Ahir Yadav Kshatriya Mahasabha

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The Ahir Yadav Kshatriya Mahasabha (AYKM) is an organization of the Yadav caste, founded in Rewari, British India, in 1910 by Rao Balbir Singh. [1]

The association claimed that the Ahirs were originally known as Yadavs (see Yadava), and descended from the Yadu dynasty, to which Krishna belonged. It claimed a Kshatriya status for the caste, relying on colonial British ethnographers who described the Ahirs as related to the ancient Abhiras. The association promoted the caste unity by promoting the members of the caste to downplay endogamous subdivisions. [2]

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References

  1. Rao, M. S. A. (1987). Social Movements and Social Transformation: India . Manohar. He was also a member of the Punjab Assembly, and took the lead in establishing the Ahir Yadav Kshatriya Mahasabha at Rewari in 1910. Thus, the leadership, in collective mobilisation of the Ahirs, came from the royal family
  2. Christophe Jaffrelot (2003). India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India. C. Hurst & Co. p. 189. ISBN   978-1-85065-670-8.