Jatt Caste

The Jat people (, ), also spelt Jaat and Jatt, are a traditionally agricultural community in Northern India and Pakistan. Originally pastoralists in the lower Indus river-valley of Sindh, many Jats migrated north into the Punjab region in late medieval times, and subsequently into the Delhi Territory, northeastern Rajputana, and the western Gangetic Plain in the 17th and 18th centuries. Quote: "Hiuen Tsang gave the following account of a numerous pastoral-nomadic population in seventh-century Sin-ti (Sind): 'By the side of the river..f Sind along the flat marshy lowlands for some thousand li, there are several hundreds of thousands very great manyfamilies ..hichgive themselves exclusively to tending cattle and from this derive their livelihood. They have no masters, and whether men or women, have neither rich nor poor.' While they were left unnamed by the Chinese pilgrim, these same people of lower Sind were called Jats' or 'Jats of the wastes' by the Arab geographers. The Jats, as 'dromedary men.' were one of the chief pastoral-nomadic divisions at that time, with numerous subdivisions, .... Quote: "In Sind, the breeding and grazing of sheep and buffaloes was the regular occupations of pastoral nomads in the lower country of the south, while the breeding of goats and camels was the dominant activity in the regions immediately to the east of the Kirthar range and between Multan and Mansura. The jats were one of the chief pastoral-nomadic divisions here in early-medieval times, and although some of these migrated as far as Iraq, they generally did not move over very long distances on a regular basis. Many jats migrated to the north, into the Panjab, and here, between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, the once largely pastoral-nomadic Jat population was transformed into sedentary peasants. Some Jats continued to live in the thinly populated ''barr'' country between the five rivers of the Panjab, adopting a kind of transhumance, based on the herding of goats and camels. It seems that what happened to the jats is paradigmatic of most other pastoral and pastoral-nomadic populations in India in the sense that they became ever more closed in by an expanding sedentary-agricultural realm." Of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh faiths, they are now found mostly in the Indian states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan and the Pakistani regions of Sindh, Punjab and AJK.

The Jats took up arms against the Mughal Empire during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Gokula, a Hindu Jat landlord was among the earliest rebel leaders who fought against the Mughal rule during Aurangzeb's era. The Hindu Jat kingdom reached its zenith under Maharaja Suraj Mal (1707–1763). The community played an important role in the development of the martial Khalsa ''panth'' of Sikhism. By the 20th century, the landowning Jats became an influential group in several parts of North India, including Punjab, Western Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi. Over the years, several Jats abandoned agriculture in favour of urban jobs, and used their dominant economic and political status to claim higher social status.

History

The Jats are a paradigmatic example of community-identity-formation in the early modern Indian subcontinent. "Jat" is an elastic label applied to a wide-ranging community from simple landowning peasants to wealthy and influential Zamindars.

A female Jat is often known as ''Jatni''.

By the time of Muhammad bin Qasim's conquest of Sind in the eighth century, Arab writers described agglomerations of Jats, known to them as Zutt, in the arid, the wet, and the mountainous regions of the conquered land of Sindh. Several medieval Muslim chronicles such as the Chach Nama, Tarikh-I-Baihaqi and ''Zainul-Akhbar'' have recorded battles between Jats and forces of Muhammad ibn al-Qasim, at battle of Aror (Rohri), the united forces of King Dahir and the eastern Jats jointly fought against Muhammad ibn al-Qasim., pp=201–205. The Arab rulers, though professing a theologically egalitarian religion, maintained the position of Jats and the discriminatory practices against them that had been put in place in the long period of Hindu rule in Sind. Quote: "... Nor can the liberation that the Muslim conquerors offered to those who sought to escape from the caste system be taken for granted. … a caliphal governor of Sind in the late 830s is said to have … (continued the previous Hindu requirement that) … the Jats, when walking out of doors in future, to be accompanied by a dog. The fact that the dog is an unclean animal to both Hindu and Muslim made it easy for the Muslim conquerors to retain the ''status quo'' regarding a low-caste tribe. In other words, the new regime in the eighth and ninth centuries did not abrogate discriminatory regulations dating from a period of Hindu sovereignty; rather, it maintained them. (page 15)" Between the eleventh and the sixteenth centuries, Jat herders at the Sind migrated up along the river valleys, Quote: "... the most numerous of the agricultural tribes (in the Punjab) were the Jats. They had come from Sindh and Rajasthan along the river valleys, moving up, displacing the Gujjars and the Rajputs to occupy culturable lands. (page 5)" into the Punjab, which may have been largely uncultivated in the first millennium. Quote: "The flatlands in the upper Punjab doabs do not seem to have been heavily farmed in the first millennium. … Early-medieval dry farming developed in Sindh, around Multan, and in Rajasthan… From here, Jat farmers seem to have moved into the upper Punjab doabs and into the western Ganga basin in the first half of the second millennium. (page 117)" Many took up tilling in regions such as western Punjab, where the sakia (water wheel) had been recently introduced. Quote: "Between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, groups of nomadic pastoralists known as Jats, having worked their way northwards from Sind, settled in the Panjab as peasant agriculturalists and, largely on account of the introduction of the Persian wheel, transformed much of western Panjab into a rich producer of food crops. (page 27)" By early Mughal times, in the Punjab, the term "Jat" had become loosely synonymous with "peasant", and some Jats had come to own land and exert local influence. The Jats had their origins in pastoralism in the Indus valley, and gradually became agriculturalist farmers. Around 1595, Jat Zamindars controlled a little over 32% of the Zamindaris in the Punjab region.

According to historians Catherine Asher and Cynthia Talbot, Over time the Jats became primarily Muslim in the western Punjab, Sikh in the eastern Punjab, and Hindu in the areas between Delhi Territory and Agra, with the divisions by faith reflecting the geographical strengths of these religions.
During the decline of Mughal rule in the early 18th century, the Indian subcontinent's hinterland dwellers, many of whom were armed and nomadic, increasingly interacted with settled townspeople and agriculturists. Many new rulers of the 18th century came from such martial and nomadic backgrounds. The effect of this interaction on India's social organisation lasted well into the colonial period. During much of this time, non-elite tillers and pastoralists, such as the Jats or Ahirs, were part of a social spectrum that blended only indistinctly into the elite landowning classes at one end, and the menial or ritually polluting classes at the other. During the heyday of Mughal rule, Jats had recognised rights. According to Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf:

As the Mughal empire faltered, there were a series of rural rebellions in North India. Although these had sometimes been characterised as "peasant rebellions", others, such as Muzaffar Alam, have pointed out that small local landholders, or ''zemindars'', often led these uprisings. The Sikh and Jat rebellions were led by such small local zemindars, who had close association and family connections with each other and with the peasants under them, and who were often armed.

These communities of rising peasant-warriors were not well-established Indian castes, but rather quite new, without fixed status categories, and with the ability to absorb older peasant castes, sundry warlords, and nomadic groups on the fringes of settled agriculture. The Mughal Empire, even at the zenith of its power, functioned by devolving authority and never had direct control over its rural grandees. It was these zemindars who gained most from these rebellions, increasing the land under their control. The triumphant even attained the ranks of minor princes, such as the Jat ruler Badan Singh of the princely state of Bharatpur.

Hindu Jats

In 1669, the Hindu Jats, under the leadership of Gokula, rebelled against the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in Mathura. The community came to predominate south and east of Delhi after 1710. According to historian Christopher Bayly

The Jats had moved into the Gangetic Plain in two large migrations, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries respectively. They were not a caste in the usual Hindu sense, for example, in which Bhumihars of the eastern Gangetic plain were; rather they were an umbrella group of peasant-warriors. According to Christopher Bayly:

By the mid-eighteenth century, the ruler of the recently established Jat kingdom of Bharatpur, Raja Surajmal, felt sanguine enough about durability to build a garden palace at nearby Deeg. According to historian, Eric Stokes,

Muslim Jats

When Arabs entered Sindh and other Southern regions of current Pakistan in the seventh century, the chief tribal groupings they found were the Jats and the Med people. These Jats are often referred as '' Zatts'' in early Arab writings. The Muslim conquest chronicles further point at the important concentrations of Jats in towns and fortresses of Lower and Central Sindh.

The Rohilla dynasty of Rohilkhand and Rampur was founded by the converted Muslim Jat Nawab Ali Mohammed Khan.

Today, Muslim Jats are found in Pakistan and India.

Sikh Jats

While followers important to Sikh tradition like Baba Buddha were among the earliest significant historical Sikh figures, and significant numbers of conversions occurred as early as the time of Guru Angad (1504–1552), the first large-scale conversions of Jats is commonly held to have begun during the time of Guru Arjan (1563–1606). While touring the countryside of eastern Punjab, he founded several important towns like Tarn Taran Sahib, Kartarpur, and Hargobindpur which functioned as social and economic hubs, and together with the community-funded completion of the Darbar Sahib to house the Guru Granth Sahib and serve as a rallying point and center for Sikh activity, established the beginnings of a self-contained Sikh community, which was especially swelled with the region's Jat peasantry. They formed the vanguard of Sikh resistance against the Mughal Empire from the 18th century onwards.

It has been postulated, though inconclusively, that the increased militarisation of the Sikh panth following the martyrdom of Guru Arjan (beginning during the era of Guru Hargobind and continuing after) and its large Jat presence may have reciprocally influenced each other.

At least eight of the 12 Sikh ''Misls'' (Sikh confederacies) were led by Jat Sikhs, who would form the vast majority of Sikh chiefs.

According to censuses in gazetteers published during the colonial period in the early 20th century, further waves of Jat conversions, from Hinduism to Sikhism, continued during the preceding decades. Writing about the Jats of Punjab, the Sikh author Khushwant Singh opined that their attitude never allowed themselves to be absorbed in the Brahminic fold. The British played a significant role in the rise of Sikh Jat population by encouraging Hindu Jats to convert to Sikhism so as to get larger number of Sikh recruits for their army.

In Punjab, the states of Patiala, Faridkot, Jind, and Nabha were ruled by the Sikh Jats.

Demographics

India

In India, multiple 21st-century estimates put Jat's population share at 20–25% in Haryana state and at 20–35% in Punjab state. In Rajasthan, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh, they constitute around 9%, 5%, and 1.2% respectively of the total population.

In the 20th century and more recently, Jats have dominated as the political class in Haryana and Punjab. Jat people also became notable political leaders, including the fifth prime minister of India, Charan Singh, from Uttar Pradesh, the sixth deputy prime minister of India, Devi Lal, from Haryana, and vice-president of India, Jagdeep Dhankar, from Rajasthan.

Affirmative action

Consolidation of economic gains and participation in the electoral process are two visible outcomes of the post-independence situation. Through this participation they have been able to significantly influence the politics of North India. Economic differentiation, migration and mobility could be clearly noticed among the Jat people.

The Jats are classified as General caste (forward caste) in almost all states of India. However, only the Jats of Rajasthan – excluding those of Bharatpur district and Dholpur district – are entitled to reservation in central government jobs under the OBC reservation. Jats from seven of India’s thirty-six states and UTs, namely Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, are included in their respective state OBC lists. In 2016, Haryana’s Jats organised massive protests demanding OBC classification for affirmative action benefits.

Pakistan

Many Jat Muslim people live in Pakistan and have dominant roles in public life in the Pakistani Punjab and Pakistan in general. Jat communities also exist in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, in Sindh, particularly the Indus delta and among Seraiki-speaking communities in southern Pakistani Punjab, the Kachhi region of Balochistan and the Dera Ismail Khan District of the North West Frontier Province.

In Pakistan also, Jat people have become notable political leaders, like Hina Rabbani Khar.

Estimations

According to anthropologist Sunil K. Khanna, Jat population is estimated to be around 30 million (or 3 crore) in South Asia in 2010. This estimation is based on statistics of the last caste census and the population growth of the region. The last caste census was conducted in 1931, which estimated Jats to be 8 million, mostly concentrated in India and Pakistan. Deryck O. Lodrick estimates Jat population to be over 33 million (around 12 million and over 21 million in India and Pakistan, respectively) in South Asia in 2009 while noting the unavailability of precise statistics in this regard. His estimation is based on a late 1980s population projection of Jats and the population growth of India and Pakistan. He also notes that some estimates put their total population in South Asia at approximately 43 million in 2009.

Culture and society

Military

Many Jat people serve in the Indian Army, including the Jat Regiment, Sikh Regiment, Rajputana Rifles and the Grenadiers, where they have won many of the highest military awards for gallantry and bravery. Jat people also serve in the Pakistan Army especially in the Punjab Regiment.

The Jat people were designated by officials of the British Raj as a " martial race", which meant that they were one of the groups whom the British favoured for recruitment to the British Indian Army. This was a designation created by administrators that classified each ethnic group as either "martial" or "non-martial": a "martial race" was typically considered brave and well built for fighting, while the remainder were those whom the British believed to be unfit for battle because of their sedentary lifestyles. However, the martial races were also considered politically subservient, intellectually inferior, lacking the initiative or leadership qualities to command large military formations. The British had a policy of recruiting the martial Indians from those who has less access to education as they were easier to control. According to modern historian Jeffrey Greenhunt on military history, "The Martial Race theory had an elegant symmetry. Indians who were intelligent and educated were defined as cowards, while those defined as brave were uneducated and backward". According to Amiya Samanta, the martial race was chosen from people of mercenary spirit (a soldier who fights for any group or country that will pay him/her), as these groups lacked nationalism as a trait. The Jats participated in both World War I and World War II, as a part of the British Indian Army. In the period subsequent to 1881, when the British reversed their prior anti-Sikh policies, it was necessary to profess Sikhism in order to be recruited to the army because the administration believed Hindus to be inferior for military purposes.

The Indian Army admitted in 2013 that the 150-strong Presidential Bodyguard comprises only people who are Hindu Jats, Jat Sikhs and Hindu Rajputs. Refuting claims of discrimination, it said that this was for "functional" reasons rather than selection based on caste or religion.

Religious beliefs

Deryck O. Lodrick estimates religion-wise break-up of Jats as follows: 47% Hindus, 33% Muslims, and 20% Sikhs.

Hindu Jats also pray to their dead ancestors, a practice which is called ''Jathera.''

Varna status

There are conflicting scholarly views regarding the varna status of Jats in Hinduism. Historian Satish Chandra describes the varna of Jats as "ambivalent" during the medieval era. Historian Irfan Habib states that the Jats were a "pastoral Chandala-like tribe" in Sindh during the eighth century. Their 11th-century status of Shudra varna changed to Vaishya varna by the 17th century, with some of them aspiring to improve it further after their 17th-century rebellion against the Mughals. He cites Al-Biruni and '' Dabistan-i Mazahib'' to support the claims of Shudra and Vashiya varna respectively.

The claim at that time of Kshatriya status was being made by the Arya Samaj, which was popular in the Jat community. The Arya Samaj saw it as a means to counter the colonial belief that the Jats were not of Aryan descent but of Indo-Scythian origin.

Christopher Bayly writes that the ruling dynasties among the Jats, Rajputs and Maratha, that arose when the Islamic cultural influence diminished, mostly originated from peasant of nomadic castes, but they performed rituals such as Śrāddha by employing high status Brahmins. These communities hoped that such rituals would enable them to make a Kshatriya claim.

Dipankar Gupta states that the reason that originally low castes, such as Jat or Rajput, who had a shudra status in the early medieval era, have been enabled to claim Kshatriya status in modern times is due to political power. He also says that Rajputs, Jats, Marathas - all claim Kshatriya status but do not accept each other's claim. There is no agreement on who is a true kshatriya caste.

Rajput-Jat relations

André Wink states that some Rajputs may be Jats by origin. Tanuja Kothiyal states that modern research reveals that Jats is one of the communities from which Rajputs have emerged, the others being Bhils, Mers, Minas, Gujars and Raikas. This is contradictory to the British colonial era false narrative that these communities had a Rajput origin. She points to the fact that "both Rajputs and Jats appear to originate from the mobile cattle rearing and rustling groups", hence it is understandable that they refer to each other in their chronicles, although they try to remain distinct. However, since Rajputs dominated the region, they were portrayed as "warriors" as opposed to Jats who were portrayed as "farmers", thus wiping out "Jat kingship" from the historiography. The Rajputs refused to accept Jat claims to Kshatriya status during the later years of the British Raj and this disagreement frequently resulted in violent incidents between the two communities.

Female infanticide and status of woman in society

During the colonial period, many communities including Hindu Jats were found to be practising female infanticide in different regions of Northern India.

A 1988 study of Jat society pointed out that differential treatment is given to women in comparison to men. The birth of a male child in a family is celebrated and is considered auspicious, while the reaction to the birth of a female child is more subdued. In villages, female members are supposed to get married at a younger age and they are expected to work in fields as subordinate to the male members. There is general bias against education for the female child in society, though trends are changing with urbanisation. Purdah system is practised by women in Jat villages which act as hindrance to their overall emancipation. The village Jat councils which are male-dominated mostly don't allow female members to head their councils as the common opinion on it is that women are inferior, incapable and less intelligent to men.

Clan system

The Jat people are subdivided into numerous clans, some of which overlap with the Ror, Arain, Rajput and other groups. Hindu and Sikh Jats practice clan exogamy.

List of clans

* Ahlawat
* Anjana Chaudhari
* Aulakh
* Bagri
* Bajwa
* Babbar
* Beniwal
* Bharwana
* Brar
* Buttar
* Chahal
* Cheema
* Dabas
* Dahiya
* Dharan
* Dhaliwal
* Dhillon
* Gill
* Godara
* Grewal
* Jakhar
* Kaswan
* Khakh
* Khangura
* Kharal
* Lashari
* Malhi
* Malik
* Marhal
* Maulaheri
* Mirdha
* Muley
* Naich
* Panwar
* Poonia
* Rahal
* Rahar
* Randhawa
* Ranjha
* Rehvar
* Sahota
* Sandhawalia
* Sandhu
* Sangwan
* Sekhon
* Sial
* Sidhu
* Sihag
* Sinsinwar
* Teotia
* Thaheem
* Tomar
* Virk
* Warraich

In popular culture

Jats are part of Punjabi and Haryanvi culture and are often portrayed in Indian and Pakistani films and songs.
*'' Maula Jatt''
*''The Legend of Maula Jatt''
*''A Flying Jatt''
*''Jatt & Juliet''
*''Jatt & Juliet 2''
*''Jatt James Bond''
*''Badla Jatti Da''
*'' Jatts In Golmaal''
* ''Jaattan ka Chhora''
* ''Jaat''

Notable people

See also

* Jat reservation agitation
* Meo (ethnic group)
* World Jat Aryan Foundation
* List of Jat dynasties and states
* Jāti

Footnotes

References

Further reading

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External links

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Ethnic groups in India
Ethnic groups in Sindh
Agricultural castes
Indian castes
Social groups of Punjab, India
Social groups of Haryana
Social groups of Punjab, Pakistan
Social groups of Uttar Pradesh
Social groups of Rajasthan
Hindu communities
Social groups of Gujarat