Jat: Position in the undivided Punjab, 1883
This article is an extract from PANJAB CASTES SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. Being a reprint of the chapter on Lahore : Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1916. |
Position in the Punjab
The Jat is in every respect the most important of the Panjab peoples. In point of numbers he sur passes the Rajput who comes next to him in the proportion of nearly three to one ; while the two together constitute 27 per cent, of the whole population of the Province. Politically he ruled the Panjab till the Khalsa yielded to our arms. Ethnologically he is the peculiar and most prominent product of the plains of the five rivers. And from an oconomical and administrative point of view he is the husbandman, the peasant, the revenue-payer par excellence of the Province. His manners do not bear the impress of generations of wild freedom which marks the races of our frontier mountains. But he is more honest, more industrious, more sturdy, and no less manly than they. Sturdy independence indeed and patient vigorous labour are his strongest characteris tics. The Jat is of all Panjab races the most impatient of tribal or communal control, and the one which asserts the freedom of the individual most strongly.
In tracts where, as in Rohtak, the Jat tribes have the field to themselves, and are compelled, in default of rival castes as enemies, to fall back upon each other for somebody to quarrel with, the tribal ties are strong. But as a rule a Jat is a man who does what seems right in his own eyes and sometimes what seems wrong also, and will not be said nay by any man.
I do not mean however that he is turbulent : as a rule he is very far from being so. He is independent and he is self-willed ; but he is reasonable, peaceably inclined if left alone, and not difficult to manage. He is usually content to cultivate his fields and pay his revenue in peace and quietness if people will let him do go ; though when he does go wrong he takes to anything from gambling to murder, with perhaps a preference for stealing other people's wives and cattle. As usual the proverbial wisdom of the villages describes him very fairly, though perhaps somewhat too severely : The soil, fodder, clothes hemp grass fibre, ami silk, those six are best beaten ; and the seventh is the Jat A Jat, a Bhat, a caterpillar, and a widow woman ; these four are best hungry. If they eat their fill they do harm.The Jat, like a wound, is better when bound.In agriculture the Jat is pre-eminent.
The market-gardening castes, the Aram, the Mali, the Saini, are perhaps more skilful cultivators on a small scale ; but they cannot rival the Jat as landowners and yeoman cul tivators. The Jat calls himself zamindar or husbandman as often as Jat, and his women and children alike work with him in the fields : The Jat's baby has a plough handle for a plaything.'The Jat stood on his corn heap and said to the king's elephant-drivers — ' Will you sell those little ' donkeys, Socially, the Jat occupies a position which is shared by the Ror, the Gujar, and the Ahir, all four eating and smoking together. He is of course far below the Rajput, from the simple fact that he practises widow marriage. The Jat father is made to say, in the rhyming proverbs of the country side — Come my daughter and be married ; if this husband dies there are plenty more.But among the widow-marrying castes he stands first. The Banya with his sacred thread, his strict Hinduism, and his twice-born standing, looks down on the Jat as a Sudra. But the Jat looks down upon the Banya as a cowardly spiritless money-grubber, and society in general agrees with the Jat. The Khatri, who is far superior to the Banya in manliness and vigour, probably takes precedence of the Jat. But among the races or tribes of purely Hindu origin, I think that the Jat stands next after the Brahman, the Rajput, and the Khatri.
There are, however, Jats and Jats. I shall briefly describe each class in the remarks prefixed to the various sections under which I discuss the Jat tribes ; and 1 shall here do nothing more than briefly indicate the broad distinctions. The Jat of the Sikh tracts is of course the typical Jat of the Panjab, and he it is whom I have described above. The Jat of the south eastern districts differs little from him save in religion ; though on the Bikaner border the puny Bagri Jat, immigrant from his rainless prairies where he has been held in bondage for centuries, and ignorant of cultivation save in its rudest form, contrasts strongly with the stalwart and independent husbandman of the Malwa. On the Lower Indus the word Jat is apphed generically to a congeries of tribes, Jats proper, Rajputs, lower castes, and mongrels, who have no points in common save their Mahomedan religion, their agricultural occu pation, and their subordinate position. In the great western grazing grounds it is, as I have said, impossible to draw any sure line between Jat and Rajput, the latter term being commonly apphed to those tribes who have attained political supremacy, while the people whom they have subdued or driven by dispossession of their territory to live a semi-noinad life in the central steppes are more often classed as Jats ; and the state of things in the Salt-range Tract is very similar. Indeed the word Jat is the Panjabi term for a grazier or herdsman ; though Mr 0Brien says that in Jatki, Jat the cultiva tor is spelt with a hard, and Jat the herdsman or camel grazier with a soft t. Thus the word Jat in Rohtak or Amritsar means a great deal ; in Muzaffar garh or Bannu it means nothing at all, or rather perhaps it means a great deal more than any single word can afford to mean if it is to be of any practical use; and the two classes respectively indicated by the term in these two parts of the Province must not be too readily confounded.
The nature and meaning of the figures
Such being the state of things, it may be imagined that our figures do not always convey any very definite meaning. The 160,000 Jats of Derah Ghazi Khan include 5,000 Malis, 2,000 Julahas, 3,000 Tarkhans, 4,500 Kutanas, 4,4OO In Panjab castes. Mallalis, 7,500 Machhis, 2,700 Machhi. and so forth. In no other district does this confusion prevail to anything like so great an extent ; but it does prevail in a smaller degree throughout the south-western districts; and till the detailed clan tables are complete it will be impossible to separate these incongruous items, or to lind out with exactness what our figures do and what they do not include. The conhusion is not wholly due to the entries in the schedules. On the Lower Indus and Chanab the entries in the caste column were numbered by thousands, tribe being there the recognized unit rather than the more comprehensive caste ; and it was absolutely necessary to allow the staff of the divisional otHees, all picl;ed men drawn from the very district with the figures of which they were dealing, sonic discretion in classifying these entries under larger heads.
Thus in Jhang the Sial will have been rightly classed as Rajputs, while in Derah Ghazithey will, with equal correctness so far as local usage is concerned, have been very probably clased as Jats. Thus our tigures are far from complete , but I have done my best to indicate in the following paragraphs the uncertainties and errors in classilication as far as I could detect them. I had indeed hoped to treat the subject more fully, and especially more systematically than I have done. I had intended to attempt some sort of grouping of the great ,at tribes on the basis of their ethnic affinities, somewhat similar to that which 1 have attempted for the Pathans. But I was not allowed the time necessary for such an undertaking ; and I have thererore roughly grouped tho tribes by locality so far as my figures served to indicate it, and liurrieJly stated the leading facts of which 1 was in possession regarding each, leaving any more elaborate treatuunt for a future occasion. The tigures for tribes are, as already explained in section 369, nece-sarily imperfect, and must only be taken as approximations.
