Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c28.s8.3

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.