Patidar (Gujarati: Pāṭīdār), formerly known as Kanbi (Gujarati: Kaṇabī), is an Indian land-owning and peasant caste and community native to Gujarat. The community comprises multiple sub-castes, most prominently the Levas and Kadvas. They form one of the dominant castes in Gujarat. The title of Patidar originally conferred to the land owning aristocratic class of Gujarati Kanbis; however, it was later applied en masse to the entirety of the Kanbi population who lay claim to a land owning identity, partly as a result of land reforms during the British Raj.

According to 2011 Socio Economic and Caste Census their population is approximately 1.5 crores and they form 21.7% of Gujarat's population.

The Kanbi/Patidars are divided into several subcastes. The Levas are from central Gujarat and the Kadavas are from northern Gujarat. The Matis, who are a sub-subcaste of the Levas, live in southern Gujarat. The Chullias live in certain areas of Saurashtra. The Bhaktas form another subcaste. The Anjana Kanbis are similar to Rajputs, and eat meat and drink alcohol. The Uda Kanbis are followers of Udabhagat, a neo-Vaishnav saint. The Matiyas, also known as Piranas are Kanbis who descend from converts to the Islamic sect of the Imam Shah in the 15th century. These Kanbis were ostracised and moved to Kutch district. Later some of these Kanbis were in turn converted to the Swaminarayan sect by Narayan Mistri. The Levas and Kadvas are considered superior to the other subcastes, with the most prestigious section living in Charotar. These two sections inter-dine but do not inter-marry.

Since the 17th century, the Leva Kanbis controlled the majority of the land in the Kheda district through a coparcenary system of land tenure called narwadari in which Levas would share the payments of revenue owed to the government. They did this to protect their community against exploitations by the government.

The Patidar were originally a title for the Kanbis who had become village tax collectors under the Mughal Empire, and later the Maratha Empire. These Kanbis also took the titles of Desai, Amin and Patel. The Kanbis were a group of western Indian peasant farmers that had various subclans, for example in the central Deccan the Maratha Kanbis and in Gujarat the-then elite Patidar Kanbis.

The rise to socio-economic prominence of the Kanbi community in Gujarat and its change of identity to that of Patidar can be attributed to the land reforms of the British Raj period. The Raj administrators sought to assure revenue from the highly fertile lands of central Gujarat by instituting reforms that fundamentally changed the relationship between the two communities of the region, the peasant Kanbi and the warrior Kolis. The two had previously been of more or less equal socio-economic standing, but the land reforms better suited the agricultural peasantry than the warriors.

Governments in India had always relied on revenue from land as their major source of income. With the decline of the Mughal Empire, the extant administrative systems fell apart and anarchy prevailed. The British colonisation of the country took place over a period of many years and had to adapt to the various local land tenure arrangements that had arisen as Mughal power waned. These systems of ownership could be broadly classified as landlord-based (zamindari, vanta or magulzari), village-based (mahalwari, narva) and individually based (ryotwari).

In Gujarat, the British administrators found that all three systems existed. The Kanbis tended to adopt the village-based model and the Kolis the landlord-based variant. The village-based system entailed that organisations jointly owned a village and shared responsibility in some fixed proportion for the land revenues. The division of responsibility might be arranged by the amount of land held by each member (the bhaiachara method) or by ancestry (the pattidari system). Working with this village model enabled the British to impose a fixed revenue demand that was payable whether or not the land was cultivated and that gave landholders the right to sublet and otherwise manage their lands with minimal official interference. It simplified revenue collection and maximised income when compared to a system based on individual responsibility for revenue, in which allowances had to be made for land being out of cultivation. It also allowed a degree of communal self-determination that permitted the rise of economic elites with no reason to engage in political challenges, and hence the rise of the communities then known as Kanbis. Some Kanbis became wealthy enough to enter the world of finance, providing lines of credit to others in their community.