The Villages
Where We Are
The Three Villages
Mor, Bhagwa, and Delasa sit on the Gulf of Khambhat in Olpad taluka, Surat district — about thirty kilometres from Surat city, twelve kilometres past Olpad town.
They were once one place. The whole area, including Dandi, was administered as a single village called Bhagwa. In January 1981, Dandi and Delasa were separated into their own panchayat. In 1991, Mor gained its own.
The 2011 census records the result: Mor covers 1,037 hectares. Bhagwa covers 61. The people did not leave Bhagwa. The boundaries were redrawn around them. And Mor — which began as families moving out from Bhagwa — is now more than six times Bhagwa's size in population.
The Community Today
Around 26,470 people. 6,865 families.
Nearly seven in ten live in one place: the Rander zone of Surat city. What was open farmland in 1960 — fields, tad palms, bordi trees all the way — is now where most of this community lives.
Roughly one in ten still lives in the villages.
About 1,660 of us live outside India, mostly in the UK and Africa, with smaller numbers in the USA, Canada, and Australia.
Where the Community Lives Now
Surat — around 68%. The Rander zone is the heart of it: Shreeji Nagri near Ugat, Jahangirpura, and ten to twelve major societies along Rander Road.
Elsewhere in India: Ankleshwar, Bharuch, Baroda, Mumbai, Nagpur, Bhilai.
Overseas: United Kingdom, Africa, Australia, Canada, United States. The largest UK settlements are Leicester, Tipton, Birmingham, Bradford, and Manchester. Read about our UK Community →
Community population by location — 2024
People (logarithmic scale)
The location chart uses a logarithmic scale so that all places remain visible — on a linear scale Surat's 18,000 would make every other bar disappear. The grouped chart above carries the true sense of proportion.
2024 figures are estimations based on community knowledge and BMD group data — not an official census.
The Villages Over Time
The peak came in the 1980s. Some elders recall Mor alone holding ten to fifteen thousand at its fullest — a figure larger than any official record, and the kind of number that says as much about how full the village felt as how many people it held.
The decline since then is not a story of hardship. It is a story of leaving for cities, for jobs, for education, for the Gulf and Britain and beyond. The houses are still there: Mor's panchayat records 1,560 across 28 fadias. But estimated permanent occupancy is around 650 homes. Most of the rest stand empty for most of the year, filling again at festivals.
Census figures cover everyone living in the three villages — including the Hadpati community in Mor, the Ahirs and others in Bhagwa, and the Koli community in Delasa. Our own community is a subset of these numbers.