Kulhaiya
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 3,000,000 to 3,500,000 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Bihar, India • Nepal | |
| Languages | |
| Kulhaiya boli | |
| Religion | |
| Islam 100% | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Shaikh of Bihar |
The Kulhaiya (Urdu: کلحیا ) is Muslim community found in the northern part of state of Bihar in India and southern part in Nepal. A person belonging to this community is also called by the same name (pl. kulhaiyas). Some people say kulhaiya is a particular ethnicity but in fact it is mixture of races, ethnicity and different castes like Brahmin, Harijan, Yadav, Rajput etc.
'Kulhaiya' is said to mean 'cap wearer' as the word 'kulah' means 'cap' in Persian. This makes the kulhaiyas modest. According to some other school of thought, the modesty of Kulhaiyas is defined as- 'kul (کل)' means 'total' and 'haya (حیا)' means 'decency'.
Actually Kulahiyas served as soldiers in the Mughal Empire, the Faujdars of Purnia at the time of a Mughal nawab Saif Ali Khan on the advice of Delhi Sultanate appointed kulahiyas to protect Indian border on the side of Nepal. Those who started this Muslim community in seemanchal area were basically Arabs and have inhabited India for more than 1000 years. Few members of the community are said to be the descendants of Hadrat Abu Baqar Siddiq, a companion of prophet Muhammad. As Arabs and other Muslims were reaching all the parts of the world to spread Islam, some of them reached to the seemanchal region of Bihar and settled, and they tried to spread Islam. Some of them even married local woman. During Mughal period, some of them became landlords (reliably) of different regions, and under their landlordship, local populations started converting into Islam seeing the principle of equality of the religion. It's not surprising that like other part of India, backward Hindu classes of the region accepted Islam, most of them were Harijan. Also some herders and farmer from other parts of India like Gujarat, UP and many others migrated to the seemanchal region with their families in search of pasture and agricultural land and settled finding the region to be the place of their quest. All the people settled there either converted into Muslims or were Muslims, and the local populations converted into Muslims in earlier part of Islamic history of seemanchal area, i.e., Araria, Purnea, Kishanganj and Katihar. The whole amalgamated population converted into Islam or the Islamic followers coming from different places totally came to known as the Kulhaiyas forming the community Kulhaiya. Even some upper castes converted into Islam as they found Islam to be the true way of life and some of them converted into Islam to evade from Jizya, though they had to pay Zakat in the same way Jizya was paid.
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Wikipedia