Bania (caste)

The Bania (also spelled Baniya, Banija, Banya, Vaniya, Vani, Vania and Vanya)[1] is a Vaishya or Rauniyar community mainly found in Indian states of Gujarat, and Rajasthan,[2] but they are also found in Madhya Pradesh. Haryana, Punjab, Chandigarh, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh, Traditionally, the main occupations of the community are merchants, bankers, money-lenders, and in modern times they are mostly white-collar, knowledge workers and owners of commercial enterprises.[3][4]

For the Nepalese community, see Bania (Newar caste).

Bania women in British India. Image taken before 1860.

The community is composed of several sub-castes including the Gahoi , Agarwal Banias, Maheshwari Banias, Porwal Banias, among others.[5] Most Banias follow Hinduism or Jainism, but a few have converted to Sikhism, Islam, Christianity and Buddhism.[6][7][8] Most of Hindu Banias are Vaishnavas and are followers of Vallabhacharya and Swaminarayan.[9]

Notable People

Etymology

The name Bania derives from the Sanskrit word vanik meaning traders.[10][11] In Bengal the term Bania is a functional catch-all for moneylenders and indigenous bankers, without respect to caste.[12]

See also

References
  1. Haynes, Douglas E. (30 October 1991). Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India: The Shaping of a Public Culture in Surat City, 1852-1928. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-06725-7.
  2. Aniketh Aga (2021). Genetically Modified Democracy: Transgenic Crops in Contemporary India. Yale University Press. p. 187. ISBN 9780300262582.
  3. Hardiman, David (1996). "Usury, Dearth and Famine in Western India". Past & Present. 152 (152): 113–156. doi:10.1093/past/152.1.113. ISSN 0031-2746. JSTOR 651058.
  4. Cheesman, David (1982). "'The Omnipresent Bania:' Rural Moneylenders in Nineteenth-Century Sind". Modern Asian Studies. 16 (3): 445–462. doi:10.1017/S0026749X00015262. ISSN 0026-749X. JSTOR 312116. S2CID 145722413.
  5. Hanks, Patrick (8 May 2003). Dictionary of American Family Names. Oxford University Press. p. xcvi. ISBN 978-0-19-977169-1.
  6. Marenco, Ethne K. (1974). The Transformation of Sikh Society. HaPi Press. p. 151. The Banias were again predominantly Hindu, but there were many Jain Banias and also Sikh and Muslim Banias in lesser numbers, and very few Buddhist Banias. Such was the picture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
  7. Tyler, Stephen A. (1986). India: An Anthropological Perspective. Waveland Press. p. 186. ISBN 978-0-88133-245-2. Some, like the Khojah caste, are Bania groups converted to Islam by Muslim pirs (saints).
  8. John, Jose Kalapura (2000). "King, Fort, Zamindaris and Missionaries: The Founding of Bihar's Oldest Christian Community, 1745". Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. 61: 1011–1028. ISSN 2249-1937. JSTOR 44148177.
  9. Rajeev Bhargava; Amiya Kumar Bagchi; R. Sudarshan (1999). Multiculturalism, Liberalism, and Democracy. Oxford University Press. p. 228. ISBN 978-0-19-564824-9. Most of the Hindu banias of Gujarat in the nineteenth century were followers of Vallabhcharya of the Vaishnava sect; the rest were Jains or Shravaks.
  10. Habib, Irfan (1990). "Merchant Communities in Precolonial India". In Tracy, James D. (ed.). The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350-1750. Cambridge University Press. pp. 371–99. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511563089. ISBN 978-0-52145-735-4.
  11. Ishwari Prasad (1986). Reservation, Action for Social Equality. Criterion Publications. Retrieved 23 February 2021. Here we are concerned only with upper backwards which have four castes; Yadav (11.0 per cent), Koeri (4.0 per cent), Kurmi (3.5 per cent) and Bania (0.6 per cent) .
  12. Schrader, Heiko (1997). Changing financial landscapes in India and Indonesia: sociological aspects of monetization and market integration. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 68. ISBN 978-3-8258-2641-3.

Further reading
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