Chitpavan Brahmins
Until the 18th century, the Chitpavans were held in low esteem by the Deshastha, the older established Brahmin community of Karnataka-Maharashtra region.
He adds that after the defeat of Peshwas in the Anglo-Maratha wars, Chitpavans were the one of the Hindu communities to flock to western education in the Bombay Province of British India.
[5][6] The etymology of their name is given in a legendary myth of the chapter citpāvanabrāhmaṇotpattiḥ i.e. “Origin of the Citpāvan brahmins” in the Hindu Sanskrit scripture Sahyadrikhanda[a] of the Skanda Purana.
According to this chapter, Parashurama, the sixth incarnation of God Vishnu, who could not find any Brahmins in Konkan to perform rituals for him, found sixty fishermen who had gathered near a funeral pyre near the ocean shore.
[8][9] The Chitpavan story of shipwrecked people is similar to the legendary arrival of Bene Israel Jews in the Raigad district.
The Chitpavans were apparently the last major community to arrive there and consequently the area in which they settled, around Ratnagiri, was the least fertile and had few good ports for trading.
[25][26] With the ascension of Balaji Baji Rao and his family to the supreme authority of the Maratha Empire, Chitpavan immigrants began arriving en masse from the Konkan to Pune[27][28] where the Peshwa offered all important offices to his fellow caste members.
[29] In 1762-63, Azad Bilgrami wrote: The Marathas in general, but the Deccani Brahmans in particular, have the desire to deprive all people of their means of livelihood and appropriate it for themselves.
Uprooting most cruelly the heirs of ancient lineages, they establish their own possession and desire that the Konkani Brahmans should become the proprietors (mālik) of the whole world.
These included Dhondo Keshav Karve,[39] Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade,[40] Vinayak Damodar Savarkar,[41][42] Gopal Ganesh Agarkar,[43] Vinoba Bhave.
[47] The Chitpavan community includes two major politicians in the Gandhian tradition: Gopal Krishna Gokhale, whom Mahatma Gandhi acknowledged as a preceptor, and Vinoba Bhave, one of his outstanding disciples.
Large numbers of the community looked to Savarkar, the Hindu Mahasabha and finally the RSS, drew their inspiration from fringe groups.
[49][full citation needed] After Mahatma Gandhi's assassination by Nathuram Godse, a Chitpavan, Brahmins in Maharashtra, became targets of violence, mostly by members from the Maratha caste.
V. M. Sirsikar, a political scientist at the University of Pune, noted that It will be too much to believe that the riots took place because of the intense love of Gandhiji on the part of the Marathas.
[51]The violence after the assassination affected Chitpavan Patwardhan family ruled princely states such as Sangli, where the Marathas were joined by the Jains and the Lingayats in the attacks against the Brahmins.
[56] In their original home of Konkan, their primary occupation was farming, while some earned money by performing rituals among their own caste members.
[57] Anthropologist Donald Kurtz writes that the late 20th century opinions about the culture of the Chitpavans was that they were frugal to the point of appearing cheap, impassive, not trustworthy and also conspiratorial.
[60] D.L.Sheth, the former director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in India (CSDS), lists Indian communities that were traditionally "urban and professional" (following professions like doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, etc.)
This list included Chitpavans and CKPs(Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhus) from Maharashtra; the South Indian Brahmins; the Nagar Brahmins from Gujarat; the Punjabi Khatris, Kashmiri Pandits and Kayasthas from northern India; the Probasi and the Bhadralok Bengalis; the Parsis and the upper crusts of Muslim and Christian communities.
[64] Earlier, the Deshastha Brahmins openly disparaged the Chitpavans as parvenus (a relative newcomer to a socio-economic class), and in Kumar's words "barely fit to associate on terms of equality with the noblest of the Dvijas".
As early as 1881, he encouraged this by writing comprehensive discussions on the urgent need for these three Maharashtrian Brahmin sub-castes to give up caste exclusiveness by intermarrying and dining together.
Tulpule reads the content as donation of 9 kuvalis of grain towards Goddess Mahalakshmi for Bodan, whereas Dikshit interprets it as digging a well to honor Mahalaskhmi.
