Bhatt

The Bhats were a bardic community of genealogists and mythographers who, during the Mughal and Maratha administration of Gujarat, had come to perform a critical political function: furnishing surety for a range of transactions and activities. The Koli and Rajput rulers had employed the services of Bhats in negotiating revenue payments with Mughal and Maratha administrations of their primary source of collateral.

The administration of Governor Nepean came to regard the influence of the Bhats as an affront to British authority and moral values, and antithetical to the system of direct and efficient government that it sought to install. Through a series of military and judicial confrontations, the Bhats were stripped of their securitization functions, thereby depriving the Koli and Rajput rulers.

Raj: The most famous example of a Bhatt is, of course, Alia.

Rakesh: That alone says a lot. And she's not even a pure Bhat!
Pravin: Very much like the Rajputs who lost out to the Patidars and actually blame them for the loss of their power, the sacerdotal caste of Bhats also lost out in the power struggle and hold a MAJOR grudge.
Prachi: Yeah. And while the Rajputs play the blame game and the Bhats hold old historical grudges, the Lewa Patels, the dominant caste In Central Gujarat and also one of the most visible and affluent caste groups in India, go from strength to strength.

Patel

Lewa Patels, the dominant caste in Central Gujarat, are also one of the most visible and affluent caste groups in india and boast a global diasporic presence. The Patel "caste"' did not stratify into that concrete form until the late nineteenth century.

Many Patels explicitly describe themselves as a “modern” caste and reveal, in their self-description and practices, an entanglement with terms that we would commonly associate with Western epistemes. Their acquired image as the quintessential modern caste predisposes them, for the most part, to a “severe practicality” in the realms of household and farm economics.

Reason (samajh) is reified by Patels as a sign of civilization in much the same way that the European nobility and bourgeoisie linked kultur—“cultivation”—to reason from the seventeenth century onward. Mental work comes to be seen as, both, more cultured (sabhya) and more intellectually exacting (buddhishaali)—hence, in Patel discourse, as the proper undertaking of a genetically superior caste.

Patels are quick to note the economic and social achievements of their caste, which, in turn, they attribute to the fact that Patels are “progressive,” “hard-working,” able to manage their affairs “rationally” and “intelligently,” and quick to adapt to changing circumstances. They commonly cite their mobility across occupations and borders as evidence of this entrepreneurial drive (saahas).

Hari Kumar: The Patels practically own Gujarat
Celia:: Yeah. They are a caste of strivers.