Affinity Bloc: South Asian Peoples

Overview: The Mahratta (Maratha) are a caste of landowning and cultivating peasants whose name is derived from Maharashtra. The Mahratta are dominant in rural areas and, together with the Kunbi, mainly constitute the landed peasantry across western India. There are more than 150 subgroups of Mahratta distributed in Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. The majority speak Marathi as their mother tongue but are typically also conversant with Hindi and use the Devanagari script.

  -- K. S. Singh, People of India, Volume V. India's Communities H-M. Delhi: Oxford University Press (1998), pp. 2212-2219

Peoples within this cluster: Kudimahan; Mahratta; Mahratta, Hindi; Mahratta, Khandeshi; Mahratta, Konkani

Countries where they are found: India