Kurmi

Clans and Kinship

Kurmis are divided into endogamous sub-castes. William Crooke (1896) found eleven main ones in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, among them the Jaiswar, Kanaujiya, Gangapari and Sainthwar, with the closely allied Mals of Azamgarh and the Patanwar of Mirzapur and Gorakhpur. In the eastern districts, Crooke records, a Kurmi may not marry within his own kul, his family line, as far back as relationship is remembered, nor within five generations into the families of his mother's brother or his father's sister; he found no totemic clans there. In the Central Provinces, Russell and Hira Lal (1916) found each sub-caste divided into exogamous sections, some named after sages such as Kashyap, others after Rajput clans, villages, titles, plants or animals, and marriage barred within the section and with first and second cousins on the mother's side.

No list is given: Crooke (1896) and Russell and Hira Lal (1916) print long lists of Kurmi sub-castes and sections for particular districts, but they are not reproduced on this page.

In the Official Lists

No listing is shown: the central (NCBC) list and the state OBC lists could not be opened for this check, and the sources opened say only that the Kurmi are counted among the Other Backward Classes, without naming the lists. Check the central and state OBC lists for the current entries.

Checked on 2026-11-06 against the sources below. The lists are amended from time to time and can differ by district; for a certificate, the current order or the state's list is what counts.

Name and Origin

The meaning of the name is not settled. Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya (1896) thought it might come from a tribal language or from the Sanskrit krishi karmi; Gustav Oppert (1893) derived it from krishmi, 'ploughman'; and Suniti Kumar Chatterji (1926) derived the Bengali kurmi from the Sanskrit kutumbin, 'householder'. Russell and Hira Lal (1916) record that many Kurmis say they belong to the Kashyap gotra. In the early twentieth century Kurmi associations claimed Kshatriya status for the community.

History

In the late eighteenth century, when the Nawab of Awadh tried to grant the title of Raja to a group of landed Kurmis of Ayodhya, opposition from the Rajputs of his court stopped him (William Pinch). The first Kurmi caste association was formed at Lucknow in 1894 to protest a provincial circular that called the Kurmis a 'depressed community' and barred them from the police; under pressure the government withdrew the description in 1896. The association then campaigned for Kurmis to be recorded as Kshatriya in the 1901 census, and in 1910 the All India Kurmi Kshatriya Mahasabha was formed. Pinch writes that concern with dignity and status reached a peak among Kurmi, Yadav and Kushwaha peasants in the first four decades of the twentieth century.

Faith and Worship

Devotion to Rama and to Krishna had long been strong among the Kurmis and Ahirs of the rural Ganges valley, and in the early twentieth century Kisan Sabha leaders urged them to claim Kshatriya status. In the Central Provinces Russell and Hira Lal record wedding cakes offered to the Kul Deo, the household god.