4. The position of the Jāt in the Punjab.
“The Jāt is in every respect the most important of the Punjab peoples. In point of numbers he surpasses the Rājpūt, who comes next to him, in the proportion of nearly three to one; while the two together constitute twenty-seven per cent of the whole population of the Province. Politically he ruled the Punjab till the Khālsa yielded to our arms. Ethnologically he is the peculiar and most prominent product of the plain of the five rivers. And from an economical and administrative point of view he is the husbandman, the peasant, the revenue-payer par excellence of the Province. His manners do not bear the impress of generations of wild freedom which marks the races of our frontier mountains. But he is more honest, more industrious, more sturdy, and no less manly than they. Sturdy independence indeed and patient, vigorous labour are his strongest characteristics. The Jāt is of all Punjab races the most impatient of tribal or communal control, and the one which asserts the freedom of the individual most strongly. In tracts where, as in Rohtak, the Jāt tribes have the field to themselves, and are compelled, in default of rival castes as enemies, to fall back upon each other for somebody to quarrel with, the tribal ties are strong. But as a rule a Jāt is a man who does what seems right in his own eyes and sometimes what seems wrong also, and will not be said nay by any man. I do not mean, however, that he is turbulent; as a rule he is very far from being so. He is independent and he is self-willed; but he is reasonable, peaceably inclined if left alone, and not difficult to manage. 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. As usual the proverbial wisdom of the villages describes him very fairly though perhaps somewhat too severely: ‘The soil, fodder, clothes, hemp, grass-fibre, and silk, these six are best beaten; and the seventh is the Jāt.’ ‘A Jāt, a Bhāt, a caterpillar, and a widow woman; these four are best hungry. If they eat their fill they do harm.’ ‘The Jāt, like a wound, is better when bound.’ In agriculture the Jāt is pre-eminent. The market-gardening castes, the Arāin, the Māli, the Saini are perhaps more skilful cultivators on a small scale; but they cannot rival the Jāt as landowners and yeoman cultivators. The Jāt calls himself zamīndār or ‘husbandman’ as often as Jāt, and his women and children alike work with him in the fields: ‘The Jāt’s baby has a plough-handle for a plaything.’ ‘The Jāt stood on his corn heap and said to the king’s elephant-drivers, Will you sell those little donkeys?’ Socially the Jāt occupies a position which is shared by the Ror, the Gūjar, and the Ahīr, all four eating and smoking together. He is, of course, far below the Rājpūt, from the simple fact that he practises widow-marriage. The Jāt father is made to say in the rhyming proverbs of the countryside, ‘Come, my daughter, and be married; if this husband dies there are plenty more.’ But among the widow-marrying castes he stands first. The Bania with his sacred thread, his strict Hinduism, and his twice-born standing, looks down on the Jāt as a Sūdra. But the Jāt looks down upon the Bania as a cowardly, spiritless money-grubber, and society in general agrees with the Jāt. The Khatri, who is far superior to the Bania in manliness and vigour, probably takes precedence of the Jāt. But among the races or tribes of purely Hindu origin, I think that the Jāt stands next after the Brāhman, the Rājpūt, and the Khatri.”