History-3

HISTORY OF OUR SAMAJ-3

These younger sons who were given part of the wealth or property in form of small villages were known as Garasiyas or Rajput (Garas in Gujarati means a small part) with passage of time these small villages were further divided amongst their heirs.These Descendants had no other means of livelihood and were solely dependent on their inheritance. Due to lack of education and skills, jobs were hard to get & slowly their honorable status declined completely. Even in these times of troubles they kept their faith in the history of their ancestors and their way of life, family values, rituals and religion, etc. but in order to survive, they had to unwillingly choose different occupations and thus gradually took to the occupations of other communities.

A few of the Garasiya's ( Rajputs) however choose not to adopt the occupation of other communities. Therefore due to their misplaced ego's and also in order to maintain their livelihood they became dacoits and took to robbing and looting. But even in these bad times there were a few good religious people, one of them being Shree Hukamsinh Parmar alias Hakmi Banda. When he saw that the evil was eating into the society, he realized that if his people continued on this path they would be lost forever.

He was inspired to guide his people to the righteous path of living. He decided to put his family fortunes to persuade the younger generation to abandon robbing & looting & return to the mainstream and the good ways of earning a living. Shree Hakami Bandaji told them that this was the only way to repay the dept of the elders and build a fulfilled and active life for themselves & their future generations.

To realize these intentions he invited his community elders & religious heads for a feast. He asked for their advice & blessings to put his thoughts into action. The elders keeping their faith in Shree Jagdama Mataji advised the community to go on a pilgrimage to the Temple of Shree Hinglaj Mataji (now in Baluchistan in Pakistan) on the top of the Kohla hill.