Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c28.s8: § 1. The local distribution of the Jat race
Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c28.s8
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§ 1. The local distribution of the Jat race
v2.c28.s8.1
The most important racial element in the vast tract of land that stretches from the bank of the Indus, through the Panjab, the northern States of Rajputana and the upper Jamuna valley, down to Gwalior beyond the Chambal, call themselves Jats. We are not here concerned with the question of their Scytho-Aryan origin, the analysis of the tribes that have been fused into the common stock, the probable line of migration to the present home of each of their branches, or their early history on the Indian soil which goes back beyond recorded antiquity. But a survey of their distribution in the early 18th century is necessary for our present purpose.
v2.c28.s8.2
"The Jat is, in every respect, the most important of the Panjab peoples. In point of numbers he surpasses the Rajput, who comes next to him, in the proportion of nearly three to one. In Bikaner Jaisalmer and Marwar, they possibly equal in number all the Rajput races put together." [Ibbetson, in ii. 366-69.] Broadly speaking, the Jat is a Musalman in the Western District (i. e., Panjab west of the Ravi), a Sikh in the Centre, and a Hindu in the South-east." Such is the distribution of the Jats in the Panjab, but the historian of Delhi is interested in the tribal population of the Panjab only so far as they merge their Jat race in the Sikh sect. [Rose's *Glossary of Panjab Tribes*.]
v2.c28.s8.3
In a second regional area, namely the northern and western districts of the United Provinces, or along the upper Jamuna valley, the Jats constitute as important an element of the population as in the Panjab, and the tribesmen living in this tract have played a most conspicuous part in the history of the fall of the Mughal Empire. They are even today the most important and industrious of all the cultivators not only in the Mirat district but in the entire Mirat division (consisting of the districts of Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Mirat, Bulandshahar and Aligarh.) In Aligarh "they are decidedly the most powerful amongst the other castes and occupy nearly the whole of the western portion of the district. In the Bulandshahar district they owned, in the late 19th century, twice as many villages as the Gujars. So, too, in the Muzaffarnagar district, the Gujars and Jats occupy the upland ridge above the Ganges *khadir* (low lands beside the river.) But these Jats were scattered over the country as peasants or landholders, without aspiring to political independence.
v2.c28.s8.4
Proceeding south of Delhi along the Jamuna, we find the Jats more numerous in Mathura than in any other district of that province except Mirat. Further south, in the Agra district, they form 7 per cent of the population, but till 14 per cent of the cultivated area and in two of the sub-divisions (Agra and Kiraoli tahsils) they are the most extensive cultivators.
v2.c28.s8.5
West of Agra is the Bharatpur territory, the rulers of which gave cohesion to the Jats by uniting them into an independent State and leading them on to a career of conquest northwards and eastwards. It is the Jats of this third region that played a striking part in the politics of the declining Delhi empire and the present history will deal with them in detail.
v2.c28.s8.6
There is a fourth area of Jat preponderance, south of Agra up to the Chambal and even beyond that river to Gwalior, where a Jat power district from the Bharatpur family raised its head but was crushed by the Maratha advance from Malwa and is now confined within the narrow limits of the State of Dholpur,—the sole remnant of that large principality of Gohad which has left its mark on North Indian history from 1750 to 1780.