by AAKAR PATEL
IMAGE/Desirage.com
When I was in school 30 years ago, a friend of mine applying for a visa to the United States changed his last name. He was a Patel and thought that if he applied with that name he stood a good change of being rejected. I do not know if that was true (I myself applied at the age of 16 and got a visa) but it is certainly true that there were and there are a lot of illegal Patels in America.
A change In the United States’ immigration policy made this week by president Barack Obama will help legalise the status of about 5 lakh Indians, many of whom are from the Patel community of Gujarat.
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This is not true, and comes mainly from myths that Patels have spread about themselves so vigorously that they may themselves have come to believe them. The Patels are peasants, from the same grouping as all the other peasant castes, like Patils, Reddys, Yadavs, Gowdas and Jats, and come from the lowest of the four ‘savarna’ or recognised castes, called shudra in Manusmriti.
Patels are slightly different from these other communities because they are vegetarian and inclined towards business. This is not because of any inherent tendencies, and they have no history of enterprise before the 20th century, but because they have absorbed the mercantile traditions of Gujarat, which is dominated by the Jain merchant.
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