Jhinwar

The Jhinwar or Kashyap Rajput is a Hindu caste and Sikh caste found in the states of Haryana and Punjab in India. They are also known as Mehra or Mehre Community. A smaller number of Kashyap Rajput are Sikh. (Bhai Himmat Singh, one of the panj pyaare, was a Kashyap Rajput)

History

This community is associated with many labor and administrative jobs in ancient times. Examples like Royal Guards(best depicted in hindi film Eklavya: The Royal Guard). Eklavya, the tribal warrior prince from Mahabharata is considered to be part of Kashyap Rajput clan , and other jobs like Horse cart carriers (buggyeman or tangawala),army soldiers and policemen. Jaimal and Patta Singh two, brave army chieftains of Mewar resistance during Mughal wars, were Kashyap Rajputs. Administration jobs like village and town accountants and some small scale businessmen etc. A few economically poor were water carriers and palanquin bearers also but now both these occupations have also been abandoned. Some are also associated with fishing, loosely connected to Dhimar. They are found mainly in Kotli and Mirpur districts.A small number are farmers, but a greater number are working class people with less or no agriculture land.A large number of the community are now operating road side restaurants/dhabas, a trade that seems to have been monopolized by Kashyap Rajputs.

Kashyap (caste)

The Kashyap are a caste in India. They are sometimes called the Koshyal or Kanshilya.

Kashyap was one of the eight original gotras (clans) of the Brahmins, being derived from Kashyapa, the name of a rishi (hermit) whom they believed to have heard the Veda. The Brahmanical clan system was later emulated by people who were considered to be of the Rajput-Kshatriya status, and is perhaps an early example of the sanskritisation process whereby ritually lower-ranked groups sought to improve their social status. In more recent times, the All-India Kashyap Rajput Mahasabha pressure group was established prior to the 1941 census of British India to lobby the census authorities to record the caste as Kashyap Rajput rather than by any other name.

Communities that are related to the Kashyap by occupation in Uttar Pradesh include the Batham, Bind, Bhar, Dhimar, Dhinwar, Dhewar, Gariya, Gaur, Godia, Gond, Guria, Jhimar, Jhir, Jhinwar, Jhiwar, Kahar, Keot, Kewat, Kharwar, Khairwar, Kumhar, Machua, Majhi, Majhwar, Mallah, Nishad, Prajapati, Rajbhar, Riakwar, Tura, Turah, Turaha, Tureha and Turaiha. There were proposals in 2013 that some or all of these communities in the state should be reclassified as Scheduled Castes under India's system of positive discrimination; this would have involved declassifying them from the Other Backwards Class category. Whether or not this would happen was a significant issue in the campaign for the 2014 Indian general election.