Chitpavan
Indian Brahmin sub-caste inhabiting Konkan region
The Chitpavan Brahmin or Konkanastha 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 Maharashtra region who considered the Chitpavans as Parvenus or newcomers to the Brahmin class.
Quotes
edit- By and large, in Nagpur, the 1948 disturbances were caused by a mix of anti-Hindu Sabha, anti-R.S.S. and anti-Samyukta Maharashtra feelings, but the common thread was anti-Maharashtrian Brahman [sic] hatred. While not all Brahmans [sic] were Chitpavan, a large number were, and the victims who were of other Brahman [sic] jatis were treated as though they were Chitpavans.
- 25.Maureen L.P. Patterson, ‘The Shifting Fortunes of Chitpavan Brahmins: The Focus on 1948’, in City, Countryside and Society in Maharashtra, in D.W. Atwood et al. (eds.), University of Toronto, Centre for South Asian Studies, 1998, p. 38ff
- about the violent repercussions against the Brahmin community of Maharashtra, and Chitpavan Brahmins in the aftermath of the murder of Gandhi, quoted in Vikram Sampath - Savarkar, A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966 (2021)
- The first consequence of the murder was immediate: Nathuram Godse’s own community, the Chitpavan Brahmins, was targeted for mass murder. The comparison with the mass killing of Sikhs by Congress secularists after Indira Gandhi’s murder is fairly exact, except that the 1984 massacre is well-known (even eclipsing the memory of the larger number of Panjabi Hindus murdered by Sikh separatists in the preceding years), whereas this one has been hushed up. The New York Times first drew attention to it, reporting 15 killings for the first day and only for the city of Mumbai (then Bombay). In fact, the killing went on for a week and all over Maharashtra, with VD Savarkar’s younger brother as best-known victim. Arti Agarwal, who leads the research in “Hindu genocide”, estimates the death toll at about 8,000. On mass murders, estimates are often overdramatised, but here we must count with a countervailing factor: The government’s active suppression of these data, as they would throw a negative light on Gandhism. But research on this painful episode has now started in earnest, and those presently trying to get at the real figures include Savarkar biographer Vikram Sampath.
- This line of anti-Brahmin rhetoric on the model of anti-Semitism comes full circle with the following allegation, originally made in 1971 by K.K. Gangadharan, a Leftist sociologist from Maharashtra working in Christ College in Kanpur, and since then adopted by the likes of V.T. Rajshekar: the Chitpavan Brahmins, ... which took a leadership role in the struggle against the Moghuls, the British Raj and Congress secularism, are so “arrogant” and “fanatical” because, unbeknownst to other Indians, they actually have Jewish ancestors!
- K.K. Gangadharan is quoted to this effect in Gérard Heuzé: Où va l’Inde moderne?, L’Harmattan, Paris 1993, p.87. As for V.T. Rajshekar to this effect, see Dalit Voice, 1-2-1995 and 1-3-1995; and V.T. Rajshekhar: Brahminism, Dalit Sahitya Akademy, Bangalore n.d., p. 28. ,
- Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
