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ravichaudhary
February 11th, 2003, 01:42 AM
Who is Nonica Datta, and why should Jats be interested in her.

Nonica Datta is a lecturer in History at Miranda College, Delhi University

Apparently a graduate of the JNU school of history, by that I mean that JNU has basically a Marxist view of history which it encourages.

She did a PhD at Cambridge England, and went on to teach Miranda College.

The bio data below is from the Miranda house web site.

Nonica Datta, M.A., M. Phil. (JNU), Ph.D. (Cambridge). Has specialized in Modern Indian history; Her publications include forming an Identity: A Social History of the Jats (OUP, Delhi, 1999) and several articles relating to social and cultural history of North India


The title of the book is deceiving, for it is only restricted to a study of some Jats. From 1880 to 1936, but she would have us believe that her book covers all Jats

When I bought the book I was looking forwrad to an academic dissertation. One OUP executive tolf me he was surprised OUP published the boook, but it was done as a political favor.

Her P. hd was on the Jats of S. E. Punjab,

The making of a Jat identity in the S.E. Punjab, c.1880-1936. Nonica Datta. (Professor C.A. Bayly.) Cambridge Ph.D. 1995.
http://www.ihrinfo.ac.uk/ihr/Resources/Theses/tc95.html

She has published a number of articles on Jats history and culture. Indeed she is fast becoming an authority on Jats.

Who is she?

A Google search shows that one VN Datta is a historian, and wrote some books on Indian History, and had some influence with the JNU historical circles. Is this his daughter, niece ?

She does come across as some one not favorable to the Jats, and her approach has a casteist flavor

I am posting two of her articles, on Mrs. Subhashini Malik, the great Jat educator. She plans to release a book on her, and if there comments in her article are anything to go by, be forewarned.

Her book contains much false and derogatory material about the Jats.

For those with an interest I will urge that you borrow the book form a library, to see how negative and derogatory it is.

Ravi

ravichaudhary
February 11th, 2003, 01:43 AM
Jats: Trading Caste Status for Empowerment
Nonica Datta
Economic and Political Weekly


FOR well over a century, the Jats of north India have been engaged in two parallel processes. They have, via the Arya Samaj movement, clamoured for Kshatriya status, which was denied to them by the forward castes as well as the colonial authorities. At the same time, they have persistently appealed for reservations and fought for their status, in colonial India, as an agricultural caste. The All-India Jat Mahasabha founded in 1905, forcefully expressed these two demands.

The sole spokesman of this demand, in the 1920s and 30s, was Sir Chhotu Ram, the Jat supremo in Punjab. More than two decades later, Charan Singh followed in his footsteps. Yet his principal concern was to build a coalition of Ahirs, Jats, Gujars and Rajputs (AJGR). Today the Jat communities do not have a leader of their stature, but the Jat Mahasabha, with its trans-regional networks, has emerged as a strong body with an impressive following in Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. This is illustrated by the enthusiasm generated by its campaign, mounted initially in Rajasthan for grant of OBC (Other Backward Classes) status to Jats.

The strategy of the newly emergent Jat leadership has changed from the days of Chhotu Ram. Today the Jat Mahasabha is no longer interested, as was the case earlier, in asserting the Kshatriya status of its followers. Its chief concern, one that is not so often aired in public, is to access state resources, homogenise Jat society vis-a-vis the others in the scramble for power and influence, and restore the political and social equilibrium that was partially disturbed by Mandalisation. No wonder, the demand for reservations has gathered momentum, while the earlier clamour for Kshatriya status has been relegated to the 'private sphere'.

Two reasons explain this reordering of priorities. First, everybody recognises that Mandalisation is a fact of life and cannot be rolled back. If nothing else, it provides a convenient reference point to various castes and communities, not just the OBCs, to stake their claims in the urban and rural power structures. Second, the reservation issue has gained, quite predictably, much salience in electoral politics. Such is the caste arithmetic and political parties ? from the left to the right ? can ill-afford to ignore it. Jat votes matter in several parliamentary and assembly constituencies. (At least in Rajasthan, it is believed, the Jats significantly influenced the outcome of the parliamentary elections.) This has vastly enhanced the bargaining power of the Jat Mahasabha and other Jat outfits.

The Jat demand will not add up to very much in terms of government employment. But what is at stake for their leaders is not the percentage of jobs but political and social empowerment. So the issue is not whether they are entitled to reservations or not, but their perception of their future role in their strongholds. On this point, there is a remarkable consensus among the Jat leadership. They will not give up what they think is theirs.

In the political market-place, there are enough parties, the BJP being the most recent, to go along with them. It suits them to do so. Yet the central question is this: why has the BJP, having brought down the VP Singh government on the Mandal issue, executed a volte face on the reservation issue? The explanation is not far to seek. The BJP, under Atal Behari Vajpayee's leadership, has made systematic efforts to change its image of a forward caste party and wean away those castes which had, in the past, rallied around the Congress banner. This strategy worked in Uttar Pradesh some time back, and more recently in Rajasthan. Yet the issue confronting the BJP leadership is whether such support structures can be sustained through reservations alone. Doubts may arise after Laloo Prasad Yadav?s relative political eclipse, and the political turmoil that has rocked Lucknow after the general elections. Some reports suggest that sections within the amorphous OBC category, having linked their fortune with the BJP, are n


ow beginning to consider alternative political strategies. If so, much would depend on Kalyan Singh's fate in the weeks to come. If he is dislodged, there may well be a major reconfiguration of caste alignments in UP. This may not be to the BJP's advantage.

Even if such things do not merit consideration in the world of realpolitik, the fact is that Jats cannot be categorised, objectively speaking, as a unified and homogeneous entity. They are an internally differentiated community. What must also be considered is the experience of UP and Bihar, where reservation has become the weapon of the strong. As a result, the original meaning of affirmative action has been lost. In other words, reservation cannot be a substitute for tangible economic measures that alone can bridge the gulf separating the prosperous Jat peasantry and the landless.

Unless some corrective measures are taken at the earliest, the BJP's recent moves may well backfire. In most states, the forward castes will not relish the prospect of the limited jobs that remain being distributed further for newer groups joining the OBC category. Already angry Rajput and Brahmin groups are beginning to flex their muscles. This may not be good news for a party that is so dependent on their goodwill and electoral support.

ravichaudhary
February 11th, 2003, 06:04 AM
the Hindu Online

Newspaper
Saturday, Jun 15, 2002 About -

Leader Page Articles Gujarat and majority women By Nonica Datta T

The participation of women activists in the movement in favour of Ram's temple in Ayodhya, and in Hindu right-wing organisations is an enduring legacy of the communalisation of Hindu women in colonial India.

"I DO not find anything wrong here" was the reaction of a young middle-class gynaecologist who drove through the roads of Ahmedabad littered with bodies burning all around. She was not stirred by the brutal savagery to which she was a witness on the first day of the Gujarat carnage. She was indifferent to the public brutalisation of Muslim women. Yet, her perception was not unusual. Many Gujarati Hindu women in fact shared it; they showed little inclination to soothe the pain of the victims and survivors. In fact, many of them either remained silent on the rape of Muslim women or justified it. Above all, many women were actively involved in looting, arson and destruction. Surely, their endorsement of the recent genocide is a testimony to their growing communal consciousness. And yet, one shudders to think how, why and to what extent has the Hindu woman become so communalised. Today's communalised woman in Gujarat, and her ilk elsewhere, is produced by her forerunner in colonial India. With the strengthening of Brahmanic Hinduism and orthodox traditions, the Hindu woman's role within the family and community was redefined in the late 19th century.

Hindu reformist organisations prescribed new rules for the role and status of women. Religio-communitarian forces and tenets shaped the everyday life of Hindu women, belonging to diverse caste and class backgrounds. In the process, women strengthened their position as mothers, daughters, wives, reformers, and professionals. With their limited access to political circles and institutional structures, they came to acquire a new position within the Hindu family and society. Their experience, shared by Hindu men, contributed to the growth of sectarian identities and Hindu nationalisms. Women's participation in communal movements in contemporary India is widely recognised. However, little is known about women in localities who fortified caste identities, promoted communal tendencies, and forged their identities within a religio-communitarian context in colonial India.


Consider the testimony of Subhashini, an 88-year-old Jat woman. She talks about the virtues of her Arya Samaj upbringing in rural Haryana. Educated at Kanya Gurukul Dehradun, in the 1920s, she committed herself to rural women's Arya Samaji education by establishing a Kanya Gurukul in Khanpur village in 1942.

Though exposed to Gandhi's nationalist struggle in the 1930s, she was principally committed to the notion of a Hinduised Jat identity.

She actively supported shuddhi (reconversion), sangathan (organisation), Ved-prachar (proselytisation) and cow-protection campaigns.

Many of her pupils and teachers remained brahmacharinis (celibate), for the purpose of serving the Hindu community and nurturing patriotism.

Central to Subhashini's worldview was her obsessive fear of Muslims. She trained her girls in self-defence techniques, including the use of arms, as protection against imaginary Muslim attacks.

She emphasised the threat of Hindu women's abduction by Muslims, but justified the reality of Muslim women being abducted by Jat men in the 1930s and 1940s.

She celebrated Partition violence as a providential moment in which the Hindu Jats wiped out Muslims from her part of Punjab (now Haryana).

The Partition was a final resolution of a long-standing conflict between her Jat community and Muslims. Her land was cleansed of the Muslims' presence. Her fear of Muslim menace vanished. She and her pupils felt safe, secure and liberated, and their sense of Jat identity fused with a supra-Hindu identity in the aftermath of India's partition.

But Subhashini was not alone in holding such beliefs. There were many women like her, in other parts of the country, who were active agents of a Hindu communitarian agenda and anti-Muslim sentiments. It was primarily through their adherence to religious orthodoxies that they came to occupy a respectable position within the Hindu family, community and society. This sort of space was neither available to women participating in anti-colonial nationalist struggles, nor to those subscribing to radical, secular traditions. Hindu communal organisations and leaders supported women's anxieties against Muslims, and co-opted their concerns into the broader Hindutva movement. Women's agency was a critical factor in the shaping of a Hindu identity.

Their agency worked subtly, and, at times, invisibly. Their agency drew boundaries between Hindus and Muslims in ways in which the homes of Hindus were closed to Muslims and their touch was seen as polluting. Their agency functioned in a way that they could not transcend or cross their family and caste-community boundaries to identify with their Muslim counterparts. Instead, they often identified themselves as vulnerable Hindu women threatened by the `sexually predatory Muslim male'.

This stereotyping justified Hindus' violence against Muslims, for communal riots were often triggered by rumours of the sexual assault of Hindu women by Muslim men in pre-Independence India. Today, the BJP draws on the same exclusivist language. The imaginary suspicion of the Muslim as an aggressor and a sexual predator continues to haunt the Hindu nationalist's psyche. Little wonder then that the Sangh Parivar has now circulated rumours about the abduction of Hindu and Adivasi women by Muslim men to mobilise diverse communities to attack Muslims, and to extend its base in rural and urban areas in Gujarat.

The participation of women activists in the movement in favour of Ram's temple in Ayodhya, and in Hindu right-wing organisations is an enduring legacy of the communalisation of Hindu women in colonial India. Indeed, the brahmacharinis of the past are turned into the sanyasins and sadhvis of today. This explains the prominent BJP women leaders' indifference to the rape and humiliation of Muslim women, and their refusal to take a gender-sensitive stand on the State Government's brutal attitude and the calculated inaction of the police forces in Gujarat. The Gujarat carnage demonstrates the most horrifying divide between the majority and minority women — the majority women have emerged as tormentors, while the minority women appear as vulnerable victims. Everyday reactions of many ordinary Hindu women show how they, like their predecessors, continue to identify with majoritarianism, rather than empathise with the sorrow, fear and insecurity of minority women.

This explains the refusal of the young gynaecologist and many like her to join the angst of the `other' in Gujarat. What they want is a `Hinduised society', what they desire is a sense of `Gujaratiness' deriving from an aggressive Hindu identity. Surely, most of them derive their ideological sustenance from their communalist inheritance. The BJP will continue to take advantage of their moorings. It is time that such women discarded their communal baggage, evaluated their historical legacy, and spoke the language of courage, sanity and personal freedom.

If they change the way they think, they may blur the boundaries between Hindu and Muslim women — us and them — and forge a new kind of `us'.

(The writer teaches History at Miranda House, University of Delhi)

http://www.hinduonnet.com/2002/06/15/stories/2002061501511000.htm

ravichaudhary
February 11th, 2003, 06:08 AM
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Urmila Duhan (Feb 10, 2003 03:20 p.m.):
[quote]Ravi Chaudhary (Feb 10, 2003 02:41 p.m.):
********************
Subhashini Malik needs to defend herself against malicious reports constructed on the basis of what the writer thinks is going on inside Ms. Maliks head. Who does she (writer) think she is- a psychoanalyst!!!!. I would try to find Ms. Maliks contact address/ e mail and mail this article to her.
She would know the best as to how to deal with the writer.
**********************
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ravichaudhary
February 11th, 2003, 06:10 AM
My views on Ms Datta

Nonica Datta has a problem, an identity problem.

Some years ago, she wrote a PhD in 1985 in Cambridge , England, The thesis was the basis of a book ” The Jats: Forming an identity". by OUP, New Delhi.

As one member in the book trade put it, it is a poor book, one that OUP would normally have ignored, as been not upto their standard. Due to her political connections it was published

Not having any understanding of the Jats, she seeks writes a shallow little book, full of errors and half-truths. That does not prevent her from calling herself a historian and teaching at a prominent Delhi University College, Miranda house.


Having no depth, she writes an article in the Hindu, again full of half-truths, but as that does not stop her, as it should not, for half-truths never deter eminent Historians.

Here, she first cleverly, seeks to militantize the pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya, the believed birth Place of Lord Rama. who were torched to death in a particularly gruesome manner, by a Muslim mob. That is her base. What followed, was in one view a retaliation, as some put it, a retaliation by a people pushed to the brink, who snapped, by an atrocity too many. This took on retaliation against many innocent Mulsims. Was this a crime, yes it was, and should the criminals be brought to justice they should, and are being brought to justice.

That does not concern Nonica Datta. He concern is seeking to demonize Hindu women, who are now activists, militants, and communalists, and the cause of the actions against the Muslim women.

To buttress her case she cites the case of an 88-year-old Jat Lady, who in the 1920’s set up a school for the teaching of rural girl students, and participates in the Arya Samaj movement. If you read her between the line comments

To quote Ms Datta - The Jat lady actively supported shuddhi (reconversion), sangathan (organisation), Ved-prachar (proselytisation) and cow-protection campaigns”


One must ask what pray is wrong with any of that ????.
She also needs to learn her basic Hindi.

Is shudhi – reconversion ?

The Arya samaj movement did seek to re open the doors of Vedic Hinduism to those who had converted to the Islamic faith, often at a point of sword.

Sangathan- organization by democratic principles, the Panchayat system, which is a hallmark of the Jats for centuries.

Ved Prachar to her is prosetylization. But Ved Prachar, is but the propagation of the Vedas and the knowledge contained in them, a knowledge that was denied through the centuries to all but to a few of the so called upper castes.


Cow protection: The Jats have always consider the cow to be the symbol of motherhood, and the giver of plenty, an object to be revered, not to made a hamburger out of, or to made into glue.


So what is it that bothers Nonica Datta, that she would happily use half-truths to achieve a dubious end?

She alleges that the Jats ethnically cleansed out Muslims. Well that again is not completely true. The facts are a little different. In Haryana, and Western UP, the Muslims were actually protected by the Jets, for the Jat Panchayat, which did wield considerable social power at that time, decreed that all Mulsims would be protected wherever their hold was. That there was much violence at the time of partition cannot be denied but - Hindu Muslim riots in rural UP and Haryana were few and far between.

For Nonica Datta to attempt to club the Jats with Riots in Gujarat betrays dubious scholarship, and one must wonder what her motivation and hidden agendas are.

She writes, “ Women's participation in communal movements in contemporary India is widely recognized.”

I ask - What an odd statement. One perforce must ask – well known to whom ??.

Datta continues > “ However, little is known about women in localities who fortified caste identities, promoted communal tendencies, and forged their identities within a religio-communitarian context in colonial India.”


Ravi> Here she goes again. After saying that “ little is known” she blithely continues to demonize these ladies.

Datta continues > Consider the testimony of Subhashini, an 88-year-old Jat woman. She talks about the virtues of her Arya Samaj upbringing in rural Haryana. Educated at Kanya Gurukul Dehradun, in the 1920s, she committed herself to rural women's Arya Samaji education by establishing a Kanya Gurukul in Khanpur village in 1942. Though exposed to Gandhi's nationalist struggle in the 1930s, she was principally committed to the notion of a Hinduised Jat identity. She actively supported shuddhi (reconversion), sangathan (organisation), Ved-prachar (proselytisation) and cow-protection campaigns. Many of her pupils and teachers remained brahmacharinis (celibate), for the purpose of serving the Hindu community and nurturing patriotism.



Central to Subhashini's worldview was her obsessive fear of Muslims. She trained her girls in self-defence techniques, including the use of arms, as protection against imaginary Muslim attacks.


She( subhshini) emphasized the threat of Hindu women's abduction by Muslims, but justified the reality of Muslim women being abducted by Jat men in the 1930s and 1940s. “’

Ravi> Where on earth does Nonica Dutta get these “ facts from “ ? Dutta obviously is a poor History student or worse is a negationist.

She chooses to ignore the wealth of evidence that shows that a favorite pastime of the Muslim invaders was to abduct young Hindu girls, who would be abducted, and slipped onto a boat, leaving their families wailing. The Jats and all other non-Muslim communities of Punjab, Haryana and UP suffered adequately at the hands of the Muslims, for defending their families, and the ancestors of the Nonica Duttas from the Muslim Invaders.
To have Dutta trivialize their sacrifice is ignominy.

Dutta continues:
“ She celebrated Partition violence as a providential moment in which the Hindu Jats wiped out Muslims from her part of Punjab (now Haryana). The Partition was a final resolution of a long-standing conflict between her Jat community and Muslims. Her land was cleansed of the Muslims' presence. Her fear of Muslim menace vanished. She and her pupils felt safe, secure and liberated, and their sense of Jat identity fused with a supra-Hindu identity in the aftermath of India's partition. “
Ravi> Dutta has an identity crisis, and having one determines that others must have one too: What is a Jat identity fused with supra – Hindu Identity?
Dutta continues, “ There were many women like her, in other parts of the country, who were active agents of a Hindu communitarian agenda and anti-Muslim sentiments. It was primarily through their adherence to religious orthodoxies that they came to occupy a respectable position within the Hindu family, community and society. “
Ravi> where does Dutta get her facts. Who are these women, who are active agents of a Hindu communitarian agenda and anti Muslim sentiments.”?
Datta continues >” This sort of space was neither available to women participating in anti-colonial nationalist struggles, nor to those subscribing to radical, secular traditions. Hindu communal organizations and leaders supported women's anxieties against Muslims, and co-opted their concerns into the broader Hindutva movement.”
Dutta “’Women's agency was a critical factor in the shaping of a Hindu identity. Their agency worked subtly, and, at times, invisibly.”

Ravi> Amazing for our mothers to have worked invisibly !!

Dutta “ Their agency drew boundaries between Hindus and Muslims in ways in which the homes of Hindus were closed to Muslims and their touch was seen as polluting. Their agency functioned in a way that they could not transcend or cross their family and caste-community boundaries to identify with their Muslim counterparts. “
Ravi> Dutta’s considerable analytical ability. All this was done invisibly.
Dutta “ Instead, they often identified themselves as vulnerable Hindu women threatened by the `sexually predatory Muslim male'. This stereotyping justified Hindus' violence against Muslims, for communal riots were often triggered by rumors of the sexual assault of Hindu women by Muslim men in pre-Independence India.”
Ravi>>Why does Dutta, ignore consistently the Violence of Muslims against Hindu’s? Is Dutta suggesting that Hindu sons were encouraged by the mothers to go out and rape a Muslim Girl?
Dutta > Today, the BJP draws on the same exclusivist language. The imaginary suspicion of the Muslim as an aggressor and a sexual predator continues to haunt the Hindu nationalist's psyche. Little wonder then that the Sangh Parivar has now circulated rumours about the abduction of Hindu and Adivasi women by Muslim men to mobilise diverse communities to attack Muslims, and to extend its base in rural and urban areas in Gujarat.
The participation of women activists in the movement in favour of Ram's temple in Ayodhya, and in Hindu right-wing organisations is an enduring legacy of the communalisation of Hindu women in colonial India. Indeed, the brahmacharinis of the past are turned into the sanyasins and sadhvis of today. This explains the prominent BJP women leaders' indifference to the rape and humiliation of Muslim women, and their refusal to take a gender-sensitive stand on the State Government's brutal attitude and the calculated inaction of the police forces in Gujarat.

Ravi> So it is all the Indian Hindu. Jat, Sikh, Buddhist womens fault for the Gujarat Godra carnage, where 54 women and children were burnt alive.

Anyone know who Nonica Datta is, and how she got be a lecturer at Delhi University.

ravichaudhary
February 11th, 2003, 10:31 PM
Ranvir Singh Dalal (Feb 11, 2003 09:38 a.m.):
even if you take her (Dutta's ) words on this. Still I do not find anything wrong doing in Smt Subhashini Devis work. Is there anything wrong in
--- Traning womens for self defence
--- what is wrong in hating muslims, after knowing their past 100 year of history in India and world. If somebody still takes seculiar view on this, I feel he is not doing justice to his/her next generations.
--- Sudhi sangthan
--- In heling/uniting jat community against the muslim agressors

I personally feel that in Haryana and Delhi our ancestors have done good job during partition. Otherwise in rest of the country you riots every now and then.

********

Ranvir

I do not wish to belabor the point.

Nonica Datta is spewing hate , under the guise of Academic scholarship.

Whta she and people like her write becomes the accepted academic truth, and that is what must be stopped.

The Brahmical Jats shudras etc. The people who stufy them then also accept that the Jats are low class, robbers, servile, sleazy thiefs.

This is the kind of stuff the Nonica Datta writes.

Thus when your kids grow up and go th school and college, they will be taugt by a generation of historians who learnt their history and view of Jats form the academic text books of Nonica Datta

So you cannt simply accept what she writes and say, "Oh it does not affect me,, It affects you and your family, and mine directly"

Ravi