A History of the Mahrattas v1.c5.s3.35

v1.c5.s3.35

The two main deductions to be drawn from Mr. Enthoven’s note are (*a*) that the modern Marāthās of the upper class are in origin identical with the great agricultural Kunbī tribe, and are now differentiated from them merely by the accident of social status, and (*b*) that in both the Marāthā and the Kunbī there is a distinct aboriginal strain, which facilitates the absorption into the Kunbī ranks of clearly aboriginal people like the Kolīs, and which justifies the conjecture that the Marāthās, whether of high or low status, are descended without any appreciable foreign admixture from the primeval tribes of the Deccan and Southern Marāthā country. The first deduction has also been arrived at by Dr. W. Crooke in his paper on ‘Rājpūts and Mahrattas,’⁵ in which he draws an analogy between the position of the Marāthās and Kunbīs and that of the Rājpūts, Jāts and Gujars in northern India. He points out that the claim of the upper-class Marāthās to a Rājpūt origin is unfounded; that in modern times some families may have absorbed Rājpūt blood; but that the claim is really the natural result of a rise in social status.¹ ‘The Rājpūts, Jāts and Gujars,’ remarks Dr. Crooke, ‘are ethnically akin; their position depends upon status, the Rājpūts having become the aristocratical body, while the Jāts and Gujars have remained agriculturists and cattle-raisers.’ In precisely the same way a rise in social status, resulting from the ‘kingdom-seizing’ raids of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries or from later economic causes, has resulted in a spurious distinction being drawn between the upper-class Marāthā and the lowly Kunbī cultivator, to whom he is shown by scientific investigation to be ethnically akin. This view finds curious corroboration among the Marāthās themselves. In a Memorandum of July 31, 1919, submitted by the All-India Mahratta League to the Parliamentary Joint Committee appointed to consider the Indian Constitutional Reforms Bill of 1919, it is definitely stated (pp. 8, 9) that ‘There is no difference whatsoever between a Mahratta and a Kunbī. . . . Since days long ago in the antiquarian history of this country they are related by blood to each other. . . . The terms “Mahratta” and “Kunbī” are synonymous; the educated and well-to-do portion of the community styles itself (as) Mahrattas, while the ignorant and the rural passes under the name Kunbī, though the former is akin to the latter as members of the same caste.’²