Bhaiband

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Bhaibund, (Hindi) meaning “brotherhood”, a Jāti designating the lower segment of the Lohana caste

An important instrument of caste self-government in India. A council formed by the heads of families belonging to the same lineage in the Sind, Pakistan. An exogamous Vaishyas merchant class community (those who do not intermarry) within a wider endogamous (those who do intermarry) caste group.

In the Bhaibund, social organization revolves around kinship rather than caste. Patrilineage (Beradari), is the most important social institution, for example, a marriage for a man with his father's brother's daughter. Often groups marriages are common beradaris.

The community is governed by a Panchayat, or council of elders, who would adjudicates disputes within the group or lineages the leader of who was a Mukhi.

[edit] Publications

• Malkani, KR (1984). THE SINDH STORY. Urbana-Champaign : Nadeem Jamali. OCLC 48506292. 
• Falzon, Mark-Anthony (July, 2003). "Bombay, Our Cultural Heart': Rethinking the relation between homeland and diaspora". Ethnic and Racial Studies 26 (4): 662–683. 
• Markovits, Claude (October, 1999). "Indian Merchant Networks outside India in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: A Preliminary Survey". Modern Asian Studies 33 (4): 883–911.