Kushwaha

Clans and Kinship

The community is a cluster of groups, among them the Kachhi, Koeri, Murao, Shakya, Maurya, Saini and Mali, that came together over time, began to marry among themselves and built caste associations across India. In the older accounts each group was divided into sub-castes, many named after a district or town, that married within themselves. Crooke (1896) found that the Koiris and Kachhis of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh had no named exogamous clans: a Koiri did not marry into the families of his maternal uncle or his paternal and maternal aunts within three generations, and the Kachhis of Agra barred the families of the mother and both grandmothers. Within a Koiri sub-caste families belonged to a brotherhood called chatai, named after the mat on which its council sat, each with its own chaudhari; brides were usually found locally within the chatai, though it was not a closed group. The Kachhis of Farrukhabad had a council under a Mahtiya or Chaudhari. In Bihar, Risley (1891) recorded exogamous sections among the Koiris, most named after places or titles, and the Kasyap and Nag gotras in Chota Nagpur; a man did not marry a woman of his own section, and other near kin were barred to seven generations. The sources used do not say how descent is reckoned.

No list is given. Risley (1891, vol. 2, Appendix I) prints sections for two Koiri sub-castes of Bihar and for the Koiris of Chota Nagpur, but the scanned table cannot be read reliably; Crooke (1896) names only sub-castes that married within themselves, not clans.

In the Official Lists

No listing is shown. The sources opened say that the National Commission for Backward Classes classes the Kushwaha as an Other Backward Class, that they are OBC in Bihar, that the Kachhi, Shakya and Koeri are OBC in Uttar Pradesh, and that Haryana added Kushwaha, Koeri and Maurya to its Backward Classes list in 2013; they do not name the states of the central list. Check the central (NCBC) list and each state's list for the current entries.

Checked on 2026-11-07 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

Before the twentieth century the groups that formed the Kushwaha, the Kachhis, Koeris and Muraos, favoured a connection with Shiva and the goddess; Crooke (1896) and Risley (1891) both record a Koiri tradition that the first Koiri was created by Shiva and set to tend the sacred gardens of Benares. In the twentieth century they began to claim descent from the solar line through Kusha, a son of Rama, and in 1921 Ganga Prasad Gupta published a book arguing for the Kshatriya status of the Koeri, Kachhi, Murao and Kushwaha. In the twenty-first century many Kushwahas of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have also associated themselves with the Maurya dynasty. William Pinch studies these claims as part of the search for dignity among the peasant communities of the region.

History

From around 1910 the Kachhis and Koeris began to call themselves Kushwaha Kshatriya. In 1928 the All India Kushwaha Kshatriya Mahasabha, speaking for them and the Muraos, petitioned for recognition as Kshatriya; it based its case on devotion to Rama and claimed the right to wear the sacred thread. Some communities built temples in support of the claim, among them the Muraos of Ayodhya. Pinch writes that concern with dignity, community identity and caste status reached a peak among Kurmi, Yadav and Kushwaha peasants in the first four decades of the twentieth century. In 2013 Haryana added the Kushwaha, Koeri and Maurya to its list of Backward Classes.

Faith and Worship

Kushwaha devotion centres on Rama, from whose son Kusha the community claims descent; in the 1920s Ganga Prasad Gupta wrote that Kushwaha families worshipped Hanuman in the month of Kartika. In central Bihar most Koeri households employ Koeri priests, who, unlike Brahmin priests, approve of widow remarriage.