Koli people

This article is about an Indian community. For the Finnish national park, see Koli National Park.

A Koli woman from the lacquer worker community in Nirona, Kutch District, Gujarat.

Kolis are a Marathi community of fishermen and women residing in the coastal regions of Maharashtra and even in neighbouring states like Gujarat and Goa. They are also one of the original inhabitants of Mumbai, then known as Bombay islands.

The Kolis almost exclusively speak Marathi language, though some Koli communities speak a variant dialect of Marathi. The Kolis of Mumbai are dispersed all over the city, especially along the western coast of the city. The Kolis of Vasai are Hindu and Christian, though both belong to the Marathi ethnic group. The community has several subcastes , the prominent ones are Koli kolis, Mangela Kolis, Vaiti kolis, Mahadeo kolis, Suryawanshi kolis.

The name is possibly derived from the Marathi word "Koli", which means a spider (one who spins a web - in Marathi that translates to 'one who weaves a net', and hence the fisherman, who weaves the net, is also called a Koli).

In 1901 the number of Kolis in all India was returned as nearly 3.75 million, but this total includes a distinct weaving caste of Kolis or Koris in northern India.

Ekveera

Kolis from around Mumbai worship the goddess Ekveera situated at the Karli caves, Malavli, Lonavla. This goddess is worshipped the most on Chaitra Purnima (one of the days in the Marathi calendar).

History

The fishermen were here first ... when Bombay was a dumbbell-shaped island tapering, at the centre, to a narrow shining strand beyond which could be seen the finest and largest natural harbour in Asia. "Midnight's Children", Salman Rushdie Kolbhat, Palva Bunder, Dongri, Mazagaon, Naigaum and Worli were among the islands the Kolis gave their names to. Kolbhat was distorted to Colaba; Palva Bunder became Apollo Bunder. The temple to Mumbadevi in Dongri gave rise to the name of the city. One of the smaller islands near Colaba, variously called Old Man's Island and Old Woman's Island, was a distortion of the Arab name Al-Omani, given for the same fishermen who ranged as far away as the gulf of Oman.

The development of the modern city slowly marginalised these people of the sea. They were removed from Dongri already in 1770 by the East India Company. This historical process of elimination eventually pushed them to the strand near Cuffe Parade, from where they plied their ancient trade of deep water fishing. The Backbay reclamation of the 60's would have further marginalised them had they not approached the courts to stay the reclamation. Now their settlements are protected by law. The places where the koli communities places called Koliwada. You will find these koliwadas from mumbai city to it's suburbs. There was also a railway station called koliwada on central railway horbour line route, which name replaced with Guru Teg Bahaddur Nagar.

In Marathi, Koli means the originally heterogeneous marginal tribe-castes that took late in history to agriculture and were often press-ganged for porterage in army service. The same word also means spider and fisherman, presumably because the fisherman makes and uses a net to catch his prey as a spider his web. D. D. Kosambi

Links

• Kolis of Mumbai

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