Ideally, castes as horizontal units should he discussed with the help of population figures. One important first-order division, namely, Rajput, does not seem to have had any second-order division at all. In all there were about eighty such divisions. The Rajput links entailed the spread of Rajput culture in each Koli division and provided a certain cultural homogeneity to all the divisions. 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. 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.). It seems the highland Bhils (and possibly also other tribes) provided brides to lower Rajputs in Gujarat. Another clearly visible change in caste in Gujarat is the emergence of caste associations. Although the people of one tad would talk about their superiority over those of another tad in an ekda, and the people of one ekda over those of another in a higher-order division, particularly in large towns where two or more tads and ekdas would be found living together, there was no articulate ranking and hypergamy among them. Many of these names were also based on place names. How many sub-divisions existed in the various divisions of the various orders is a matter of empirical investigation. A recent tendency in sociological literature is to consider jatis as castes. For example, the Patanwadia population was spread continuously from the Patan area to central Gujarat, and the Talapada population from central Gujarat to Pal. Castes pervaded by divisive tendencies had small populations confined to small areas separated from each other by considerable gaps. There was an emphasis on being different and separate rather than on being higher and lower. I would suggest that this feature of urban caste, along with the well known general tendency of urban culture to encourage innovation, provided the groundhowever diffuse that ground might have beenfor a favourable response to the anti-hierarchical ideas coming from the West. 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. 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. We shall return later to a consideration of this problem. 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. Caste associations have been formed on the lines of caste divisions. In other words, it did not involve a big jump from one place to another distant place. A comment on the sociology of urban India would, therefore, be in order before we go ahead with the discussion of caste divisions. In each of these three divisions the top stratum was clear. 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. Bougies repulsion) rather than on hierarchy was a feature of caste in certain contexts and situations in traditional India, and increasing emphasis on division in urban Indian in modern times is an accentuation of what existed in the past. It used to have a panch (council of leaders) and sometimes also a headman (patel). 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. 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. 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. They have been grouped in Vaishya category of Varna system. The degree of contravention involved in an inter-divisional marriage, however, depends upon the order (i.e., first-order, second-order, etc.) endobj
In 1920 there were 2 Mehta families living in New Jersey. A new view of the whole, comprising the rural and the urban and the various orders of caste divisions, should be evolved. The boundaries of caste division were fairly clear in the village community. 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. The population of certain first-order divisions lived mainly in villages. Since Rajput as a caste occurred all over northern, central and western India (literally, it means rulers son, ruling son), the discussion of Rajputs in Gujarat will inevitably draw us into their relationship with Rajputs in other regions. 3 0 obj
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 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). 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. The unit might possess some other corporate characteristics also. 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. They were thus not of the same status as most other second-order divisions among Brahmans. The Kanbis (now called Patidars) had five divisions: Leva, Kadya, Anjana, Bhakta, and Matia. 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. 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. While we do get evidence of fission of caste divisions of a higher order into two or more divisions of a lower order, the mere existence of divisions of a lower order should not be taken as evidence of fission in a division of a higher order. 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 most Mehta families were found in USA in 1920. 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. Let me illustrate briefly. Until recently, sociologists and anthropologists described Indian society as though it had no urban component in the past. 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. There was a continuous process of formation and disintegration of such units. The Chumvalias and Patanwadias migrated possibly from the same tract and continued to belong to the same horizontal unit after migration. 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. Plagiarism Prevention 4. 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). 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. 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. For example, among almost every Vania division there was a dual division into Visa and Dasa: Visa Nagar and Dasa Nagar, Visa Lad and Dasa Lad, Visa Modh and Dasa Modh, Visa Khadayata and Dasa Khadayata, and so on. Usually, it was a small population. The two former ekdas continued to exist with diminished strength. 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. 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. There were similar problems about the status of a number of other divisions. As regards the rest of Gujarat, I have used various sources: my work on the caste of genealogists and mythographys and on the early 19th century village records; the available ethnographic, historical and other literature; and observations made while living m Gujarat. To obtain a clear understanding of the second-order divisions with the Koli division, it is necessary first of all to find a way through the maze of their divisional names. The existence of ekdas or gols, however, does not mean that the divisiveness of caste ended there or that the ekdas and gols were always the definitive units of endogamy. There was another kind of ambiguity about the Brahman status or two other divisionsKayatia and Tapodhan. 92. 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. 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. %PDF-1.7
In any case, castes are not likely to cease to be castes in the consciousness of people in the foreseeable future. Today, there are two kinds of Koli areas. The Hindu and Muslim kingdoms in Gujarat during the medieval period had, of course, their capital towns, at first Patan and then Ahmedabad. 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. The Khadayatas were divided into about 30 ekdas. Also, the horizontal spread of a caste rarely coincided with the territorial boundaries of a political authority. 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. Frequently, a division among Vanias corresponded to a division among Brahmans. endobj
There was considerable elaboration in urban areas of what Ghurye long ago called the community aspect of caste (1932: 179) and frequently, this led to juxtaposition rather than hierarchy between caste divisions of the same order. 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. The Rajputs relationship with the Kolis penetrated every second-order division among them, i.e., Talapada, Pardeshi, Chumvalia, Palia, and so on. The co-residence of people belonging to two or more divisions of the lower orders within a division of a higher order has been a prominent feature of caste in towns and cities. 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. This stratum among the Kanbis coped with the problem mainly by practising remarriage of widows and divorced women. 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. The degree of contravention is highest if the couple belong to two different first-order divisions. 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. 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. 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. Since after expansion of British textile markets and decline of Indian textile industry Vankars suffered a lot. There was not only no pyramid type of arrangement among the many ekdas in a second-order Vania divisionthe type of arrangement found in the Rajput, Leva Kanbi, Anavil and Khedawal divisions-but frequently there was no significant sign of hierarchical relation, except boastful talk, between two neighbouring ekdas. The lowest stratum in all the three divisions had to face the problem of scarcity of brides. As could be expected, there were marriages between fairly close kin, resulting in many overlapping relationships, in such an endogamous unit. Radhvanaj Rajputs were clearly distinguished from, and ranked much above local Kolis. The two areas merge gradually, and my field work covered most of the spectrum. He stresses repeatedly the primacy of the principle of hierarchy-epitomized in the title of his book. While some of the divisions of a lower order might be the result of fission, some others might be a result of fusion. 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 are divided into two main sub-castes: Leuva Patels and Kadva Patels, who claim to be descendants of Ram's twins Luv and Kush respectively. Gujarat did not have anything like the non-Brahmin movement of South India and Maharashtra before 1947. Patidars or Patels claim themselves to be descendants of Lord Ram. In the plains, therefore, every village had one or more towns in its vicinity. This meant that he could marry a girl of any subdivision within the Vania division. But the hypergamous tendency was so powerful that each such endogamous unit could not be perfectly endogamous even at the height of its integration. The tad thus represented the fourth and last order of caste divisions. This reflects the high degree of divisiveness in castes in Gujarat. Vankar is described as a caste as well as a community. I have bits and pieces of information about relations between a considerable numbers of other lower-order divisions in their respective higher-order divisions. Since Vankars were involved in production and business they were known as Nana Mahajans or small merchants. Sometimes a division could even be a self-contained endogamous unit. Indian textiles especially of Gujarat have been praised in several accounts by explorers and historians, from Megasthenes to Herodotus. 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. Both were recognized as Brahman but as degraded ones. 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. Such a description not only overlooks the diversity and complexity of caste divisions and the rural-urban Link- ages in them but also leads to placing them in the same category as Muslims, Christians, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists, and so on. 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.