A photo on twitter during the Patel agitation in Gujarat early this year. The Hindi translation: Rajpoot ki najar na lage. The Rajput rulers in Gujarat were called Bapu (father) or Darbar (royal court) by their subjects and these terms became generic names of the Rajput community as a whole.
The photo shows the political rivalry between Patels and Rajputs which has been the main factor of Gujarat's modern political history. The term patel means village official, and they occupied the space just below the Rajputs in the villages. But this equation was destroyed by the 14th century Islamic invasions. The Gujarat region, from Amdavad down to Surat, was conquered and the Rajputs massacred by the Muslims. The descendants of the few survivors lost their Rajpoot status over time and became peasants and even landless labourers. For the Patels and other communities though, it was just a change of masters. At the village level they actually gained inasmuch as the Rajputs lost from the genocide of their leaders/employers.
In the Saurashtra region the Rajputs held on tenaciously. The Muslim rulers from the Gujarat region attacked them repeatedly, breaking temples, sacking cities, and slaughtering warrior Hindus. But each time the Muslims ultimately had to retreat back to Gujarat region which remained the core of their sultanate.
So in Saurashtra the dominance of Rajputs, as rulers and warriors, and the links that went down to the village level remained strong. In the Gujarat region these links were broken by the Islamic invasions. The descendants of the fallen Rajputs were called Thakore, Thakardas, Bariya in the Gujarat region but they had retained Rajput surnames. The Kshatriya movement in Gujarat region chose the name 'Kshatriya' to unify and uplift these communities but it could not extend into Saurashtra.
So in central and south Gujarat the main landowners were Patels while in Saurashtra it were Rajputs. There was a time when these two communities aligned their interests (opposition to land reforms) by supporting the Swatantra Party, but the Congress rallied back through the KHAM combination.
