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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. The Chumvalias and Patanwadias migrated possibly from the same tract and continued to belong to the same horizontal unit after migration. There are other sub-castes like Satpanthis, who are mainly centered in Kutch district and have some social customs akin to Muslims . However, on the basis of the meagre information I have, I am able to make a few points. If the first-order divisions are called jatis and castes, the second-order divisions would be called sub-jatis or sub-castes. The bulk of the population was spread all over the villages as small landholders, tenants and labourers. Gujarat did not have anything like the non-Brahmin movement of South India and Maharashtra before 1947. There is enormous literature on these caste divisions from about the middle of the 19th century which includes census reports, gazetteers, [] Although the number of inter-ekda marriages has been increasing, even now the majority of marriages take place within an ekda. A recent tendency in sociological literature is to consider jatis as castes. 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. The decline was further accelerated by the industrial revolution. The understanding of changes in caste is not likely to be advanced by clubbing such diverse groups together under the rubric of ethnic group. 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. 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 example, the Khadayata Brahmans worked as priests at important rituals among Khadayata Vanias. 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. The advance made in recent years is limited and much more needs to be done. More of them were located in the plains, than in the bordering highlands. Moreover, a single division belonging to any one of the orders may have more than one association, and an association may be uni-purpose or multi-purpose. But the hypergamous tendency was so powerful that each such endogamous unit could not be perfectly endogamous even at the height of its integration. 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). That Rajputs were one of the divisions, if not the only division of the first-order, not having further divisions, has already been mentioned. In an area of the first kind there are no immigrant Kolis from elsewhere, and therefore, there is no question of their having second-order divisions. Let me illustrate briefly. It reflects, on the one hand, the political aspirations of Kolis guided by the importance of their numerical strength in electoral politics and on the other hand, the Rajputs attempt to regain power after the loss of their princely states and estates. 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. How many sub-divisions existed in the various divisions of the various orders is a matter of empirical investigation. Gujarati migrations to the nearby metropolis of Bombay the first new centre of administration, industry, commerce, education, and western culture, followed the same links. 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. 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 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 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. Inclusion of a lower-order division in a higher-order one and distinction between various divisions in a certain order was not as unambiguous. In each of these three divisions the top stratum was clear. The Mehta family name was found in the USA, and the UK between 1891 and 1920. The members of a kings caste were thus found not only in his own kingdom but in other kingdoms as well. 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. Typically, a village consists of the sections of various castes, ranging from those with just one household to those with over u hundred. 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. 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. rogers outage brampton today; levelland, tx obituaries. 100 Most Popular Indian Last Names Or SurnamesWhy Don't Tamil People Have Last Names?-----A . 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. The Hindu and Muslim kingdoms in Gujarat during the medieval period had, of course, their capital towns, at first Patan and then Ahmedabad. window.__mirage2 = {petok:"uGhRfiuY26l2oZgRlfZRFSp4BWPIIt7Gh61sQC1XrRU-3600-0"}; 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. They worked not only as high priests but also as bureaucrats. 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. Census officials-turned-scholars, from Risley to Hutton, wrote many of the earlier general works on caste. 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 . 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. 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. 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. Ideally, castes as horizontal units should he discussed with the help of population figures. All Brahman divisions did not, however, have a corresponding Vania division. 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. r/ahmedabad From Mumbai. This was about 22% of all the recorded Mehta's in USA. 92. 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. For example, in a Rajput kingdom the families of the Rajput king and his nobles resided in the capital town, while the Rajput landlords and cultivators resided in villages. There was an emphasis on being different and separate rather than on being higher and lower. Privacy Policy 8. This list may not reflect recent changes. 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. so roamed around clueless. Patidars or Patels claim themselves to be descendants of Lord Ram. All this trade encouraged development of trading and commercial towns in the rest of Gujarat, even in the highland area. The humble Charkha (spinning wheel) and khadi became a dominant symbol of self-reliance, self-determination and nationalist pride. 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. To whichever of the four orders a caste division belonged, its horizontal spread rarely, if ever, coincided with that of another. 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. 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. What may be called the census approach influenced a great deal of scholarly work. We shall return to this issue later. 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 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 boundaries of caste division were fairly clear in the village community. Vankar is described as a caste as well as a community. Weavers became beggars, manufacturing collapsed and the last 2000 years of Indian textile industry was knocked down. professor melissa murray. Leva Sheri and Kadva Sheri, named after the two major second-order divisions among the Kanbis. There were Brahman and Vania divisions of the same name, the myths about both of them were covered by a single text. 4 GUJARAT 4273 SHODA . In any case, castes are not likely to cease to be castes in the consciousness of people in the foreseeable future. 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. Although my knowledge is fragmentary, I thought it was worthwhile to put together the bits and pieces for the region as a whole. Srinivas has called the unity of the village manifested in these interrelations the vertical unity of the village (1952: 31f. For example, there was considerable ambiguity about the status of Anavils. One important first-order division, namely, Rajput, does not seem to have had any second-order division at all. 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. New Jersey had the highest population of Mehta families in 1920. It used to have a panch (council of leaders) and sometimes also a headman (patel). The small town sections therefore separated themselves from the respective large town sections and formed a new ekda. endobj
In 1931, their total population was more than 1,700,000, nearly one-fourth of the total population of Gujarat. Nor were ekdas and tads entirely an urban phenomenon. Simultaneously, there is gradual decline in the strength of the principle of hierarchy, particularly of ritual hierarchy expressed in purity and pollution. Use census records and voter lists to . 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 small ekda or tad with its entire population residing in a single town was, of course, not a widespread phenomenon. In other words, it did not involve a big jump from one place to another distant place. Most associations continue to retain their non-political character. Hindu society is usually described as divided into a number of castes the boundaries of which are maintained by the rule of caste endogamy. Copyright 10. A first-order division could be further divided into two or more second-order divisions. 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. Together they provide a slice of Gujarati society from the sea- coast to the bordering highlands. The name, Talapada, meaning mdigenous, commonly used in the 19th century, is most clear, since it is clearly distinguished from the other division called Pardeshi, meaning foreign, who during the last one or two centuries immigrated here from the area around Patan in north Gujarat and were, therefore, also called Patan- wadias. More common was an ekda or tad having its population residing either in a few neighbouring villages, or in a few neighbouring towns, or in both. 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. Toori. : 11-15, 57-75). It will readily be agreed that the sociological study of Indian towns and cities has not made as much progress as has the study of Indian villages. The Kolis in such an area may not even be concerned about a second-order divisional name and may be known simply as Kolis. 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. 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. I am dealing here only with certain typical situations. Our analysis of the internal organization of caste divisions has shown considerable variation in the relative role of the principles of division and hierarchy. In all there were thirty to forty such divisions. He stresses repeatedly the primacy of the principle of hierarchy-epitomized in the title of his book. The Rajputs, in association with the Kolis, were probably the only horizontal unit which had continuous internal hierarchy, i.e., hypergamy unbroken by any endogamous subdivisions, and which did not have discernible boundaries at the lowest level. Although some of them set up shops in villages they rarely became full-fledged members of the village community. 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. A block printed and resist-dyed fabric, whose origin is from Gujarat was found in the tombs of Fostat, Egypt. The latter continued to be the provincial capital during Mughal rule. Among the first-order divisions with subdivisions going down to the fourth order, there are associations for divisions of all the orders. Gujarat- A state in India. 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.
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