Lodhi

Clans and Kinship

Russell and Hira Lal (1916) found the landholding Lodhis of the northern districts divided into exogamous clans, among them the Mahdele, Kerbania, Dongaria, Narwaria and Bhadoria, and the community as a whole into endogamous sub-castes such as the Singrore, Jarha, Jangra and Mahalodhi, each with exogamous sections named after places, titles, plants and animals. A man must not marry within his own section or his mother's. William Crooke (1896) likewise found Lodha sub-castes endogamous, avoiding marriage with near relations in both the father's and the mother's line.

No list is given: Russell and Hira Lal (1916) name a few clans and sections of the Central Provinces, and Crooke (1896) names sub-castes, but no fuller list was checked for this page.

In the Official Lists

• Other Backward Class (central list)

  Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi

  The state entries spell the name Lodhi, Lodha or Lodh, and Uttar Pradesh also uses Lodhi-Rajput; the exact wording of each entry was not checked.

The states are those Wikipedia gives for the Lodhi in the central list of the National Commission for Backward Classes (as accessed in 2023). It also names Andhra Pradesh, Assam and Gujarat, whose Lodh or Lodha entries may name other communities and are not shown here. The Lodha of West Bengal and Odisha are a different people, listed as a Scheduled Tribe. Each state also keeps its own list, not checked here.

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

Lodhi tradition, as Russell and Hira Lal (1916) record it, holds that the community is of Rajput descent from Lava, son of Rama, and many associations use the name Lodhi Rajput. Russell and Hira Lal give Lodha as the older form of the name and report several derivations, none settled, among them one from the Ludhiana district, held by some to be the Lodhi homeland.

History

Russell and Hira Lal (1916) describe the Lodhis of the Central Provinces as immigrants from the United Provinces who settled in the Vindhyan districts and the Narmada valley and spread to the Wainganga valley; the Mandla Lodhis are said to have been brought there in the seventeenth century by Raja Hirde Shah of Garha-Mandla. They became landholders addressed as Thakur, and some families in Damoh and Saugor received the titles of Raja and Diwan from the Raja of Panna. In 1857 the Ramgarh family of Mandla took up arms against the British and lost its estates; Rani Avantibai of Ramgarh is remembered for her opposition to the British that year. After the 1911 census Lodhi associations met at Fatehgarh and claimed the name Lodhi-Rajput, and the Akhil Bharatiya Lodhi-Kshatriya (Rajput) Mahasabha was drafted at a conference in 1929.

Faith and Worship

In Russell and Hira Lal's account Lodhi weddings follow the rites of the Kurmis, and Lodhi tradition traces the community to Lava, son of Rama.

Notable Personalities