Panjab Castes: 08- General distribution of castes by occupation
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. |
General distribution of agricultural castes
Abstract No. 64
on the next page- shows the general distribution of castes throughout the Province, the hgures representing the proportion borne by each group of castes to every thousand of total population.
The distribution of each caste will be discussed more fully when the caste itself comes under consideration. It will of course be understood that the castes are grouped very roughly. Indeed it will be apparent from the following pages that any but the roughest classification is impossible, for not only is the class within which any given caste should fall incapable of exact definition, but it varies in different parts of the Province. Still some sort of classification was necessary on Avhich to arrange the chapter, and I have there fore divided the various castes and tribes into three great groups. The first or landowning and agricultural group comprises half of the total population of the Panjab, and is even more important socially, administratively, and politically than it is numerically. It is divided into^ six sections. The first includes the two great frontier races, the Eiloches and Pathans ; and with the latter I have taken the TanaoH, Tajik and Hazara_, as closely allied to them if not really entitled to be ranked with them. Next follows the great Jat race, and after that the Rajputs, with the Thakars and Rathis whom it is so impossible to separate from them, and one or two minor castes which are perhaps rather Rajput tribes than separate castes. The next class, the minor dominant tribes, includes all those castes which, while hardly less important in their particular territories, are less numerous and less widely distributed than the four great races already specified. Such are the Gakkhars and Awans of the Salt-range Tract, the Kharrals and Daudpotras of the Western Plains, the Dogars and Rors of the Eastern Plains, the Meos of Gurgaon, and the Gujars of the hills. Next follow the minor agricultural tribes, the Sainis, Arâin^, Kanets, Ghiraths, Ahirs, Mahtams and the like, who, while forming a very important factor in the agricultural community of the Panjab, occupy a social and political position of far less importance thun that of the dominant tribes. The last class is headed Foreign Races, and inchides Shekhs, Mughals, Turks, and the like, most of whom perhaps have no real title to the name under which they have returned themselves, while many of them own no land and are mere artisans, though these cannot be separated from the still greater number who are landowners.
The distribution of these classes is very marked. The Biloches and Pathans are of course chiefly to be found in the trans-Indus districts ; but while the latter form the great bulk of the group in the districts where they prevail, the former, who have settled in the Province at a far more recent date, are accompanied by a very large class of inferior cultivating classes of all castes who are, in accordance with the custom of the lower Indus,^ grouped under the comprehensive name of Jat, a term whose signifi cance is in these parts occupational as much as ethnic. Setting these districts aside, the Jats are to be found in greatest predominance in the great Sikh States and districts, and in the south-east of the Province in Rohtak and Hissar. In the sub-montane districts, the Salt-range Tract, and Kaugra,
' For instance, the ceremony of Tcundla described in section 354. The eating together very commonly takes the form of a distribution of ^«;- or 8weatmeat<«. and throughout the cis-Indus districts of the Western Plains^ excepting Muzaffargarh which goes with the truns-Indus ,y:roup, the Rajput to a great extent takes the place of the Jat. In the Hill States^ with the exception of Chamba, Rajputs are few, and are ivnportant by their social and political position rather than by their numbers. But the figures are of no very certain significance, since the line of demarcation between Thakar and Rathi who have been classed with Rajputs, and Kanels and GIraths who have been classed as minor agricultural tribes, is exceedingly difficult to draw, and the abnormal figures for Chamba are due to this cause. The proportion of minor dominant tribes naturally varies from district to district, and their distribution is discussed in the section devoted to their consideration. The same may be said of th( minor agricultural castes, the group being too miscellaneous in its composition for its distribution to present very general features. But it is noticeable that where the Jat, who prefers to do his own cultivation is numerous, these castes are found only in small numbers, while they bear the highest proportion to total population in those tracts where the Hill Rajput, who looks upon agriculture as degrading, is most largely represented. Taking the landowning and agricultural castes as a whole, they form the largest proportion of the population in the trans-Indus districts ; and this is due to the freedom from occupational restraints which I have already noticed as prevailing on the frontier, a very large proportion of the industrial and menial work being done on the frontier by members of the dominant and agricultural tribes, and not, as in the rest of the Province, by separate castes. They are least numerous in the sub-montane tract and in the Eastern Plains, where they are assisted in the cultivation by a numerous class of village menials, and where, the Hindu religion being most prevalent and commerce most important, the religious and mercantile elements of societies are most numerous.
General distribution of professional castes
— The next great group consists of the priestly, ascetic, professional, and mercantile castes, and includes people of very different social positions, from the priestly Brahman to the wandering pedlar. As a whole they occupy a position superior to that of the landowning classes if measured by a religious standard, for the great mercan tile castes come next after the Brahmans in strictness of religious observance , but indefinitely inferior if the comparison be made from a social or political standpoint. The Brahmans are naturally most numerous in the Hindu and the iSaiyads in the Musalman portions of the Province, the former being extraordinarily numerous in the hills where Hinduism is stronger than in any other part of the Pan jab. The ascetic orders are chiefly to be found in the eastern and central districts, partly perhaps because they are more common among Hindus than among Mahomedans, but still more I suspect because it is in these districts that the wealth of the Province is concentrated, and in them that there is most hope for an idle man who wishes to live at the expense of his fellows. The minor professional group consists of Nais, 187] Mirasis, Jogis, and the like, and its numbers are tolerably constant throughout the cis-Indus Panjab, while beyond the Indus it is hardly represented. Taking the professional groujo as a whole, and especially the religious element, its numbers decrease steadily from east to west ; chiefly because the Brahmans, who form an integral portion of the stock from which the Hindu population has chiefly sprung, are naturally far more numerous than the Saiyads, who are but foreign immigrants in the Panjab. The mercantile castes are found in greatest abundance in the south-western districts ; not because commerce is there peculiarly extensive^ but because the Aroras, the principal mercantile castes of these parts, are not mere traders^ but largely follow all sorts of occupations both industrial and agricultural. Setting these districts aside the trading-castes are least numerous in the hills, where commerce is very much in the hands of the Brahmans. The miscellaneous class is largely composed of Kashmiris, who are chiefly to be found in the districts on the Kashmir border, and in the great Kashmiri colonies of Amritsar and Ludhiana.
General distribution of menial castes
The last of the three groups comprises all the lower strata of society, the vagrant, criminal, and gipsy tribes, the village menials, and the industrial classes. I shall show when I come to discuss these castes in greater detail, how wholly impossible it is to class them by occupation with even approximate accuracy. Thus the classes into which I have divided them in the abstract have no very definite significance. Still certain broad facts are brought out by the figures. The vagrant tribes are chiefly to be found in two parts of the Province, on the Rajputana border and under the central and western hills. Among the village menial castes who perform so large a part of the agricultural labour in the Panjab, namely the leather-workers, scavengers and watermen, the leather-workers prevail throughout the eastern districts, the hills and the great Sikh states. In the centre of the Panjab, and to a less degree in the Western Plains, their place is taken by the scavengers, and partly by the watermen. The menial and industrial class as a whole is most numerous in the hills where they have much of the cultivation in their hands, and in the sub montane and central districts where wealth is greatest and the standard of cultivation highest. It is curiously scanty in the west, and particularly on the Indus frontier ; and this partly because, as I have already pointed out, the hereditary restrictions upon occupation are more lax, and the poor Pathan thinks it no shame to earn his bread by callings which would involve social degradation where caste-feeling is stronger ; but also very largely because on the lower Indus the menial who cultivates becomes a Jat by mere virtue of the fact, and is classed as such, whereas in the rest of the Panjab he would have retained his menial caste unaltered. In Sirsa, and to a less degree in Hissar, the exact opposite is the case. There the menial classes are more numerous than in the neighbouring districts because the tract is to a great extent newly settled, and land is so plentiful and the demand for agricultural labour so great that the lower classes have flocked into these districts, and though retaining at present their caste unaltered, have risen in the social scale by the acquisition of land or at least by the substitution of husbandry for menial callings.
