Indian Brahmin sub-caste inhabiting Konkan region From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Chitpavan Brahmin or the Kokanastha Brahmin is a Hindu Maharashtrian Brahmin community inhabiting Konkan, the coastal region of the state of Maharashtra. Initially working as messengers and spies in the late seventeenth century, the community came into prominence during the 18th century when the heirs of Peshwa from the Bhat family of Balaji Vishwanath became the de facto rulers of the Maratha empire. Until the 18th century, the Chitpavans were held in low esteem by the Deshastha, the older established Brahmin community of Karnataka-Maharashtra region.[1][2][3]
Chitpavan Brahmins practising Bodan, a rite performed on important occasions like birth or marriage
As per Jayant Lele, the influence of the Chitpavans in the Peshwa era as well as the British era has been greatly exaggerated because even during the time of the most prominent Peshwas, their political legitimacy and their intentions were not trusted by all levels of the administration, not even by Shivaji's successors. He adds that after the defeat of Peshwas in the Anglo-Maratha wars, Chitpavans were the one of the Hindu communities to flock to western education in the Bombay Province of British India.[4]
The Chitpavans are also known as Kokanastha Brahmins.[5][6]
The etymology of their name is given in a legendary myth of the chapter citpāvanabrāhmaṇotpattiḥ i.e. “Origin of the Citpāvan brahmins” in the Hindu Sanskrit scripture Sahyadrikhanda[lower-alpha 1] of the Skanda Purana. According to this chapter, Parashurama, the sixth incarnation of God Vishnu, who could not find any Brahmins in Konkan to perform rituals for him, found sixty fishermen who had gathered near a funeral pyre near the ocean shore. These sixty fishermen families were purified and Sanksritized to Brahminhood. Since the funeral pyre is called Chita and pure as pavana, the community was henceforth known by the name Chitapavan or "purified at the location of a funeral pyre". However, 'Chita' also means 'mind' in Sanskrit and the Chitapavans prefer "pure of mind" instead of "pure from the pyre". One scholar suggests that the author of the current version was a Deshastha Brahmin and there were earlier suggestions of similarity with the Sadbodhacintāmaṇi published by the community of goldsmiths from Bombay. Madhav Deshpande(2010) rejects these suggestions because it is inconceivable that a Deshastha brahmin would write a "pro-Saraswat" text as there was dislike of the Gaud Saraswats of the west coast of India by the Deshasthas as well as the fact that the Deshastha, Chitpavans and Karhade Brahmin unanimously rejected the Brahmin status claim of the Gaud Saraswat Brahmins (Shenvi) of the western coast of Maharashtra. The Kulavruttanta of the Khare (Chitpavan) family prefers a modified version of the scripture. They state that fourteen dead-bodies were purified by Parshurama. Since "Chiplun pleased Paraśurāma’s heart", the Brahmins of that place received the name cittapāvana.[8][9]
The Chitpavan story of shipwrecked people is similar to the legendary arrival of Bene Israel Jews in the Raigad district.[10][11][12][13][14] According to the historian Roshen Dalal, similarities between the legends may be due to a connection between the Chitpavans and the Bene Israel communities.[14] The Bene Israel, who also settled in Konkan, claim that the Chitpavans are also of Jewish origin. According to their version, these Jews later adopted Hinduism and later were called Chitpavans by the people in the area.[15][16] A member of the community, B.J Israel, noted that there might be truth in his community's claim that they and Chitpavans belong to the same stock but there is also a possibility that the Puranic legend of Chitpavan origin had been appropriated by his community to account for their presence on the coast.[17] Yulia Egorova notes that the attempts of Bene-Israel to be associated with high caste Chitpavan Brahmins is similar to the concept of Sanskritisation in which low caste Hindus try to elavate their social status.[18]
Historian Jadunath Sarkar opines that the Chitpavans had a non-Indian origin and bases his views on traditions and inscriptions.[19] Indologist Johannes Bronkhorst writes that there is a belief that Chitpavans are sometimes considered to be people of non-Indian origin who later became Brahmins.[20] Oxford historian O'Hanlon states that there are allegations that Chitpavan are progeny of arab sailors, and their historic practice of taking bride price was at odds with the standard practice of Kanyadana, or giving a daughter away.[21]
Maureen L. P. Patterson writes that the Konkan region witnessed the immigration of groups, such as the Bene Israel, Parsis, Kudaldeshkar Gaud Brahmins, Gaud Saraswat Brahmins, and Chitpavan Brahmins. Each of these arrived at different time, they settled in different parts of the region and there was little mingling between them. The Chitpavans were apparently the last major community to arrive there and consequently the area in which they settled, around Ratnagiri, was the least fertile and had few good ports for trading.[22]
In ancient times, the Chitpavans were employed as messengers and spies. Later, with the rise of the Chitpavan Peshwa in the 18th century they began migrating to Pune and found employment as military men, diplomats and clerks in the Peshwa administration. A 1763–64 document shows that at least 67% of the clerks at the time were Chitpavans.[23][3][24]
Very little is known of the Chitpavans before 1707CE[22]Balaji Vishwanth Bhat, a Chitpavan arrived from Ratnagiri to the Pune-Satara area. He was brought there on the basis of his reputation of being an efficient administrator. He quickly gained the attention of Chhatrapati Shahu. Balaji's work so pleased the Chhatrapati that he was appointed the Peshwa or Prime Minister in 1713. He ran a well-organised administration and, by the time of his death in 1720, he had laid the groundwork for the expansion of the Maratha Empire. Since this time until the fall of the Maratha Empire, the seat of the Peshwa would be held by the members of the Bhat family.[25][26]
With the ascension of Balaji Baji Rao and his family to the supreme authority of the Maratha Empire, Chitpavan immigrants began arriving en masse from the Konkan to Pune[27][28] where the Peshwa offered all important offices to his fellow caste members.[22] The Chitpavan kin were rewarded with tax relief and grants of land.[29] In 1762-63, Azad Bilgrami wrote:
The Marathas in general, but the Deccani Brahmans in particular, have the desire to deprive all people of their means of livelihood and appropriate it for themselves. They do not spare the zamindārs of rājas, nor even the zamindāri of small people like headmen and village accountants. Uprooting most cruelly the heirs of ancient lineages, they establish their own possession and desire that the Konkani Brahmans should become the proprietors (mālik) of the whole world.[30]
On the other hand, Mahars were subjected to degradation during the rule of the Peshwas, who treated them as untouchables.[31] Historians cite nepotism[32][33][34][35][36][37] and corruption[35][37] as causes of the fall of the Maratha Empire in 1818. Richard Maxwell Eaton states that this rise of the Chitpavans is a classic example of social rank rising with political fortune.[28]
After the fall of the Maratha Empire in 1818, the Chitpavans lost their political dominance to the British. The British would not subsidise the Chitpavans on the same scale that their caste-fellow, the Peshwas, had done in the past. Pay and power was now significantly reduced. Poorer Chitpavan students adapted and started learning English because of better opportunities in the British administration.[29]
As per the 1901 census, about 5% of the Pune population was Brahmin and about 27% of them were Chitpavans.[38]
Some of the strongest resistance to change came from the very same community. The vanguard and the old guard clashed many times. D. K. Karve was ostracised. Even Tilak offered penance for breaking caste or religious rules. One was for taking tea at Poona Christian mission in 1892 and the second was going to England in 1919.[46]
When the social reformer Jyotirao Phule was trying to get the backward castes educated, historian Umesh Chattopadhyaya says that "Pune's Chitpavans would not allow any Dalit and backward to join schools". This opposition from them resulted in Phule establishing schools in and around Pune.[47]
The Chitpavan community includes two major politicians in the Gandhian tradition: Gopal Krishna Gokhale, whom Mahatma Gandhi acknowledged as a preceptor, and Vinoba Bhave, one of his outstanding disciples. Gandhi describes Bhave as the "jewel of his disciples", and recognised Gokhale as his political guru. However, strong opposition to Gandhi came from the Chitpavan community. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the founder of the Hindu nationalist political ideology Hindutva, was a Chitpavan Brahmin and several other Chitpavans were among the first to embrace it because they thought it was a logical extension of the legacy of the Peshwas and caste-fellow Tilak.[48] These Chitpavans felt out of place with the Indian social reform movement of Phule and the mass politics of Gandhi. Large numbers of the community looked to Savarkar, the Hindu Mahasabha and finally the RSS, drew their inspiration from fringe groups.[49][full citation needed]
V. M. Sirsikar, a political scientist at the University of Pune, noted that
It will be too much to believe that the riots took place because of the intense love of Gandhiji on the part of the Marathas. Godse became a very convenient hate symbol to damn the Brahmins and burn their properties.[51]
The violence after the assassination affected Chitpavan Patwardhan family ruled princely states such as Sangli, where the Marathas were joined by the Jains and the Lingayats in the attacks against the Brahmins. Here, specifically, the loss was about Rs.16 million. This event led to the hasty integration of the Patwardhan states into the Bombay Province by March 1948 – a move that was opposed by other Brahmins as they feared the Maratha predominance in the integrated province.[53]
The Chitpavans have considered themselves to be both warriors and priests.[54] Their involvement in military affairs began with the rise of the Peshwas[55] and their willingness to enter military and other services earned them high status and power in the Deccan.[56]
In their original home of Konkan, their primary occupation was farming, while some earned money by performing rituals among their own caste members.[57]
Anthropologist Donald Kurtz writes that the late 20th century opinions about the culture of the Chitpavans was that they were frugal to the point of appearing cheap, impassive, not trustworthy and also conspiratorial.[58] According to Tilak, a Chitpavan himself, his community was known for cleanliness and being industrious but he suggested they should learn virtues such as benevolence and generosity from the Deshasthas.[59] During the heyday of the Maratha Empire, the city of Pune became the financial metropolis of the empire with 150 big and petty moneylenders. Most of these were Chitpavan or Deshastha Brahmins.[60]
D.L.Sheth, the former director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in India (CSDS), lists Indian communities that were traditionally "urban and professional" (following professions like doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, etc.) immediately after Independence in 1947. This list included Chitpavans and CKPs(Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhus) from Maharashtra; the South Indian Brahmins; the Nagar Brahmins from Gujarat; the Punjabi Khatris, Kashmiri Pandits and Kayasthas from northern India; the Probasi and the BhadralokBengalis; the Parsis and the upper crusts of Muslim and Christian communities. According to P.K.Verma, "Education was a common thread that bound together this pan Indian elite" and almost all male members of these communities could read and write English and were educated beyond school.[61][62][63]
Language
Chitpavan Brahmins in Maharashtra speak Marathi as their language. The Marathi spoken by Chitpavans in Pune is the standard form of language used all over Maharashtra today.[4] This form has many words derived from Sanskrit and retains the Sanskrit pronunciation of many, misconstrued by non-standard speakers as "nasalised pronunciation".[64]
Social status
Earlier, the Deshastha Brahmins openly disparaged the Chitpavans as parvenus (a relative newcomer to a socio-economic class), and in Kumar's words "barely fit to associate on terms of equality with the noblest of the Dvijas". The Deshastha Brahmins were also joined by the Karhade Brahmins who also showed disdain for the Chitpawans and both these castes even declined to eat food together with them. Thus, they did not treat them as social equals. Even the Peshwas themselves were not given access to the ghats reserved for Deshastha priests at Nashik on the Godavari river.[1][65][66][citation needed]
After the appointment of Balaji Vishwanath Bhat as Peshwa, Kokanastha Brahmin migrants began arriving en masse from the Konkan to Pune,[28][67] where the Peshwa offered some important offices to the Kokanastha Brahmin caste.[68] The Kokanastha Brahmin kin were rewarded with tax relief and grants of land.[69] Historians point out nepotism[70][71][72][73][74][75] and corruption during this time.
The rise in prominence of the Chitpavans compared to the Deshastha Brahmins resulted in intense rivalry between the two communities.[76] 19th century records also mention Gramanyas or village-level debates between the Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhus and the Chitpavans, Saraswat Brahmins and the Chitpavans, Pathare Prabhus and the Chitpavans and Shukla Yajurvedi Deshastha Brahmins and the Chitpavans. These disputes pertaining to the so-called violation of "Brahmanical ritual code of behavior" were quite common in Maharashtra during that period.[77]
Bal Gangadhar Tilak believed that the Deshasthas, Chitpavans and Karhades should get united. As early as 1881, he encouraged this by writing comprehensive discussions on the urgent need for these three Maharashtrian Brahmin sub-castes to give up caste exclusiveness by intermarrying and dining together.[78]
Starting in the 20th century, the relations between the Deshastha Brahmins and the Chitpavan Brahmins have improved by the large-scale mixing of both communities on social, financial and educational fields, as well as with intermarriages.[79][80][81]
Diet
Traditionally, Chitpavan Brahmins are vegetarian. Rice is their staple food.[82]
Bodan
A.J.Agarkar describes Bodan as follows and adds that some kind of dancing is also involved:
In certain Chitpavan families, it is obligatory to perform bodan, after a birth or a marriage has taken place in the family. Four married women and an unmarried girl are invited to meals. A metal idol of the Goddess Annapurna is placed in a plate containing all the items of the meals in small quantities. All the contents of the plate along with the idol are mixed together by the invited women and if any of them is in the habit of getting possessed on such occasions, or if anyone gets possessed for the first time, ghee, milk, honey, etc. are added to the mixture according to her instructions. The idol is afterwards removed and the mixture is fed to a cow.[83]
Vandana Bhave has published the only dedicated book on Bodan Vidhi (Bodan method) named Merutantrokta Bodan Vidhi.[84]
Bodan finds mention in the Akshi Shilalekh (Pillar Inscription), dated to 1012 CE (sake 934) by Dr. S. G. Tulpule, and by Dikshit to 1209-1210 CE (Sake 1132). V. V. Mirashi agress with Sake 1132 as the right date. Tulpule reads the content as donation of 9 kuvalis of grain towards Goddess Mahalakshmi for Bodan, whereas Dikshit interprets it as digging a well to honor Mahalaskhmi.[85]
Genealogy
The community has published several family history and genealogy almanacs called Kulavruttantas. These books usually document various aspects of a clan's history, name etymology, ancestral land holdings, migration maps, religious traditions, genealogical charts, biographies, and records of births, deaths and marriages within the clan.[86][87]
Vishnushastri Krushnashastri Chiplunkar (1850–1882),[96] essayist, editor of Nibandha Mala, a Marathi journal, educator, mentor to Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, founder of the Chitrashala press[97]
Vasudev Balwant Phadke (1845–1883),[98] a petty government clerk in Pune who led an armed rebellion against the British. Later an Educator.[99]
Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920),[56] educator, writer and early nationalist leader with widespread appeal. Described by British colonial administration as the "Father of Indian Unrest"[100][101]
Chapekar brothers (1873–1899), (1879–1899), brothers who assassinated British plague commissioner Walter Rand for his heavy-handed approach to plague relief in Pune in 1897[106]
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar[41][111] (28 May 1883 – 26 February 1966), freedom fighter, social reformer and formulator of the Hindutva philosophy. Popularly known as Veer Savarkar ("Brave" Savarkar)[112]
Senapati Bapat (12 November 1880 – 28 November 1967), prominent Indian freedom fighter who acquired title of Senapati, meaning "Commander"[113]
Dadasaheb Phalke (30 April 1870 – 16 February 1944), pioneer of Indian film industry[114]
The book is less than 400 years old per Alexander Kyd Nairne, a British colonial era author.[7]
Collector A. M. T. Jackson, a Sanskrit scholar was affectionately called"Pandit Jackson".Kanhere assassinationed him for Ganesh Damodar Savarkar's trial and an acquittal of a British Engineer in the death of a farmer caused by rash driving.[119][120][121]
Ravinder Kumar (28 October 2013). Western India in the Nineteenth Century: A study in the social history of Maharashtra. Taylor & Francis. pp.41–. ISBN978-1-135-03145-9. Upon the chitpavans who had come into prominence after the rise of the Peshwas they[deshasthas] looked down with scarcely veiled contempt as the parvenus, barely fit to associate on terms of equality with the noblest of the dvijas. A chitpavan who was invited to a deshasth home was a privileged individual, and even the Peshwa was denied the right to use the ghats reserved for deshasth priests at Nasik on the Godavari
Guy Delury. India, the Rebel Continent. p.183. The name Chitpavan had been given to them by the other local jatis of Brahmins a little mockingly, since they tended to look down on the Chitpavans
Percival Griffiths (23 April 2019). The British Impact on India. Taylor & Francis. pp.329–. ISBN978-0-429-61424-8. They were not highly regarded by other Brahmans in ancient days and appeared to have been employed principally as spies and messengers
Singh, R.; Lele, J.K. (1989). Language and society: steps towards an integrated theory. Leiden: E.J. Brill. p.34. ISBN978-9-00408-789-7. The extent of the real chitpavan influence in the socio-polity of Maharashtra, during this period, has been vastly exaggerated. Even under the most ambitious and effective peshwas, the established local power structure, from the major Maratha chieftains down to village headmen, did not trust Peshwas' political intentions and doubted their legitimacy. This was particularly true under Shivaji's feuding successors.
Deshpande, M.M. (2010). "Pañca Gauḍa and Pañca Drāviḍa: Contested borders of a traditional classification". Studia Orientalia (108): 37,39. The first chapter of the Sahyādrikhaṇḍa is titled citpāvanabrāhmaṇotpattiḥ "Origin of the Citpāvan brahmins". In the newly recovered land of Konkan, there are no traditional brahmins, either of the Gauḍa or Draviḍa persuasion, to be found. Paraśurāma invites all the brahmins for carrying out ancestral offerings (śrāddha-pakṣa), and yet no one showed up (Chapter 1, verse 31). The angry brahmin Paraśurāma decided to produce new brahmins (brāhmaṇā nūtanāḥ kāryāḥ, Chapter 1, verse 33). As he was wandering along the bank of the ocean, he saw some men gathered around a funeral pyre and asked them about their caste and dharma. These were fishermen, and Paraśurāma purified their sixty families and offered them brahminhood (brāhmaṇyaṁ ca tato dattvā, Chapter 1, verse 37). Since these fishermen were purified at the location of a funeral pyre (citā), they received the designation of citapāvana (ibid.)
Egorova, Yulia (2006). Jews and India: Perceptions and Image. p.85. ISBN978-0-203-96123-0. The Bene-Israel had their own version of this legend, according to which both groups had a common origin. Their tradition states that after the famous shipwreck, the seven men and seven women who are considered to be the ancestors of the Bene-Israel community were washed ashore together with some other compatriots of theirs. The latter were discovered by the local inhabitants, who decided that they were dead and attempted to cremate them; however, when the bodies were put on the burning pile they regained consciousness. Subsequently they were converted to Hinduism and eventually became known among the local population as Chitpavan Brahmans.
Strizower, Schifra (1971). The Bene Israel of Bombay: A Study of a Jewish Community. Knopf Doubleday Publishing. p.16. ISBN978-0-8052-3405-3. B.J. Israel, a member of the community, in an essay privately published writes: The legend that their ancestors were the survivors of a shipwreck at the village of Nowgaon near the port of Cheul may be based on truth . On the other hand, it may have been adopted when our people came to learn that, according to one of the Hindu Puranas, fourteen corpses of foreigners from a shipwreck on the Konkan coast were miraculously brought back to life by Parshuram, an avtar of the Hindu god Vishnu, and given the status of Brahmins... The Puranic legend may have been appropriated by the Bene Israel with suitable modification to account for their presence on the coast.
Yulia Egorova (22 February 2008). Jews and India: Perceptions and Image. Routledge. p.85. ISBN978-1-134-14654-3. These two cases, in one of which the Bene-Israel tried to imitate the way of life of the Agris, while in the other they showed an interest in being associated with the Chitpavans, whose position in the local hierarchy was very high, resemble the attempts of lower caste Hindus to raise their status along the lines of Sanskritisation.
Bronkhorst, Johannes (2016). How the Brahmins won: from Alexander to the Guptas. Brill. p.121. ISBN978-90-04-31551-8. The magas may not be the only brahmins of foreign origin. The chitpavan Brahmins of Maharashtra are sometimes believed to be in origin foreigners who turned into Brahmins. See Patterson 1968; Lele 2010.
Cohn, Bernard S; Singer, Milton, eds. (2007). Structure and Change in Indian Society. AldineTransaction (Transaction Publishers). pp.399–400. ISBN978-0-202-36138-3. The string of ports from Bombay south to Karwar has had in turn Roman, Greck, Arab, Abysinian, Portuguese, Dutch, and English traders, invaders, visitors, or settlers. is this stretch of coast, too, which has received at one time or another such immigrant groups as the Bene Israel, Parsis, Kudal deshkar Brahmans, Gaud Saraswat Brahmans, and Chitpavan Brahmans. It is not pertinent to the present discussion to go into the place of origin or reason for immigration of any of these groups. What is pertinent is that cach of these groups has been an intrusive group, physically and culturally differentiated from the others as well as from the population into which they all came.One further point is that cach of these groups appears to have settled in different sections of the coastal territory, adjoining rather than intermingling with the settlements of the others. In this way, the Bene Israel came to be associated with the northern part of Kolaba District; Chitpavans, with the southern section of Ratnagiri (including what was formerly the small Sawantwadi princely state); Gaud Saraswat Brahmans, with Goa and the adjacent coastal section of North Kanara District. Of all these groups, the Chitpavan Brahmans were apparently the last to arrive, and so they ended up with that section of the coast which is by and large the least fertile and which has the fewest good ports. It would seem that Ratnagiri District, being thus the least desirable, was easily available, in a frontier-like way, and that little competition and few obstacles faced the Chitpavans as they went about settling down.
Gordon Johnson (1970). Edmund Leach; S.N.Mukherjee (eds.). elites in south asia. Cambridge University Press. p.100. Chitpavan Brahmins became powerful in western India with the rise of the Mahratta empire. In the late seventeenth century, Chitpavans were employed as messengers and spies by the Mahratta chiefs
Balkrishna Govind Gokhale (1988). Poona in the Eighteenth Century: An Urban History. Oxford University Press. p.110. ISBN9780195621372. chitpavans found employment easily under the Peshwas in diverse fields, from commanders in armies to clerks in the administration[...].A document of 1763-4 gives a list of 82 clerks of whom 55(67 percent) can be definitely identified as Chitpavans. In addition to their salaries, they were granted a substantial fringe benefit of being permitted to bring rice from Konkan to Poona free of Octroi duty.
Sandhya Gokhale (2008). The Chitpavans: social ascendancy of a creative minority in Maharashtra, 1818–1918. Shubhi Publications. p.113. ISBN978-81-8290-132-2.
Christophe Jaffrelot (2006). Dr Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analysing and Fighting Caste. Permanent Black. pp.21–. ISBN978-81-7824-156-2. The stigma of untouchability from which Mahars suffered was such that, in extreme cases, they were obliged to wear earthenware around their necks so that their spit did not defile the ground on which Brahmins walked. They also had to sweep the earth behind them to erase their footsteps or at least maintain a good distance from Brahmins to avoid contaminating them with their shadow. According to Pillai-Vetschera, these and other restrictions were imposed on Mahars during the Peshwa period.
Anil Seal (2 September 1971). The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century (Political change in modern South Asia). CUP Archive. pp.74, 78. ISBN978-0-521-09652-2.
Wolpert, Stanley A. (April 1991). Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.32. ISBN978-0195623925.
Wolpert, Stanley A. (April 1991). Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.19. ISBN978-0195623925.
Mariam Dossal and Ruby Maloni, ed. (1999). State intervention and popular response: western India in the nineteenth century. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan. p.87. ISBN978-81715-4855-2.
Wolpert, Stanley A. (April 1991). Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.32. ISBN978-0195623925.
Swapan Dasgupta, Smruti Koppikar (3 August 1998). "Godse on Trial". India Today: 24–26. Archived from the original on 7 December 2007. Retrieved 29 June 2010.
Maureen Patterson (October 1988). Donald W. Attwood; Milton Israel; Narendra K. Wagle (eds.). City, countryside and society in Maharashtra. University of Toronto, Centre for South Asian Studies. pp.35–58. ISBN978-0-9692907-2-8. Such resistance was to no avail, and the Brahmans' fears and troubles were realized in February 1948 when they were set upon by recently politicized communities - Marathas, as well as Jains and Lingayats - who unhesitatingly took advantage of the opportunity provided by assassin Godse's shots.[page 50]
Paul Hockings, ed. (1992). Encyclopedia of world cultures: South Asia – Volume 2. Macmillan Reference USA. p.69. The occupation of the Chitpavans in their original territory of the Konkan was farming, with some income from performing rituals among their own caste.
Donald V. Kurtz (31 December 1993). Contradictions and Conflict: A Dialectical Political Anthropology of a University in Western India. BRILL. p.64-. ISBN90-04-09828-3. Local non-Chitpavan Brahmans and non-Brahmans will tell you that Chitpavan Brahmans are notoriously frugal, even cheap. As one non-Brahman teacher described and other corroborated at a social function, it would be characteristic of a Chitpavan not to offer a visitor a glass of water after he/she walked across town to deliver a message when the temperature is 40 degrees C. In additional, Chitpavans are thought to be conspiratorial, untrustworthy, phlegmatic and inbred
Pavan K. Varma (2007). The Great Indian Middle class. Penguin Books. p.28. ISBN9780143103257. ...its main adherents came from those in government service, qualified professionals such as doctors, engineers and lawyers, business entrepreneurs, teachers in schools in the bigger cities and in the institutes of higher education, journalists[etc]...The upper castes dominated the Indian middle class. Prominent among its members were Punjabi Khatris, Kashmiri Pandits and South Indian brahmins. Then there were the 'traditional urban-oriented professional castes such as the Nagars of Gujarat, the Chitpavans and the Ckps (Chandrasenya Kayastha Prabhus)s of Maharashtra and the Kayasthas of North India. Also included were the old elite groups that emerged during the colonial rule: the Probasi and the Bhadralok Bengalis, the Parsis and the upper crusts of Muslim and Christian communities. Education was a common thread that bound together this pan Indian elite...But almost all its members spoke and wrote English and had had some education beyond school
Patil, U.R., 2010. Conflict, identity and narratives: the Brahman communities of western India from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries (Doctoral dissertation)
Gokhale, Sandhya (2008). The Chitpwans. Shubhi Publications. p.204. The jati disputes were not a rare occurrence in Maharashtra. There are recorded instances of disputes between jatis such as Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhus and the Chitpavans, Pathare Prabhus and the Chitpavans, Saraswat brahmin and the Chitpavans and Shukla Yajurvedi and the Chitpavans. The intra-caste dispute involving the supposed violation of the Brahmanical ritual code of behavior was called Gramanya in marathi.
Sandhya Gokhale (2008). The Chitpavans: social ascendancy of a creative minority. p.147. As early as 1881, in a few articles Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the resolute thinker and the enfant terrible of Indian politics, wrote comprehensive discourses on the need for united front by the Chitpavans, Deshasthas and the Karhades. Invoking the urgent necessity of this remarkable Brahmans combination, Tilak urged sincerely that these three groups of Brahmans should give up caste exclusiveness by encouraging inter sub-caste marriages and community dining."
A. C. Paranjpe (1970). Caste, Prejudice, and the Individual. Lalvani Publishing House. p.117. It may also be pointed out that marriages between the Deshastha and Kokanastha Brahmins have been very common
India's Communities, Volume 5. Oxford University Press. 1998. p.1804,2079. ISBN9780195633542. (quote on page 1804):The Chitpavan are vegetarian and rice is their staple cereal. (quote on page 2079): Among them the Chitpavan, Desastha, Karhade and Devdny Brahman are pure vegetarian though nowadays, they occasionally take non-vegetarian food.
Wolpert, Stanley A. (April 1991). Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.9. ISBN978-0195623925.
Bayly, Susan (2000). Caste, society and politics in India from the eighteenth century to the modern age (1st, Indianed.). Cambridge [u.a.]: Cambridge Univ. Press. p.236. ISBN978-0-5217-9842-6. The true nature of these groups, said fearful Bombay officials, had been revealed in 1879 in the response of the region's politically active intelligentsia to the actions of W.B.Phadke, a chitpavan ex-government clerk from Pune.
Pinney, Christopher (2004). Photos of the gods: the printed image and political struggle in India. London: Reaktion. pp.46–47. ISBN978-1861891846. a petty government clerk in Poona, Vasudev Balvant Phadke, led an uprising that would anticipate the revolutionary terrorism that would come to mark India in the first half of the twentieth century. Like B.G. Tilak, Phadke was a Chitpavan brahman...
Kumari Jayawardena (1995). The White Woman's Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia During British Rule. Routledge. p.104. ISBN9781136657146. By the early 1880s, Indian women started to benefit from the opening of medical studies to women in Europe and the United States, the first being Anandibai Joshi (1865–1887), born in Pune to a Chitpavan Brahmin family. She was married (according to custom) when she was nine years old. In 1883, at age eighteen, she went to the United States (with her husband)and studied medicine at the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where she graduated in medicine in 1886
Wolpert, Stanley A. (April 1991). Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.2. ISBN978-0195623925.
Arundhati Roy (May 2017). The Doctor and the Saint: Caste, Race, and Annihilation of Caste, the Debate Between B.R. Ambedkar and M.K. Gandhi. Haymarket Books. p.129. ISBN9781608467983. According to Teltumbde, "There was a deliberate attempt to get some progressive people from nonuntouchable communities to the conference, but eventually only two names materialised. One was Gangadhar Nilkanth Sahasrabuddhe, an activist of the Social Service League and a leader of the cooperative movement belonging to the Agarkari Brahman caste, and the other was Vinayak alias Bhai Chitre, a Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu. In the 1940s, Shasrabuddhe became the editor of Janata- another of Ambedkar's newspapers.
Sri Narasimha Chintaman "Alias" Tatyasaheb Kelkar, K. N. Watve, Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Vol. 28, No. 1/2 (January–April 1947), pp. 156-158, published by Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute
Y. D. Phadke (1981). Portrait of a revolutionary: Senapati Bapat. Senapati Bapat Centenary Celebration Samiti. p.2. Among such young men initiated into revolutionary activities was Pandurang Mahadeo Bapat who later on became widely known as Senapati (General) Bapat. On 12 November 1880, Pandurang Bapat was born in a Chitpavan or Kokanastha Brahmin family at Parner in the Ahmednagar
Subramanian, L., 2000. The master, muse and the nation: The new cultural project and the reification of colonial modernity in India∗. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 23(2), pp.1–32.
Sunanda Swarup (1983). "The Nasik assassination". Organiser. 35–36. Bharat Prakashan. ...Anant Kanhere, who actually killed Jackson, was a sixteen-year-old chitpavan Brahman youth...The whole episode will not be complete without mentioning about Jackson, who was assassinated. Ironically enough the records show that he was a popular Collector and liked by many. He was a Scholar of Sanskrit and was even known as Pandit Jackson. He was very fond of the theatre, dramas...Even On the eve of assassination, he had gone to watch the play "Sharada" which was organised in his honour
Bimanbehari Majumdar (1966). Militant Nationalism in India and Its Socio-religious Background, 1897–1917. p.94. On December 21, A. M. T. Jackson was assassinationed at Nasik by Anant Laxman Kanhere. Jackson was a learned Indologist. He contributed many interesting papers on Indian history and culture and was popularly known as Pandit Jackson. His fault was that he had committed Ganesh Savarkar to trial and acquitted an Engineer named Williams of the charge of killing a farmer by rash and negligent driving. He was not harsh in punishing people charged with sedition. W. S. Khare, a pleader of Nasik delivered some seditious speeches. Jackson ordered him to execute a personal bond of Rs. 2,000 and to be of good behaviour for one year with two substantial and respectable sureties of Rs. 1,000 each.
Pramod Maruti Mande (2005). Sacred offerings into the flames of freedom. Vande Mataram Foundation. p.27. At that time an Englishman named Jackson was the Collector of Nashik District. A cruel man by nature, he greatly harassed the people. He used to hold public assemblies to hear the people's grievances, but this was just a show, meant to put a gloss on his despotic administration. There was no justice for the people. Rather, they were subject to great tyranny.
Patricia Uberoi; Nandini Sundar; Satish Deshpande (2008). Anthropology in the East: founders of Indian sociology and anthropology. Seagull. p.367. ISBN9781905422784. In this general atmosphere of reform and women's education, and coming from a professional Chitpavan family, neither getting a education nor going into a profession like teaching would for someone like Irawati Karve have been particularly novel.
Alex Damm, ed. (2017). Gandhi in a Canadian Context: Relationships between Mahatma Gandhi and Canada. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. p.54. ISBN9781771122603. Moreover, the two principal conspirators behind Gandhi's assassination, who were hung for their actions – Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte – were both Chitpavan Brahmins from Maharashtra as was Savarkar, their ideological mentor. The Chitpavans had a long history of supporting violence against the alleged enemies of Brahminical Hinduism.
Thomas Blom Hansen (1999). The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India. Princeton University Press. Gandhi's assassin Naturam Godse, a Chitpavan brahmin from Pune, had been a member of the RSS for some years, as well as a member of the Hindu Mahasabha. In the early 1940s Godse left the RSS to form a militant organization, Hindu Rashtra Dal, aimed at militarizing the mind and conduct of Hindus, to make them "more assertive and aggressive" (interview with Naturam Godse's brother Gopal Godse, still a member of the Hindu Mahasabha, in Pune, 3 February 1993)
O'Hanlon, Rosalind (2002), Caste, Conflict and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low Caste Protest in Nineteenth-Century Western India, Cambridge South Asian Studies, Cambridge University Press, ISBN978-0-521-52308-0
Deccan College Post-graduate and Research Institute (1947), "Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute", Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute, 8, Dr. A. M. Ghatage, director, Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute, LCCN47021378
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