Rajbhar

The Rajbhar (also spelled Rajbhaar) are a community of the state of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Bihar, Mumbai, Nepal and other states India.

They are also known as Bhar. Influenced by the Arya Samaj movement, as were members of other highly  castes, Baijnath Prasad Adhyapak published Rajbhar Jati ka Itihas in 1940. This book attempted to prove that the Rajbhar were formerly rulers who were related to the ancient Bhar tribe.

There were proposals in 2013 that the community in the state should be reclassified as Scheduled Castes under India's system of positive discrimination; this would have involved declassifying them from the Other Backwards Class (OBC) category. Whether or not this would happen was a significant issue in the campaign for the 2014 Indian general election.

They are among 17 OBC communities that were again proposed for Scheduled Caste status by the Samajwadi Party-controlled Government of Uttar Pradesh. However, this proposal, which relates to votebank politics, has been stayed by the courts; the prior attempt had been rejected by the India.

References

Category:Other Backward Classes
Category:Social groups of Uttar Pradesh