Where did the Patels come from?

There are 5,000,000 of us around the world, it's high time we knew where we came from.

There are 5,000,000 of us Patels around the world, it's high time we knew where we came from.

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A few years ago while I was in Chicago, my cousin’s son who was just eight years old at the time asked, so how much Indian am I and how much American am I? Does that mean I’m 50% Indian and 50% American? Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that so many of us think of ourselves as our genetic make-up, our DNA or the culture we have been born and raised in. Sometimes it isn’t about being “half” of any of those identities, but being each of those as fully as we can or as much as we want to .

There is no particular dress, language, ritual, or tradition that makes us a quarter, half, full of any of our identities. What I realized is that it’s about holding the tension of the two, being within the dichotomy that exists when living between two, three, or even four identities that don’t quite seem to easily fit together.

For some of us, they might contradict, compliment, or even clash with each other.

Throughout my life, the stories of my ancestors are the threads that have weaved through the fabric of my understanding of who and where I have come from. It is the stories that kept me rooted in my culture, heritage, and connection to India. It’s knowing these stories and facts of where I have come from that have allowed me to be okay with creating new stories as an Indian-American. 

For my family, we created new stories every thousand or so years through migration and looking for opportunities in new places. The farthest back I traced was about 1,000 years ago when my ancestors came to settle in Vayaveedesha, a region in present-day Afghanistan. Overtime, they split into two groups. One group went towards Iran and the other migrated towards the Hindu Kush region in Punjab. 

The group which migrated to Punjab divided into three groups: Leuva, Khadva, and Ojra. The story is that the names came from Luv and Kush, the sons of Lord Rama from the Ramayana. These two groups were known to come from the bloodline of a man named Kashyup Rishi, who was a brahmin. The separation of Khedvas and Leuvas comes based on the type of community and location of that community. Certain practices are different although there are similar threads between the values and culture. Today, in the state of Gujarat, there are less Ojras. You’re most likely to see them with last names like Chowdhary. 

For reasons unknown, the dominant groups, Leuva and Khadva left and migrated to Patan, a city in the northwestern region of the state of Gujarat. They followed the river to present-day Mehsana, a district in the same state. There are multiple stories for the reasons these groups dispersed, but one such story is about the king of Patan, Sidra Jaysee. He brought 1,001 families to Gujarat 900 years ago to take up the task of reviving the dry land and cultivating it with crops. Through conquering the land, he collected taxes from the people who already lived there and who would eventually come to settle there. 

The 1,001 families were called the Patidars, holders of land (pati meaning strip or piece). The tax collectors, to match their profession, changed their surnames to Amin or Desai. The other Patidars also changed their surnames to Patel as they became leaders or heads of the land. 

Patels also began giving themselves the surname based on their village name. One example of this are people from the Borsad village of Gujarat who began calling themselves ‘Borsadiya’. -Iya meaning the people/person. They also stopped calling themselves Patidars and officially gave themselves the name of ‘Patel’ as it was easier to remember and write down. As they established their own villages throughout the state, four families found their way to Sampad, the village my father was born and raised. Today, the village lies 22 kilometers southwest of the nearest town, Himatnagar and about 70 kilometers northeast from the nearest and largest city of Gujarat, Ahmedabad.

At the time of our ancestors' migration to the region, Sampad made up of just four families who lived on the dungar, or hilltops throughout the village. Hilltops were a place of safety for villagers as it allowed them to see who was coming from faraway. At the time, the regions were split into kingdoms and kings often had their palaces on the tops of hills. The king’s security guards were able to look out for miles to see if there were any intruders coming. With safety, hilltops also represented status and privilege. They also had a spiritual meaning as saints and sages often meditated in the heavens, on mountaintops and it is from the tops of these mountains that powerful vibrations descended to the rest of the inhabitants on earth.

Growing up, my father often told me my ancestors chose the land our village is on because of the abundant Sabarmati River which once flowed next to our village. In ancient scripture, it was Lord Vishnu who brought the Ganges from the heavens, from the Himalayas. The Sabarmati River, also known as Bhogwa, was pavitra, or sacred, because it was Lord Vishnu, the God of destruction and transformation, who brought this piece of Goddess Ganga, or the Ganges River, to Gujarat. The rivers were sacred because they brought life - crops, food for livestock, drinking water. 

In Sampad today, the river still flows after the rainfall during the monsoon season, but is dry the rest of the year. The Sabarmati River is one of the major west flowing rivers of India, running from the Aravalli mountain range in the Udaipur District of Rajasthan and meets the Gulf of Cambay, a bay bordering Gujarat on the Arabian Sea coast of India. 

Much like the nearest city of Ahmedabad, Sampad and the surrounding villages were established around the banks of the Sabarmati River. Throughout my father’s childhood in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, in times of drought, relatives from neighboring villages or goat herders passed through Sampad. 

These relatives came from neighboring villages like Saibapur and Derol, all of which are included in our samaj, or community. Sampad is one of ten villages within our samaj and each samaj makes up one of three gors, or circles. After settling on our land, for generations, social, economic, and political life revolved around these three circles. My parents, grandparents, and those preceding were each married within the samaj. Life revolved around this social structure. 

Many of the villages of our samaj or gor were nestled in the middle of large valleys where water would go down, but never come back up. It became hot and they were unable to provide water to their buffalo. They used this opportunity to walk or come to Sampad with their buffalo carts, also called ghadoos.

I’m constantly amazed by how connected I feel by knowing these simple, yet profound facts about my family’s history. Finding these answers has meant sitting with my dad to translate books and articles, flying to Chicago to interview family members, sitting in the living rooms of uncles and aunties I’d never met before who were referred to me by other family members, and interviewing a dying generation in my family’s villages in India. Fragments of these facts are housed within stories amongst dozens, if not hundreds of individuals. Stories that will be gone within a generation if we do not know them and hold onto them now.

This manuscript isn’t just so my sister’s kids and my own can know where we have come from. It’s a call to action for you to ask your parents, uncles, aunts, and grandparents questions that you might not have the opportunity to ask them in 20 years. It’s a call for you, if you are first or second generation, to know the stories of a land that you have never called home, but a land that has inevitably shaped who you are today.

Thank you for reading today. As always, feel free to like, share, or comment.

Love,

Rina