View source for Kurmi

{{short description|Indian agricultural caste in the Gangetic plain}}
{{About|the Indian agricultural community|the district in Nigeria|Kurmi, Nigeria}}
{{pp-semi-indef|small=yes}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2023}}
{{EngvarB|date=December 2023}}
{{Infobox caste
| region           = [[Awadh]], [[Bhojpuri region|Bhojpur]], [[Madhesh Province|Madhesh]], [[Lumbini Province|Lumbini]]
| languages        = [[Awadhi language|Awadhi]], [[Bhojpuri language|Bhojpuri]], [[Hindi]], [[Urdu]]
| religions        = {{hlist|[[Hinduism]]|[[Islam]]}}
| image            = The tribes and castes of the Central Provinces of India (1916) (14577152309).jpg
| caption          = A group of Kurmi women in traditional "[[India|Hindustani]] dress".
|country=[[India]] and [[Nepal]]
| classification   = [[Other Backward Class]]
}}

'''Kurmi''' is a traditionally non-elite [[Tillage|tiller]] [[caste]] in the lower [[Gangetic Plain|Gangetic plain]] of India, especially southern regions of [[Awadh]], eastern [[Uttar Pradesh]] and parts of [[Bihar]] and [[Jharkhand]].<ref name="Bayly2001-lead">{{citation|last=Bayly|first=Susan|author-link=Susan Bayly|title=Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HbAjKR_iHogC&pg=PA200|year=2001|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-79842-6|pages=200–|quote=In southern Awadh, eastern NWP, and much of Bihar, non-labouring gentry groups lived in tightly-knit enclaves among much larger populations of non-elite ‘peasants’ and labouring people. These other groupings included ... non-elite tilling and cattle-keeping people who came to be known by such titles as Kurmi, Koeri and Goala/Ahir.}}</ref> The Kurmis came to be known for their exceptional work ethic, superior tillage and manuring, and gender-neutral culture, bringing praise from Mughal and British administrators alike.<ref name="Bayly1988-p478" /><ref name="Bayly1988-p101" /><ref name="bayly-p41" />

== Etymology ==
There are several late-19th century theories of the etymology of ''Kurmi''. According to [[Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya]] (1896), the word may be derived from an Indian tribal language, or be a [[Sanskrit]] compound term ''krishi karmi'', "agriculturalist."<ref name="Bhattacharya1896">{{cite book|author=Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya|title=Hindu castes and sects: an exposition of the origin of the Hindu caste system and the bearing of the sects towards each other and towards other religious systems / Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya|url=https://archive.org/details/hinducastesands00bhatgoog|year=1896|publisher=Thacker, Spink|pages=[https://archive.org/details/hinducastesands00bhatgoog/page/n20 270]}}</ref> A theory of [[Gustav Salomon Oppert]] (1893) holds that it may be derived from ''kṛṣmi'', meaning "ploughman".<ref name="Oppert1978">{{cite book|author=Gustav Salomon Oppert|title=On the original inhabitants of Bharatavarṣa or India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kDzXAAAAMAAJ|date=February 1978|publisher=Arno Press|isbn=978-0-405-10557-9}}</ref>

According to [[Suniti Kumar Chatterji]] (1926), the Bengali word ''kuṛmī'' or ''kurmī'' derives from Sanskrit ''kuṭumbin''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chatterji |first=Suniti Kumar |title=The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language |publisher=Calcutta University Press |year=1926 |pages=333}}</ref> This view is endorsed in [[Ralph Lilley Turner]]'s ''A Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages'' (1962–1985), where he lists cognates across many Indo-Aryan languages including [[Bhojpuri language|Bhojpuri]], [[Bihari languages|Bihari]], and [[Eastern Hindi languages|Eastern Hindi]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Turner |first=Ralph Lilley |url=https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/soas_query.py?qs=ku%E1%B9%ADumbin&searchhws=yes&matchtype=exact |title=A Comparative Dictionary of Indo-Aryan Languages |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1962–1985 |pages=166}}</ref>

== History ==

=== Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ===
With the continued waning of [[Mughal empire|Mughal rule]] in the early 18th century, the [[Indian subcontinent]]'s hinterland dwellers, many of whom were armed and nomadic, began to appear more frequently in settled areas and interact with townspeople and agriculturists.  Many new rulers of the 18th century came from such nomadic backgrounds. The effect of this interaction on India's social organisation lasted well into the colonial period. During much of this time, non-elite tillers and pastoralists, such as the Kurmi, were part of a social spectrum that blended only indistinctly into the elite landowning classes at one end, and the menial or ritually polluting classes at the other.<ref name=bayly-p41>{{citation|last=Bayly|first=Susan|title=Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HbAjKR_iHogC|year=2001|publisher=Cambridge University Press|page=41|isbn=978-0-521-79842-6}}</ref>

The Kurmi were famed as market gardeners. In western and northern [[Awadh]], for example, for much of the eighteenth century, the Muslim gentry offered the Kurmi highly discounted rental rates for clearing the jungle and cultivating it. Once the land had been brought stably under the plough, however, the land rent was usually raised to 30 to 80 per cent above the going rate. Although British revenue officials later ascribed the high rent to the prejudice among the elite rural castes against handling the plough, the main reason was the greater productivity of the Kurmi, whose success lay in superior manuring.<ref name="Bayly1988-p478">{{cite book|last=Bayly|first=C. A.|author-link=Christopher Bayly|title=Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xfo3AAAAIAAJ|year=1988|publisher=CUP Archive|isbn=978-0-521-31054-3|page=478}}</ref> According to historian [[Christopher Bayly]], <blockquote> Whereas the majority of cultivators manured only the lands immediately around the village and used these lands for growing food grains, Kurmis avoided using animal dung for fuel and manured the poorer lands farther from the village (the ''manjha''). They were able, therefore, to grow valuable market crops such as potatoes, melons and tobacco immediately around the village, sow fine grains in the ''manjha'', and restrict the poor millet subsistence crops to the periphery. A network of ''ganjs'' (fixed rural markets) and Kurmi or Kacchi settlements could transform a local economy within a year or two.<ref name="Bayly1988-p101">{{cite book|last=Bayly|first=C. A.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xfo3AAAAIAAJ|title=Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870|publisher=CUP Archive|year=1988|isbn=978-0-521-31054-3|page=101|author-link=Christopher Bayly}}</ref></blockquote>

Cross-cultural influences were felt also. Hindu tillers worshipped at Muslim shrines in the small towns founded by their Muslim overlords. The Hindu Kurmis of [[Chunar]] and [[Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh|Jaunpur]], for instance, took up the Muslim custom of [[Cousin marriage|marrying first cousins]] and of burying their dead.<ref name="Bayly1988-p478" /> In some regions, the Kurmis' success as tillers led to land ownership, and to avowals of high status, as noted, for examples, by [[Francis Buchanan]] in the early 19th century among the [[Ayodhya]] Kurmis of the Awadh.<ref name="Pinch1996-p85">{{cite book|first=William R. |last=Pinch|title=Peasants and monks in British India|url=https://archive.org/details/peasantsmonksinb0000pinc|url-access=registration |year=1996|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-20061-6|page=[https://archive.org/details/peasantsmonksinb0000pinc/page/85 85]}}</ref>  Earlier, in the late eighteenth century, when [[Asaf-Ud-Dowlah]], the fourth [[Nawab of Awadh]], attempted to grant the kshatriya title of [[Raja]] to a group of influential landed Ayodhya Kurmis, he was thwarted by a united opposition of [[Rajput]]s, who were themselves (as described by Buchanan), "a group of newcomers to the court, who had been peasant soldiers only a few years before ..."<ref name="Pinch1996-p85" />  According to historian William Pinch:  <blockquote> Rajputs of Awadh, who along with [[brahmin|brahmans]] constituted the main beneficiaries of what historian Richard Barnett characterizes as "Asaf's permissive program of social mobility," were not willing to let that mobility reach beyond certain arbitrary socio-cultural boundaries. ... The divergent claims to status in the nineteenth century (and earlier) illustrate the point that for non-Muslims, while varna was generally accepted as the basis for identity, on the whole little agreement prevailed with respect to the place of the individual and the jati within a varna hierarchy.<ref name="Pinch1996-p85" /></blockquote>

Although the free peasant farm was the mainstay of farming in many parts of north India in the 18th century, in some regions, a combination of climatic, political, and demographic factors led to the increased dependence of peasant cultivators such as the Kurmi. In the Benares division, which had come under the revenue purview of the [[East India Company|British East India Company]] in 1779, the [[Chalisa famine]] of 1783 and the relentless revenue demand from the Company reduced the status of many Kurmi cultivators. A British revenue agent wrote in 1790, "It unfortunately happened that during the famine aforesaid a great proportion of the Kurmis, Kacchis and Koeris were in this district as well as in others supplanted by Brahmans ... " and bemoaned the loss of agricultural revenue in part due to, "this unfavourable mutation amongst the cultivators ..."<ref name="Bayly1988-p478" />

In the first half of the nineteenth century, economic pressures on the large landowning classes increased noticeably. The prices of agricultural lands fell at the same time that the East India Company, after acquiring the [[Ceded and Conquered Provinces]] (later the [[North-Western Provinces]]) in 1805, began to press landowners for more [[Company rule in India#Revenue collection|land revenue]]. The annexation of Awadh in 1856 created more fear and discontent among the landed elite, and may have contributed to the [[Indian rebellion of 1857]]. Economic pressures also opened marginal areas to intensive agriculture and turned the fortunes of the non-elite peasants, such as the Kurmi, who worked them. After the rebellion, the landowning classes, defeated but still pressed economically in the new [[British Raj]], attempted to treat their tenants and labourers as people of lowly birth and to demand unpaid labour from them.<ref name="bayly-p41" /> According to historical anthropologist [[Susan Bayly]], <blockquote> In some instances these were attempts to stave off decline by reinvigorating or intensifying existing forms of customary service. Elsewhere these were wholly novel demands, many being imposed on 'clean' tillers and cattle-keepers like the Ram- and Krishna-loving Koeris, Kurmis and Ahirs ... In either case, these calls were buttressed with appeals to Sanskritic varna theory and Brahmanical caste convention. ... Kurmi and Goala/Ahir tillers who held tenancies from these 'squireens' found themselves being identified as Shudras, that is, people who were mandated to serve those of the superior Kshatriya and Brahman varnas.<ref name="bayly-p41" /></blockquote>

The elite landowning classes, such as Rajputs and [[Bhumihar]]s, now sought to present themselves as flagbearers of the ancient Hindu tradition. At the same time, there was a proliferation of [[Brahmin|Brahmanical]] rituals in the daily life of the elite, a greater stress on pure bloodlines, more stringent conditions placed on matrimonial alliances, and, as noted by some social reformers of the day, an increase among the Rajputs of [[female infanticide]], a practice that had little history among the Kurmi.<ref name="bayly-p41" />

{{Gallery|width=200 | align        =center
|File:India1909PrevailingRaces.JPG|The map of the prevailing "races" of India (now discredited) based on the 1901 Census of British India. The Kurmi are shown both in the [[United Provinces of Agra and Oudh|United Provinces]] (UP) and the [[Central Provinces]].
|File:Kurmi sowing.jpg|An "ethnographic" photograph from 1916 showing Kurmi farmers, both men and women, sowing a field
|File:Kurmi threshing.jpg|Another ethnographic print from 1916 showing a Kurmi family employing its beasts of burden to thresh wheat
|File:Kurmi winnowing.jpg|A third print from the same collection showing the Kurmi family winnowing
}}

The second half of the nineteenth century also largely overlapped with the coming of age of ethnology—interpreted then as the science of race—in the study of societies the world over. Although later to be discredited, the methods of this discipline were eagerly absorbed and adopted in British India, as were those of the emerging science of anthropology. Driven in part by the intellectual ferment of the discipline and in part by the political compulsions in both Britain and India, two dominant views of caste emerged among the administrator-scholars of the day.<ref name="bayly-p41" />  According to Susan Bayly: <blockquote> Those like [[William Wilson Hunter|(Sir William) Hunter]], as well as the key figures of [[Herbert Hope Risley|H. H. Risley]] (1851–1911) and his protégé [[Edgar Thurston]], who were disciples of the French race theorist Topinard and his European followers, subsumed discussions of caste into theories of biologically determined race essences, ... Their great rivals were the material or occupational theorists led by the ethnographer and folklorist [[William Crooke]] (1848–1923), author of one of the most widely read provincial ''Castes and Tribes'' surveys, and such other influential scholar-officials as [[Denzil Ibbetson]] and [[E. A. H. Blunt]].<ref name="bayly-p41" /></blockquote>

Seeing caste as a fundamental force in Indian life, Risley, especially, influenced official views as expressed in both the Censuses of British India and the [[Imperial Gazetteer of India|Imperial Gazetteer]] brought out by Hunter. Risley is best known for the now discounted attribution of all differences in caste to varying proportions of seven racial types which included "Dravidian," "Aryo-Dravidian," and "Indo-Aryan". The Kurmi fell into two such categories. In the ethnological map of India published in the 1909 Imperial Gazetteer of India and based on the 1901 Census supervised by Risley, the Kurmi of the United Provinces were classified as "Aryo-Dravidian," whereas the Kurmi of the [[Central Provinces]] were counted among "Dravidians".<ref name="bayly-p41" /> In the 1901 Census of India, the category of [[Varna (Hinduism)|varna]], the four-fold graded system, was included in the official classification of caste,<ref name="RudolphRudolph1984">{{cite book|last1=Rudolph|first1=Lloyd I.|last2=Rudolph|first2=Susanne Hoeber|title=The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7guY1ut-0lwC|year=1984|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-73137-7|page=116}}</ref> the only time this was the case.{{efn|Although influential, Risley's attempt did not achieve the end which he sought: people were unable to determine in which group they should classify themselves, the localised system he adopted could not be transposed onto the national stage, and some groups took advantage of the situation deliberately to seek reclassification and therefore satisfy their aspirations. L. I. and S. H. Rudolph have commented that "Risley's work, as a scientific effort, seemed based on mistaken premises. Varna was not a behavioral concept."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Rudolph|first1=Lloyd I.|last2=Rudolph|first2=Susanne Hoeber|title=The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7guY1ut-0lwC|year=1984|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-73137-7|page=117}}</ref>}} In the [[United Provinces of Agra and Oudh|United Provinces]] (UP), the Kurmi were classified under "Class VIII: Castes from whom some of the twice-born would take water and ''pakki'' (food cooked with [[ghee]]),<ref name="BluntBlunt1931">Quote: "The Hindu draws a distinction between ''kachcha'' food, which is cooked in water, and ''pakka'' food, which is cooked in ''[[ghee|ghi]]'' (clarified butter). This distinction depends on the principle that ''ghi'', like all products of the sacred cow protects from impurity ... and enables the Hindu to be less particular in the case of ''pakka'' than of ''kachcha'' food, and allows him to relax his restrictions accordingly." In {{cite book|last=Blunt|first=Sir Edward Arthur Henry|title=The caste system of northern India: with special reference to the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wb45AQAAIAAJ|year=1931|publisher=H. Milford, Oxford University Press|page=89}}</ref> without question;" whereas, in [[Bihar]], they were listed under: "Class III, Clean Sudra, Subclass (a)."<ref name="CommissionerRisley1903">{{cite book|author1=India. Census Commissioner|last2=Risley|first2=Sir Herbert Hope|title=Census of India, 1901: Volume I. India. Ethnographic appendices, being the data upon which the caste chapter of the Report is based|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8MsiAQAAMAAJ|year=1903|publisher=Office of the Supt. of Govt. Printing, India|location=Calcutta|pages=56–57}}</ref>{{efn|[[Census of India prior to independence|Indian censuses of the British Raj period]] are not usually considered to be particularly reliable except for overall population figures. Those for some areas of the country could be more reliable than others.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fq1MVCSqu4sC |page=60 |title=The economic development of India |first=Vera Powell |last=Anstey |edition=Reprinted |publisher=Ayer Publishing |year=1977 |orig-year=1931 |isbn=978-0-405-09775-1 |quote=... a vast army of enumerators are utilized, many of whom have a very limited understanding of what is required. Hence the Indian census provides at times more food for merriment than is usually connected with statistical compilations.}}
{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-2RP04HHopkC |pages=104–116 |title=The census administration under the raj and after |first=Shriram |last=Maheshwari |publisher=Concept Publishing Company |year=1996 |isbn=978-81-7022-585-0}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H3fxvuxjJOsC |page=124 |title=Social Sciences: The Indian Scene |first=Yogesh |last=Atal |publisher=Abhinav Publications |year=2003 |isbn=978-81-7017-042-6}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wBUot0-CIYUC |title=Children of Colonialism: Anglo-Indians in a Postcolonial World |first=Lionel |last=Caplan |publisher=Berg |year=2003 |pages=66–67 |isbn=978-1-85973-632-6}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3Qy14yBg8Q8C |page=290 |title=Elements Of Demography |last=Sinha |first=E. Zacharia |publisher=Allied Publishers |isbn=978-81-7764-044-1|date=12 April 1984 }}</ref>}}  According to William Pinch, "Risley's hierarchy (for United Provinces) was far more elaborate than that for Bihar, suggesting that contending claims of social respectability may have been more deeply entrenched in the western half of the Gangetic Plain."<ref name="Pinch1996-p85" />

In the writings of the occupational theorists, the Kurmis and the Jats came to be extolled for their yeoman-like purposefulness, tirelessness, and thrift, all of which, according to writers such as Crooke, Ibbetson, and Blunt had been largely abandoned by the landed elite.<ref name="bayly-p41" />  Crooke wrote about the Kurmi in 1897: <blockquote> They are about the most industrious and hard-working agricultural tribe in the Province. The industry of his wife has passed into a proverb: <br />
''Bhali jât Kurmin, khurpi hât,'' <br />
''Khet nirâwê apan pî kê sâth.'' <br />
"A good lot is the Kurmi woman; she takes her spud and weeds the field with her lord."<ref name="Crooke1896-p353-354">{{cite book|last=Crooke|first=William|title=The tribes and castes of the North-western Provinces and Oudh, Volume III|url=https://archive.org/details/tribesandcastes01croogoog|year=1896|publisher=Office of the superintendent of government printing|pages=[https://archive.org/details/tribesandcastes01croogoog/page/n374 353]–354}}</ref></blockquote>

According to Susan Bayly, <blockquote> By the mid-nineteenth century, influential revenue specialists were reporting that they could tell the caste of a landed man by simply glancing at his crops. In the north, these observers claimed, a field of 'second-rate barley' would belong to a Rajput or Brahman who took pride in shunning the plough and secluding his womenfolk. Such a man was to be blamed for his own decline, fecklessly mortgaging and then selling off his lands to maintain his unproductive dependents. By the same logic, a flourishing field of wheat would belong to a non-twice-born tiller, wheat being a crop requiring skill and enterprise on the part of the cultivator. These, said such commentators as Denzil Ibbetson and E. A. H. Blunt, were the qualities of the non-patrician 'peasant'&nbsp;– the thrifty Jat or canny Kurmi in upper India, .... Similar virtues would be found among the smaller market-gardening populations, these being the people known as Keoris in Hindustan, ....<ref>{{citation|last=Bayly|first=Susan|title=Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HbAjKR_iHogC&pg=PA212|year=2001|publisher=Cambridge University Press|page=212|isbn=978-0-521-79842-6}}</ref></blockquote>

=== Twentieth century ===
As the economic pressures on the patrician landed groups continued through the remainder of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, there were increasing demands for unpaid labour directed at the Kurmi and other non-elite cultivators.<ref name="bayly-p41" />  The landed elites' demands were couched in avowals of their ancient rights as "twice-born" landowners and of the Kurmi's alleged lowly, even servile, status, which required them to serve. At times encouraged by sympathetic British officials and at other times carried by the groundswell of egalitarian sentiment being espoused then by the devotional [[Vaishnavism|Vaishnava]] movements, especially those based on [[Tulsidas]]'s ''[[Ramcharitmanas]]'', the Kurmi largely resisted these demands.<ref name="bayly-p41" />  Their resistance, however, did not take the form of denial of caste or of caste-based imposition, but rather of disagreement about where they stood in the caste ranking.<ref name="bayly-p41" />  A noteworthy attribute of the resulting Kurmi-kshatriya movement was the leadership provided by educated Kurmis who were now filling the lower and middle levels of government jobs.<ref name="Pinch1996-p85" /> According to William Pinch: <blockquote> The mantle of leadership in this phase befell the well-connected Ramdin Sinha, a government forester who had gained notoriety by resigning from his official post to protest a provincial circular of 1894 that included Kurmis as a "depressed community" and barred them therefore from recruitment into the police service. The governor’s office was flooded with letters from an outraged Kurmi-kshatriya public and was soon obliged to rescind the allegation in an 1896 communique to the police department "His Honor [the governor] is ... of the opinion that Kurmis constitute a respectable community which he would be reluctant to exclude from Government service."<ref name="Pinch1996-p85" /></blockquote>

The first Kurmi caste association had been formed in 1894 at [[Lucknow]] to protest against the police recruitment policy. This was followed by an organisation in Awadh that sought to draw other communities&nbsp;— such as the [[Patidar]]s, [[Maratha]]s, [[Kapu (caste)|Kapus]], [[Reddy]]s and [[Naidu]]s&nbsp;— under the umbrella of the Kurmi name. This body then campaigned for Kurmis to classify themselves as Kshatriya in the 1901 census and, in 1910, led to the formation of the [[All India Kurmi Kshatriya Mahasabha]].<ref name=Jaffrelot2003p197>{{cite book |title=India's silent revolution: the rise of the lower castes in North India |page=197 |first=Christophe |last=Jaffrelot |publisher=C. Hurst & Co. |location=London |year=2003 |isbn=978-1-85065-670-8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OAkW94DtUMAC |access-date=3 October 2016 |archive-date=2 February 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230202200231/https://books.google.com/books?id=OAkW94DtUMAC |url-status=live }}</ref> Simultaneously, newly constituted farmers' unions, or ''Kisan Sabhas''—composed of cultivators and pastoralists, many of whom were Kurmi, Ahir, and [[Yadav]] ([[Gavli|Goala]]), and inspired by Hindu mendicants, such as [[Baba Ram Chandra]] and [[Sahajanand Saraswati|Swami Sahajanand Saraswati]]—denounced the Brahman and Rajput landlords as ineffective and their morality as false. In the rural Ganges valley of Bihar and Eastern United Provinces, the [[Bhakti]] cults of [[Rama]], the incorruptible Kshatriya god-king of Hindu tradition, and [[Krishna]], the divine cowherd of Gokul, had long been entrenched among the Kurmi and Ahir. The leaders of the ''Kisan Sabhas'' urged their Kurmi and Ahir followers to lay claim to the Kshatriya mantle. Promoting what was advertised as soldierly manliness, the ''Kisan Sabhas'' agitated for the entry of non-elite farmers into the British Indian army during World War I; they formed [[cow protection movement|cow protection societies]]; they asked their members to wear the [[sacred thread]] of the [[twice-born]], and, in contrast to the Kurmis own traditions, to sequester their women in the manner of Rajputs and Brahmins.<ref name="bayly-p41" />

In 1930, the Kurmis of Bihar joined with the Yadav and [[Koeri]] agriculturalists to enter local elections. They lost badly but in 1934 the three communities formed the [[Triveni Sangh]]  political party, which allegedly had a million dues-paying members by 1936. However, the organisation was hobbled by competition from the Congress-backed [[Backward Class]] Federation, which was formed around the same time, and by co-option of community leaders by the Congress party. The Triveni Sangh suffered badly in the 1937 elections, although it did win in some areas. The organisation also suffered from caste rivalries, notably the superior organisational ability of the higher castes who opposed it, as well as the inability of the Yadavs to renounce their belief that they were natural leaders and that the Kurmi were somehow inferior. Similar problems beset a later planned caste union, the ''Raghav Samaj'', with the Koeris.<ref name="Jaffrelot2003p197" />

Again in the 1970s, the India Kurmi Kshatriya Sabha attempted to bring the Koeris under their wing, but disunity troubled this alliance.<ref>{{cite news |first=Akshaya |last=Mukul |url=http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/young-india-votes/news/Mighty-Kurmis-of-Bihar/articleshow/555124.cms |title=Mighty Kurmis of Bihar |work=The Times of India |date=12 March 2004 |access-date=17 June 2011 |archive-date=27 November 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101127201356/http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/young-india-votes/news/Mighty-Kurmis-of-Bihar/articleshow/555124.cms |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news | title=Fernandes to head Janata Dal (United) | url=http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/2003/10/31/stories/2003103104371100.htm | author=Gargi Parsai | date=31 October 2003 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120204034133/http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/2003/10/31/stories/2003103104371100.htm | newspaper=[[The Hindu]] | archive-date=4 February 2012}}</ref>

Many private caste-based armies surfaced in Bihar between the 1970s and 1990s, largely influenced by landlord farmers reacting to the growing influence of left extremist groups. Among these was the [[Bhumi Sena]], the membership of which was drawn mainly from youths who had a Kurmi origin.<ref name="bayly-p41" /><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://frontline.thehindu.com/static/html/fl1919/19190330.htm|title=End of a terror trail|work=Frontline|date=27 September 2002|first=Kalyan |last=Chaudhuri|access-date=19 December 2018}}</ref> Bhumi Sena was much feared in the Patna region and also had influence in the districts of Nalanda, Jehanabad and Gaya.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/a-lasting-signature-on-bihar-s-most-violent-years/957421/2|title=A lasting signature on Bihar's most violent years|work=[[The Indian Express]]|access-date=18 December 2018|archive-date=2 June 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200602172108/http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/a-lasting-signature-on-bihar-s-most-violent-years/957421/2|url-status=live}}</ref>

==Kurmis in Nepal==
The [[Central Bureau of Statistics (Nepal)|Central Bureau of Statistics]] of Nepal classifies the Kurmi as a subgroup within the broader social group of [[Madheshi people|Madheshi]] Other Caste.<ref>Population Monograph of Nepal, Volume II [https://nepal.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/Population%20Monograph%20V02.pdf] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211126164846/https://nepal.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/Population%20Monograph%20V02.pdf|date=26 November 2021}}</ref> At the time of the [[2011 Nepal census]], 231,129 people (0.9% of the population of Nepal) were Kurmi. The frequency of Kurmis by province was as follows:
* [[Madhesh Province]] (2.8%)
* [[Lumbini Province]] (1.6%)
* [[Koshi Province]] (0.1%)
* [[Bagmati Province]] (0.0%)
* [[Gandaki Province]] (0.0%)
* [[Karnali Province]] (0.0%)
* [[Sudurpashchim Province]] (0.0%)

The frequency of Kurmis was higher than national average (0.9%) in the following districts:<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://cbs.gov.np/wp-content/upLoads/2018/12/Volume05Part02.pdf |title=2011 Nepal Census, District Level Detail Report |access-date=10 April 2023 |archive-date=14 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230314170005/https://cbs.gov.np/wp-content/upLoads/2018/12/Volume05Part02.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>
* [[Parsa District|Parsa]] (8.4%)
* [[Kapilvastu District|Kapilvastu]] (6.3%)
* [[Rautahat District|Rautahat]] (5.7%)
* [[Bara District|Bara]] (3.9%)
* [[Banke District|Banke]] (2.2%)
* [[Sarlahi District|Sarlahi]] (2.2%)
* [[Rupandehi District|Rupandehi]] (2.0%)
* [[Parasi District|Parasi]] (1.7%)
* [[Dhanusha District|Dhanusha]] (1.3%)

== See also ==
*[[Kunbi]]
*[[Koeri]]
*[[Patidar]]
*[[Patel]]
*[[Kochaisa]]
*[[History of Backward Caste movement in Bihar]]

== References ==
'''Notes'''
{{notelist}}
'''Citations'''
{{Reflist|30em}}

== Further reading ==
*{{cite book|last1=Bhattacharya|first1=Ranjit Kumar|last2=Das|first2=Nava Kishor|author3=Anthropological Survey of India|title=Anthropology of weaker sections|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pjVdJMBeXU8C|access-date=1 August 2011|date=1 January 1993|publisher=Concept Publishing Company|isbn=978-81-7022-491-4}}
*{{cite book|last=Gooptu|first=Nandini|title=The politics of the urban poor in early twentieth-century India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yRrbSzEvNCMC|access-date=1 August 2011|date=1 July 2001|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-44366-1}}
*{{cite book|editor-last1=Singer|editor-first1=Milton |editor-last2=Cohn|editor-first2=Bernard S. |title=Structure and Change in Indian Society|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_g-_r-9Oa_sC|access-date=1 August 2011|year=2007|publisher=Transaction Publishers|isbn=978-0-202-36138-3}}
*{{cite book|last=Yang|first=Anand A.|title=The limited Raj: agrarian relations in colonial India, Saran District, 1793–1920|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ck4jmD7H34UC|access-date=1 August 2011|year=1989|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-05711-1}}
*{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oDeFAAAAIAAJ|title=Daughters of The Earth|last=Jassal|first=Smita Tewari|publisher=Technical Publications|year=2001|isbn=978-8-17304-375-8|page=57}}
*{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QCp0JQcFik8C&q=awadhiya&pg=PA78|title=Anthropological Methods for Communication Research: Experiences and Encounters During SITE|last=Viswanath|first=Sashikala|date=1985|publisher=Concept Publishing Company|language=en}}

[[Category:Social groups of Bihar]]
[[Category:Social groups of Uttar Pradesh]]
[[Category:Social groups of Madhya Pradesh]]
[[Category:Agricultural castes]]
[[Category:Social groups of Odisha]]