Ravived

Ravived is a caste that is mainly found among Hindus in Mauritius.[1] The origin of this caste lay in an Indian caste named Chamar[2] This same caste is referred to as Ravidassia outside Mauritius, and this terminology is very seldom used in Mauritius.[3]

In the ship records on which Indian laborers migrated to Mauritius, around ten percent of the boarded people mentioned their caste as Chamar. After the establishment of caste hierarchies in Mauritius, the Chamar community families turned to the religious songs of Kabir and Ravidass for their own religious outlet. Slowly, they started adopting religious-sounding names from these devotional songs.[4]

Arya Ravived Pracharni Sabha

During the initial stage of migration in Mauritius, significant numbers of Chamar people joined the Arya Samaj in the hope that it would help them to be free from the curse of casteism, as it was claimed by the leaders of the Arya Samaj.[5] But later, Upper Caste Arya Samajis started building separate halls for themselves and chamars for prayer within the same shrine to avoid Arya Samaj being labelled as a Chamar religion, which led to the establishment of Arya Ravived Pracharini Sabha in 1935.[6]

Notable People

  • Atma Doolooa - Mauritian Politician, Former Director of State Trading Corporation Director of Development Works Corporation, Mauritius and Former Advisor at Ministry of Commerce and Cooperatives, Mauritius.[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Understanding the caste system in Mauritius". 6 April 2021. Archived from the original on 8 June 2023. Retrieved 8 June 2023.
  2. ^ "Journal of Indian research" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-09-27.
  3. ^ Claveyrolas, Mathieu (2015). "The 'Land of the Vaish'? Caste Structure and Ideology in Mauritius". South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal. doi:10.4000/samaj.3886.
  4. ^ Younger, Paul (30 November 2009). New Homelands: Hindu Communities in Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, South Africa, Fiji, and East Africa. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-974192-2. Retrieved 30 August 2024.
  5. ^ The Legacy of Indian Indenture: Historical and Contemporary Aspects of Migration and Diaspora. Routledge. 10 November 2016. ISBN 9781351986830.
  6. ^ New Homelands: Hindu Communities in Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, South Africa, Fiji, and East Africa. Oxford University Press, USA. 2010. ISBN 978-0-19-539164-0.
  7. ^ "PORTRAIT: Atma Doolooa, un chamar fier de l'être". Le Mauricien (in French). 8 July 2012. Retrieved 2 August 2025.
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