The unit might possess some other corporate characteristics also. 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. 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.). The ekdas have not yet lost their identities. 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. Srinivas has called the unity of the village manifested in these interrelations the vertical unity of the village (1952: 31f. This was because political authorities were hierarchized from little kingdom to empire and the boundaries of political authorities kept changing. I do not propose to review the literature on caste here; my aim is to point out the direction towards which a few facts from Gujarat lead us. This account of the divisions is based on various sources, but mainly on Bombay Gazetteer (1901). Division and Hierarchy: An Overview of Caste 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. Homo Hierarchicus. 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.). However, on the basis of the meagre information I have, I am able to make a few points. He stresses repeatedly the primacy of the principle of hierarchy-epitomized in the title of his book. That Rajputs were one of the divisions, if not the only division of the first-order, not having further divisions, has already been mentioned. 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. The Chumvalias and Patanwadias migrated possibly from the same tract and continued to belong to the same horizontal unit after migration. The two together formed a single complex of continental dimension. The small endogamous units, on the other hand, did not practise either. For example, there was considerable ambiguity about the status of Anavils. Not only that, there were also third-order divisions (i.e., ekdas) in one or more second-order divisions, and finally one or more fourth-order divisions (i.e., tads) in one or more third-order divisions. All this trade encouraged development of trading and commercial towns in the rest of Gujarat, even in the highland area. These and many other artisans, craftsmen and servants reflected the special life-style of the town. 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. 3 0 obj Frequently, social divisions were neatly expressed in street names. 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. It is easy to understand that the pattern of change would be different in those first-order divisions (such as Rajput) or second-order divisions (such as Leva Kanbi) which did not have within them subdivisions of lower orders and which practised hypergamy extensively. 3.8K subscribers in the gujarat community. 2 0 obj More of them were located in the plains, than in the bordering highlands. The Vanias provide an example of such castes. 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. In the past the dispersal over a wide area of population of an ekda or tad was uncommon; only modern communications have made residential dispersal as well as functional integration possible. Thus, while each second-order Koli division maintained its boundaries vis-a-vis other such divisions, each was linked with the Rajputs. The urban centres in both the areas, it is hardly necessary to mention, are nucleated settlements populated by numerous caste and religious groups. 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. The Kolis seem to have had only two divisions in every part of Gujarat: for example, Talapada (indigenous) and Pardeshi (foreign) in central Gujarat and Palia and Baria in eastern Gujarat (significantly, one considered indigenous and the other outsider). 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. Each unit was ranked in relation to others, and many members of the lower units married their daughters into the higher units, so that almost every unit became loose in the course of time. Inclusion of a lower-order division in a higher-order one and distinction between various divisions in a certain order was not as unambiguous. There was another kind of ambiguity about the Brahman status or two other divisionsKayatia and Tapodhan. 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. endobj Gujarat (along with Bombay) has perhaps the largest number of caste associations and they are also more active and wealthy compared to those in other regions. They were thus not of the same status as most other second-order divisions among Brahmans. Once the claim was accepted at either level, hypergamous marriage was possible. 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. 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. 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 primarily rural castes, such as Kolisthe largest castehave remained predominantly rural even today. For example, the Khadayata Brahmans worked as priests at important rituals among Khadayata Vanias. Since after expansion of British textile markets and decline of Indian textile industry Vankars suffered a lot. Gujarat- A state in India. Tapodhans were priests in Shiva temples. That the role of the two principles could vary at different levels within a first-order division has also been seen. As could be expected, there were marriages between fairly close kin, resulting in many overlapping relationships, in such an endogamous unit. Further, during this lengthy process of slow amalgamation those who will marry in defiance of the barriers of sub-caste, will still be imbued with caste mentality (1932: 184). Nor were ekdas and tads entirely an urban phenomenon. The Hindu population of Gujarat was divided first of all into what I have called caste divisions of the first order. It was also an extreme example of a division having a highly differentiated internal hierarchy and practising hypergamy as an accepted norm. It is a coalescence of Kolis and Rajputs on the modern political plane based on the foundation of the traditional social and cultural symbiosis under the rubric of Kshatriya. For example, the Patanwadia population was spread continuously from the Patan area to central Gujarat, and the Talapada population from central Gujarat to Pal. 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. Plagiarism Prevention 4. Content Filtrations 6. 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. 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). What may be called the census approach influenced a great deal of scholarly work. It has already been mentioned that every first-order division was not divided into second-order divisions, and that every second-order division was not divided into third-order divisions, and so on. Moreover, some leading Anavils did not wish to be bothered about Brahman status, saying that they were just Anavil. However, it is well known that there were subtle arguments regarding the status of certain royal families being Rajput. Jun 12, 2022. Although caste was found in both village and town, did it possess any special characteristics in the latter? Ideally, castes as horizontal units should he discussed with the help of population figures. 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. [CDATA[ The Kanbis (now called Patidars) had five divisions: Leva, Kadya, Anjana, Bhakta, and Matia. For example, just as there were Modh Vanias, there were Modh Brahmans, and similarly Khadayata Vanias and Khadayata Brahmans, Shrimali Vanias and Shrimali Brahmans, Nagar Vanias and Nagar Brahmans, and so on. The three trading castes of Vania, Lohana and Bhatia were mainly urban. Similarly, in Saurashtra, the Talapadas were distinguished from the Chumvalias, immigrants from the Chumval tract in north Gujarat. 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. For example, there were Khedawal Brahmans but not Khedawal Vanias, and Lad Vanias but no Lad Brahmans. 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. 1 0 obj If this rule was violated, i.e., if he married a girl with whom the Vanias did not have commensal relations, the maximum punishment, namely, excommunication, was imposed. There is enormous literature on these caste divisions from about the middle of the 19th century which includes census reports, gazetteers, [] Each ekda or gol was composed of a definite number of families living in certain villages and/or towns. Sometimes castes are described as becoming ethnic groups in modern India, particularly in urban India. The most important of them was the Koli division, which was, the largest division and mainly included small landholders, tenants and labourers. 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.