Julaha: Momin
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From The Tribes And Castes Of The Central Provinces Of India
By R. V. Russell
Of The Indian Civil Service
Superintendent Of Ethnography, Central Provinces
Assisted By Rai Bahadur Hira Lal, Extra Assistant Commissioner
Macmillan And Co., Limited, London, 1916.
NOTE 1: The 'Central Provinces' have since been renamed Madhya Pradesh.
NOTE 2: While reading please keep in mind that all articles in this series have been scanned from the original book. Therefore, footnotes have got inserted into the main text of the article, interrupting the flow. Readers who spot these footnotes gone astray might like to shift them to their correct place.
Julaha: Momin
A low Muhammadan caste of weavers resident mainly in Saugor and Burhanpur. They numbered about 4000 persons in 191 1. In Nagpur District the Muhammadan weavers generally call themselves Momin, a word meaning ' orthodox.' In northern India and Bengal Julahas are very numerous and the bulk of them are probably converted Hindus. Mr. (Sir Denzil) Ibbetson remarks : " We find Koli-Julahas, Chamar-Julahas, Morhi- Julahas, Ramdasi-Julahas, and so forth ; and it is probable that after a few generations these men will drop the prefix which denotes their low origin and become Julahas pure and simple.
" 2 The Julahas claim Adam as the founder of their craft, inasmuch as when Satan made him realise his nakedness he taught the art of weaving to his sons. And they say that their ancestors came from Arabia.
In Nimar the Julahas or Momins assert that they do not permit out- siders to be admitted as members of the caste, but the accu- racy of this is doubtful, while in Saugor any Muhammadan who wishes to do so may become a Julaha. They follow the Muhammadan laws of marriage and inheritance. Unions between relatives are favoured, but a man may not marry 1 Some of these names and also Names of the Punjabis. some of the women's names have been taken from Colonel Temple's Proper 2 Punjab Ethnography, para. 612.
his sister, niece, aunt or foster-sister.
The Julaha or Momin women observe no purda, and are said to be almost unique among Muhammadans in this respect. " The Musalman l weaver or Julaha," Sir G. Grierson writes, " is the proverbial fool of Hindu stories and proverbs. He swims in the moonlight across fields of flowering linseed, thinking the blue colour to be caused by water. He hears his family priest reading the Koran, and bursts into tears to the gratification of the reader. When pressed to tell what part affected him most, he says it was not that, but that the wagging beard of the old gentleman so much reminded him of a favourite goat of his which had died. When forming one of a company of twelve he tries to count them and finding himself missing wants to perform his own funeral obsequies. He finds the rear peg of a plough and wants to set up farming on the strength of it. He gets into a boat at night and forgets to pull up the anchor. After rowing till dawn he finds himself where he started, and concludes that the only explanation is that his native village could not bear to lose him and has followed him. If there are eight weavers and nine huqqas, they fight for the odd one. Once on a time a crow carried off to the roof of the house some bread which a weaver had given his child. Before giving the child any more he took the precaution of removing the ladder.
Like the English fool he always gets unmerited blows. For instance, he once went to see a ram-fight and got butted himself, as the saying runs : Karigah chhor taniasa jay Nahak chot Julaha khay. ' He left his loom to see the fun and for no reason got a bruising.' Another story (told by Fallon) is that being told by a soothsayer that it was written in his fate that his nose would be cut off with an axe, the weaver was incredulous and taking up an axe, kept flourishing it, saying — Yon karba ta gor katbon Yon karba ta hath katbon Auryon karba tab net 1 This passage is taken from Sir G. Grierson's Peasant Life in Bihar, p. 64.
1 If I do so I cut off my leg, if I do so I cut off my hand, but unless I do so my no / and his nose was off. Another proverb Julaha janathi jo katai, ' Does a weaver know how to cut barley,' refers to a story (in Fallon) that a weaver unable to pay his debt was set to cut barley by his creditor, who thought to repay himself in this way.
But instead of reaping, the stupid fellow kept trying to untwist the tangled barley stems. Other proverbs at his expense are : ' The Julaha went out to cut the grass at sunset, when even the crows were going home.' 'The Julaha's brains are in his backside.' His wife bears an equally bad character, as in the proverb : ' A wilful Julahin will pull her own father's beard.' "
