Rajputization

process of coalescing diverse communities into the Rajput community

Rajputisation is the study of formation of the community of Rajputs over the centuries. The rajputs are a caste in the Indian caste system. They consisted of a mix of various different social groups and different varnas (in the Dharma system, the (Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishya and Shudras) including and tribes. Rajputization explains how such diverse communities merged into the Rajput community.[1][2]

The Rajpoot cultivators from Dehradun

Individuals with whom the word "rajput" was associated before the 15th century were considered varna–samkara ("mixed caste origin") and inferior to Kshatriya. Over time, the term "Rajput" came to denote a hereditary political status, which was not necessarily very high: the term could denote a wide range of rank-holders, from an actual son of a king to the lowest-ranked landholder.[3][4][5][6][7]

Rajpoot, Hindoo from Marwar, Chota Nagpoor

Rajput formation continued in the colonial era. Even in the 19th century, anyone from the "village landlord" to the "newly wealthy lower caste Shudra" could employ Brahmins to retrospectively fabricate a genealogy and within a couple of generations they would gain acceptance as Hindu Rajputs. This process would get mirrored by communities in north India. This process of origin of the Rajput community resulted in hypergamy as well as female infanticide that was common in Hindu Rajput clans. Scholars refer to this as "Rajputization", which, like Sanskritization, was a mode for upward mobility, but it differed from Sanskritization in other attributes, like the method of worship, lifestyle, diet, social interaction, rules for women, and marriage, etc. German historian Hermann Kulke has coined the term "Secondary Rajputization" for describing the process of members of a tribe trying to re-associate themselves with the former chief of their tribe who had already transformed himself into a Rajput via Rajputization and thus become Rajputs themselves[8][9][10][11]

Rajputization of Brahmins, Bhars, Ahirs, Jats, Gurjars and Huns change

According to Harbans Singh Bhatia, It would appear that Brahmans, Bhars, Ahirs, Jats, Gujars, and Huns have all contributed to the Rajput clans.[12]


Rajputization of Chandelas, Gaharwars, Bundelas and Rathors change

The Chandel Rajputs were originally Hinduised Bhars or Gonds or both. When they became politically powerful, they became Kshatriyas or Rajputs. The Gaharwars similarly are associated with the Bhars, the Bundelas and the northern Rathors are offshoots of the Garhawars. The Dharmasastras recognise the possibility of lower castes being elevated to higher castes.[13][14]

Rajputization of Kachhwahas change

The Kachhwahas, is a celebrated Indian tribe, neither Rajput race nor Jat race by descent, but adopted into the Rajput.[15]

Descent from the Muslims change

According to the sociologist Lyla Mehta, the Jadeja were Hindu descendents of a Muslim tribe that had migrated from Sindh to Kutch.[16] They originated from pastoral communities and laid a claim on the Rajput identity after marriages with Sodha Rajput women.[17]

Gujarat's Jadeja Rajputs were called "half-Muslim" and they employed Muslim African Siddi slaves for cooking.[18]

References change

  1. Satish Chandra (2008). Social Change and Development in Medieval Indian History. Har-Anand Publications. p. 44. ISBN 9788124113868. Modern historians are more or less agreed that the Rajputs consisted of miscellaneous groups including shudras and tribals
  2. Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar; Reena Dube (1 February 2012). Female Infanticide in India: A Feminist Cultural History. State University of New York(SUNY) Press. pp. 59, 62, 63, 257. ISBN 978-0-7914-8385-5. (62,63)We have culled from the sociological literature, particularly from Srivinas's analysis of Sanskritization, the key differences between the two modes of upward mobility, Sanskritization and Rajputization. Despite the excellent fieldwork on Rajputization by Sinha (1962) and Kulke(1976), there is no clear theoretical definition of the key features of Rajputization, and its differences and similarities to Sanskritization. We argue that theorizing is as important as fieldwork, principally because of the colonial misreading of the term Rajput and its relation to Rajput history and to Rajputization. As a corrective we demarcate the distinction between Sanskritization and Rajputization in terms of attributional criteria - which denotes a code of living, dietary prohibition, modes of worship-and social interactional criteria, which signify the rules of marriage, rules pertaining to women, and modes of power. The attributional criteria for Sanskritization are vegetarianism, prohibition against beef eating, teetotalism, and wearing the sacred thread; the attributional criteria for Rajputized men consists of meat-eating, imbibing alcohol and opium, and the wearing of the sword; the attributional criteria for Rajputized women are seclusion through purdah or the veil and elaborate rules for women's mobility within the village. The religious code for Sanskritization is a belief in the doctrine of karma, dharma, rebirth and moksha and the Sradda ceremony for male ancestors. Conversely, the religious code for Rajputization consists of the worship of Mahadeo and Sakto and the Patronage of Brahmins through personal family priests(historically the Rajputized rulers gave land grants to Brahmins) and the priestly supervision of rites of passage. The social interactional criteria for Sanskritization is claiming the right to all priestly intellectual and cultural vocations, patronage from the dominant political power, and prohibition against widow remarriage. The interactional criteria for Rajputization consists of claiming the right to all military and political occupations, the right to govern, the right to aggrandize lands through wars, sanctioned aggressive behavior, the adoption of the code for violence, compiling clan genealogies and the right to coercively police the interactions between castes.
  3. Parita Mukta (1994). Upholding the Common Life: The Community of Mirabai. Oxford University Press. p. 51. ISBN 978-0-19-563115-9. The term 'Rajput' before the fifteenth century meant 'horse soldier', 'trooper', 'headman of a village' or 'subordinate chief'. Moreover, individuals with whom the word was associated were generally considered to be products of varna–samkara of mixed caste origin, and thus inferior in rank to Kshatriyas.
  4. Norman Ziegler 1976, p. 141:...individuals or groups with which the word was associated were generally considered to owe their origin to miscegenation or varna-samkara ("the mixing of castes") and were thus inferior in rank to Ksatriyas. [...] What I perceive from the above data is a rather widespread change in the subjective perception and the attribution of rank to groups and individuals who emerged in Rajasthan and North India as local chiefs and rulers in the period after the muslim invasions(extending roughly from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries). These groups were no longer considered kshatriyas and though they filled roles previously held by kshatriyas and were attributed similar functions of sustaining society and upholding the moral order, they were either groups whose original integrity were seen to have been altered or who had emerged from the lower ranks of the caste system. This change is supported by material from the Rajput chronicles themselves.
  5. Hastings 2002, p. 54:The Indian historian K. R. Qanungo has pointed out that in " the middle ages ' Rajput ' ordinarily meant a trooper in the service of a chief or a free-lance captain(1960,98); and Dirk Kolff(1990), following both Quango and D.C.Sircar has surely settled the matter with his argument that many Rajput clans came out of pastoralist bands which achieved some degree of landed status in the first half of the second millennium, forming "largely open status groups of clans, lineages, or even families and individuals who achieved statuses as 'horse soldier', 'trooper' or 'headman of village', and pretended to be connected with the family of some king, it became a generic name for this military and landed class(p 71-72)
  6. Satish Chandra (1982). Medieval India: Society, the Jagirdari Crisis, and the Village. Macmillan. ISBN 9780333903964.
  7. Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya (1994). "Origin of the Rajputs: The Political, Economic and Social Processes in Early Medieval Rajasthan". The Making of Early Medieval India. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195634150.
  8. Detlef Kantowsky (1986). Recent Research on Max Weber's Studies of Hinduism: Papers Submitted to a Conference Held in New Delhi, 1.-3.3. 1984. Weltforum Verlag. p. 104. ISBN 978-3-8039-0333-4.
  9. Hermann Kulke (1993). Kings and Cults: State Formation and Legitimation in India and Southeast Asia. Manohar Publishers & Distributors. p. 251. ISBN 9788173040375.
  10. Mayaram, Shail (2010). "The Sudra Right to Rule". In Ishita Banerjee-Dube (ed.). Caste in History. Oxford University Press. p. 110. ISBN 978-0-19-806678-1. In their recent work on female infanticide, Bhatnagar, Dube and Bube(2005) distinguish between Rajputization and Sanksritization. Using M.N.Srinivas' and Milton Singer's approach to social mobility as idioms they identify Rajputization as one of the most dynamic modes of upward mobility. As an idiom of political power it 'signifies a highly mobile social process of claiming military-political power and the right to cultivate land as well as the right to rule. Rajputization is unparalleled in traditional Indian society for its inventiveness in ideologies of legitimation and self-invention. This was a claim that was used by persons of all castes all over north India ranging from peasants and lower-caste Sudras to warriors and tribal chiefs and even the local raja who had recently converted to Islam.
  11. Ishita Banerjee-Dube (2010). Caste in History. Oxford University Press. p. xxiii. ISBN 978-0-19-806678-1. Rajputization discussed processes through which 'equalitarian, primitive, clan based tribal organization' adjusted itself to the centralized hierarchic, territorial oriented political developments in the course of state formation. This led a 'narrow lineage of single families' to disassociate itself from the main body of their tribe and claim Rajput origin. They not only adopted symbols and practices supposedly representative of the true Kshatriya, but also constructed genealogies that linked them to the primordial and legendary solar and lunar dynasties of kings. Further, it was pointed out that the caste of genealogists and mythographers variously known as Carans, Bhats, Vahivanca Barots, etc., prevalent in Gujarat, Rajasthan and other parts of north India actively provided their patron rulers with genealogies that linked local clans of these chiefs with regional clans and with the Kshatriyas of the Puranas and Mahabharata. Once a ruling group succeeded in establishing its claim to Rajput status, there followed a 'secondary Rajputization' when the tribes tried to 're-associate' with their formal tribal chiefs who had also transformed themselves into Hindu rajas and Rajput Kshatriyas."
  12. Bhatia, Harbans Singh (1984). Political, Legal, and Military History of India. Deep & Deep Publications. p. 21.
  13. Sen, Sailendra Nath (1999). Ancient Indian History and Civilization. New Age International. ISBN 978-81-224-1198-0. The Chandel Rajputs were originally Hinduised Bhars or Gonds or both, who became Kshatriyas on attaining political power. The Gaharwars similarly are associated with the Bhars the Bundelas and the northern Rathors are offshoots of the Garhawars. The Dharmasastras recognise the possibility of lower castes being elevated to higher castes.
  14. Talbot, Cynthia (2016). The Last Hindu Emperor: Prithviraj Cauhan and the Indian Past, 1200–2000. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-11856-0. Kolff's provocative thesis certainly applies to more peripheral groups like the Bundelas of Cenral India, whose claims to be Rajput were ignored by the Rajput clans of Mughal-era Rajasthan, and to other such lower-status martial communities.
  15. Bellew, Henry Walter (1891). An Inquiry Into the Ethnography of Afghanistan: Prepared for and Presented to the 9th International Congress of Orientalists (London, Sept. 1891). Oriental Univ. Inst. p. 85.
  16. Lyla Mehta (2005). The Politics and Poetics of Water: The Naturalisation of Scarcity in Western India. Orient Blackswan. pp. 113–. ISBN 978-81-250-2869-7. As stated in Chapter 3, the Jadeja Rajputs were the former rulers of Kutch and the Hindu descendants of a Muslim tribe that migrated to Kutch from Sind.
  17. Farhana Ibrahim (29 November 2020). Settlers, Saints and Sovereigns: An Ethnography of State Formation in Western India. Taylor & Francis. pp. 127–. ISBN 978-1-00-008397-2. The Jadejas entered the rank of Rajput society slowly from pastoralist pasts, as was frequently the norm in this region. Steady intermarriage between Jadeja men and Sodha Rajput women in Sindh enabled the former to lay claim to a Rajput identity.
  18. Shail Mayaram (6 May 2011). Kamala Visweswaran (ed.). Perspectives on Modern South Asia: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 18–. ISBN 978-1-4051-0062-5. Helena Basu points out that the Jadeja Rajputs of Gujarat who were described as 'half Muslim' employed African Sidi(Muslim) slaves as cooks