Laads of Karnataka

The Laad community has scattered all over the country that originally migrated from “Laat Desh” in South Gujarat several centuries ago.

Many Laads are not aware that the dialect spoken by them called Chaurasi, is a mixture of Gujarati, Marathi and Rajasthani.

In 2005, J P Narayan Laad made an attempt to analyse its phonetical structure and grammar and published a monograph with the assistance of Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore.

Their traditional profession is trade and commerce. About one-third of them reside in Mysore, Srirangapatna, Ganjam, Bangalore and Sira and the rest in cities like Belagur, Bijapur, Gulbarga, Hubli, Dharwad and elsewhere in Karnataka.

Small colonies of them are also found in Chitradurga, N R Pura and Savanur.

According to a publication of the University of Mysore in 1931, L K Ananthakrishna Iyer writes, “In the Mysore census Report of 1901, it is said that the Laads are a class of general merchants.”

“Lad or Lat is the original name of Southern Gujarat. Their mother tongue is known as Chaurasi, which is a possible indication that they came from Chorasi in Surat.”

Francis Buchanan who toured in parts of Mysore and surrounding regions also mentions Laads.
As for the history of the community, there is no written material, because neither the community, nor the rulers have left any document about them.

We must reconstruct their history on the basis of their oral tradition and language, which is a branch of Indo-European family.