Chamar - Background and Origin

Background and Origin

Chamar were the diverse group of people who were engaged in manufacturing, processing and trading in leather and leather goods. A second occupation was farming, either in full ownership or on share cropping basis, by which they used to get a third or a quarter of the farm produce.

As now constituted, the Chamar caste is made up of a heterogeneous group of peoples. They do not belong to any one particular group, clan or area, but are those people from various castes who were classified into the Chamar castes by Mughal and British censuses from time to time for various reasons and purposes such as employment, political, and religion etc. The caste has been recruited from numerous sources. Many people and even whole sections of tribes have risen up from the lower levels and entered the caste, and this process is still going on.

The subjugation of tribe after tribe has been a recurring phenomenon in India. These movements have occurred over wide areas and over limited portions of the country as well. Local history fully illustrates this fact, and we may picture the flux of rising and falling tribes and clans under repeated foreign and local waves of conquest, and the consequent reconstruction, in more or less detail, of the social distribution of races and clans as a fairly constant process. This means that the fixed status of an occupational group may go hand in hand with the repeated recruitment of the group by those who have been degraded from better positions. In some instances this may mean that certain clans were unable to maintain their identity and prestige with the changing order, and that consequently they have sunk to lower levels.

There are more than 1000 Chamar subcastes or gots. Many of the these subclans originated from the local regions from a mixture of the local population and this is some sub-caste names showing the region names such as Azamgarhiya Banaudhiya, Kalkattiya, Ujjaini, Saksena, Chandariya, Guliya, Aharwar, and Jhusiya, are specifically local; while other sub-caste names, such as, Gangapari, Purabiya, Uttaraha, and Dakkhinaha, point to definite geographical origins.

There is one Mahasabha named Akhil Bhartiya Chamar Mahasabha in existence.

Many of the sub-caste names indicate that the caste has received large recruitments from higher castes above. For example Chamar sub-castes such as Banaudhiya,Ujjaini,Chandhariya, Sarwariya, Kandujiya, Chauhan, Chandel, Saksena, Katoch, Sakarwar, Bhadarauriya, and Bundela are names of Rajput clbers of this caste are of a higher physical type than some other sub-castes and of lighter complexion.

On the other hand, there have been large accessions to the caste from castes that are considered to be lower than the Chamars in the caste system. Got and sub-caste names show that many Chamars have sprung from the Dom, the Kanjar, the Habura, the Koli, the Jaiswar and other casteless tribes. This movement of peoples upwards through successive stages is a well-known phenomenon.