Jats

The Jat people (Punjabi: ਜੱਟ, pronounced [d͡ʒəʈːᵊ]; Hindi: जाट, pronounced [d͡ʒaːʈ]; Sindhi: جاٽ) are a traditionally agricultural community in Northern India and Pakistan.[1][2][3][lower-alpha 1][lower-alpha 2][lower-alpha 3] Originally pastoralists in the lower Indus river-valley of Sindh, Jats migrated north into the Punjab region in late medieval times, and subsequently into the Delhi Territory, northeastern Rajputana, and the western Gangetic Plain in the 17th and 18th centuries.[7][8][9] Of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh faiths, they are now found mostly in the Indian states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan and the Pakistani provinces of Sindh and Punjab.

"Jat" and "Jat people" redirect here. For other uses, see Jat (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with the Jats of Afghanistan.

Jat
Regions with significant populations
South Asia~30–43 million (c. 2009/10)
Languages
Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu) • Haryanvi • Punjabi (and its dialects) • Lahnda • Rajasthani • Sindhi (and its dialects) • Braj • Khariboli
Religion
Hinduism • Islam • Sikhism

The Jats took up arms against the Mughal Empire during the late 17th and early 18th centuries.[10] Gokula, a Hindu Jat landlord was among the earliest rebel leaders against the Mughal rule during Aurangzeb's era.[11] The Hindu Jat kingdom reached its zenith under Maharaja Suraj Mal (1707–1763).[12] The community played an important role in the development of the martial Khalsa panth of Sikhism.[13] By the 20th century, the landowning Jats became an influential group in several parts of North India, including Punjab,[14] Western Uttar Pradesh,[15] Rajasthan,[16] Haryana and Delhi.[17] Over the years, several Jats abandoned agriculture in favour of urban jobs, and used their dominant economic and political status to claim higher social status.[18]

History
Jat Zamindars. Hindoos. Rajpootana 1874

The Jats are a paradigmatic example of community- and identity-formation in early modern Indian subcontinent.[7] "Jat" is an elastic label applied to a wide-ranging community[19][20] from simple landowning peasants [lower-alpha 4][lower-alpha 5][lower-alpha 6][21][22][lower-alpha 7] to wealthy and influential Zamindars.[24][25][26][27][28]

By the time of Muhammad bin Qasim's conquest of Sind in the eighth century, Arab writers described agglomerations of Jats in the arid, the wet, and the mountainous regions of the conquered land of Sindh.[29] The Arab rulers, though professing a theologically egalitarian religion, maintained the position of Jats and the discriminatory practices against them that had been put in place in the long period of Hindu rule in Sind.[30] Between the eleventh and the sixteenth centuries, Jat herders at the Sind migrated up along the river valleys,[31] into the Punjab,[7] which may have been largely uncultivated in the first millennium.[32] Many took up tilling in regions such as western Punjab, where the sakia (water wheel) had been recently introduced.[7][33] By early Mughal times, in the Punjab, the term "Jat" had become loosely synonymous with "peasant",[34] and some Jats had come to own land and exert local influence.[7] The Jats had their origins in pastoralism in the Indus valley, and gradually became agriculturalist farmers.[35] Around 1595, Jat Zamindars controlled a little over 32% of the Zamindaris in the Punjab region.[36]

According to historians Catherine Asher and Cynthia Talbot,[37]

The Jats also provide an important insight into how religious identities evolved during the precolonial era. Before they settled in the Punjab and other northern regions, the pastoralist Jats had little exposure to any of the mainstream religions. Only after they became more integrated into the agrarian world did the Jats adopt the dominant religion of the people in whose midst they dwelt.[37]

Over time the Jats became primarily Muslim in the western Punjab, Sikh in the eastern Punjab, and Hindu in the areas between Delhi Territory and Agra, with the divisions by faith reflecting the geographical strengths of these religions.[37] During the decline of Mughal rule in the early 18th century, the Indian subcontinent's hinterland dwellers, many of whom were armed and nomadic, increasingly interacted with settled townspeople and agriculturists. Many new rulers of the 18th century came from such martial and nomadic backgrounds. The effect of this interaction on India's social organization lasted well into the colonial period. During much of this time, non-elite tillers and pastoralists, such as the Jats or Ahirs, were part of a social spectrum that blended only indistinctly into the elite landowning classes at one end, and the menial or ritually polluting classes at the other.[38] During the heyday of Mughal rule, Jats had recognized rights. According to Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf:

Upstart warriors, Marathas, Jats, and the like, as coherent social groups with military and governing ideals, were themselves a product of the Mughal context, which recognized them and provided them with military and governing experience. Their successes were a part of the Mughal success.[39]

Jat Sikh of the "Sindhoo" clan, Lahore, 1872

As the Mughal empire faltered, there were a series of rural rebellions in North India.[40] Although these had sometimes been characterized as "peasant rebellions", others, such as Muzaffar Alam, have pointed out that small local landholders, or zemindars, often led these uprisings.[40] The Sikh and Jat rebellions were led by such small local zemindars, who had close association and family connections with each other and with the peasants under them, and who were often armed.[41]

These communities of rising peasant-warriors were not well-established Indian castes,[42] but rather quite new, without fixed status categories, and with the ability to absorb older peasant castes, sundry warlords, and nomadic groups on the fringes of settled agriculture.[41][43] The Mughal Empire, even at the zenith of its power, functioned by devolving authority and never had direct control over its rural grandees.[41] It was these zemindars who gained most from these rebellions, increasing the land under their control.[41] The triumphant even attained the ranks of minor princes, such as the Jat ruler Badan Singh of the princely state of Bharatpur.[41]

Hindu Jats
The Hindu Jat Maharaja of Bharatpur, 1882

In 1669, the Hindu Jats, under the leadership of Gokula, rebelled against the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in Mathura.[44] The community came to predominate south and east of Delhi after 1710.[45] According to historian Christopher Bayly

Men characterised by early eighteenth century Mughal records as plunderers and bandits preying on the imperial lines of communications had by the end of the century spawned a range of petty states linked by marriage alliance and religious practice.[45]

The Jats had moved into the Gangetic Plain in two large migrations, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries respectively.[45] They were not a caste in the usual Hindu sense, for example, in which Bhumihars of the eastern Gangetic plain were; rather they were an umbrella group of peasant-warriors.[45] According to Christopher Bayly:

This was a society where Brahmins were few and male Jats married into the whole range of lower agricultural and entrepreneurial castes. A kind of tribal nationalism animated them rather than a nice calculation of caste differences expressed within the context of Brahminical Hindu state.[45]

By the mid-eighteenth century, the ruler of the recently established Jat kingdom of Bharatpur, Raja Surajmal, felt sanguine enough about durability to build a garden palace at nearby Deeg.[46] According to historian, Eric Stokes,

When the power of the Bharatpur raja was riding high, fighting clans of Jats encroached into the Karnal/Panipat, Mathura, Agra, and Aligarh districts, usually at the expense of Rajput groups. But such a political umbrella was too fragile and short-lived for substantial displacement to be effected.[47]

Muslim Jats
Main article: Muslim Jats
A Jutt (Jat) Muslim camel-driver from Sind, 1872

When Arabs entered Sindh and other Southern regions of current Pakistan in the seventh century, the chief tribal groupings they found were the Jats and the Med people. These Jats are often referred as Zatts in early Arab writings. The Muslim conquest chronicles further point at the important concentrations of Jats in towns and fortresses of Lower and Central Sindh.[48][49] Today, Muslim Jats are found in Pakistan and India.[50]

Sikh Jats
Main article: Jat Sikh
The Sikh Jat Maharaja of Patiala, 1898

While followers important to Sikh tradition like Baba Buddha were among the earliest significant historical Sikh figures, and significant numbers of conversions occurred as early as the time of Guru Angad (1504–1552),[51] the first large-scale conversions of Jats is commonly held to have begun during the time of Guru Arjan (1563–1606).[51][52]: 265  While touring the countryside of eastern Punjab, he founded several important towns like Tarn Taran Sahib, Kartarpur, and Hargobindpur which functioned as social and economic hubs, and together with the community-funded completion of the Darbar Sahib to house the Guru Granth Sahib and serve as a rallying point and center for Sikh activity, established the beginnings of a self-contained Sikh community, which was especially swelled with the region's Jat peasantry.[51] They formed the vanguard of Sikh resistance against the Mughal Empire from the 18th century onwards.

It has been postulated, though inconclusively, that the increased militarization of the Sikh panth following the martyrdom of Guru Arjan (beginning during the era of Guru Hargobind and continuing after) and its large Jat presence may have reciprocally influenced each other.[53][54]

At least eight of the 12 Sikh Misls (Sikh confederacies) were led by Jat Sikhs,[55] who would form the vast majority of Sikh chiefs.[56]

According to censuses in gazetteers published during the colonial period in the early 20th century, further waves of Jat conversions, from Hinduism to Sikhism, continued during the preceding decades.[57][58] Writing about the Jats of Punjab, the Sikh author Khushwant Singh opined that their attitude never allowed themselves to be absorbed in the Brahminic fold.[59][60] The British played a significant role in the rise of Sikh Jat population by encouraging Hindu Jats to convert to Sikhism so as to get larger number of Sikh recruits for their army.[61][62]

In Punjab, the states of Patiala,[63] Faridkot, Jind, and Nabha[64] were ruled by the Sikh Jats.

Demographics

According to anthropologist Sunil K. Khanna, Jat population is estimated to be around 30 million (or 3 crore) in South Asia in 2010. This estimation is based on statistics of the last caste census and the population growth of the region. The last caste census was conducted in 1931, which estimated Jats to be 8 million, mostly concentrated in India and Pakistan.[65] Deryck O. Lodrick estimates Jat population to be over 33 million (around 12 million and over 21 million in India and Pakistan, respectively) in South Asia in 2009 while noting the unavailability of precise statistics in this regard. His estimation is based on a late 1980s population projection of Jats and the population growth of India and Pakistan. He also notes that some estimates put their total population in South Asia at approximately 43 million in 2009. [66]

Republic of India
Chaudhary Charan Singh, the first Jat Prime Minister of India, accompanied by his wife, on his way to address the nation at the Red Fort, Delhi, Independence Day, 15 August 1979.

In India, multiple 21st-century estimates put Jats' population share at 20–25% in Haryana state and at 20–35% in Punjab state.[67][68][69] In Rajasthan, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh, they constitute around 9%, 5%, and 1.2% respectively of the total population.[70][71][72]

In the 20th century and more recently, Jats have dominated as the political class in Haryana[73] and Punjab.[74] Some Jat people have become notable political leaders, including the sixth Prime Minister of India, Charan Singh[75] and the sixth Deputy Prime Minister of India, Chaudhary Devi Lal.[76]

Consolidation of economic gains and participation in the electoral process are two visible outcomes of the post-independence situation. Through this participation they have been able to significantly influence the politics of North India. Economic differentiation, migration and mobility could be clearly noticed amongst the Jat people.[77]

Jats are classified as Other Backward Class (OBC) in seven of India's thirty-six States and UTs, namely Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.[78] However, only the Jats of Rajasthan – excluding those of Bharatpur district and Dholpur district – are entitled to reservation of central government jobs under the OBC reservation.[79] In 2016, the Jats of Haryana organized massive protests demanding to be classified as OBC in order to obtain such affirmative action benefits.[78]

Pakistan
See also: Jats of Azad Kashmir and Muslim Jat of Punjab

Many Jat Muslim people live in Pakistan and have dominant roles in public life in the Pakistani Punjab and Pakistan in general. Jat communities also exist in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, in Sindh, particularly the Indus delta and among Seraiki-speaking communities in southern Pakistani Punjab, the Kachhi region of Balochistan and the Dera Ismail Khan District of the North West Frontier Province.

In Pakistan also, Jat people have become notable political leaders, like Hina Rabbani Khar.[80]

Culture and society

Military
See also: Jat Regiment
14th Murrays Jat Lancers (Risaldar Major) by AC Lovett (1862–1919).jpg
A contingent of the Jat Regiment of Indian Army, during the Republic day parade

Many Jat people serve in the Indian Army, including the Jat Regiment, Sikh Regiment, Rajputana Rifles and the Grenadiers, where they have won many of the highest military awards for gallantry and bravery. Jat people also serve in the Pakistan Army especially in the Punjab Regiment.[81]

The Jat people were designated by officials of the British Raj as a "martial race", which meant that they were one of the groups whom the British favoured for recruitment to the British Indian Army.[82][83] This was a designation created by administrators that classified each ethnic group as either "martial" or "non-martial": a "martial race" was typically considered brave and well built for fighting,[84] whilst the remainder were those whom the British believed to be unfit for battle because of their sedentary lifestyles.[85] However, the martial races were also considered politically subservient, intellectually inferior, lacking the initiative or leadership qualities to command large military formations. The British had a policy of recruiting the martial Indians from those who has less access to education as they were easier to control.[86][87] According to modern historian Jeffrey Greenhunt on military history, "The Martial Race theory had an elegant symmetry. Indians who were intelligent and educated were defined as cowards, while those defined as brave were uneducated and backward". According to Amiya Samanta, the martial race was chosen from people of mercenary spirit (a soldier who fights for any group or country that will pay him/her), as these groups lacked nationalism as a trait.[88] The Jats participated in both World War I and World War II, as a part of the British Indian Army.[89] In the period subsequent to 1881, when the British reversed their prior anti-Sikh policies, it was necessary to profess Sikhism in order to be recruited to the army because the administration believed Hindus to be inferior for military purposes.[90]

The Indian Army admitted in 2013 that the 150-strong Presidential Bodyguard comprises only people who are Hindu Jats, Jat Sikhs and Hindu Rajputs. Refuting claims of discrimination, it said that this was for "functional" reasons rather than selection based on caste or religion.[91]

Religious beliefs
See also: Jat Sikh and Jat Muslim

Deryck O. Lodrick estimates religion-wise break-up of Jats as follows: 47% Hindus, 33% Muslims, and 20% Sikhs.[66]

Jats pray to their dead ancestors, a practice which is called Jathera.[92]

Varna status

There are conflicting scholarly views regarding the varna status of Jats in Hinduism. Historian Satish Chandra describes the varna of Jats as "ambivalent" during the medieval era.[93] Historian Irfan Habib states that the Jats were a "pastoral Chandala-like tribe" in Sindh during the eighth century. Their 11th-century status of Shudra varna changed to Vaishya varna by the 17th century, with some of them aspiring to improve it further after their 17th-century rebellion against the Mughals. He cites Al-Biruni and Dabestan-e Mazaheb to support the claims of Shudra and Vashiya varna respectively.[94]

The Rajputs refused to accept Jat claims to Kshatriya status during the later years of the British Raj and this disagreement frequently resulted in violent incidents between the two communities.[95] The claim at that time of Kshatriya status was being made by the Arya Samaj, which was popular in the Jat community. The Arya Samaj saw it as a means to counter the colonial belief that the Jats were not of Aryan descent but of Indo-Scythian origin.[96]

Female infanticide and status of woman in society

During the colonial period, many communities including Hindu Jats were found to be practicing female infanticide in different regions of Northern India.[97][98]

A 1988 study of Jat society pointed out that differential treatment is given to women in comparison to men. The birth of a male child in a family is celebrated and is considered auspicious, while the reaction to the birth of a female child is more subdued. In villages, female members are supposed to get married at a younger age and they are expected to work in fields as subordinate to the male members. There is general bias against education for the female child in society, though trends are changing with urbanisation. Purdah system is practiced by women in Jat villages which act as hindrance to their overall emancipation. The village Jat councils which are male-dominated mostly don't allow female members to head their councils as the common opinion on it is that women are inferior, incapable and less intelligent to men.[99]

Clan system

The Jat people are subdivided into numerous clans, some of which overlap with the Ror,[100] Arain,[101] Rajput[102] and other groups.[103] Hindu and Sikh Jats practice clan exogamy.

List of clans

Jats are part of Punjabi and Haryanvi culture and are often portrayed in Indian and Pakistani films and songs.

Notable people
Main article: List of Jat people

See also

Footnotes
  1. "Glossary: Jat: title of north India's major non-elite 'peasant' caste."[4]
  2. "... in the middle decades of the (nineteenth) century, there were two contrasting trends in India's agrarian regions. Previously marginal areas took off as zones of newly profitable 'peasant' agriculture, disadvantaging non-elite tilling groups, who were known by such titles as Jat in western NWP and Gounder in Coimatore."[5]
  3. "In the later nineteenth century, this thinking led colonial officials to try to protect Sikh Jats and other non-elite 'peasants' whom they now favoured as military recruits by advocating legislation under the so-called land alienation."[6]
  4. "Glossary: Jat: title of north India's major non-elite 'peasant' caste."[4]
  5. "... in the middle decades of the (nineteenth) century, there were two contrasting trends in India's agrarian regions. Previously marginal areas took off as zones of newly profitable land-owning agriculture, disadvantaging non-elite tilling groups, who were known by such titles as Jat in western NWP and Gounder in Coimatore."[5]
  6. "In the later nineteenth century, this thinking led colonial officials to try to protect Sikh Jats and other non-elite 'peasants' whom they now favoured as military recruits by advocating legislation under the so-called land alienation."[6]
  7. According to Susan Bayly, "... (North India) contained large numbers of non-elite tillers. In the Punjab and the western Gangetic Plains, convention defined the Rajput's non-elite counterpart as a Jat. Like many similar titles used elsewhere, this was not so much a caste name as a broad designation for the man of substance in rural terrain. … To be called Jat has in some regions implied a background of pastoralism, though it has more commonly been a designation of non-servile cultivating people."[23]

References
  1. Khanna, Sunil K. (2004). "Jat". In Ember, Carol R.; Ember, Melvin (eds.). Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology: Health and Illness in the World's Cultures. Vol. 2. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. p. 777. ISBN 978-0-306-47754-6. Notwithstanding social, linguistic, and religious diversity, the Jats are one of the major landowning agriculturalist communities in South Asia.
  2. Nesbitt, Eleanor (2016). Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-19-874557-0. Jat: Sikhs' largest zat, a hereditary land-owning community
  3. Gould, Harold A. (2006) [2005]. "Glossary". Sikhs, Swamis, Students and Spies: The India Lobby in the United States, 1900–1946. SAGE Publications. p. 439. ISBN 978-0-7619-3480-6. Jat: name of large agricultural caste centered in the undivided Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh
  4. Bayly, Susan (2001). Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age. Cambridge University Press. p. 385. ISBN 978-0-521-79842-6. Retrieved 15 October 2011.
  5. Bayly, Susan (2001). Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age. Cambridge University Press. p. 201. ISBN 978-0-521-79842-6. Retrieved 15 October 2011.
  6. Bayly, Susan (2001). Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age. Cambridge University Press. p. 212. ISBN 978-0-521-79842-6. Retrieved 15 October 2011.
  7. Asher, Catherine Ella Blanshard; Talbot, Cynthia (2006). India before Europe. Cambridge University Press. p. 269. ISBN 978-0-521-80904-7. Retrieved 29 October 2011.
  8. Khazanov, Anatoly M.; Wink, Andre (2012), Nomads in the Sedentary World, Routledge, p. 177, ISBN 978-1-136-12194-4, retrieved 15 August 2013 Quote: "Hiuen Tsang gave the following account of a numerous pastoral-nomadic population in seventh-century Sin-ti (Sind): 'By the side of the river..[of Sind], along the flat marshy lowlands for some thousand li, there are several hundreds of thousands [a very great many] families ..[which] give themselves exclusively to tending cattle and from this derive their livelihood. They have no masters, and whether men or women, have neither rich nor poor.' While they were left unnamed by the Chinese pilgrim, these same people of lower Sind were called Jats' or 'Jats of the wastes' by the Arab geographers. The Jats, as 'dromedary men.' were one of the chief pastoral-nomadic divisions at that time, with numerous subdivisions, ....
  9. Wink, André (2004), Indo-Islamic society: 14th – 15th centuries, BRILL, pp. 92–93, ISBN 978-90-04-13561-1, retrieved 15 August 2013 Quote: "In Sind, the breeding and grazing of sheep and buffaloes was the regular occupations of pastoral nomads in the lower country of the south, while the breeding of goats and camels was the dominant activity in the regions immediately to the east of the Kirthar range and between Multan and Mansura. The jats were one of the chief pastoral-nomadic divisions here in early-medieval times, and although some of these migrated as far as Iraq, they generally did not move over very long distances on a regular basis. Many jats migrated to the north, into the Panjab, and here, between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, the once largely pastoral-nomadic Jat population was transformed into sedentary peasants. Some Jats continued to live in the thinly populated barr country between the five rivers of the Panjab, adopting a kind of transhumance, based on the herding of goats and camels. It seems that what happened to the jats is paradigmatic of most other pastoral and pastoral-nomadic populations in India in the sense that they became ever more closed in by an expanding sedentary-agricultural realm."
  10. Catherine Ella Blanshard Asher; Cynthia Talbot (2006). India before Europe. Cambridge University Press. p. 265. ISBN 978-0-521-80904-7.
  11. R. C. Majumdar, H.C. Raychaudhari, Kalikinkar Datta: An Advanced History of India, 2006, p.490
  12. The Gazetteer of India: History and culture. Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, India. 1973. p. 348. OCLC 186583361.
  13. Karine Schomer and W. H. McLeod, ed. (1987). The Sants: studies in a devotional tradition of India. Motilal Banarsidass Publ. p. 242. ISBN 978-81-208-0277-3.
  14. Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas (1962). Caste in modern India: and other essays. Asia Pub. House. p. 90. OCLC 185987598.
  15. Sheel Chand Nuna (1 January 1989). Spatial fragmentation of political behaviour in India: a geographical perspective on parliamentary elections. Concept Publishing Company. pp. 61–. ISBN 978-81-7022-285-9. Retrieved 20 January 2012.
  16. Lloyd I. Rudolph; Susanne Hoeber Rudolph (1984). The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India. University of Chicago Press. pp. 86–. ISBN 978-0-226-73137-7. Retrieved 20 January 2012.
  17. Carol R. Ember; Melvin Ember, eds. (2004). Encyclopedia of medical anthropology. Springer. p. 778. ISBN 978-0-306-47754-6.
  18. Sunil K. Khanna (2009). Fetal/fatal knowledge: new reproductive technologies and family-building strategies in India. Cengage Learning. p. 18. ISBN 978-0-495-09525-5.
  19. Oldenburg, Veena Talwar (2002). Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime. Oxford University Press. p. 232. ISBN 978-0-19-515071-1. The Jats, who are numerically dominant in central and eastern Punjab, can be Hindu, Sikh, or Muslim; they range from powerful landowners to poor subsistence farmers, and were recruited in large numbers to serve in the British army.
  20. Alavi, Seema (2002). The eighteenth century in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. p. 67. ISBN 0-19-565640-7. OCLC 50783542. The Jat power neat Agra and Mathura arose out of the rebellion of peasants under zamindar leadership, attaining the apex of power under Suraj Mal...it seems to have been an extensive replacement of Rajput by Jat zamindars...and the 'warlike Jats' (a peasant and zamindar caste).
  21. Judge, Paramjit (2014). Mapping social exclusion in India: caste, religion and borderlands. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 112. ISBN 978-1-107-05609-1. OCLC 880877884.
  22. Stokes, Eric (1978). The peasant and the Raj: studies in agrarian society and peasant rebellion in colonial India. Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 185. ISBN 978-0-521-29770-7. OCLC 889813954. n the Ganges Canal Tract of the Muzaffarnagar district where the landowning castes – Tagas , Jats , Rajputs , Sayyids , Sheikhs , Gujars , Borahs
  23. Bayly, Susan (2001). Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age. Cambridge University Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-0-521-79842-6. Retrieved 15 October 2011.
  24. Khan, Zahoor Ali (1997). "ZAMINDARI CASTE CONFIGURATION IN THE PUNJAB, c.1595 — MAPPING THE DATA IN THE". Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. 58: 336. ISSN 2249-1937. JSTOR 44143925. The number of parganas with Jat zamindaris (Map 2) is surprisingly large and well spread out, though there are none beyond the Jhelum. They appear to be in two blocks, divided by a sparse zone between the Sutlej and the Sarasvati basin. The two blocks, in fact, represent two different segments of the Jats, the western one (Panjab) known as Jat (with short vowel) and the other (Haryanvi) as Jaat (with long vowel).
  25. Ramaswamy, Vijaya (2016). Migrations in Medieval and Early Colonial India. London: Taylor and Francis. p. 59. ISBN 978-1-351-55825-9. OCLC 993781016. Out of the 45 parganas of the sarkars of Delhi, 17 are reported to have Jat Zamindars. Out of these 17 parganas, the Jats are exclusively found in 11, whereas in other 6 they shared Zamindari rights with other communities.
  26. Dhavan, Purnima (2011). When sparrows became hawks: the making of the Sikh warrior tradition, 1699-1799. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-19-975655-1. OCLC 695560144. Muzaffar Alam's study of the akhbarat (news reports) and chronicles of the period demonstrates that Banda and his followers had wide support amongst the Jat zamindars of the Majha, Jalandhar Doab, and the Malwa area. Jat zamindars actively colluded with the rebels, and frustrated the Mughal faujdars or commanders of the area by supplying Banda and his men with grain, horses, arms, and provisions. This evidence suggests that understanding the rebellion as a competition between peasants and feudal lords is an oversimplification, since the groups affiliated with Banda as well as those affiliated with the state included both Zamindars and peasants.
  27. Alam, Muzaffar (1978). "Sikh Uprisings Under Banda Bahadur 1708-1715". Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. 39: 509–522. ISSN 2249-1937. JSTOR 44139389. Banda led predominantly the uprisings of the Jat zamindars.It is also to be noted that tha Jats were the dominant zamindar castes in some of the parganas where Banda had support. But Banda's spectacular success and the amazing increase in the strength of his army within a few months*6 does not cohere with the presence of a few Jat zamindaris…we can, however presume that the unidentified zamindars of our sources who rallied behind Banda were the small zamindars (mah'ks) and the Mughal assessees (malguzars). It is not without significance that they are almost invariably described as the zamindars of village (mauza and dehat). These zamindars were largely the Jats who had settled in the region for the last three or four centuries.
  28. Syan, H.S. (2013). Sikh Militancy in the Seventeenth Century: Religious Violence in Mughal and Early Modern India. I.B. Tauris. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-7556-2370-9. Retrieved 2 August 2022. Guru Nanak's father- in-law, Mula Chonha, works as an administrator for the Jat landlord,Ajita Randawa. If we expand this train of thought and examine other Janamsakhi figures we can detect an interesting pattern…All of Nanak's immediate relatives were professional administrators for local or regional lords, including Jat masters. From this we can infer that Khatris did seem to occupy a position as a professional class and some Jats held the position of being landlords. There was clearly a professional services relationship between high-ranking Khatris and high-ranking Jats, and this seems indicative of the wider socio- economic relationship between Khatris and Jats in medieval Panjab.
  29. Mayaram, Shail (2003), Against history, against state: counterperspectives from the margins, Columbia University Press, p. 19, ISBN 978-0-231-12730-1, retrieved 12 November 2011
  30. Jackson, Peter (2003), The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History, Cambridge University Press, p. 15, ISBN 978-0-521-54329-3, retrieved 13 November 2011 Quote: "... Nor can the liberation that the Muslim conquerors offered to those who sought to escape from the caste system be taken for granted. … a caliphal governor of Sind in the late 830s is said to have … (continued the previous Hindu requirement that) … the Jats, when walking out of doors in future, to be accompanied by a dog. The fact that the dog is an unclean animal to both Hindu and Muslim made it easy for the Muslim conquerors to retain the status quo regarding a low-caste tribe. In other words, the new regime in the eighth and ninth centuries did not abrogate discriminatory regulations dating from a period of Hindu sovereignty; rather, it maintained them. (page 15)"
  31. Grewal, J. S. (1998), The Sikhs of the Punjab, Cambridge University Press, p. 5, ISBN 978-0-521-63764-0, retrieved 12 November 2011 Quote: "... the most numerous of the agricultural tribes (in the Punjab) were the Jats. They had come from Sindh and Rajasthan along the river valleys, moving up, displacing the Gujjars and the Rajputs to occupy culturable lands. (page 5)"
  32. Ludden, David E. (1999), An agrarian history of South Asia, Cambridge University Press, p. 117, ISBN 978-0-521-36424-9, retrieved 12 November 2011 Quote: "The flatlands in the upper Punjab doabs do not seem to have been heavily farmed in the first millennium. … Early-medieval dry farming developed in Sindh, around Multan, and in Rajasthan… From here, Jat farmers seem to have moved into the upper Punjab doabs and into the western Ganga basin in the first half of the second millennium. (page 117)"
  33. Ansari, Sarah F. D. (1992). Sufi saints and state power: the pirs of Sind, 1843–1947. Cambridge University Press. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-521-40530-0. Retrieved 30 October 2011. Quote: "Between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, groups of nomadic pastoralists known as Jats, having worked their way northwards from Sind, settled in the Panjab as peasant agriculturalists and, largely on account of the introduction of the Persian wheel, transformed much of western Panjab into a rich producer of food crops. (page 27)"
  34. Mayaram, Shail (2003), Against history, against state: counterperspectives from the margins, Columbia University Press, p. 33, ISBN 978-0-231-12730-1, retrieved 12 November 2011
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  44. Avari, Burjor (2013). Islamic Civilization in South Asia: A History of Muslim Power and Presence in the Indian Subcontinent. Routledge. p. 131. ISBN 978-0-41558-061-8.
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  48. Wink, André (2002). Al-Hind, The Making of the Indo-Islamic World: Early Medieval India and the Expansion of Islam, 7th-11th Centuries. Vol. 1. Boston: Brill. pp. 154–160. ISBN 9780391041738. OCLC 48837811.
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  50. Singha, Bhagata (2001). Canadian Sikhs Through a Century, 1897-1997. Gyan Sagar Publications. p. 418. ISBN 9788176850759. Quote: "Most of the Muslim Jats are in Pakistan and some of them are in India as well."
  51. Mandair, Arvind-pal Singh (2013). Sikhism: A Guide for the Perplexed (illustrated ed.). London, U.K.: A&C Black. pp. 36–42. ISBN 9781441102317.: 42 
  52. Singh, Jagjit (1981). The Sikh Revolution: A Perspective View. New Delhi: Bahri Publications. ISBN 9788170340416.
  53. McLeod, W. H. Who is a Sikh?: the problem of Sikh identity. The Jats have long been distinguished by their martial traditions and by the custom of retaining their hair uncut. The influence of these traditions evidently operated prior to the formal inauguration of the Khalsa.
  54. Singh 1981, pp. 190, 265.
  55. Dhavan, Purnima (3 November 2011). When Sparrows Became Hawks: The Making of the Sikh Warrior Tradition, 1699–1799. Oxford University Press, USA. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-19-975655-1.
  56. Dhavan, Purnima (2011). When Sparrows Became Hawks: The Making of the Sikh Warrior Tradition, 1699–1799 (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 63. ISBN 978-0199756551. Retrieved 5 November 2018.
  57. The transformation of Sikh society — Page 92 by Ethne K. Marenco - The gazetteer also describes the relation of the Jat Sikhs to the Jat Hindus ... to 2019 in 1911 is attributed to the conversion of Jat Hindus to Sikhism. ...
  58. Social philosophy and social transformation of Sikhs by R. N. Singh (Ph. D.) Page 130 - The decrease of Jat Hindus from 16843 in 1881 to 2019 in 1911 is attributed to the conversion of Jat Hindus to Sikhism. ...
  59. Singh, Khushwant (2004). A History of the Sikhs: 1469–1838 (2, illustrated ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 15. ISBN 0-19-567308-5. OCLC 438966317. The Jat's spirit of freedom and equality refused to submit to Brahmanical Hinduism and in its turn drew the censure of the privileged Brahmins ... The upper caste Hindu's denigration of the Jat did not in the least lower the Jat in his own eyes nor elevate the Brahmin or the Kshatriya in the Jat's estimation. On the contrary, he assumed a somewhat condescending attitude towards the Brahmin, whom he considered little more than a soothsayer or a beggar, or the Kshatriya, who disdained earning an honest living and was proud of being a mercenary.
  60. Singh, Khushwant (2000). Not a Nice Man to know: The Best of Khushwant Singh. Penguin Books. ISBN 9789351182788.
  61. Heather Streets (2004). Martial Races : The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857-1914. Manchester University Press. p. 174. ISBN 0719069629. Others were even more candid about the necessity-and feasibility -of 'creating' Sikhs for the army. One contributor to the Indian Army's Journal of the United Services Institute of India proposed a scheme that would change Hindus to Sikhs for the specific purpose of recruitment. To do this, the Sikh recruiting grounds would be extended and Hindu Jats encouraged to take the pahul (the conversion ritual to martial Sikhism)'. He went on to say that these latter might not be as good stuff as that procurable from the present Sikh centres but they would, if of good physique, compare favourably (as regards field service qualifications) with the weedy specimens sometimes enlisted'. In this officer's view, then, the army could 'encourage' Hindus to become Sikhs simply to increase their overall numbers.
  62. Kaushik Roy (2015). Harsh V. Pant (ed.). Handbook of Indian Defence Policy. Taylor & Francis. p. 71. ISBN 978-1317380092. The British policy of recruiting the Sikhs (due to the imperial belief that Sikhism is a martial religion) resulted in the spread of Sikhism among the Jats of undivided Punjab and conversion of the Singhs into the 'Lions of Punjab'.
  63. Hughes, Julie E. (2013). Animal Kingdoms (illustrated ed.). Harvard University Press. p. 237. ISBN 978-0674074781. While the rulers of Patiala were Jat Sikhs and not Rajputs, the state was the closest princely territory to Bikaner's northwest.
  64. Bates, Crispin (2013). Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on the Indian Uprising of 1857: Volume I: Anticipations and Experiences in the Locality. India: SAGE Publishing. p. 176. ISBN 978-8132115892. The passage to Delhi, however, lay through the cis–Sutlej states of Patiala, Jind, Nabha and Faridkot, a long chain of Jat Sikh states that had entered into a treaty of alliance with the British as far back as April 1809 to escape incorporation into the kingdom of their illustrious and much more powerful neighbour, 'the lion of Punjab' Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
  65. Khanna, Sunil K. (2010). Fetal/Fatal Knowledge: New Reproductive Technologies and Family-Building Strategies in India. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. p. 18. ISBN 978-0495095255. Retrieved 30 January 2020.
  66. Lodrick, Deryck O. (2009). "JATS". In Gallagher, Timothy L.; Hobby, Jeneen (eds.). Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life. Volume 3: Asia & Oceania (2nd ed.). Gale. pp. 418–419. ISBN 978-1414448916. Retrieved 30 January 2020.
  67. Meena, Sohan Lal (October–December 2006). Sharma, Sanjeev Kumar (ed.). "Dynamics of State Politics in India". The Indian Journal of Political Science. International Political Science Association. 67 (4): 712. ISSN 0019-5510. JSTOR 41856253. Retrieved 30 January 2020.
  68. Sidhu, Aman; Jaijee, Inderjit Singh (2011). Debt and Death in Rural India: The Punjab Story. SAGE Publications. p. 32. ISBN 978-8132106531. Retrieved 30 January 2020.
  69. Jodhka, Surinder S. (2003). "Contemporary Punjab: A Brief Introduction". In Gill, Manmohan Singh (ed.). Punjab Society: Perspectives and Challenges. Concept Publishing Company. p. 12. ISBN 978-8180690389. Retrieved 30 January 2020.
  70. Jaffrelot, Christophe (2003). India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India. C. Hurst & Co. pp. 69, 281. ISBN 978-1850656708. Retrieved 30 January 2020.
  71. Robin, Cyril (2009). "Bihar: The New Stronghold of OBC Politics". In Jaffrelot, Christophe; Kumar, Sanjay (eds.). Rise of the Plebeians?: The Changing Face of the Indian Legislative Assemblies. Routledge. p. 66. ISBN 978-0415460927. Retrieved 30 January 2020.
  72. Kumar, Sanjay (2013). Changing Electoral Politics in Delhi: From Caste to Class. SAGE Publications. p. 43. ISBN 978-8132113744. Retrieved 30 January 2020.
  73. Shah, Ghanshyam (2004). Caste and Democratic Politics in India. ISBN 9788178240954.
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  77. K L Sharma:The Jats — Their Role and Contribution to the Socio-Economic Life and Polity of North and North West India, Vol.I, 2004. Ed. by Vir Singh, page 14
  78. Saubhadra Chatterji (22 February 2016). "History repeats itself as yet another Central govt faces a Jat stir". Hindustan Times.
  79. "Rajasthan was first state to extend OBC benefits to Jats in 1999". The Times of India. 23 February 2016. Retrieved 15 March 2016.
  80. "Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar". First Post (India). Archived from the original on 19 October 2013. Retrieved 11 May 2013. Hina Rabbani Khar was born on 19 November 1977 in Multan, Punjab, Pakistan in a Muslim Jat family.
  81. Ian Sumner (2001). The Indian Army 1914–1947. London: Osprey. pp. 104–105. ISBN 1-84176-196-6.
  82. Pati, Budheswar (1996). India And The First World War. Atlantic Publishers. p. 62. ISBN 9788171565818.
  83. Britten, Thomas A. (1997). American Indians in World War I: At Home and at War (illustrated, reprint ed.). University of New Mexico Press. p. 128. ISBN 0-8263-2090-2. The Rajputs, Jats, Dogras, Pathans, Gorkhas, and Sikhs, for example, were considered martial races. Consequently, the British labored to ensure that members of the so-called martial castes dominated the ranks of infantry and cavalry and placed them in special "class regiments."
  84. Rand, Gavin (March 2006). "Martial Races and Imperial Subjects: Violence and Governance in Colonial India 1857–1914". European Review of History. 13 (1): 1–20. doi:10.1080/13507480600586726. S2CID 144987021.
  85. Streets, Heather (2004). Martial Races: The military, race and masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857–1914. Manchester University Press. p. 241. ISBN 978-0-7190-6962-8. Retrieved 20 October 2010.
  86. Omar Khalidi (2003). Khaki and the Ethnic Violence in India: Army, Police, and Paramilitary Forces During Communal Riots. Three Essays Collective. p. 5. ISBN 9788188789092. Apart from their physique , the martial races were regarded as politically subservient or docile to authority
  87. Philippa Levine (2003). Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire. Psychology Press. pp. 284–285. ISBN 978-0-415-94447-2. The Saturday review had made much the same argument a few years earlier in relation to the armies raised by Indian rulers in princely states. They lacked competent leadership and were uneven in quality. Commander in chief Roberts, one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the martial race theory, though poorly of the native troops as a body. Many regarded such troops as childish and simple. The British, claims, David Omissi, believe martial Indians to be stupid. Certainly, the policy of recruiting among those without access to much education gave the British more semblance of control over their recruits.
  88. Amiya K. Samanta (2000). Gorkhaland Movement: A Study in Ethnic Separatism. APH Publishing. pp. 26–. ISBN 978-81-7648-166-3. Dr . Jeffrey Greenhunt has observed that " The Martial Race Theory had an elegant symmetry. Indians who were intelligent and educated were defined as cowards, while those defined as brave were uneducated and backward. Besides their mercenary spirit was primarily due to their lack of nationalism.
  89. Ashley Jackson (2005). The British Empire and the Second World War. Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 121–122. ISBN 1-85285-417-0.
  90. Van Der Veer, Peter (1994). Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India. University of California Press. pp. 55–56. ISBN 978-0-520-08256-4.
  91. "Prez Bodyguards Only for Rajput, Jats and Sikhs: Army". Outlookindia.com. 2 October 2013.
  92. Jhutti, Sundeep S. (2003). The Getes. Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania. OCLC 56397976. The Jats of the Panjab worship their ancestors in a practice known as Jathera.
  93. Chandra, Satish (1973). "Social Background to the Rise of the Maratha Movement during the 17th Century in India". Indian Economic and Social History Review. SAGE Publications. 10 (3): 214–215. doi:10.1177/001946467301000301. S2CID 144887395. The Marathas formed the fighting class in Maharashtra and also engaged themselves in agriculture. Like the Jats in north India, their position in the varna system was ambivalent.
  94. Habib, Irfan (2002). Essays in Indian History: Towards a Marxist Perception. Anthem Press. p. 175. ISBN 978-1843310259. Retrieved 29 March 2020. A historically singular case is that of the Jatts, a pastoral Chandala-like tribe in eighth-century Sind, who attained sudra status by the eleventh century (Alberuni), and had become peasants par excellence (of vaisya status) by the seventeenth century (Dabistani-i Mazahib). The shift to peasant agriculture was probably accompanied by a process of 'sanskritization', a process which continued, when, with the Jat rebellion of the seventeenth century a section of the Jats began to aspire to the position of zamindars and the status of Rajputs.
  95. Stern, Robert W. (1988). The Cat and the Lion: Jaipur State in the British Raj. Leiden: BRILL. p. 287. ISBN 9789004082830.
  96. Jaffrelot, Christophe (2010). Religion, Caste & Politics in India. Primus Books. p. 431. ISBN 9789380607047.
  97. Vishwanath, L. S. (2004). "Female Infanticide: The Colonial Experience". Economic and Political Weekly. 39 (22): 2313–2318. ISSN 0012-9976. JSTOR 4415098. The 1921 census reports classifies castes into two categories, namely, castes. having a tradition' of female infanticide and castes without such a tradition (see table). This census provides figures from 1901 to 1921 to show that in Punjab, United Provinces and Rajputana castes such as Hindu rajputs, Hindu jats and gujars with 'a tradition' of female infanticide had a much lower number of females per thousand males compared to castes without such a tradition which included: Muslim rajputs, Muslim jats, chamar, kanet, arain, kumhar, kurmi, brahmin, dhobi, teli and lodha
  98. VISHWANATH, L. S. (1994). "Towards a Conceptual Understanding of Female Infanticide and Neglect in Colonial India". Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. 55: 606–613. ISSN 2249-1937. JSTOR 44143417. By 1850, several castes, in North India, the Jats, Ahirs, Gujars and Khutris, and the Lewa Patidar Kanbis in Central Gujarat were found to practice female infanticide. The colonial authorities also found that both in rural North and West India, the castes which practised female infanticide were propertied (they owned substantial arable land), had the hypergamous marriage norm and paid large dowries.
  99. Mann, Kamlesh (1988). "Status Portrait of Jat Woman". Indian Anthropologist. 18 (1): 51–67. ISSN 0970-0927. JSTOR 41919573.
  100. Singh, Kumar Suresh (1992). People of India: Haryana. Anthropological Survey of India. p. 425. ISBN 978-81-7304-091-7. Ror clans: Sangwan, Dhiya, Malik, Lather, etc, are also found among the Jats. From an economic point of view the Rors living in Karnal and Kurukshetra districts consider themselves better off than their counterparts in Jind and Sonepat districts.
  101. Ahmed, Mukhtar (18 April 2016). The Arains: A Historical Perspective. Createspace. p. 95. ISBN 978-1-5327-8117-9. Some clans of the Arains which is also shared by Rajputs and the Jats. Bhutto is another variant of Bhutta. Some important Arian clans overlap with the Rajputs, for instance: Sirohsa, Ganja, Shaun, Bhatti, Butto, Chachar, Indrai, Joiya...
  102. Ahmed, Mukhtar (18 April 2016). The Arains: A Historical Perspective. Createspace. p. 95. ISBN 978-1-5327-8117-9. Some clans of the Arains which is also shared by Rajputs and the Jats. Bhutto is another variant of Bhutta. Some important Arian clans overlap with the Rajputs, for instance: Sirohsa, Ganja, Shaun, Bhatti, Butto, Chachar, Indrai, Joiya...
  103. Marshall, J. A. (1960). Guide to Taxila. Cambridge University Press. p. 24.
  104. Webster, John C. B. (22 December 2018). A Social History of Christianity: North-west India since 1800. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-909757-9.

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