Kurmi.pdf

Kurmi 1

Kurmi

Kurmi

Ethnographic photograph (1916) of Kurmi women pounding rice

Religions Hinduism

Languages Kurmali, Hindi, Chhattisgarhi, Marathi, Konkani, Gujarati, Oriya, Telugu, South Indian languages and dialects

PopulatedStates

Northern India, Western India, Central India, South India, Gujarat, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Nepal

Subdivisions Singraur, Umrao, Awadhiya (caste), Ghamalia, Kochyasa, Gangwar, Kanbi, Kapu, Katiyar, Kulambi, Joshwar, Kulwadi,Kutumbi, Patel, Singhror, Choduary, Sachan, Artarvavanshi,(Niranjan), Reddy

The Kurmi are a Hindu agricultural Jāti (community) in India and Nepal.The group has been associated with the Kunbi, though scholars differ as to whether the terms are synonymous. In2006, the Indian government announced that Kurmi was considered synonymous with the Kunbi and Yellam castes inMaharashtra. There are differences of opinion regarding the group's classification in the traditional varna system.

EtymologyThere are several theories regarding the etymology of the term Kurmi. It may be derived from an Indian triballanguage, or may be a Sanskrit compound term krishi karmi, "agriculturalist." Another theory holds that it wasderived from kṛṣmi, meaning "ploughman".

Kurmi subcastesAccording to the Anthropological Survey of India, which used British Raj sources, the Kurmis of Bihar and UttarPradesh are divided into different subcastes e.g. Awadhiya, Ghamalia, Konchasia, Yasawar or Joshwar,Chandel,Sindriya, Patel etc.

History

Eighteenth and nineteenth centuriesWith the waning of Mughal rule in the early 18th century, the Indian subcontinent's hinterland dwellers, many of whom were armed and nomadic, began to appear more frequently in settled areas and interact with townspeople and agriculturists. Many new rulers of the 18th century came from such nomadic backgrounds. The effect of this interaction on India's social organization lasted well into the colonial period. During much of this time, non-elite tillers and pastoralists, such as the Kurmi or Ahirs, were part of a social spectrum that blended only indistinctly into

Kurmi 2

the elite landowning classes at one end, and the menial or ritually polluting classes at the other.The Kurmi were famed as cultivators and market gardeners. In western and northern Awadh, for example, for muchof the eighteenth century, the Muslim gentry offered the Kurmi highly discounted rental rates for clearing the jungleand cultivating it. Once the land had been brought stably under the plough, however, the land rent was usually raisedto 30 to 80 per cent above the going rate. Although British revenue officials later ascribed the high rent to theprejudice among the elite rural castes against handling the plough, the main reason was the greater productivity ofthe Kurmi, whose success lay in superior manuring. According to historian Christopher Bayly,

Whereas the majority of cultivators manured only the lands immediately around the village and usedthese lands for growing food grains, Kurmis avoided using animal dung for fuel and manured the poorerlands farther from the village (the manjha). They were able, therefore, to grow valuable market cropssuch as potatoes, melons and tobacco immediately around the village, sow fine grains in the manjha, andrestrict the poor millet subsistence crops to the periphery. A network of ganjs (fixed rural markets) andKurmi or Kacchi settlements could transform a local economy within a year or two.

Cross-cultural influences were felt also. Hindu tillers worshipped at Muslim shrines in the small towns founded bytheir Muslim overlords. The Hindu Kurmis of Chunar and Jaunpur, for instance, took up the Muslim custom ofmarrying first cousins and of burying their dead. In some regions, the Kurmis' success as tillers led to landownership, and to avowals of high status, as noted, for examples, by Francis Buchanan in the early 19th centuryamong the Ayodhya Kurmis of the Awadh. Earlier, in the late eighteenth century, when Asaf-Ud-Dowlah, the fourthNawab of Awadh, attempted to grant the kshatriya title of Raja to a group of influential landed Ayodhya Kurmis, hewas thwarted by a united opposition of Rajputs, who were themselves (as described by Buchanan), "a group ofnewcomers to the court, who had been peasant soldiers only a few years before ..." According to historian WilliamPinch:

(The) Rajputs of Awadh, who along with brahmans constituted the main beneficiaries of what historianRichard Barnett characterizes as "Asaf's permissive program of social mobility," were not willing to letthat mobility reach beyond certain arbitrary socio-cultural boundaries. ... The divergent claims to statusin the nineteenth century (and earlier) illustrate the point that for non-Muslims, while varna wasgenerally accepted as the basis for identity, on the whole little agreement prevailed with respect to theplace of the individual and the jati within a varna hierarchy.

Although the free peasant farm was the mainstay of farming in many parts of north India in the 18th century, in someregions, a combination of climatic, political, and demographic factors led to the increased dependence of peasantcultivators such as the Kurmi. In the Benares division, which had come under the revenue purview of the British EastIndia Company in 1779, the Chalisa famine of 1783 and the relentless revenue demand from the Company reducedthe status of many Kurmi cultivators. A British revenue agent wrote in 1790, "It unfortunately happened that duringthe famine aforesaid a great proportion of the Kurmis, Kacchis and Koeris were in this district as well as in otherssupplanted by Brahmans ... " and bemoaned the loss of agricultural revenue in part due to, "this unfavourablemutation amongst the cultivators ..."In the first half of the nineteenth century, economic pressures on the large landowning classes increased noticeably.The prices of agricultural lands fell at the same time that the East India Company, after acquiring the Ceded andConquered Provinces (later the North-Western Provinces) in 1805, began to press landowners for more land revenue.The annexation of Awadh in 1856 created more fear and discontent among the landed elite, and may havecontributed to the Indian rebellion of 1857. Economic pressures also opened marginal areas to intensive agricultureand turned the fortunes of the non-elite peasants, such as the Kurmi, who worked them. After the rebellion, thelandowning classes, defeated but still pressed economically in the new British Raj, attempted to treat their tenantsand labourers as people of lowly birth and to demand unpaid labour from them. According to historicalanthropologist Susan Bayly,

Kurmi 3

In some instances these were attempts to stave off decline by reinvigorating or intensifying existingfroms of customary service. Elsewhere these were wholly novel demands, many being imposed on'clean' tillers and cattle-keepers like the Ram- and Krishna-loving Koeris, Kurmis and Ahirs ... In eithercase, these calls were buttressed with appeals to Sanskritic varna theory and Brahmanical casteconvention. ... Kurmi and Goala/Ahir tillers who held tenancies from these 'squireens' found themselvesbeing identified as Shudras, that is, people who were mandated to serve those of the superior Kshatriyaand Brahman varnas.

The elite landowning classes, such as Rajputs and Bhumihar Brahmins, now sought to present themselves asflagbearers of the ancient Hindu tradition. At the same time, there was a proliferation of Brahmanical rituals in thedaily life of the elite, a greater stress on pure blood lines, more stringent conditions placed on matrimonial alliances,and, as noted by some social reformers of the day, an increase among the Rajputs of female infanticide, a practicethat had little history among the Kurmi.

The map of the prevailing "races" of India (now discredited) based on the 1901 Census of British India. The Kurmi areshown both in the United Provinces (UP) and the Central Provinces. 

An "ethnographic" photograph from 1916 showing Kurmi farmers, both men andwomen, sowing a field. 

Kurmi 4

Another ethnographic print from 1916 showing a Kurmi family employing its beasts ofburden to thresh wheat. 

A third print from the same collection showing the Kurmifamily winnowing. 

The second half of the nineteenth century also largely overlapped with the coming of age of ethnology—interpretedthen as the science of race—in the study of societies the world over. Although later to be discredited, the methods ofthis discipline were eagerly absorbed and adopted in British India, as were those of the emerging science ofanthropology. Driven in part by the intellectual ferment of the discipline and in part by the political compulsions inboth Britain and India, two dominant views of caste emerged among the administrator-scholars of the day.According to Susan Bayly:

Those like (Sir William) Hunter, as well as the key figures of H. H. Risley (1851–1911) and his protégéEdgar Thurston, who were disciples of the French race theorist Topinard and his European followers,subsumed discussions of caste into theories of biologically determined race essences, ... Their greatrivals were the material or occupational theorists led by the ethnographer and folklorist William Crooke(1848–1923), author of one of the most widely read provincial Castes and Tribes surveys, and suchother influential scholar-officials as Denzil Ibbetson and E. A. H. Blunt.

Seeing caste as a fundamental force in Indian life, Risley, especially, influenced official views as expressed in both the Censuses of British India and the Imperial Gazetteer brought out by Hunter. Risley is best known for the now discounted attribution of all differences in caste to varying proportions of seven racial types which included "Dravidian," "Aryo-Dravidian," and "Indo-Aryan". The Kurmi fell into two such categories. In the ethnological map of India published in the 1909 Imperial Gazetteer of India and based on the 1901 Census supervised by Risley, the Kurmi of the United Provinces were classified as "Aryo-Dravidian," whereas the Kurmi of the Central Provinces were counted among "Dravidians". (See figure.) In the 1901 Census of India, the category of varna, the four-fold graded system, was included in the official classification of caste, the only time this was the case.[1]</ref> In the United Provinces (UP), the Kurmi were classified under "Class VIII: Castes from whom some of the twice-born would take water and pakki (food cooked with ghee),[2] without question;" whereas, in Bihar, they were listed under:

Kurmi 5

"Class III, Clean Sudra, Subclass (a)."[3] </ref> According to William Pinch, "Risley's hierarchy (for UnitedProvinces) was far more elaborate than that for Bihar, suggesting that contending claims of social respectability mayhave been more deeply entrenched in the western half of the Gangetic Plain."In the writings of the occupational theorists, the Kurmis and the Jats came to be extolled for their yeoman-likepurposefulness, tirelessness, and thrift, all of which, according to writers such as Crooke, Ibbetson, and Blunt hadbeen largely abandoned by the landed elite. Crooke wrote about the Kurmi in 1897:

They are about the most industrious and hard-working agricultural tribe in the Province. The industry ofhis wife has passed into a proverbBhali jât Kurmin, khurpi hât,Khet nirâwê apan pî kê sâth."A good lot is the Kurmi woman; she takes her spud and weeds the field with her lord."

According to Susan Bayly,By the mid-nineteenth century, influential revenue specialists were reporting that they could tell thecaste of a landed man by simply glancing at his crops. In the north, these observers claimed, a field of'second-rate barley' would belong to a Rajput or Brahman who took pride in shunning the plough andsecluding his womenfolk. Such a man was to be blamed for his own decline, fecklessly mortgaging andthen selling off his lands to maintain his unproductive dependents. By the same logic, a flourishing fieldof wheat would belong to a non-twice-born tiller, wheat being a crop requiring skill and enterprise onthe part of the cultivator. These, said such commentators as Denzil Ibbetson and E. A. H. Blunt, werethe qualities of the non-patrician 'peasant' – the thrifty Jat or canny Kurmi in upper India, .... Similarvirtues would be found among the smaller market-gardening populations, these being the people knownas Keoris in Hindustan, ....

Twentieth century

Kurmi women in "Hindustani dress" (1916)

As the economic pressures on thepatrician landed groups continuedthrough the remainder of thenineteenth century and into the earlytwentieth, there were increasingdemands for unpaid labour directed atthe Kurmi and other non-elitecultivators. The landed elites' demandswere couched in avowals of theirancient rights as "twice-born"landowners and of the Kurmi's allegedlowly, even servile, status, whichrequired them to serve. At timesencouraged by sympathetic Britishofficials and at other times carried by the groundswell of egalitarian sentiment being espoused then by the devotionalVaishnava movements, especially those based on Tulsidas's Ramcharitmanas, the Kurmi largely resisted thesedemands. Their resistance, however, did not take the form of denial of caste or of caste-based imposition, but ratherof disagreement about where they stood in the caste ranking. A noteworthy attribute of the resulting Kurmi-kshatriyamovement was the leadership provided by educated Kurmis who were now filling the lower and middle levels ofgovernment jobs. According to William Pinch:

Kurmi 6

The mantle of leadership in this phase befell the well-connected Ramdin Sinha, a government foresterwho had gained notoriety by resigning from his official post to protest a provincial circular of 1894 thatincluded Kurmis as a "depressed community" and barred them therefore from recruitment into the policeservice. The governor’s office was flooded with letters from an outraged Kurmi-kshatriya public andwas soon obliged to rescind the allegation in an 1896 communique to the police department "His Honor[the governor] is ... of the opinion that Kurmis constitute a respectable community which he would bereluctant to exclude from Government service."

The first Kurmi caste association had been formed in 1894 at Lucknow to protest against the police recruitmentpolicy. This was followed by an organisation in Awadh that sought to draw other communities — such as thePatidars, Marathas, Kapus and Naidus — under the umbrella of the Kurmi name. This body then campaigned forKurmis to classify themselves as Kshatriya in the 1901 census and, in 1910, led to the formation of the All IndiaKurmi Kshatriya Mahasabha. Simultaneously, newly constituted farmers' unions, or Kisan Sabhas—composed ofcultivators and pastoralists, many of whom were Kurmi, Ahir, and Yadav (Goala), and inspired by Hindumendicants, such as Baba Ram Chandra and Swami Sahajanand Saraswati—denounced the Brahman and Rajputlandlords as ineffective and their morality as false. In the rural Ganges valley of Bihar and Eastern United Provinces,the Bhakti cults of Lord Rama, the incorruptible Kshatriya god-king of Hindu tradition, and Lord Krishna, the divineKshatriya guardian of cows, had long been entrenched among the Kurmi and Ahir. The leaders of the Kisan Sabhasurged their Kurmi and Ahir followers to lay claim to the Kshatriya mantle. Promoting what was advertised assoldierly manliness, the Kisan Sabhas agitated for the entry of non-elite farmers into the British Indian army duringWorld War I; they formed cow protection societies; they asked their members to wear the sacred thread of thetwice-born, and, in contrast to the Kurmis own traditions, to sequester their women in the manner of Rajputs andBrahmins.In 1930, the Kurmis of Bihar joined with the Yadav and Koeri agriculturalists to enter local elections. They lostbadly but in 1934 the three communities formed the Triveni Sangh political party, which allegedly had a milliondues-paying members by 1936. However, the organisation was hobbled by competition from the Congress-backedBackward Class Federation, which was formed around the same time, and by co-option of community leaders by theCongress party. The Triveni Sangh suffered badly in the 1937 elections, although it did win in some areas. Theorganisation also suffered from caste rivalries, notably the superior organisational ability of the higher castes whoopposed it, as well as the inability of the Yadavs to renounce their belief that they were natural leaders and that theKurmi were somehow inferior. Similar problems beset a later planned caste union, the Raghav Samaj, with theKoeris.Again in the 1970s, the India Kurmi Kshatriya Sabha attempted to bring the Koeris under their wing, but again adisunity troubled this alliance. Kurmi politician Nitish Kumar formed the Samata Party in 1994, forming abackward-upper caste alliance with the conservative Bharatiya Janata Party, which achieved only initial success. In1998, politician Laloo Prasad Yadav took advantage of this lack of unity in the IKKS, portraying Koeri ShakuniChaudhry as an incarnation of Kush. Under Yadav, the IKSS became less and less advantageous to the Kurmi,favouring instead the priorities of the Yadav caste, and this combined with the competition of the Kurmi-basedSamata led to a divide between these intermittently allied castes.[4]

Kurmi 7

ReferencesNotes[1] Although influential, Risley's attempt did not achieve the end which he sought: people were unable to determine in which group they should

classify themselves, the localised system he adopted could not be transposed onto the national stage, and some groups took advantage of thesituation deliberately to seek reclassification and therefore satisfy their aspirations. L. I. and S. H. Rudolph have commented that "Risley'swork, as a scientific effort, seemed based on mistaken premises. Varna was not a behavioral concept."<ref>

[2] Quote: "The Hindu draws a distinction between kachcha food, which is cooked in water, and pakka food, which is cooked in ghi (clarifiedbutter). This distinction depends on the principle that ghi, like all products of the sacred cow protects from impurity ... and enables the Hinduto be less particular in the case of pakka than of kachcha food, and allows him to relax his restrictions accordingly." In

[3] Indian censuses of the British Raj period are not usually considered to be particularly reliable except for overall population figures. Those forsome areas of the country could be more reliable than others.<ref>

[4] Akshaya Mukul. Mighty Kurmis of Bihar (http:/ / timesofindia. indiatimes. com/ young-india-votes/ news/ Mighty-Kurmis-of-Bihar/articleshow/ 555124. cms). Times of India, 12 March 2004

Citations

Further reading• Bhattacharya, Ranjit Kumar; Das, Nava Kishor; Anthropological Survey of India (1 January 1993), Anthropology

of weaker sections (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=pjVdJMBeXU8C), Concept Publishing Company,ISBN 978-81-7022-491-4, retrieved 1 August 2011

• Gooptu, Nandini (1 July 2001), The politics of the urban poor in early twentieth-century India (http:/ / books.google. com/ books?id=yRrbSzEvNCMC), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-44366-1, retrieved 1August 2011

• Singer, Milton (editor); Cohn, Bernard S. (editor) (2007), Structure and Change in Indian Society (http:/ / books.google. com/ books?id=_g-_r-9Oa_sC), Transaction Publishers, ISBN 978-0-202-36138-3, retrieved 1 August2011

• Yang, Anand A. (1989), The limited Raj: agrarian relations in colonial India, Saran District, 1793-1920 (http:/ /books. google. com/ books?id=Ck4jmD7H34UC), University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-05711-1,retrieved 1 August 2011

Article Sources and Contributors 8

Article Sources and ContributorsKurmi  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=574596861  Contributors: 4twenty42o, 81jsc, Abhi2488, Agcolbert, Ajaipal, Ajneesh Katiyar, Alexius08, Alfred Lau, Alphachimp,Ameliorate!, Andreas Kaganov, Angpradesh, Anilgonu, Anilsachan, Antiuser, ArglebargleIV, Arnon Chaffin, Arya bactria, Ashi57, Ashumech527, Avicennasis, Avskking, BADMINton,BD2412, Baba Ovian, Bdiscoe, Bender235, Bentogoa, Betacommand, Bhadani, Bmohanta34, Boing! said Zebedee, Bolivian Unicyclist, Bonadea, Breeezee, Brijeshweb, Britisharmy, C21K,Capitalismojo, CaptRik, CarTick, Chhora, Crusoe8181, DSachan, DabMachine, Dangerous-Boy, Denisarona, Desidesiboy, Devansh gangwar, Doc Tropics, Dogposter, Dougweller, Drmies,Drniteshkr, Edit wiki 114436, Ekabhishek, ErrantX, Fabrictramp, Favonian, Feezo, Flyer22, Fowler&fowler, Funandtrvl, GB fan, Gaius Cornelius, Garion96, Gaurav saraswat, Gauravmunger,Genealogy1959, Gimboid13, GoingBatty, Graham87, Guddu56, Hawksachan, Himanshu.47, Hitendra dba, HitroMilanese, Hornplease, Igoldste, Ikonoblast, IndianGeneralist, Indianittdoms,Indiboy2009, Intoronto1125, Ipru, Iridescent, JDP90, JHunterJ, Jack2314, JamesAM, Jaychandra, Jclemens, Jeffrey Mall, Jhingalinga, John of Reading, Johnuniq, Jonathansammy, K1Bond007,Kamtagangwar, Kartik.singh, Katieh5584, Kenatipo, Kman543210, Krishnakoli, Kukini, Kumioko (renamed), KurmiKshatriya, Kurubagowda, LADave, LFaraone, Laknirala, LilHelpa, Lwieise,Makks2010, Mandarax, MangoWong, Manishnayak1, MatthewVanitas, Medflight, Medicare2002, MelbourneStar, Mild Bill Hiccup, Minimac's Clone, Miteshvelani, Mm40, Mmxx, MuhammadHamza, Mywiki member01, NKumar76, NSINGH, Nameisnotimportant, Nasnema, New Rock Star, Niteowlneils, Niteshpatelapnadal, Nitin.chandrakar, Nkanne, Ospalh, Paknur, Panel1,Patelurology2, Paul Barlow, Pawyilee, PhilMacD, Philip Trueman, Piya 1983, Porqin, Precise, Princeamit77, QuartierLatin1968, Qwyrxian, R'n'B, R000t, RSPatel, RainbowOfLight, Raj veerma,Rajesh chandrakar, Rajesh785, Rajvir rana, Reaper Eternal, Rjwilmsi, Robinindian, Runewiki777, S h i v a (Visnu), S virendra, Salvio giuliano, Sam.k.singh, Sandeepsinghkhaga, Sandyiit,Satya7, Satyabrata m, Seb az86556, Shadowjams, Shanofhind, Shivendrasachan, Shobhit.ireland, Shyamsunder, Sitush, Sls, Someshkirar, Southindiandude, Spatone, Sunnyrathore,Sunnyverma1984, SuryaLavyas, Svsingh, Symplectic Map, Tassedethe, Tbhotch, Thakurta, The Thing That Should Not Be, Thestraycat57, Thisthat2011, Titodutta, Tngangwar, Tnxman307,Tommy2010, Tripathy89, Tripping Nambiar, Ulric1313, Valenciano, Veinor, Viren56, Viridian, Vishalwebmaster76, WALTHAM2, Welsh, WereSpielChequers, Widr, WikHead,Wiki.aditya000, Woohookitty, Xionbox, Yogesh Khandke, 976 anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and Contributorsfile:Kurmi women pounding rice.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Kurmi_women_pounding_rice.jpg  License: unknown  Contributors: User:Fowler&fowlerFile:India1909PrevailingRaces.JPG  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:India1909PrevailingRaces.JPG  License: unknown  Contributors: User:Fowler&fowlerFile:Kurmi sowing.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Kurmi_sowing.jpg  License: unknown  Contributors: User:Fowler&fowlerFile:Kurmi threshing.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Kurmi_threshing.jpg  License: unknown  Contributors: User:Fowler&fowlerFile:Kurmi winnowing.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Kurmi_winnowing.jpg  License: unknown  Contributors: User:Fowler&fowlerFile:Kurmi women in Hindustani dress 1916.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Kurmi_women_in_Hindustani_dress_1916.jpg  License: unknown  Contributors:User:Fowler&fowler

LicenseCreative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/