Pasi (caste)

Pasi
Pasi
	Pasis Group in 1868
Languages	Hindi
Populated states	Bihar, Uttar Pradesh
Related groups	Turuk Pasi

The Pasi (also spelled Passi) is a Dalit (untouchable) community of India.^[1]^[2] Pasi refers to tapping toddy, a traditional occupation of the Pasi community.^[3] The Pasi are divided into Gujjar, Kaithwas, and Boria.^[4] They are classified as an Other Backward Class in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.^[5]^[6] They live in the northern Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Etymology

According to William Crooke, the word Pashi derives from the Sanskrit word Pashika, a noose used by Pasi to climb and tap toddy, a drink obtained from palm trees. The tapping of toddy is the original occupation of the Pasi community. However, like other aspirational caste groups of India, Pasis have a myth of origin. They claim to originate from the sweat of Parshuram, an incarnation of Vishnu. They claim support for this in the word sweat being derived from the Hindi word Pasina. It also furthers their claim of belonging to the Kshatriya caste.^[3]

Population

The Pasi live mainly in the northern Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where their traditional occupation was that of rearing pigs.^[7] The Pasis of most of the north Indian states have been classified as Scheduled Castes by the Government of India.^[3] In the 2001 Indian census, the Pasi were recorded as the second-largest Dalit group in Uttar Pradesh. At the time, they constituted 16 per cent of the Dalit population of the state and mostly inhabited the Awadh region.^[8] The 2011 Census of India for the state recorded their population as 6,522,166. This figure includes the Tarmali.^[9]

History

Ramnarayan Rawat states that the role of the Pasi (and other untouchable) communities in the Kisan Sabha movement has been understated by earlier historians. He writes that earlier scholarship held Pasi involvement to be minimal, late-arriving, and more inclined towards criminality and rioting than political activism.^[2] He notes that the involvement of Pasi and Chamars was significant from the outset. According to him, the Pasi, being land owners, had the same concerns as other savarna groups, rather than being the 'alienated' pig-rearers as which they had sometimes been characterised.^[2] Chandra Bhan Prasad, a political commentator, has said that those who continued pig-rearing were ill-treated by socio-political activists, who blamed the occupation in large part for their untouchable status rather than Brahminism.^[10]

The Pasi have in recent times engaged in invention of tradition. Badri Narayan, a social historian and cultural anthropologist, says that

Sources of vision and contemplation are absent without literature. This feeling, along with the growing urge to construct an assertive identity and the sense of being deprived of history, led the Pasi community towards the invention of heroes, histories and myths and their documentation in the print medium.^[11]

Of late,^[when?] Hindu Nationalists (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and affiliates) have been trying to appropriate different folk-heroes of the Pasi caste as Hindu icons to mobilize the electoral prospects of the Bharatiya Janata Party.^[12] Hindu nationalists have supported claims that there was a Pasi kingdom that ruled what is now Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the 11th and 12th centuries. The rulers of this claimed state include Bijli Pasi.^[13]

Notable people

Bijli Pasi, a king from the Pasi community.
Madari Pasi was a leader of the militant peasant Eka Movement.

References

^ Pandey, Gyan (1988). "Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism: The Peasant Movement in Awadh, 1919-1922". In Guha, Ranajit; Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (eds.). Selected Subaltern Studies. Oxford University Press. p. 274. ISBN 978-0-19505-289-3.
^ ^a ^b ^c Rawat, Ramnarayan S. (2011). Reconsidering Untouchability: Chamars and Dalit History in North India. Indiana University Press. pp. 12–15. ISBN 978-0-25322-262-6.
^ ^a ^b ^c Badri Narayan (2012). Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India: Culture, Identity and Politics. SAGE. p. 136. ISBN 9780761935377.
^ Singh, Kumar Suresh (1998). India's Communities: H - M. Oxford University Press. p. 2796. ISBN 978-0-19-563354-2.
^ "National Commission for Backward Classes". www.ncbc.nic.in. Retrieved 7 September 2020.
^ "National Commission for Backward Classes". www.ncbc.nic.in. Retrieved 7 September 2020.
^ Hunt, Sarah Beth (2014). Hindi Dalit Literature and the Politics of Representation. Routledge. pp. 8, 23. ISBN 978-1-31755-952-8.
^ Vij, Shivam (8 May 2010). "Can the Congress Win Over UP's Dalits?". Economic and Political Weekly.
^ "A-10 Individual Scheduled Caste Primary Census Abstract Data and its Appendix - Uttar Pradesh". Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. Retrieved 4 February 2017.
^ Prasad, Chandra Bhan (2011). "My Experiments with Hunting Rats". In Babu, D. Shyam; Khare, Ravindra S. (eds.). Caste in Life: Experiencing Inequalities. Pearson Education India. pp. 161–162. ISBN 978-8-13175-439-9.
^ Narayan, Badri (2006). Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India: Culture, Identity and Politics. SAGE Publications India. p. 140. ISBN 978-8-13210-280-9.
^ Narayan, Badri (14 January 2009). Fascinating Hindutva: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation. SAGE Publishing India. pp. 65–72. ISBN 978-93-5280-135-0.
^ Badri Narayan (2012). Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India: Culture, Identity and Politics. SAGE. p. 72. ISBN 9780761935377.