each of them might be an endogamous units. We shall return later to a consideration of this problem. However, it is well known that there were subtle arguments regarding the status of certain royal families being Rajput. There were Brahman and Vania divisions of the same name, the myths about both of them were covered by a single text. He stated: hereditary specialization together with hierarchical organization sinks into the background in East Africa (293). The Kanbis (now called Patidars) had five divisions: Leva, Kadya, Anjana, Bhakta, and Matia. 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). 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. Gujarat did not have anything like the non-Brahmin movement of South India and Maharashtra before 1947. r/ahmedabad From Mumbai. Marco Polo a Venetian merchant on his visit to India in 13th century Gujarat observed that "brocading art of Gujarat weavers is par excellent". 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. Caste divisions of the first-order can be classified broadly into three categories. These linkages played an important role in the traditional social structure as well as in the processes of change in modern India. New Jersey had the highest population of Mehta families in 1920. The Rajputs, in association with Kolis, Bhils, and such other castes and tribes, provide an extreme example of such castes. 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 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. Moreover, some leading Anavils did not wish to be bothered about Brahman status, saying that they were just Anavil. 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. 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. Image Guidelines 5. (Frequently, such models are constructed a priori rather than based on historical evidence, but that is another story). Content Guidelines 2. It was also an extreme example of a division having a highly differentiated internal hierarchy and practising hypergamy as an accepted norm. Today majority of these community members are not engaged in their ancestral weaving occupation still some population of these community contribute themselves in traditional handloom weaving of famous Patola of Patan, Kachchh shawl of Bhujodi in Kutch, Gharchola and Crotchet of Jamnagar, Zari of Surat, Mashroo of Patan and Mandvi in Kutch, Bandhani of Jamnagar, Anjar and Bhuj, Motif, Leheria, Dhamakda and Ajrak, Nagri sari, Tangaliya Shawl, Dhurrie, Kediyu, Heer Bharat, Abhala, Phento and art of Gudri. rogers outage brampton today; levelland, tx obituaries. This surname is most commonly held in India, where it is held by 2,496 people, or 1 in 307,318. 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. The two considered themselves different and separateof course, within the Kanbi foldwhere they happened to live together in the villages in the merger zone between north and central Gujarat and in towns. 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. Together they provide a slice of Gujarati society from the sea- coast to the bordering highlands. 3 0 obj As for the size of other castes, I shall make mainly relative statements. The degree of contravention is less if the couple belong, let us say, to two different fourth-order divisions within a third-order division than if they belong to two different third-order divisions within a second-order division, and so on. The handloom weavers of Gujarat, Maharastra and Bengal produced and exported some of the world's most desirable fabrics. Similarly, although the number of marriages between the second-order divisions in the Vania division, i.e., between Khadayata, Modh, Shrimali, Lad, Vayada, etc., has been increasing, the majority of marriages take place within the respective second-order divisions. Although the ekda or tad was the most effective unit for endogamy, each unit of the higher order was also significant for endogamy. [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 Vankars were involved in production and business they were known as Nana Mahajans or small merchants. This tendency reaches its culmination in the world of Dumont. 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). 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. There was another kind of ambiguity about the Brahman status or two other divisionsKayatia and Tapodhan. But there were also others who did not wield any power. 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). 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. For example, there was considerable ambiguity about the status of Anavils. A block printed and resist-dyed fabric, whose origin is from Gujarat was found in the tombs of Fostat, Egypt. 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. Most associations continue to retain their non-political character. This list may not reflect recent changes. Many primarily rural castes, such as Kolisthe largest castehave remained predominantly rural even today. 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. The following 157 pages are in this category, out of 157 total. Although some of them set up shops in villages they rarely became full-fledged members of the village community. 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. They worked not only as high priests but also as bureaucrats. There were also a number of first-order divisions, mainly of artisans, craftsmen and specialized servants, with small populations. 92. Census officials-turned-scholars, from Risley to Hutton, wrote many of the earlier general works on caste. 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. Kolis were the largest first-order division in Gujarat. All associations originated in large towns, are more active in towns than in villages, and are led by prominent members in towns. 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. A recent tendency in sociological literature is to consider jatis as castes. What may be called the census approach influenced a great deal of scholarly work. With the exclusion of caste (except scheduled caste) from the census since 1951 (practically since 1941, because the census of that year did not result in much reporting), writings on castes as horizontal units greatly declined. On the other hand, there was an almost simultaneous spurt in village studies. 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. They are described by the ruling elite as robbers, dacoits, marauders, predators and the like. Also, the horizontal spread of a caste rarely coincided with the territorial boundaries of a political authority. An important idea behind the activities of caste associations is: service to ones caste is service to the nation. 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. 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. This list may not reflect recent changes. // The two areas merge gradually, and my field work covered most of the spectrum. Although they claimed to be Brahman they were closely associated with agriculture. I know some ekdas, and tads composed of only 150 to 200 households. ADVERTISEMENTS: Division and Hierarchy: An Overview of Caste in Gujarat! Similarly, in Saurashtra, the Talapadas were distinguished from the Chumvalias, immigrants from the Chumval tract in north Gujarat. 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. More of them were located in the plains, than in the bordering highlands. 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. In addition, they carried on overland trade with many towns in central and north India. 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. 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. It has been pointed out earlier that an emphasis on the principle of division existed in the caste system in urban centres in traditional India. Copyright 10. Some ekdas did come into existence in almost the same way as did the tads, that is to say, by a process of fission of one ekda into two or more ekdas. Radhvanaj Rajputs were clearly distinguished from, and ranked much above local Kolis.
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