Lodhi (Landowner and cultivator), primarily called as Lodhi/Lodh/Lodha (hindoo)

The Lodhi (or Lodha, Lodh) is a community of agriculturalists and according to the VARNA SYSTEM OF INDIA - VAISHYA ( third of the four vamas) Includes merchants, traders, and farmers ( agriculturalists).

But due to there large landowners, they started referencing themselves as Rajputs. And set up their own territories like in Uttar pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and in few regions of Rajasthan.

Lodhi comes under OBCs category in only 9 states of India and only near regions of Hyderabad in Telangana.. while in rest states , Lodhi comes under General category like Bihar, Maharashtra, Punjab west Bengal (Lodh)etc

Lodhi caste comes under the section of Higher Agricultural Castes in Northern part of India, with some other castes are noted below:

The Lodhas (Lodhi) of the United Provinces are placed highest among the agricultural castes by Mr. Nesfield, who describes them as a forward caste than a forest tribe. In the Central Provinces the name has been changed to Lodhi, and they started trade with the Rāja of the Gond-Rājpūt dynasty of Mandla in the seventeenth century, and aquire a large grants of fetile land. They become landholders, and rank with the higher agricultural castes. They are addressed as Thākur, Rājpūts, and Lodhi landowners. Lodhi usually wear the sacred thread(Janeu).

Lodhi who rank little higher than the others, as the Jāts, Marāthas, Dāngis, include in their body some ruling chiefs or large landed proprietors, and as a rule were formerly dominant in the territory in which they are found.

The Brāhmans and Rājpūts, however, and one or two other military castes, as the Marāthas and Lodhi-Rajputs, do not have the small exogamous clans (which probably, as has been seen, represented the persons who lived together in a village), but large ones. Thus the Rājpūts were divided into thirty-six royal races, and theoretically all these should have been exogamous, marrying with each other. Each great clan was afterwards, as a rule, split into a number of branches, and it is probable that these became exogamous; while in case of Lodhi-Rajput community, they have settled on the land and become ordinary cultivators, they have developed into an endogamous subcaste containing small clans of the ordinary type.

But due high patriotism, Lodhi highly participated in the voluntary fights with the British administration before Indias Independence, the Lodhis were considered as a criminal caste after 1857 revolution so britishers took all the jagirs from them to expel them from power . To accommodate this loss and poverty caused by this , they are given quota under OBC ( non creamy layer).

According to Ramnarayan Rawat, a professor of History and specialising in social exclusion in Indian subcontinent, states that the criminal-by-birth castes under this Act included initially Gujjars and Harni (sub-clan of Rajput) and Lodhi (sub-clan of Rajput) but its enforcement expanded by late 19th century to include most Shudras.