Nawayath

The Nawayaths (also spelled as Navayath or Nawayat) are a small Muslim community concentrated mostly in coastal Uttara Kannada.The Nawayaths are also known as the Indo-Iranians as their ancestors are from Iran. Every nawaythi family has a surname ending with'Irani'.Mostly all Nawayaths are Muslims but during migration some of the nawayaths had become Zoroastrians.These zoroastrians then migrated to Mumbai (Bombay ) and Gujrat and settled there .Even today the Muslim Nawayath and the Zoroastrians follow the same customs and still have the love for their country of origin ;Iran. The nawayaths speak "Nawayathi" which is a mixture of Parsi and Urdu.Today most of the Nawayaths are found in Bangalore andMysore, Karnataka . Victor D’ Souza in his book "Navayaths of Kanara"(1955). Anticipating Khalidi, D'Souza relates Navayaths to Iranians based on the influence of the Persian language on the language spoken by the Navayaths and Persian elements in Navayaths culture, there is also the presence of an Iranian graveyard in bhatkal and most of the surname are Iranians which can be traced back to Iran even today. It is an ethnic society, having its own unique traditions and distinct cultural identity. The Nawayathi community holds an important place among the other coastal Muslim communities, like Bearys of South Kanara district, Mappilas (Moplahs) of the Malabar coast and Labbay of the Coromandel coast. There are smaller distributed pockets of Nawayaths in Bhatkal, Murdeshwara, Kumta, Manki, Upponi, Honnavar, Byndoor, Gangolli, Shiroor, Hoode, Malpe and Basrur in Karnataka and in Arcot district in Tamil Nadu. Meenambur, a small village close to Gingee south of Madras in Tamil Nadu, is the largest of these. Navyaths also found in Dewas District of Madhya Pradesh also in Indore, Ujjain, Dhar District of Madhya Pradesh. Many have migrated to Pakistan after independence in 1947 and have predominantly settled in Karachi, Sindh. In Pakistan, Nawayath community speak Nawayathi as mother tongue. Majority of Nawayaths are involved in Small & Medium businesses.