Alternative Names
An alternative name used in government records and some scholarly literature is Gujar-Bakkarwal.
Location
The Bakkarwal are located in Jammu and Kashmir (in the western Himalayas).
Cultural Overview
The Bakkarwal of Jammu and Kashmir are a patrilineal Sunni Muslim community of nomadic pastoralists consisting of 39 preferentially endogamous descent groups or “patrilineages” known as zaat or khel (Rao, 1988/Rao, 1995). Zaat derives from the same Indo-Iranian root as the jaati of the Hindu varna-jaati system, while khel denotes units of social organization in areas of Pashtun influence. Although taxonomically different, Bakkarwal zaat and khel are organically and functionally indifferentiable, but they indicate different origins. Despite preferential endogamy and concepts of intergenerationally transmitted zaat- and khel-specific characteristics, these units cannot be glossed by the term “caste,” since a formal ideology of social ranking is absent. Thirty-six zaatform...
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References
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Rao, A. (2003). Bakkarwal. In: Ember, C.R., Ember, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-29907-6_29
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