Patidar

Patidar (Gujarati: Pāṭidār), formerly known as Kanbi, is an Indian landlord and agrarian caste and community mostly found in Gujarat but also in at least 22 other states of India. The community comprises at multiple subcastes, most prominently the Levas and Kadvas. They form one of the dominant castes in Gujarat. The title of Patidar originally conferred to the land owning aristocratic class of Gujarati Kanbis; however, it was later applied en masses to the entirety of the peasant population who lay claim to a land owning identity, partly as a result of land reforms during the British Raj. The Patidars claimed to be descendants of the Hindu deity Rama. Specifically, the Patidars claim that the Levas and Kadvas are the descendants of Lava and Kusha, respectively, the two sons of Rama. The Barots record that Lava and Kusha were cursed by their mother Sita to become cultivators, and after which the Patidars supposedly migrated from Ayodhya to Gujarat. Shah and Shroff consider this scenario to be unlikely, and believe it to be an example of Barots creating myths to legitimize caste claims to a particular varna (in this case, Kshatriya). The Kanbi/Patidars were divided into several subcastes. The Levas were from central Gujarat and the Kadavas were from northern Gujarat. The Matis, who were a sub-subcaste of the Levas, lived in southern Gujarat. The Chullias lived in certain areas of Saurashtra. The Bhaktas form another subcaste. Since the 17th century, the Leva Kanbis controlled the majority of the land in the Kheda district through a coparcenary system of land tenure called narwadari in which Levas would share the payments of revenue owed to the government. They did this to protect their community against exploitations by the government. The Patidar were originally a title for the Kanbis who had become village tax collectors under the Mughal Empire, and later the Maratha Empire. These Kanbis also took the titles of Desai, Amin and Patel.