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. The purpose is not to condemn village studies, as is caste in a better perspective after deriving insights from village studies. The Anavil, numbering 30,000 to 40,000 in 1931, were found mainly in south Gujarat. The small endogamous units, on the other hand, did not practise either. Many primarily rural castes, such as Kolisthe largest castehave remained predominantly rural even today. stream The error is further compounded whenalthough this is less commonthe partial, rural model of traditional caste is compared with the present urban situation, and conclusions are drawn about overall change. Inclusion of a lower-order division in a higher-order one and distinction between various divisions in a certain order was not as unambiguous. As soon as there is any change in . * List of Scheduled Tribes in Gujarat; A. . Frequently, the urban population of such a division performed more specialized functions than did the rural one. 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. Usually, a single Koli division had different local names in different parts of Gujarat, but more about this later. Leva Sheri and Kadva Sheri, named after the two major second-order divisions among the Kanbis. 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. While fission did occur, fusion could also occur. Frequently, a division among Vanias corresponded to a division among Brahmans. He stresses repeatedly the primacy of the principle of hierarchy-epitomized in the title of his book. The two categories of castes have been deeply conscious of these differences between them and have been talking freely about them. Thus, at one end, there were first-order divisions, each of which was sub-divided up to the fourth-order, and at the other end there were first-order divisions which were not further divided at all. 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 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. There are other sub-castes like Satpanthis, who are mainly centered in Kutch district and have some social customs akin to Muslims . A large proportion, if not the whole, of the population of many of such divisions lived in towns. It was also an extreme example of a division having a highly differentiated internal hierarchy and practising hypergamy as an accepted norm. The boundaries of caste division were fairly clear in the village community. The Mehta family name was found in the USA, and the UK between 1891 and 1920. As for the size of other castes, I shall make mainly relative statements. 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. Census officials-turned-scholars, from Risley to Hutton, wrote many of the earlier general works on caste. 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. In the second kind of area, indigenous Kolis live side-by-side with immigrant Kolis from an adjoining area. Toori. If the first-order divisions are called jatis and castes, the second-order divisions would be called sub-jatis or sub-castes. Today, there are two kinds of Koli areas. In 1931, the Rajputs of all strata in Gujarat had together a population of about 35,000 forming nearly 5 per cent of the total population of Gujarat. 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. This surname is most commonly held in India, where it is held by 2,496 people, or 1 in 307,318. : 11-15, 57-75). 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. 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.). According to the Rajputs I know in central Gujarat, the highest stratum among them consisted of the royal families of large and powerful kingdoms in Gujarat and neighbouring Rajasthan, such as those of Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Kachchh, Porbandar, Bikaner, Idar, Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Udaipur, and so on. In 1920 there were 2 Mehta families living in New Jersey. The humble Charkha (spinning wheel) and khadi became a dominant symbol of self-reliance, self-determination and nationalist pride. 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. Unfortunately, although the Kolis are an important element in Gujarats population, their earlier ethnography is confusing, and there is hardly any modern, systematic, anthropological, sociological or historical study, so that the confusion continues to persist. This tendency reaches its culmination in the world of Dumont. 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. Even the archaeological surveys and studies have indicated that the people of Dholavira, Surkotada. The handloom weavers of Gujarat, Maharastra and Bengal produced and exported some of the world's most desirable fabrics. Village studies, as far as caste is a part of them, have been, there fore, concerned with the interrelations between sections of various castes in the local context. Created Date: 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. To illustrate, among the Khadayata or Modh Vanias, an increasing number of marriages take place between two or more tads within an ekda. 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. to which the divisions of the marrying couple belong. Most of the second-order divisions were further divided into third-order divisions. 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. 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. Fortunately, they have now started writing about it (see Rao 1974). Until recently, sociologists and anthropologists described Indian society as though it had no urban component in the past. 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. 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. One may say that there are now more hypogamous marriages, although another and perhaps a more realistic way of looking at the change would be that a new hierarchy is replacing the traditional one. As could be expected, there were marriages between fairly close kin, resulting in many overlapping relationships, in such an endogamous unit. There were also a number of first-order divisions, mainly of artisans, craftsmen and specialized servants, with small populations. 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. But there were also others who did not wield any power. Vankar is described as a caste as well as a community. 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). This reflects the high degree of divisiveness in castes in Gujarat. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. Similarly, in Saurashtra, the Talapadas were distinguished from the Chumvalias, immigrants from the Chumval tract in north Gujarat. 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. 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. 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. Systematic because castes exist and are like each other in being different (298). Their origin myth enshrined in their caste purana also showed them to be originally non-Brahman. 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. 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. 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. Content Guidelines 2. When Mr. H. Borradaile in A.D. 1827 collected information regarding the customs of Hindus, no less than 207 castes which did not intermarry, were found in the city of Surat alone. 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. This does not solve the problem if there are four orders of divisions of the kind found in Gujarat. A block printed and resist-dyed fabric, whose origin is from Gujarat was found in the tombs of Fostat, Egypt. 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. //