Kachhi (caste)

The Kachhi are a caste group with origins in India. The Kachhi caste are part of a wider community that claims a common descent. This community is known as the Kushwaha.

Lineage

The Kachhi claim descent from Kusha, a son of the mythological Rama, who is considered to be an avatar of Vishnu. This enables their claim to be of the Suryavansh - or Solar - dynasty but this is a myth developed in the twentieth century. Earlier, the branches that form the Kushwaha community - the Mauryas, Kachhis, Kachwahas and Koeris - favoured a connection with Shiva and Shakta.[1] Ganga Prasad Gupta claimed in the 1920s that Kushwaha families worshiped Hanuman - described by Pinch as "the embodiment of true devotion to Ram and Sita" - during Kartika, a month in the Hindu lunar calendar.[2]

In Uttar Pradesh, Kachhis are vegetable-cultivators who traditionally cultivate on their comparatively smaller landholdings without aid of animals.[3]

References

1. Pinch 1996, pp. 91-92.
2. Pinch 1996, p. 98.
3. Singh, Charan (1964). India's Poverty and Its Solution. Asia Publishing House. p. 88. Retrieved 30 March 2017.

Further reading

• Chaudhuri, B. B. (2008). Peasant History of Late Pre-colonial and Colonial India. Pearson Education India. pp. 467–468. ISBN 978-8-13171-688-5.
• Richards, J. F. (1981). "The Indian Empire and Peasant Production of Opium in the Nineteenth Century". Modern Asian Studies. 15 (1): 59–82. doi:10.1017/s0026749x00006788. JSTOR 312105.
• Pinch, William R. (1996). Peasants and monks in British India. University of California Press. pp. 12, 91–92. ISBN 978-0-520-20061-6. Retrieved 22 February 2012.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)