By Maq Masi
The Patel Story: Origins, Ancestry and the Making of a Gujarati Community
From Ancient Gujarat to Kanbi Farmers, Patidars, Momin Patels and a Global Diaspora
Abstract
Where did Gujarat’s Patels come from? The question is often answered through stories of Aryan migration, Dravidian ancestry, ancient Kshatriya descent or migration from northern India. Yet these explanations frequently make a fundamental mistake: they project the modern Patel identity thousands of years backwards into periods when no such community existed.
Historical evidence places the recognisable origins of the Patel and Patidar communities much later, among Gujarat’s agricultural Kanbi population. Successful cultivators accumulated land, became village leaders and revenue intermediaries, and over time sections of this population developed the landholding Patidar identity. Leva, Kadva, Matiya and other communities subsequently developed within this wider Gujarati agricultural world, while some Kanbi communities converted to Islam and became known as Momna or Momin Kanbis and, in later usage, Momin Patels.
The deeper ancestry of the population from which these communities emerged is a different question. New mitochondrial research by Shailesh Desai and colleagues finds that Gujarat possesses a predominantly indigenous maternal genetic foundation extending deep into the Pleistocene, with little evidence for major maternal population replacement during approximately the last 40,000 years. This continuity extends across a period far older than modern caste identities and encompasses the age in which Gujarat formed part of the Indus or Harappan civilisation.
The emerging story is therefore neither one of an isolated population untouched by migration nor one of successive populations replacing each other. It is a history of deep continuity accompanied by migration, mixture, cultural transformation and the later formation of new social identities.
The Patel community was not brought ready-made into Gujarat. It was made in Gujarat.
Introduction: Where Did the Patels Come From?
Few surnames are as closely associated with Gujarat as Patel.
For centuries, communities today associated with the Patel and Patidar identity were connected principally with agriculture, landholding and village society. Later they became increasingly prominent in commerce, education and industry. Migration carried them to East Africa, Britain, the United States, Canada and many other parts of the world.
Their economic transformation has been remarkable.
Their ancient origins, however, are much more difficult to explain.
Community traditions have sometimes connected the Leva and Kadva Patidars with Lava and Kusha, the sons of Rama. Other narratives describe Patels as descendants of Kshatriyas or migrants from northern India. More recent explanations have attempted to place them within the much larger debate over Indo-Aryan migration and indigenous or Dravidian-related ancestry.
The problem with many of these explanations is chronological.
There were no people calling themselves Patels during the Bronze Age migrations into South Asia. There were no Patidars during the Indus civilisation. Nor can the inhabitants of prehistoric Gujarat simply be classified according to the caste identities of modern Gujarat.
The first distinction we therefore need to make is between the ancestry of Gujarat’s population and the historical formation of the Patel community.
The first story extends tens of thousands of years into the past.
The second is much more recent.
Only by separating them can we understand how they eventually connect.
Part I: Before Patel, Before Caste
The Population Came Before the Caste
The human history of Gujarat began long before Patel, Patidar, Kanbi, Brahmin, Vaniya, Jain, Momin, Dalit or any other modern Gujarati social identity existed.
This may seem obvious, but it is fundamental to understanding genetic research.
When geneticists reconstruct a maternal lineage extending 10,000, 20,000 or 40,000 years into the past, they are not discovering a 40,000-year-old caste. They are reconstructing the ancestry of populations that existed before those social categories developed.
Modern Gujarati society subsequently differentiated through geography, occupation, religion, political organisation, marriage networks and caste.
Some communities became cultivators.
Others became pastoralists, artisans, merchants, religious specialists or labouring communities.
Some populations remained more geographically or socially isolated.
Religions changed.
Caste structures developed and hardened.
Communities today classified as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, together with numerous other Gujarati communities, belong to this wider and complicated population history just as socially dominant communities do.
Ancient Gujarat cannot therefore be appropriated as the exclusive ancestry of Patels, Brahmins, Vaniyas, Jains or any other modern group.
The population came before the caste.
Part II: What the New Gujarat DNA Research Found
168 Gujarati Mitochondrial Genomes
In Maternal Genetic Ancestry of Gujarat: A Pleistocene Passage to India, Shailesh Desai and colleagues analysed complete mitochondrial genomes from 168 individuals from Gujarat.
They then compared these with an additional 529 complete mitochondrial genomes representing South Asian and East-West Eurasian lineages.
It is important to understand what was being measured.
Mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, is transmitted through the maternal line. It can therefore be used to reconstruct the history of mothers, their mothers and increasingly ancient maternal ancestors.
It does not represent an individual’s complete ancestry.
The researchers’ published conclusions concern the maternal population history of Gujarat rather than establishing a separate prehistoric ancestry for individual modern Gujarati castes.
That distinction becomes particularly important when applying the research to Patel history.
76 Percent of the Maternal Lineages Were South Asian
The researchers found that approximately 76 percent of Gujarat’s maternal lineages in their study were South Asian.
Approximately 21 percent were West Eurasian.
East Eurasian contribution was much smaller, approximately 0.6 percent.
At first sight, the presence of West Eurasian maternal lineages might appear to support a simple explanation involving the later migration of Indo-Aryan-speaking populations into India.
But the chronology produced a much more interesting result.
Only approximately 19 percent of the West Eurasian maternal lineages identified by the researchers appeared to have entered during the last 5,000 years.
Approximately 81 percent predated the Steppe migrations.
In other words, most of the West Eurasian maternal ancestry detected in Gujarat cannot simply be attributed to the Bronze Age movement usually discussed in connection with Indo-Aryan languages.
Some connections between western Eurasia and the population of western India are considerably older.
Forty Thousand Years of Maternal Continuity
The most striking conclusion of the research concerns continuity.
Desai and colleagues argue that western India retains a largely indigenous maternal ancestry and find little evidence for major maternal migration or population replacement during approximately the last 40,000 years.
This does not mean that nobody entered Gujarat for 40,000 years.
The researchers actually identify West Eurasian maternal lineages arriving in several waves and describe bidirectional maternal gene flow between the Indian subcontinent and West Eurasia.
The important point is different.
Migration apparently occurred without repeatedly replacing the existing maternal population.
People arrived.
People mixed.
Genes travelled in both directions.
Yet much of the older maternal foundation survived.
This gives us a very different picture of Gujarat from one in which a succession of invading populations simply replaced whoever lived there before.
Part III: What Does This Mean for Indo-Aryan Migration?
The New Study Challenges a Simple Migration Model
The authors themselves state that their findings challenge the classic Indo-Aryan migration model when viewed from the perspective of maternal population history.
That conclusion deserves to be taken seriously.
But it also requires precision.
The study analyses mitochondrial DNA.
Other forms of genetic evidence, particularly ancient genome-wide DNA, demonstrate that Steppe pastoralist-related ancestry entered South Asia during the second millennium BCE.
The major ancient-DNA research led by Vagheesh Narasimhan and colleagues found evidence for this migration and connected it with the wider demographic processes accompanying the spread of Indo-Iranian and Indo-European languages.
The two findings do not necessarily contradict each other.
Migration Can Be Male-Biased
One important clue comes from the sex bias visible in South Asian population history.
Steppe-related ancestry appears to have entered South Asia disproportionately through males.
This matters enormously when interpreting mitochondrial DNA.
Imagine an established population containing large numbers of local women. A smaller incoming population, disproportionately male, enters and mixes with it.
The newcomers can contribute paternal ancestry.
They can contribute autosomal ancestry.
Their language may spread.
Their social institutions may spread even further.
But many of the maternal lineages can remain those of the population already living there.
Over centuries both things can therefore be true:
Steppe-related ancestry entered South Asia.
And Gujarat retained considerable indigenous maternal continuity.
The history is therefore not adequately described as either complete population replacement or complete isolation.
It is continuity with mixture.
Part IV: Indo-Aryan Does Not Mean Genetically “Aryan”
Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language.
That statement describes language.
It does not define a race.
Languages can spread much further than the populations among whom they originated.
English is spoken across populations whose ancestry is overwhelmingly not Anglo-Saxon. Spanish became dominant throughout much of Latin America without eliminating Indigenous American ancestry. Arabic spread throughout North Africa among populations whose ancestry long predates the Arab conquests.
Prehistoric South Asia need not have behaved differently.
Populations carrying Indo-Aryan languages could enter an established region, intermarry and gradually influence or transform its language without replacing most of its inhabitants.
A population can therefore become linguistically Indo-Aryan while retaining substantial ancestry from populations that lived in South Asia much earlier.
This distinction is essential when discussing Gujarati ancestry.
Part V: Nor Can We Simply Call the Earlier Population “Dravidian”
The opposite argument presents another problem.
Older indigenous South Asian ancestry is sometimes automatically described as Dravidian.
But Dravidian is principally a linguistic category.
Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam are Dravidian languages. Genetic evidence cannot directly tell us what language a person living in Gujarat five thousand or ten thousand years ago spoke.
There are serious hypotheses concerning the possible wider prehistoric distribution of Dravidian languages and their potential relationship with the Indus civilisation.
But the Indus script remains undeciphered.
We therefore cannot confidently label the prehistoric inhabitants of Gujarat either “Aryan” or “Dravidian” in a racial sense.
The scientifically safer conclusion is also more interesting:
Gujarat contains substantial ancestry deriving from populations deeply rooted in South Asia, while also reflecting repeated interactions with populations beyond the subcontinent.
Part VI: Gujarat and the Indus Civilisation
Dholavira Changes the Geography of the Question
The Indus civilisation is often imagined primarily through sites in present-day Pakistan and northwestern India.
But Gujarat was an important part of the Harappan world.
Dholavira, situated in Kutch, was one of the great urban centres of the Indus civilisation.
Lothal and numerous other Harappan settlements provide further evidence that Gujarat participated in a sophisticated network of agriculture, craft production, settlement and long-distance trade.
This matters enormously when discussing the new genetic findings.
If Gujarat’s maternal population demonstrates substantial continuity over approximately 40,000 years, that chronology necessarily extends through the period in which the Indus civilisation developed, flourished and declined.
The people did not begin existing after Harappan civilisation disappeared.
They were already there.
Were the Patels the People of Dholavira?
This is where we must be particularly careful.
We cannot say that the inhabitants of Dholavira were Patels.
There is no evidence that a Patel, Patidar or Kanbi identity existed during the Indus civilisation.
Nor has ancient DNA from Dholavira been demonstrated to match modern Patels specifically.
The new genetic evidence establishes something broader.
Desai and colleagues conclude that the Indus Valley population continued in neighbouring regions after the collapse of its urban civilisation. Their wider results indicate substantial maternal continuity in Gujarat across the period concerned.
It is therefore reasonable to consider that some ancestry carried by modern Gujarati populations may descend from populations living in Gujarat before, during and after the Harappan period.
But that inheritance cannot currently be assigned exclusively to Patels.
If such continuity exists, descendants of those ancient populations could subsequently have become members of many different Gujarati communities.
Patels would be one later branch within that much older population history.
So would numerous other communities occupying completely different positions within modern Gujarati society.
The Indus civilisation belongs to the ancient history of Gujarat, not to the exclusive genealogy of one modern caste.
Part VII: From Ancient Population to Historical Community
When Can We Actually Begin Talking About Patels?
Once we move from ancient genetics into historical records, the story changes.
Now we encounter recognisable agricultural communities.
Among the most important were the Kanbis.
Kanbis were principally cultivators.
Their identity was rooted in agricultural production rather than in an identifiable foreign conquest of Gujarat.
This is the population within which the historical Patel and Patidar story becomes much clearer.
The transition was fundamentally connected with land.
Successful cultivators accumulated agricultural resources.
Land created surplus.
Surplus created influence.
And influence created opportunities to acquire administrative authority.
Part VIII: What Did “Patel” Originally Mean?
Patel was originally associated with a position or title rather than the name of an ancient tribe.
Historically, the Patel could function as the village headman and as an intermediary between cultivators and political authorities.
Responsibilities could include maintaining local records, assisting with assessment and collection of revenue, representing village interests and exercising administrative responsibilities.
These positions existed before British rule and continued in changing forms under later governments.
Kanbi cultivators who occupied such positions could combine agricultural wealth with administrative authority.
Over generations a title became increasingly associated with families and communities.
This is an important distinction.
The ancient ancestry came first.
The agricultural community came much later.
The Patel identity came later still.
Part IX: From Kanbi to Patidar
The word Patidar acquired particular importance among prosperous agricultural Kanbis.
It is associated with holding a recognised share in village land and revenue arrangements.
Landholding was more than an economic advantage.
It generated independence, political influence and social prestige.
Successful Kanbi families increasingly developed marriage networks among households of similar standing. Collective organisations strengthened community identity. Over generations, sections of the Kanbi population increasingly identified themselves as Patidars.
The transformation can therefore be understood materially:
cultivation → landholding → economic power → social status → community identity.
This process is far more historically useful than attempting to find a single ancient tribe from which every Patel supposedly descended.
Patidar identity was created through historical development.
Part X: Leva and Kadva Patidars
The Levas
Leva or Leuva Patidars became particularly prominent in central Gujarat, including the fertile Charotar region.
Agricultural prosperity helped some communities accumulate substantial land and wealth.
Over time, these resources supported investment in education, commerce and eventually migration.
Leva communities subsequently established institutions extending far beyond Gujarat.
The Kadvas
Kadva Patidars became particularly associated with northern Gujarat.
They similarly emerged from Gujarat’s agricultural Kanbi world and developed distinctive marriage networks, institutions and religious traditions.
Umiya Mata at Unjha became particularly important within Kadva community identity.
Leva and Kadva identities therefore represent important historical subdivisions of the Patidar world.
They should not automatically be projected thousands of years into prehistory.
Part XI: Matiya and Other Patel Communities
The Patel world was never limited to Levas and Kadvas.
Matiya Patidars developed distinctive communities, particularly in southern Gujarat.
Other agricultural populations were historically connected in different ways with the wider Kanbi landscape.
Nor did everyone bearing the surname Patel necessarily belong to the same caste.
Because Patel could also be an administrative title, it could be acquired by people outside the main agricultural Patidar communities.
This again demonstrates why surname, caste and genetic ancestry cannot simply be treated as interchangeable categories.
The history is more complicated than the name.
Part XII: Lava, Kusha and Community Tradition
A famous tradition connects Leva Patels with Lava, the son of Rama, and Kadva Patels with Kusha.
These traditions form an important part of community memory.
But mythology and demonstrated genealogy are different things.
There is no established genetic or documentary chain connecting modern Leva and Kadva Patidars directly with Lava and Kusha.
Such stories may instead tell us something about the historical development of social status.
Communities that became increasingly prosperous frequently developed genealogical traditions connecting themselves with prestigious ancient lineages.
The stories therefore deserve to be preserved as traditions.
They should not be presented as established population history.
Part XIII: The Momna and Momin Patels
A Muslim Branch of the Wider Gujarati Agricultural World
One particularly interesting part of Patel history concerns Muslim communities that emerged from Gujarat’s Kanbi agricultural population.
British-period records provide important evidence.
The Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency records Momna Kanbis alongside other Kanbi populations and, in some districts, describes very substantial Momna Kanbi communities.
One Gazetteer account distinguishes Leva and Anjana Kanbis while identifying a large population as Momna Kanbis, described within the same broader agricultural context.
Other historical accounts preserve traditions of conversion from Hindu Kanbi communities to Islam.
This matters because it demonstrates that Momin or Momna identity cannot necessarily be understood as the arrival of a completely separate Muslim population into Gujarat.
In at least some cases, the process was conversion within an existing Gujarati agricultural community.
Conversion Changed Religion, Not Ancestry Overnight
If a Kanbi family converted to Islam, what happened to its ancestry?
Nothing.
Its religion changed.
Its biological relationships did not.
Parents remained parents.
Cousins remained cousins.
Neighbouring branches of the extended family could remain Hindu while another branch became Muslim.
Language, occupation, food, locality and many social customs could also continue.
Only over subsequent generations, particularly through religious endogamy, could populations become more socially and genetically differentiated.
The existence of Momna or Momin Kanbis therefore provides another example of the central pattern running throughout Gujarati history:
identity can change without population replacement.
Part XIV: A Personal Reference
This part of the history also intersects with my own family.
My family belongs to the Momin Patel tradition, and our family history records descent from Patels who converted to Islam. The wider historical relationship between Momna/Momin communities and Gujarat’s Kanbi population is independently documented in British-period records.
My own AncestryDNA result is currently assigned 100 percent Gujarat.
Among my DNA matches I also find Patel relatives within relatively recent branches of my extended genealogy.
I do not present this as scientific evidence for the ancestry of the Patel community.
One person’s commercial autosomal DNA result cannot establish the population history of millions of Gujaratis, nor should my sample be confused with the mitochondrial genomes analysed by Desai and colleagues.
It is simply a personal illustration of a historical process already visible in documentary evidence.
A branch of a family can change religion while common ancestry with other branches survives.
Centuries later, social identities may look completely separate while genealogy still connects them.
Part XV: The British Period and the Transformation of Patidar Power
British rule did not create the Patidars, but colonial land and revenue arrangements significantly affected their development.
In areas such as central Gujarat, substantial cultivators strengthened their control over agricultural resources.
Land produced surplus.
Surplus financed education.
Education created access to professions and commercial opportunities.
Community organisations strengthened networks beyond individual villages.
Something important was therefore happening.
The economic foundation of Patidar power was beginning to move beyond agriculture.
Land was being converted into capital.
Capital could then be converted into education, commerce, property and migration.
Part XVI: Caste and Social Mobility
The rise of the Patidars also challenges the idea that caste remained completely unchanged throughout Indian history.
Social hierarchy was certainly powerful and often brutally restrictive.
But communities also changed their position.
They accumulated or lost land.
Occupations changed.
Political regimes rewarded different groups.
Communities adopted new titles.
Marriage practices changed.
Genealogies were reconstructed.
Some groups converted to different religions.
Others claimed new social positions.
The transformation of sections of the Kanbi population into prosperous Patidars demonstrates that material circumstances could contribute significantly to changes in social identity.
This does not mean caste was freely chosen.
It means caste itself has a history.
Part XVII: From Gujarat to East Africa
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Gujarati migration increasingly extended across the British imperial world.
East Africa became particularly important.
Gujarati merchants, artisans, professionals and agricultural communities established themselves in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and elsewhere.
Patels became increasingly prominent within these migrations.
Migration was rarely an entirely individual process.
Family and community networks provided information, employment, accommodation, credit and introductions.
A successful migrant could help another relative migrate.
The social organisation that had once operated within Gujarati villages could now operate across continents.
Part XVIII: Britain and the Second Migration
Britain’s Gujarati population developed through several migration routes.
Some families migrated directly from India.
Others arrived after spending generations in East Africa.
The expulsion of Asians from Uganda by Idi Amin in 1972 became an especially important moment.
Families who had established businesses and lives in East Africa were forced to rebuild elsewhere.
Many settled in Britain.
Gujarati communities subsequently became prominent in retail, manufacturing, property, hospitality and the professions.
Once again, the environment changed dramatically.
But family organisation, community finance and willingness to reinvest resources remained powerful advantages.
Part XIX: America and the Patel Motel Story
Perhaps the most famous example of modern Patel economic adaptation occurred in the United States.
Patel families acquired an extraordinary presence in the motel and hospitality industry.
There was nothing genetically predetermined about this.
The explanation was economic and organisational.
A family could acquire a relatively modest motel.
They could live on the premises.
Family members could provide much of the labour.
Operating costs could be controlled.
Profits could be reinvested.
Relatives could learn the business and acquire properties of their own.
Knowledge and sometimes finance circulated through community networks.
The underlying pattern is striking.
For earlier generations, the productive asset had been agricultural land.
For later generations it could be a motel, shop, factory, professional qualification or commercial property.
The asset changed.
The capacity to organise resources survived.
Part XX: What Genetics Changes About the Patel Story
Modern genetics does not give the Patels a new racial identity.
It actually demonstrates why searching for one is misleading.
South Asian population history contains multiple layers.
There is very deep South Asian ancestry.
There were ancient connections between South Asia and populations farther west.
There were populations associated with the Indus civilisation.
Later Steppe-related ancestry entered the subcontinent.
Populations repeatedly mixed.
Much later, increasingly endogamous communities developed.
The new Gujarat mitochondrial research adds an important element to this picture.
Despite migration and mixture, the maternal population of Gujarat demonstrates substantial continuity extending deep into prehistory.
This means that the deeper population from which the later Kanbis and eventually Patidars emerged should not simply be imagined as newcomers arriving in Gujarat during the Bronze Age.
But neither should the new evidence be turned into the opposite myth.
It does not demonstrate that Patels existed 40,000 years ago.
It does not prove that Dholavira was a Patel city.
It does not establish that modern Patels alone descend from the inhabitants of the Indus civilisation.
The conclusion is broader.
The population history from which Patels eventually emerged is much older than the Patel identity itself.
Part XXI: So Were Patel Ancestors Part of the Indus Civilisation?
This question can now be answered more carefully.
Some ancestors of modern Patels may indeed descend from populations living in Gujarat during the age of the Indus civilisation.
Given the evidence for deep maternal continuity in Gujarat, that is a reasonable possibility.
But the same statement may apply to many other Gujarati populations.
The available evidence does not allow us to take an ancient Gujarati population and divide it retrospectively into modern caste identities.
The people of Dholavira did not leave records saying that they were Patidars.
We do not possess a Dholavira genetic sample demonstrating exclusive continuity with modern Patels.
What we possess is evidence of a much deeper Gujarati population history through which the Harappan period passes.
Later, over thousands of years, that population differentiated into numerous communities.
Eventually one part of this history produced agricultural Kanbis.
From sections of that agricultural population emerged the historical Patels and Patidars.
This is a more modest claim than saying “Patels built Dholavira.”
But historically it is far more significant.
It places Patel ancestry within the long history of Gujarat without claiming ownership of Gujarat’s ancient civilisation.
Part XXII: So Where Did the Patels Actually Come From?
We can finally return to the question with which we began.
If we mean the historical Patel community, the answer is:
The Patels were formed in Gujarat, principally from its Kanbi agricultural population and through the later development of landholding and village authority.
If we mean their deeper biological ancestry, there is no single point of origin.
The populations from which later Gujaratis emerged contained ancestry deeply rooted in South Asia.
There were ancient interactions with populations to the west.
Gujarat participated in the Indus civilisation.
Later migrations introduced additional ancestry, including Steppe-related ancestry associated with the broader Indo-Aryan transformation of South Asia.
But these movements did not simply erase the people already living in Gujarat.
The emerging genetic picture is one of:
continuity + migration + mixture + transformation.
Only much later did social identities such as Kanbi, Patel and Patidar emerge from this deeper population history.
Conclusion: The Patel Community Was Made in Gujarat
The Patel story becomes much clearer once we stop searching for a single ancient Patel tribe.
There was none.
The people from whom the Patels ultimately descended were part of a far older and more complicated population history.
New mitochondrial research suggests that Gujarat’s maternal genetic foundation is predominantly indigenous and displays substantial continuity extending approximately 40,000 years into the past.
That chronology crosses the rise and decline of the Indus civilisation.
Gujarat itself contained major Harappan centres, including Dholavira.
But the ancient inhabitants of Gujarat cannot be retrospectively called Patels—or assigned exclusively to any other modern caste.
The population came before the caste.
Later migrations occurred.
West Eurasian ancestry entered at different times.
Steppe-related ancestry reached South Asia.
Languages changed.
Religious traditions changed.
Populations mixed.
Yet substantial biological continuity remained.
Thousands of years later, within Gujarat’s agricultural society, we encounter the Kanbis.
Successful cultivators accumulated land.
Some acquired village administrative authority and became associated with the title Patel.
Landholding sections developed the Patidar identity.
Leva, Kadva, Matiya and other communities developed distinctive histories.
Some Kanbi populations converted to Islam and became Momna or Momin communities without instantaneously losing their older Gujarati ancestry.
Colonialism transformed the economic environment again.
Agricultural wealth became education and capital.
Migration carried Patel communities to East Africa, Britain, North America and elsewhere.
Farmers became traders, professionals, industrialists, property owners and hoteliers.
At every stage the identity changed.
But the population was never simply erased and recreated.
This is why the Patel story should not ultimately be framed as Aryan versus Dravidian, migrant versus indigenous, or Hindu versus Muslim.
Those binaries are too simple for the evidence.
The history instead reveals a much more interesting process:
people remain while identities evolve.
The Patel community was not brought ready-made into Gujarat from Central Asia.
Nor can it be projected unchanged backwards into the Indus civilisation.
The Patel community was made in Gujarat from populations whose history in western India is vastly older than the Patel name itself.
That, I believe, is the most defensible answer we can currently give to the question:
Who are the Patels, and where did they come from?
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