The Jat people are a community of traditionally non-elite tillers and herders in Northern India and Pakistan. Originally pastoralists in the lower Indus river-valley of Sindh, 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. Of Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu faiths, they are now found mostly in the Pakistani provinces of Sindh and Punjab and the Indian states ofPunjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Traditionally involved in peasantry, the Jats took up arms against the Mughal Empire during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The community played an important role in the development of the martial Khalsa panthan of Sikhism. The Hindu Jat kingdom reached its zenith under Suraj Mal of Bharatpur (1707–1763). 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
According to historians Catherine Asher and Cynthia Talbot,
The Jat people also briefly ruled at Gwalior and Agra. Following the decline of Mughal Empire, the fort was usurped by Gohad dynasty by a Jat Rana King. The Jat rulers Maharaja Bhim Singh Rana and Maharaja Chhatar Singh Rana occupied the Gwalior Fort thrice:
The Jat people were designated by British officials as a "martial race", a designation created by officials of British India . The British recruited heavily from these martial races for service in the colonial army.
Clan system
History
According to historians Catherine Asher and Cynthia Talbot,
The Jats are a paradigmatic example of community- and identity-formation in early modern South Asia. "Jat" is an elastic label applied to a wide-ranging, traditionally non-elite, community which had its origins in pastoralism in the lower Indus valley of Sindh. At the time of Muhammad bin Qasim's conquest of Sind in the 8th century, Arab writers described agglomerations of Jats in the arid, the wet, and the mountainous regions of the conquered land. The new Islamic rulers, though professing a theologically egalitarian religion, did not alter either the non-elite status of Jats or the discriminatory practices against them that had been put in place in the long period of Hindu rule in Sind. Between the eleventh and the sixteenth centuries, Jat herders migrated, up along the river valleys, into the Punjab, which had not been brought under the plough in the first millennium. Many took up tilling in regions such as the Central and East Punjab, where the Persian wheel had been recently introduced or where the land was less arid; others, especially in the West Punjab, continued herding. 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 also provide an important insight into how religious identities evolved during the precolonial era. Before they settled in the Punjab and other northern regions, the pastoralist Jats had little exposure to any of the mainstream religions. Only after they became more integrated into the agrarian world did the Jats adopt the dominant religion of the people in whose midst they dwelt.
With passage of time, in the western Punjab, the Jats became primarily Muslim, in the eastern Punjab, Sikh, and in the areas between Delhi Territoryand Agra, primarily Hindu, their 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 organization 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. Earlier, during the heyday of Mughal rule, Jats had benefited from Mughal munificence. According to Barbara D. Metcalf andThomas R. Metcalf:
Upstart warriors, Marathas, Jats, and the like, as coherent social groups with military and governing ideals, were themselves a product of the Mughal context, which recognized them and provided them with military and governing experience. Their successes were a part of the Mughal success.
As the Mughal empire now faltered, there were a series of rural rebellions in North India. Although these had sometimes been characterized as "peasant rebellions," scholars, 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, in both cases, increasing the land under their control. The more triumphant even attaining the ranks of minor princes, such as the Jat ruler Badan Singh of the princely state of Bharatpur. The non-Sikh Jats came to predominate south and east of Delhi after 1710. According to historian Christopher Bayly
Men characterised by early eighteenth century Mughal records as plunderers and bandits preying on the imperial lines of communications had by the end of the century spawned a range of petty states linked by marriage alliance and religious practice.
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:
This was a society where Brahmins were few and male Jats married into the whole range of lower agricultural and entrepreneurial castes. A kind of tribal nationalism animated them rather than a nice calculation of caste differences expressed within the context of Brahminical Hindu state.
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 Dig (Deeg). Although, the palace, Gopal Bhavan, was named for Lord Krishna, its domes, arches, and garden were evocative of Mughal architecture, a reflection ultimately of how much these new rulers—aspiring dynasts all—were products of the Mughal epoch. In another nod to the Mughal legacy, in the 1750s, Surajmal removed his own Jat brethren from positions of power and replaced them with a contingent of Mughal revenue officials from Delhi who proceeded to implement the Mughal scheme of collecting land-rent. According to historian, Eric Stokes,
When the power of the Bharatpur raja was riding high, fighting clans of Jats encroached into the Karnal/Panipat, Mathura, Agra, and Aligarh districts, usually at the expense of Rajput groups. But such a political umbrella was too fragile and short-lived for substantial displacement to be effected.
Jat states of the 18th century
The Jat people also briefly ruled at Gwalior and Agra. Following the decline of Mughal Empire, the fort was usurped by Gohad dynasty by a Jat Rana King. The Jat rulers Maharaja Bhim Singh Rana and Maharaja Chhatar Singh Rana occupied the Gwalior Fort thrice:
Jat states of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries included Kuchesar (ruled by the Dalal Jat clan of Mandoti, Haryana), and the Mursan state (the present-day Hathras district in Uttar Pradesh) ruled by the Thenua Jats. A recent ruler of this state was Raja Mahendra Pratap (1886–1979), who was popularly known as Aryan Peshwa.
- 1740 to 1756 by Maharaja Bhim Singh Rana
- 1761 to 1767 by Maharaja Chhatra Singh Rana
- 1780 to 1783 by Maharaja Chhatra Singh Rana
Maharaja Suraj Mal captured Agra Fort on 12 June 1761 and it remained in the possession of Bharatpur rulers till 1774.
Sikh states
Patiala and Nabha were two important Sikh states in Punjab, ruled by the Jat-Sikh people of the Siddhu clan. The Jind state in present-day Haryana was founded by the descendants of Phul Jat of Siddhu ancestry. These states were formed with the military assistance of the sixth Sikh guru, known as Guru Har Gobind.
Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780–1839) of the Sandhawalia Jat clan (other historians assert a Sansi Caste lineage to Maharaja Ranjit Singh ) of Punjab became the Sikh emperor of the sovereign country of Punjab and the Sikh Empire. He united the Sikh factions into one state, and conquered vast tracts of territory on all sides of his kingdom. From the capture of Lahore in 1799, he rapidly annexed the rest of the Punjab. To secure his empire, he invaded North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) (which was then part of Afghanistan), and defeated the Pathan militias and tribes. Ranjit Singh took the title of "Maharaja" on April 12, 1801 (to coincide with Baisakhi day). Lahore served as his capital from 1799. In 1802 he took the city of Amritsar. In the year 1818, Ranjit Singh successfully invaded Kashmir.
Demographics
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, "In the early 21st century the Jat constituted about 20 percent of the population of Punjab, nearly 10 percent of the population of Balochistan, Rajasthan, and Delhi, and from 2 to 5 percent of the populations of Sindh, Northwest Frontier, and Uttar Pradesh. The four million Jat of Pakistan are mainly Muslim; the nearly six million Jat of India are mostly divided into two large castes of about equal strength: one Sikh, concentrated in Punjab, the other Hindu."
Census under the British Raj
The census in 1931 in India recorded population on the basis of ethnicity. In 1925, the population of Jats was around nine million in South Asia, of which 47% were Hindu, 33% Muslim and 20% Sikh.
According to earlier censuses, the Jat people accounted for approximately 25% of the entire Sindhi-Punjabi speaking area, making it the "largest single socially distinctive group" in the region.
The region-wise breakdown of the total Jat people population in 1931 (including Jat Hindus, Jat Sikhs and Jat Muslims) is given in the following table. The Jat people, approximately 73%, were located mainly in the Punjab region.
Post-independence estimates
Dhillon states that by taking population statistical analysis into consideration the Jat population growth of both India and Pakistan since 1925, Quanungo's figure of nine million could be translated into a minimum population statistic (1988) of 30 million.
From 1931 to 1988 the estimated increase in the Jat people population of the Indian subcontinent including Pakistan respectively is 3.5% Hindu, 3.5% Sikh and 4.0% Muslim. Sukhbir Singh estimates that the population of Hindu Jats, numbered at 2,210,945 in the 1931 census, rose to about 7,738,308 by 1988, whereas Muslim Jats, numbered at 3,287,875 in 1931, would have risen to about 13,151,500 in 1988. The total population of Jats was given as 8,406,375 in 1931, and estimated to have been about 31,066,253 in 1988.
Republic of India
Some specific clans of Jat people are classified as Other Backward Castes in some states, e.g.Jats of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Muslim Jats in Gujarat and Mirdha Jat people (except Jat Muslims) in Madhya Pradesh.
Land reforms, particularly the abolition of Jagirdari and Zamindari systems, Panchayati Raj and Green Revolution, to which Jat people have been major contributors, have contributed to the economic betterment of the Jat people.
The Jat people are one of the most prosperous groups in India on a per-capita basis. (Haryana, Punjab, and Gujarat are the wealthiest of Indian states). Haryana has the largest number of rural crorepatis in India,
In the 20th century and more recently, Jats have dominated as the political class in Haryana. and Punjab.
Some Jat people have become notable political leaders, including the sixth Prime Minister of India, Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh.
Adult franchise has created enormous social and political awakening among Jat people. 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 ofNorth India. Economic differentiation, migration and mobility could be clearly noticed amongst the Jat people.
Pakistan
A large number of the Jat Muslim people live in Pakistan and have dominant roles in public life in the Pakistani Punjab and Pakistan in general. In addition to the Punjab, Jat communities are also found 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.
North American diaspora communities
The Association of Jats of America (AJATA) is an organisation which serves as a forum and lobby for Jat people in North America. The North American Jat Charities (NAJC) is one of the main charities for Jat people in that area.
Culture and society
The life and culture of Jats is full of diversity and approaches most closely to that ascribed to the traditional Central Asian colonists of South Asia. Jat people became tillers of soil. They are fiercely independent in character and value their self respect more than anything, which is why they offered heavy resistance against any foreign force that treated them unjustly. In the government of their villages, they appear much more democratic. They have less reverence for hereditary right and a preference for elected headmen.
Military
The Jat people were designated by British officials as a "martial race", a designation created by officials of British India . The British recruited heavily from these martial races for service in the colonial army.
A large number of 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, where they have also been highly decorated. The Jat Regiment is an infantry regiment of the Indian Army, it is one of the longest serving and most decorated regiments of the Indian Army. The regiment won 19 battle honours between 1839 and 1947 and post independence 5 battle honours, eight Mahavir Chakra, eight Kirti Chakra, 32 Shaurya Chakra, 39 Vir Chakra and 170 Sena Medals. Major Hoshiar Singh of Rohtak won the Param Vir Chakra during Indo-Pak war of 1971. Rohtak district in Haryana.
Religion
In 1925, the population of the Jat people was around nine million in British India, made up of followers of three major religions: Hinduism (47%), Islam (33%) and Sikhism (20%). During the early 1900s, four million Jats of present-day Pakistan were mainly Muslims by faith and the nearly six million Jats of present-day India were mostly divided into two large groups: Hindus concentrated in Haryana and Rajasthan and Sikhs, concentrated in Punjab.
Most Sikh Jats were converted from Hindu Jats so they would join forces with the Khalsa to fight against the Mughal monarchy.
Varna status
The Hindu varna system is unclear on Jat status within the caste system. Some sources state that Jats are regarded as Kshatriyas or "degraded Kshatriyas" who, as they did not observe Brahmanic rites and rituals, had fallen to the status of Shudra. Another author reports that the varna status of the Jats improved over time, with the Jats starting in the untouchable/chandala varna during the eighth century, changing to shudra status by the 11th century, and with some Jats striving for zamindar status after the Jat rebellion of the 17th century.
Social customs
The Jat people have always organized themselves into hundreds of patrilineage clans, Panchayat system or Khap. A clan was based on one small gotra or a number of related gotras under one elected leader whose word was law.
In addition to the conventional Sarva Khap Panchayat, there are regional Jat Mahasabhas affiliated to the All India Jat Mahasabha to organize and safeguard the interests of the community, which held its meeting at regional and national levels to take stock of their activities and devise practical ways and means for the amelioration of the community.
Some of the Jat clan names overlap with other groups. Jat clans have been compiled by several historians, such as Ompal Singh Tugania, Bhaleram Beniwal. and Mahendra Singh Arya. These lists have more than 2700 Jat gotras. Thakur Deshraj and Dilip Singh Ahlawat have mentioned history of some of Jat gotras.