Mahadev Kolis

KOLIS are perhaps the largest and the most well-known of the non-Brahmanic non-dominant ethnic groups in Bombay State. In 1891 they numbered about twenty-one lakhs. They are found spread over from Saurashtra, through Guparat down the coast through Thana and Kolaba districts and over the Ghats through Khandesh, Nasik, Ahmednagar, to the southern and western talukas of the Poona district. In Maharashtra, Koli par excellence means a fisherman. In the Gujarati-speaking regioni of the State, however, it has no such connotation.
The overall designation of Koli, applied to a number of communities, only serves to disguise the variety of occupations and the different stages of cultural development which are met with in the different communities making up the group. This fact of cultural differentiation is reflected in the various names of the component communities current amongst themselves and their immediate neighbours. Thus in the Gujarati region we have two great constituents of the Koli etnic group named Talabda Koli and Chunvalia Koli. The Chunvalia Koli is better known as an agricultural labourer and also as a dangerous character. And the Kolis who figured as the objects of punitive military measures of the British in the first quarter of the nineteenth century must have been the Chunvalia Kolis and not the very much more settled agriculturist section. The Talabda Koli, on the other hand, is a confirmed agriculturist and in some parts almost the superior agriculturist.