Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c28.s9: § 2. The Jat character ; comparison with Sikhs and Marathas
Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c28.s9
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§ 2. The Jat character ; comparison with Sikhs and Marathas
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"The Jat is the husbandman, the peasant, the revenue-payer *par excellence*", observes Ibbetson when writing of the Panjab province; and the same high praise is given to the race in the Agra province by the local administrators. Whiteway calls them "the backbone of the agricultural population" in Mathura. The Jat "is more honest, more industrious, more sturdy, and no less manly than the races of our frontier mountains. Sturdy independence and patient vigorous labour are his strongest characteristics. . . . But he is of all the Panjab races the most impatient of tribal or communal control and the one which asserts the freedom of the individual most strongly. . . . He is usually content to cultivate his fields and pay his revenue in peace and quietness if people will let him do so; though when he does go wrong he takes to anything from gambling to murder, with perhaps a preference for stealing other people's wives and cattle." Herein the Jat presents a contrast to the Gujar who, though precisely of the same physical type and almost of the same social status as the former, is "lazy to a degree and a wretched cultivator," . . . turbulent and habitually fond of cattle-lifting. In short, we can broadly distinguish between the three castes of the village population by calling the Rajputs landlords, the Jats yeomen, and the Gujars primarily cattle-keepers. [Atkinson, N.W.P. Gaz.]
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The Jats, except in the Rajputana desert, are a healthy prolific race. Their devotion to agriculture and freedom from most of the restrictions on marriage observed by high caste Hindus give to their homes a stronger freer womanhood and numerous children. They follow the ancient Vedic Aryan practice—so much abhorred by the latter-day Hindus,—of a man marrying his deceased brother's widow as a matter of right. They have no scruple in taking wives from other castes and the offspring of such unions become fully merged in Jat society without any taint of inferiority. Among them man woman and child share in the agricultural work or in cattle-tending. Their close contact with the soil and healthy outdoor life make them the most stalwart of the Hindu races. As is well known, the Jats form the racial backbone of the Sikh sect, so famous for their martial achievements.
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Oppression by revenue officers and robbery by their neighbours, especially the Gujars, during the dissolution of government, drove the Jat peasants to a predatory life by way of self-defence or reprisal. They had the making of the best infantry in them. With their sturdy physique, manly habits, and the experience and tradition of forays and even of vulgar burglaries, they supplied the Rajahs of Bharatpur,—as in another region they did the Rajahs of the Panjab,—with the finest material for an army, if only they could be properly armed trained and led. But the Jat soldiery of Bharatpur, in spite of their martial instincts, lacked that intelligence and power of co-ordination which modern warfare requires.* They also used cannon only in forts and had to depend for their field artillery on foreign allies or mercenaries. Further, this peasant race was without letters, without knowledge, unlike the Marathas,—among whom an admirable union was effected between the brainy priest and writer castes and the warrior Maratha caste, in fighting as much as in diplomacy and the civil administration,—so that all the various works of a State could be done in Maharashtra by men of the same race speech and province. The Jat Rajahs, on the contrary, had to depend on other people than Jats for their revenue administration and diplomatic settlements.
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∗ The reader will remember, as a parallel case, how the officers were theia weakest element in the Sikh army, so that, in their struggle with the English the Khalsa proved an army of lions led by asses. Here too the soldiers were Jats by race.
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Again, the Jats who embraced the religion of Guru Govind were fused into a perfect brotherhood, differing only where personal interests and jealousies separated them. This compact homogeneity was lacking among the Hindu Jats, where innumerable minute differences of sept or of family-groups within one and the same caste, caused almost the same mutual cleavage as between Brahmans and Shudras. Thus the Jats in the Mirat division are separated into two branches, the Heles and the Dhes, who do not intermarry, the former despising the latter as of less pure blood! Hence, Suraj Mal of Bharatpur failed where Ranjit Singh of Lahor succeeded.
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§ 3. Relations of the Bharatpur State with its neighbours.
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The Jats under the house of Bharatpur, in their natural expansion eastwards and northwards along the upper Jamuna valley and beyond that river, came into collision not only with the authority of the Delhi Government but also with the Rajput Gujar and other landowners already in possession of the soil. Even before the rise of this royal family, the Jats had been making a peaceful penetration of the Agra and Mathura districts; they first entered that region as immigrant servants and hired labourers; but their skill in husbandry, rapid growth in numbers and dynamic force as a race enabled them to supplant the decadent lazy old owners and make themselves lords of much of the soil. The same process continued throughout the 18th century and received a great impetus from Suraj Mal's victorious advance and his legal position as a lessee of these districts recognized by the sovereign of Delhi. But this Jat occupation of the country could be effected only at the cost of the existing superior landowners, and thus every Rajput and Gujar zamindar’s arms were turned against the Jat power. The success of Suraj Mal only accentuated the age-long feud between Rajput and Jat, and the former readily joined the enemies of the latter every time the Jat power showed the least sign of decline.*
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It was the dream of the Jat kings of Bharatpur to justify their title of *Braja-rāj* by actually ruling over the sacred city and district of Mathura. But that was possible only if they could be allowed either to cut the highway between the imperial cities of Delhi and Agra, or to hold Agra, the second capital of the Empire, in addition to Mathura. The sovereign of Delhi could not be expected to agree to this mutilation of his empire, and hence Mathura was held by the Jat Rajahs only on an eternally precarious tenure, and solely by the force of indisputably superior arms. And yet the Jats of Bharatpur could expand only by holding Agra and Mathura, and then from these secured bridge-heads crossing the Jamuna and overflowing into the Aligarh and Bulandshahar districts east of that river. The Bharatpur State is hemmed in on the west by the Rajput kingdoms,—Mewat (Narnol, Alwar etc.) being the bone of contention between the two races,—on the north by Delhi and its surrounding districts, and on the south-east by the Marathas, now firmly planted in Malwa. This geography inexorably dictated the course of Bharatpur history.
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∗ Even during the eclipse of British authority in the Mutiny of 1857, this feud broke out afresh in the rural parts of Agra, without any connection with the revolted sepoys.