Koli people

The Koli people are an ethnic Indian group native to Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana states.

While the Koli are mostly Hindu, in Mumbai, Native Christians include autichtonous Koli East Indian Catholics, who were converted by the Portuguese during the 16th century.

The Kolis of Gujarat intermixed with Rajputs due to the practice of hypergamous marriage, which was commonly used to enhance or secure social status.

Some Kolis had also once held small princely states before the colonial British Raj period and some were still significant landholders and tenants in the twentieth century. However, most Kolis had lost their once-equal standing with the Patidar community due to the land reforms of the Raj period.

During the later period of the Raj, the Gujarati Kolis became involved in the process of what has subsequently been termed sanskritisation. At that time, in the 1930s, they represented around 20 per cent of the region's population and members of the local Rajput community were seeking to extend their own influence by co-opting other significant groups as claimants to the ritual title of Kshatriya. The Rajputs were politically, economically and socially marginalised because their own numbers — around 4 - 5 per cent of the population — were inferior to the dominant Patidars, with whom the Kolis were also disenchanted. The Kolis were among those whom the Rajputs targeted because, although classified as a criminal tribe by the British administration, they were among the many communities of that period who had made genealogical claims of descent from the Kshatriya. The Rajput leaders preferred to view the Kolis as being Kshatriya by dint of military ethos rather than origin but, in whatever terminology, it was a marriage of political expedience.

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