Matang

Clans and Kinship

Enthoven (1922) found the community in the Marathi districts divided into a number of groups that married within themselves and differed from district to district. Within them the exogamous divisions were the same as surnames, and marriage within one's own division was forbidden. A man could not marry his father's sister's or mother's sister's daughter, but could marry his mother's brother's daughter. In Khandesh a sadhu of the community, each with twelve to thirty villages in his charge, usually conducted the marriage, and the headman, the mehetar, had to be present at every wedding. Russell and Hira Lal (1916), writing of the Central Provinces, describe exogamous family groups named after animals, other objects or titles, within which members may not marry. Neither source says how descent is reckoned. In public life the community's own associations, first formed in 1923 and 1932, and later bodies that organise processions in Annabhau Sathe's name, speak for it.

No list is given. Enthoven (1922, vol. 2, p. 436) prints about forty common surnames that served as the exogamous divisions, but nearly all are surnames shared with other Marathi-speaking communities, and a surname alone says nothing about a family's community, so they are not reproduced here.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Caste

  Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan

  Listed as: Matang

  In each of these states Matang is part of one combined entry that also carries an older name and Minimadig; Maharashtra's entry adds regional names such as Madari and Garudi (Census 2011, Table A-10 Appendix).

Checked in Census 2011 Table A-10 Appendix for Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Rajasthan, the four states whose entry names Matang, and against Wikipedia's compilation of the Scheduled Castes order. Entries under the older name alone, without Matang, appear in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh (which then included Telangana) and Daman and Diu; whether each names this community was not checked, so they are not shown.

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

Matang is a name the community uses for itself, and Wikipedia gives it beside an older name that the community's own associations and writers have also used. Enthoven (1922) records that the community traced its descent from a sage, Jambrishi. The meaning of the name is not settled in the sources used for this page.

History

Mukta Salve, born into the community, studied for about three years from the age of ten at a school run by Jotirao and Savitribai Phule. In 1855, when she was fourteen, the Marathi periodical Dnyanodaya published her essay on the grief of her community and the Mahars, which criticised caste inequality; it was reprinted in 1946. In the early twentieth century the community formed associations of its own, in 1923 and 1932. Annabhau Sathe, born at Wategaon in present-day Sangli district in 1920, is credited as a founding father of Dalit literature in Marathi: his novel Fakira (1959) tells of a young man who fights for the rights of his community, and he founded the first Dalit Sahitya Sammelan in Bombay in 1958.

Faith and Worship

Most Matang families are Hindu and keep the major Hindu festivals and the yearly jatra of the goddess Maisamma; many follow B. R. Ambedkar, and in the 2011 census 35,831 people in Maharashtra recorded in the combined entry that includes Matang gave Buddhism as their religion (Census 2011, Table SC-14, Maharashtra).

Customs

Hindu families keep the rites of the first haircut (jawal), shendi, marriage (lagna) and the funeral. Women in local branches of a Matang and Ambedkarite body organise jayanti processions in the names of Annabhau Sathe, B. R. Ambedkar and Savitribai Phule.

Festivals

Notable Personalities