Gujarat: Residents share same surname in this village!

BOKADTHAMBHA: If you happen to visit Bokadthambha village, don't say you've come to meet 'a Charavadia'. Nearly 700-odd Charavadias of all shapes, sizes, ages, and sexes will line up to meet you. Baffled?
Located almost 13km from Wankaner town in Morbi district on Than road, this quaint little hamlet is home to the Charavadias for hundreds of years. What’s more, if you do not have Charavadia as your surname, you are not permitted to live in this village.

Ghanshyam Maharaj, an ascetic who runs an ashram in the village and belongs to the same community, said, “There’s a belief that the village is cursed and nobody else with other surnames can come to reside here. Some families had tried many years ago, but had to leave after their family members started falling ill.”
Fifty-year-old Geetaben Charavadia, however, said, “We have a relation with other villages through marriages. Girls from other villages get married to boys from our village and settle here.”

Bokadthambha’s population belongs to the Chuvadia Koli community, who are all farmers. The village doesn’t even have a village panchayat of its own and falls under Lunasaria gram panchayat.
Octogenarian Mangabapa Charavadia, all of 85 years, recalls from hearsay how this village go settled. "Some four hundred years ago, the rulers of Wankaner took four brothers from Than and they settled here. The entire villagers are descendants of these four brothers.”
The agriculture land that they farm belongs to the Rajput family of Wankaner, which got mutated in the names of the villagers under the land ceiling Act after independence. After families started expanding, the land for cultivation fell short and so, many youngsters from the village went to Morbi's ceramic industry in search of work as labourers.
‘But we all belong to one family’
It’s not that people here don’t have internal issues. But we all belong to one family. So, whenever there is a crisis, all of us gather near the Ramji temple and solve the issue,” Mangabapa said, talking about why the village even doesn't need a police outpost.
Yuvrajsinh Zala, a resident of the nearby Lunasaria village, said, “This is happy little village of relatives. They are all united and live in harmony. I often come there to sit with my friends.”