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ravichaudhary
February 28th, 2003, 06:51 AM
Nonica Dutta - Forming an Identity

Part 4 of 4 Pages 16-21

Introduction

16 A Social History of the Jats
expansion in cultivation after 1847. Between 1840 and 1847, cultivation increased by a fifth in Gohana tahsil, by a third in Rohtak tahsil, and by one-tenth in Sampla.61 The bhaiachara land system and the Jats’ traditional and regular use of women for agricultural labour, as well as a wider kinship and community network, contributed to their success, and also set them apart from other rural groups.62 The bhaiachara system was not a system dominated by landlords. It depended instead on the power of the khudkasht belonging to a single Jat got (clan). Almost all peasant proprietors were cultivators. Until the late nineteenth century the class of tenants
was negligible.63
The revolt of 1857 marked the end of the dominance of pastoral culture in this region when the Rangars, Pachhadas of Hissar and the Bhattis of Sirsa, followed by the Muslim villages, rose in revolt. The pastoral groups, organized under the nawabs of Farrukhnagar, Jhajjar and Bahadurgarh and the Bhatti chieftains of Sirsa and Hissar, suffered the most.64 The British seized power from the ruling elites, a clear break from their earlier conciliatory policies towards them. Muslim chiefs and jagirdars (Pathans), who had rallied round the British against the Marathas and had received large tracts of land from Lord Lake (1803-09), lost their dominance in the aftermath of the 1857 revolt. The ‘rebel’ nawab ofJha))ar, Abdur Rahman, was hanged for his loyalty to the Mughal emperor.65 Thus, there ensued much strife in Rohtak during the revolt of 1857 among the Jat clans, especially among those who were struggling for territorial dominance.
The Jats were not a homogenous group as is evident from their varied responses to the happenings in 1857.” Two dominant factions were those of the Dahiyas of Sampla, allied to the Mandhar Rajputs, the Gujars, the Tagas of Kamal and the Hoodas and Latmar, and the Maliks or Ghatwalas of Gohana tahsil. 67 The factional fight between the Dahiyas and the Haulanias (headed by Ghatwalas) shaped the nature of politics in places like Rohtak, Sonepat and
Introduction 17
Karnal.68 The Dahiyas and Bahniwals had resisted the British in 1857, while the Maliks were friendly towards them.69 The Dahiyas were an aggrieved lot because their land had been constantly damaged by reh (saline efflorescence). The Maliks, on the other hand, were beneficiaries of canal irrigation.70
The variety of responses to the 1857 revolt can be linked to several factors, including the extension of agriculture and the corresponding tension between different clans to wield power and control territory, the segmentation of lineage, lack of an organized leadership, the fluidity of the tappa system, and the tensions between the gots. This was, in some ways, in sharp contrast to Muslim )’agirdars and pastoral elites, who were organized by the nawab ofJhajjar, or the Ahirs who were led by their head Rao Tula Ram of Rewari.
Recruits in the Army
James Skinner (1778-1841) recruited manyJats as irregulars in the famous Skinner’s Irregular Horse in Hansi,7’ an extension of George Thomas’ policy of settling armed peasants and pastoralists. The Jats and Gujars, who worked as cultivators on his farm, also served as a recruitment base for his irregular army.72 He gave them pensions, jagirs and attached them to army service and land. This bolstered their status in the villages and, in the long run, led to a more settled pattern of life in Hariana.73
Skinner’s experiment also helped to reduce social and economic tensions, particularly between the old pastoral elites (Bhattis, Pachhadas), the Muslim jagirdars and the new colonists, notably, the Jats and the Ahirs. This was possible because the Bhattis and Rangars, reluctant to leave grazing for plough agriculture, could now join military service.74
The Jat clans who had helped the British in 1857 were commended by the colonial authorities and recruited in large numbers in the following regiments: 14th Lancers (Murray’s Jat Horse), 6th Jat Light Infantry, 10th Jats, 12th Pioneers, and 48th Pioneers.” The main recruiting areas in the Rohtak-Hissar region were Rohtak, Jhajjar, Chuchakwas, Badii, Bahadurgarh, Sampla,
Dighal, Gohana, Sonepat, and Meham, Fatehabad, Bhatti, Bhiwani and Hissar. The Jats from these areas earned their reputation as soldiers in the military campaigns in Bhutan (1864), Afghanistan (1878-80), Burma (1884), East Africa (1898), the North-Western Frontier of India and China (1900-03). During the First World War, they were described as ‘one of the best and most trustworthy of the fighting races of India’.76 As a result, the 6th Battalion of the Jat
Light Infantry was made a Royal Battalion. Yet, unlike the Marathas, Sikhs and Rajputs, the British neither glorified nor romanticized the Jat soldier to the same degree. Many Jats, who were drawn into the British army owing to economic cqmpulsions, were left high and dry after the military campaigns were over and were forced to return to their villages.

IMPERIAL PATRONAGE

With the Jats emerging as stable agriculturists and soldiers, the British decided to establish a system of imperial patronage and control in rural southeast Punjab. The formal categories created by them were: Jat, the agricultural ‘tribe’, the zaildar, and the soldier. Having portrayed an idyllic picture of Jat cultivation in the nineteenth century, the British administrators recognized the Jat peasant proprietor as the ‘pillar of the state’ and of Punjabi rural society.n
They also distinguished the Jat as a sturdy peasant proprietor from the (Muslim) Rajput as a wandering pastoralist. Prominent amongst them were Malcolm Darling and F. L. Brayne. In addition, the Land Alienation Act of 1900, which sought to prevent sale of agricultural
land from ‘agriculturists’ to ‘non-agriculturists’, marked the peasant proprietors as members of one of the most important ‘agricultural tribes’. One of its principal aims was to protect the ‘agricultural
tribes’ of ‘political importance, who were being displaced by the Bania’.78 The ‘agriculturist’ identity of the Jats and other rural groups that developed in early twentieth century was rooted in this legislation.

In the army, colonial officials recruited the Jats as a ‘caste’ and represented them as a martial and sturdy race. 9 But, in practice, this ‘race’ was subdivided under the category of the ‘Gots of Jats preferable to the others for purposes of recruitment’.”” Thus, only some gots were encouraged to join the army. These included those who were loyal during the 1857 revolt or had a good physique.*’ Those living in the irrigated tracts were not inclined to join the
army. In the 1860s, the British divided southeast Punjab into zails, which were placed under a zaildar who mediated between the colonial state and the villages.” The zaildars were selected from among the local landowners who had been loyal in 1857 and were required to maintain law and order and assist in recruiting young men to the army. The zaildars mostly represented dominant Jat clans, and were closely allied to the British administration and wielded considerable influence within their clan. The government safeguarded their position by ensuring that every zail included members of only one clan. Such policies led to the creation of a strong class of intermediaries, who played a pivotal role in the
imperial system.83


A NEW SOCIAL ORDER

The strengthening of the Brahman literati and the Banias, along with the emergence of the Jats as sepoys and agriculturists, led to the creation of a new social order in southeast Punjab. This had serious implications. For one, the increasing hierarchical social order resulted in serious tensions between the Jats, who were placed lower down the caste hierarchy, and the upper castes. The Jat headmen and their powerful allies began to challenge the dominance of Brahmans and tried to scale the caste hierarchy through a conscious and organized endeavour. They were in a much stronger position to do so because of their landholdings, their key role in the village-based economy, and their representation in the army.


The emergence of Jat identity needs to be related to the wider changes in nineteenth-century society: the decline of the warrior culture, the rise of village-based peasant economy, the neutral position of the East India Company towards the local peasantpastoral culture and the interrelated diminution of syncretic traditions. Though the population of Rohtak-Hissar was predominantly rural, new towns mushroomed by early twentieth century and old towns began losing much of their importance. Hissar, an old prominent Muslim qasbah and fortified town, became less important while Rohtak emerged as an important market and recruiting centre.84 Strategically located on the Delhi-Multan route, Hansi, Panipat, Mahim, Narnaul, Sirsa and Jhajjar also diminished in importance as trading and sufi centres, particularly due to the reduction of caravan trade after the 1760s.85 Bhiwani, a town founded by the British, was gradually transformed from an insignificant village to a ‘free market’ in 1817.86 Thus, many old cultural centres turned into mandis (market towns).
By the late nineteenth century a new cultural pattern emerged in southeast Punjab. The Jats emerged as a dominant economic group simultaneous with the decline of the nawabi and the old Islamic pastoralist culture.87 In Rohtak, the Hindus constituted 80 per cent of the population by the early part of the twentieth century; the Hindu Jats were about a third.88 In the mid-1880s, out of 511 estates in the district, the Jats held about 366. By 1931, the Maliks numbered 20,000 males
142,764, owning 22 villages, while the Dahiyas, numbering about 20,000 males, held 16 villages. In the creation of Jat identity in southeast Punjab, these two clans played a significant role initially. Later, many other clans began playing their part in accelerating the process of Jat identity formation.
With this outline, some of the issues that are discussed in this book are: how and why was the relationship of the Jats changing vis a vis other communities? What were the cultural resources available to them before and after 1880? What were the instruments used by them to express their identity? Did their economic importance correspond with their self-perceived social status? Despite the fact that the warrior culture had been on the decline since the 1820s and community boundaries were being more clearly defined thereafter as a result of the disruption of a pluralist culture, the crystallization of a self-conscious Jat identity took place after 1880 and, more significantly, in the context of the Arya samaj movement

Footnotes :
“ Stokes, Peasant Armed, pp. 135-6.
“ Revenue and Agriculture Proceedings, September-October 1909, no. 15, IOL.
~F. C. Channing, Report on the Revised Settlement of’the Gurgaon District, 187283. (Lahore, 1882), p. 18; Rohtak, SR, 1905-1910, p. II.
“ Rohtak, SR, 1873-9, pp. 34-7; see also Impenal Gazetteer ojIndia, Provincial Series, Punjab, vol. I (Calcutta, 1908), p. 250. 65 Imperial Gazetteer, p. 250.
“ Rohtak, SR, 1873, p. 39; also see Stokes, Peasant Armed, p. 132. <•” Des Raj, Jatitihas (1934), p. 721; Stokes, Peasant Armed, p. 133.
“ Rohtak, DC, 1910, p. 167; A.H. Bingley, Jats, Gujars andAhirs (New Delhi,
1937), p. 21; W. L. Hailes, Theft!Regiment, 1803-1947, vol. I (first published 1938,
repr. Bareilly, 1963), on the importance of Haryana as a recruiting centre.
76 Bingley, Jats, Gujars andAhirs, p. 21.
“ On the romanticization of the peasant proprietor for revenue purposes in
utilitarian thinking, see Fox, Lions of Punjab, p. 157 and passim.
“ Annual Report of the Working ofthePunjabAlienation of Land Act XIII of 1900

79 War History ofthe Robtak District, 1914-1919, pp. 3-4; Bingley, Jats, Gujars
andAhirs, pp. 21-2.
 The other subdivisions were: ‘names of villages the Jats of which are generally willing to secure military service’. Regional Repository D.C. Office, Hissar Dist., File no. S/63/9, Misc. Military, ‘Recruitment from the Jat community’. Karnal, DC, 1918, pp. 202-3.
“ Roblak, DG, 1883-84, p. 79, Gazetteer o/’the Hissar District, 1892 (Lahore,
1893), p. 132; R. Singh, Traditional Leaders and the Raj: A Monograph’, Journal of
HaryanaStudi’s, xi. nos. 1-2 (1989), pp. 38-95. On the role ofzaildars, see Gilmartin,
Empire and Islam, pp. 20-6.
“’ On tribal-clan leadership and land control in Punjab, see Gilmartin ibid pp
I ?’-w
out of the total Jat male population of 84 Rohtak, SR, 1905-1910, p. 10.
“’ Ibid. On the relationship between the diminution of caravan trade and these declining centres, see Bayly, Rulers, pp. 91-2.
“ See Imperial Gazetteer, p. 243; Mohim (Mahim or Meham) was a ‘heap of ruins’ by the early nineteenth century. And by the early twentieth century, the merchants became important replacing the dominance of Islamic gentry. On its Muslim character and subsequent decline, see Mundy, Pen and Pencil Sketches, pp. 353,358 and passim.
“ Rohtak, DC, 1910, pp. 28-41; Rohtak, SR, 1873-1879, pp. 32-44; Impenal DC, pp. 247-50; Rev. and Agri., A.R. Hissar, Sept 1906, no. 16, IOL.
“}. W. Thomas (ed.), The Board of Enquiry, A CattleSurveyin theRohtakDfstrici of the Punjab (Lahore, 1935), p. v; Rohtak, SR, 1905-1910, p. 10.