The Garha, Gaur, Gaud or Gour, Gauri are a Muslim community or caste found in the Indian states of

Delhi NCR The National Capital Region (NCR) is a planning region centred upon the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi in India. It encompasses Delhi and several districts surrounding it from the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The N ...

Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 ...

Haryana Haryana (; ) is an Indian state located in the northern part of the country. It was carved out of the former state of East Punjab on 1 Nov 1966 on a linguistic basis. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with less than 1.4% () of India's land a ...

,Manohar, K S Singh, ed. (2005) ''People of India Uttar Pradesh''. Vol. XXIII. p. 407

Punjab Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising a ...

and

Uttarakhand Uttarakhand ( , or ; , ), also known as Uttaranchal ( ; the official name until 2007), is a state in the northern part of India. It is often referred to as the "Devbhumi" (literally 'Land of the Gods') due to its religious significance and ...

History and origin

The Garha have 51 sub-divisions,Manohar, K S Singh, ed. (2005) ''People of India Uttar Pradesh''. Vol. XLII Part 2. p. 509 known as biradari. Some of these are based on territorial groupings and some on the sects and castes they belonged prior to their conversion to Islam. Their main biradari is the

Gaur Brahmin Gaur Brahmins (spelling variations: Gor or Gour), also Gauda Brahmins (spelling variations: Gaud, or God), also known as Adi Gauda/Gaur, is a group of Brahmin communities in India. The Gauda Brahmins are one of the five Pancha Gauda Brahmin commu ...

. Some Garha sub-groups descent from the

Gaur (Clan) Gaur is a Hindu Rajput clan of India. They have ancient ancestry and find mention by James Tod as one of 36 royal races in his book Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan The Gaur Rajputs once held a prominent position in Ajmer till the time of Pri ...

Rajput Rajput (from Sanskrit ''raja-putra'' 'son of a king') is a large multi-component cluster of castes, kin bodies, and local groups, sharing social status and ideology of genealogical descent originating from the Indian subcontinent. The term Ra ...

. But most of Gada groups are descent from the Gaur Brahmin community, and claim ''Gada'' is the khadi boli transformation of the original ''Gauda''. Some Garha Biradari sub-groups also descent from the tribe of Muhammad Ghouri or

Muhammad of Ghor Mu'izz ad-Din Muhammad ibn Sam ( fa, معز الدین محمد بن سام), also Mu'izz ad-Din Muhammad Ghori, also Ghūri ( fa, معز الدین محمد غوری) (1144 – March 15, 1206), commonly known as Muhammad of Ghor, also Gh ...

. They merged with the Gaur Muslims through marriage and political alliance and use surname Ghouri or Gouri and Ghazi. Thus it can be concluded that Gaur Muslims are a mixed community of

(major and the main part),

and Gauri Afghan. The Garha have a caste association, called the Anjuman Garha (Garha association), whose primary purpose is to look after their socio-economic welfare. The association runs schools imparting education and making arrangements of boarding house for poors. They live in multi-caste villages, occupying their own quarters and they are landlords and well educated as well as powerful. They are upper caste and Swarn or Ashraaf.Manohar, K S Singh, ed. (2005) ''People of India Uttar Pradesh''. Vol. XLII Part 2. p. 511 The community comprises mostly peasants called Nambardaar, Gour, Padhaan, Zamindaar, Jagirdar, Chaudhary, Gauri and Ghazi concentrated in the

Doab ''Doab'' () is a term used in South Asia Quote: "Originally and chiefly in South Asia: (the name of) a strip or narrow tract of land between two rivers; spec. (with) the area between the rivers Ganges and Jumna in northern India." for the tract ...

region of Uttar Pradesh and neighbouring

Haridwar District Haridwar district () also spelled as ''Hardwar'' is a district in Garhwal which is a part of Uttarakhand, India. It is headquartered at Haridwar which is also its largest city. The district is ringed by the districts Dehradun in the north and e ...

and

Yamuna Nagar district Yamunanagar district is one of the 22 districts of the Indian state of Haryana. The district came into existence on 1November 1989 and occupies an area of . Yamunanagar town is the district headquarters. Yamunanagar's average rainfall in Monso ...

. Each of their settlements contains a village-based caste council, known as a ''biradari panchayat'', which acts as an instrument of social control and resolves intra-community disputes. In terms of religion, they are fairly orthodox Sunni Muslims, and have customs similar to other neighbouring Muslim peasant castes such as Muslim Jaat, Ranghad, Rohilla and Musalman Taga. The Garha speak

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Khari boli Kauravi ( hi, कौरवी, ur, ), also known as Khaṛībolī is a set of Western Hindi varieties of Shauraseni Prakrit mainly spoken in Northwestern Uttar Pradesh. Standard Hindi and Urdu are based on Khariboli, specifically on its De ...

dialect.

References

{{Indian Muslim Muslim communities of Uttar Pradesh Social groups of Haryana

History and origin

See also

References