History of the Jats

Title: History of the Jats

Author: Kalika R Qanungo

Publisher: Originals, Delhi, 2013 (First published 1925)

ISBN: 9788184541298

Pages: 226

India is a bewilderingly complex amalgam of cultures, races, languages and customs. Such a large variety of people living cheek by jowl from the ancient times is unparalleled anywhere in the world, especially if you come to learn that each group and sect retains its distinctive characteristics. America is another example of such cosmopolitanism, but the confluence of her people is hardly two centuries old, and the people are expected to gradually melt into the national whole. The Jats are a prominent modern community seen prevalently in Northern India. In fact, they belong to different religions. A third of them are Muslims in Pakistan, one-fifth Sikhs and the rest Hindu. Bounded in the north by the lower ranges of the Himalayas, West by Indus, on the south by a line drawn from Hyderabad (Sindh) to Ajmer and then to Bhopal and on the east by the Ganga, the Jats occupy the heartland of India. These rugged people rose to prominence in the lawless atmosphere obtaining towards the end of the Mughal reign. This book is a history of the sturdy group who call themselves Jats. The origin of this populous society is investigated and then the narrative fast forwards to the eighteenth century when all the action takes place. The Jats are said to be fortunate to have Qanungo as their historian, as the Rajputs had Col. Todd, the Marathas Grant-Duff and the Sikhs Cunningham. Kalika Ranjan Qanungo (1895-1972) was a learned historian scholar from Bengal. He was a professor of the universities of Lucknow and Dhaka. His field of research covered the medieval history of India, various aspects of the Muslim rulers, the Rajputs and the Marathas. His knowledge of Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Oudhi and some other local dialects greatly helped him dig into local sources. This book is a fine example of his erudition.

Royal houses in ascendancy often claim lineage with real or mythical heroes. This custom had been going on even in the medieval period as we come to know of many rulers boasting descent from Alexander or Chingiz Khan. The Jats ascribe Aryan origins to themselves. We must remember that this book was first published in 1925 when the theory of Aryan invasion of India was gaining ground in academic discourse as a result of the immensely successful excavations at Indus civilization sites. Archeologists suggested the invasion of a foreign race as one of the probable reasons for the downfall of the Indus culture. A few others extrapolated it to the references in the Rig Veda to ‘establish’ that it was the fair-skinned Aryans who attacked the pacific, black-skinned Indus people and imposed a culture of their own in India. In the same vein, the mention of a tribe named jartrika or jathara is suggested as an ancestor to modern Jats. However, the Jats themselves believe that they have descended from Yadavas, the tribe of the Hindu god Krishna. Anyhow, a prominent presence of Jats in the region is attested by one of the attacks of Mahmud of Ghazni. His seventeenth expedition was said to be undertaken for chastising the Jats, who had attacked the rear of his baggage train which was returning after destroying and looting the temple of Somanath. The Jats have also fought against Qutb ud-din Aibak, Mohammed bin Tughluq and Timur.

With a solid pedigree at their back, the Jats rose to prominence during the reign of Aurangzeb. Having a foolish religious policy that bears more resemblance to that of modern day Jihadis than to the wise and prudent program of his great-grandfather Akbar, he alienated the Hindu states one after the other. The Marathas, Rajputs, Sikhs and Jats rose up in revolt often in sequence and sometimes simultaneously, causing great alarm to Aurangzeb who didn’t get much free time to sit comfortably on his throne at Delhi. For nearly three decades, he followed futile campaigns to suppress enemies. However hard he struck, his rivals soon regained enough strength to hit at a different part of the far-flung empire, which was continuously bled through a thousand cuts. It was during the reign of Aurangzeb that the Jats desecrated Akbar’s tomb at Agra. In 1688, Raja Ram Jat plundered the tomb at Sikandra, carried away its carpets, gold and silver vessels. The Khan-i-Jahan of the place watched helplessly as the invaders damaged the building and even dragged out the bones of Akbar and burnt them. It is unfortunate and ironic that the mortal remains of the most tolerant ruler of the Mughal dynasty was despoiled in this way by the leader of a community he sought to admit into his polity. However, we must be thankful to Aurangzeb for performing a single good deed among the plethora evil ones – for sowing the seed of destruction of the Mughal Empire.

As soon as Aurangzeb breathed his last, the power struggle began in earnest in Delhi. Not long after, Muslim power was visibly in the wane, which couldn’t be boosted up even with the fleeting raids of Nadir Shah Afzar and Ahmed Shah Abdali of the Durrani clan. These two invaders had no more intention of staying back in India than getting away with as much booty and plunder they can wring out in the short time they were here. The country lay open to the Hindu rulers for engaging in their own fratricidal fights for power. Churaman Jat utilized the uncertain conditions to his advantage, allied with both sides when the need arose and plundered both when the opportunity came. Suraj Mal established the Jat principality of Bharatpur and cleverly expanded his domains. We read about a long list of collusions and betrayals between the Rajputs, Marathas, Jats, Rohillas and the Nawab of Oudh. The emperor in Delhi degenerated into a puppet. The contenders in his dominions decided the issues among themselves and simply instructed the emperor to sign on the dotted line. With the ascendancy of Jawahar Singh at Bharatpur, the northern kingdoms trembled at the terrible war machine that came up in his capital city. The Mughals and Nawabs invited Abdali to invade India again to crush the Jat menace, but the tactical alliance he had forged with the British at Calcutta saved him.

The book covers the events of eighteenth century North India in very good detail. The rise and fall of Jat kingdoms are accurately noted. The narration abruptly stops at the death of Mirza Najaf Khan, the chief noble among the Mughals and his conquest of the Jat territory which marked a brief refulgence of Mughal glory. He subjugated the recalcitrant rebels with extraordinary sagacity and showed kindness and consideration to conquered enemies which was quite unlike the norm of those times. The author has relied on the Waqa-i-Shah Alam Sani, Ibratnama, Chahar Gulzar-i-Shujai, Tarikh-i-Muzaffari, Siyar ul-Mutakhkharin and Imad us-Saadat as reference material for the work. The book is gifted with a foreword by the eminent historian Jadunath Sarkar, who was also the author’s teacher and the whole text is thoroughly edited and annotated by Vir Singh. It sports a reasonably good index and a detailed bibliography. The disadvantage of the book is its short span of coverage where the nineteenth century is not even alluded to.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star