South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic
Journal
21 | 2019
Representations of the “Rural” in India from the
Colonial to the Post-Colonial
The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land
Control in an Agrarian Frontier
Girija Joshi
Electronic version
URL: http://journals.openedition.org/samaj/5638
ISSN: 1960-6060
Publisher
Association pour la recherche sur l'Asie du Sud (ARAS)
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The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier
The Politics of Lineage: Caste,
Kinship and Land Control in an
Agrarian Frontier
Girija Joshi
1
The study of rural India is as old as the study of Indian society itself. 1 Over the past halfcentury, perhaps no concept within South Asian rural history has been more criticized
and more frequently revised than that of the “eternal village.” This might be summarized
as the view that Indian rural communities have historically been timeless, self-contained
units, whose cohesion was preserved over the centuries by rigid (religious) traditions
(Srinivas and Shah 1960:1375). Once the dominant trope of rural life in the subcontinent,
some fifty years of scholarship have progressively chipped away at much of its
foundations. The avenues of criticism chosen by scholars have varied. Some have
highlighted the enmeshment of villages in the subcontinent in wider circuits of trade and
exchange (for instance, Bayly [1983] 2012; Yang 1998). Others have foregrounded the
diverse modes of subsistence and ways of life that constituted the rural in pre-modern
South Asia (for instance, Ludden 1994; Bhattacharya 1996; Parasher-Sen 1998; Skaria 1998;
Guha 1999; Mayaram 2003). Whether through explicit engagement or by implication, each
of these contributions has shown that rather than corresponding to a single, stable type
that might be conveniently designated “the Indian village,” rural communities in the
subcontinent have historically encompassed an impressive diversity of social, economic
and political structures.
2
A third avenue of investigation has been to take a critical look at the social and cultural
institutions that were once presumed to have served as the gatekeepers of the village
community, to explore just how stable these in fact were. This approach has reaped rich
analytical gains, bringing into relief the untenability of what might be termed a
“tradition-centric” approach to the sociology of the South Asian countryside. Whereas
within the “eternal village” paradigm, the social, political and economic life of rural
communities is organized in accordance with supposedly timeless principles, a firmer
grounding in historical context problematizes the very notion of “tradition.” The case of
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The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier
caste is exemplary of this tendency. Thus, while scholarship from the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries was apt to treat caste as a coherent institution founded upon
distinct and timeless principles,2 a vast body of scholarship has undermined this
conclusion. Far from conforming to any single definition, the historical manifestations of
caste appear to be as varied as rural South Asia itself.
3
The diversity and mutability of caste notwithstanding, it has proved difficult to do away
with concept entirely (Jodhka 2012), and there is an abundance of historically grounded
theoretical scholarship on the subject. At the risk of very considerable simplification, one
might divide this literature into three broad approaches. The first of these identifies caste
with particular sets of values (for instance, Dumont [1970] 1980; Das [1977] 1990;
Bayly 1999). Although the simple ideological tension between purity and pollution, which
Louis Dumont ([1970] 1980:46–61) proposed was the driving principle of caste
stratification, is no longer generally accepted as such, it remains common for caste to be
defined in terms of ideas (Guha 2013:2). The history of caste is therefore the history of the
growing influence of those who profit from its values. Perhaps the best-known example
of this approach is Susan Bayly’s careful and nuanced classic study (1999), in which she
treats the development of caste as an historical process, that is bound up with indigenous
and colonial state formation.
4
The second approach divides the development of caste in South Asia into two periods,
before and after colonialism. The Raj is treated as a watershed, during which caste was
effectively stripped of the largely political role it had previously played, and instead
assigned a purely social and religious meaning. As a colonial “technology of power”
(Cohn and Dirks 1988; Dirks 2001:17)—a way for the state to order, other and understand
South Asian society—it was lent a false homogeneity, and in this new avatar became a
recurrent theme in both the study and governance of the subcontinent. This discursive
dominance in turn reshaped reality in its image, such that a simplified, neo-traditional
caste subsequently became “inscribed in ritual, familial, communal, socioeconomic,
political, and public theaters of quotidian life” (Dirks 2001:15). Clearly the
aforementioned approaches differ in the importance they assign to colonial rule in the
historical trajectory of caste. Nonetheless, what they share in common is their treatment
of caste as a discourse, sustained by certain techniques of information gathering and
organization (Peabody 2001; Dirks 2001).
5
A third broad approach to the study of caste concentrates not primarily upon its
discursive aspect, but rather upon the mechanism of stratification and its political and
economic determinants. This approach is by no means new. As early as 1971, Richard Fox
published a study demonstrating how conceptions of caste in pre-modern rural Uttar
Pradesh varied with the political priorities of rural populations. David Gilmartin (1994)
has shown that similarly pragmatic considerations shaped the boundaries of baradari
(brotherhood) in Panjab (p. 8–9). More recently, Sumit Guha (2013) has advocated shifting
our attention from the ritual expression of caste and its ideological underpinnings to the
drawing of caste boundaries. The myriad systems of stratification in South Asia that have
been assigned the label of “caste,” he suggests, were simply varying forms of ethnic
segregation. In each instance, differentiation was driven by local and regional politics,
rather than by any set of values, although the latter certainly served a rhetorical purpose.
Viewed through this prism, castes are no more than “bounded ethnic groups” (Guha
2013:5) that have historically coalesced around common political interest.
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The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier
6
According to Guha, the advantages of making stratification and segmentation the focus of
an enquiry into caste are at least twofold. To begin with, this liberates scholars from the
need to explain the ideological diversity of practices described as “caste” (Guha 2013:1).
Another corollary benefit is that it dismantles the fence of cultural peculiarity which has
hitherto prevented the historical sociology of South Asia from drawing upon the same
pool of methodologies that are used in the study of other world regions (Guha 2015:53).
More pertinent to the overarching theme of this special issue, a focus upon boundaries
and politics grounds the study of caste firmly in local context. Rather than searching for
adherence to specific principles, it privileges the particular ecology and economy of the
locality. Similarly, rather than having to square locally particular observations of caste
with dominant principles, focusing upon the mechanism of stratification is sensitive to
the ways in which local institutions like kinship and clan served as the axis of “caste”
stratification.
7
This article will use these insights to explore the nature of caste and kinship categories in
rural Haryana in the early nineteenth century. For want of space, it will confine its
attention to dominant landholding groups. The analysis consists of four sections. The first
two of these introduce respectively the geographical context and the primary sources
consulted. The third explores some common social categories used in the region. One of
these was the term qaum (people, community)—a malleable, multivalent concept, that
appears to have designated groups defined broadly and imperfectly by occupation and
geography. Another ethnic category was gota (clan, lineage), which, despite the
implication of biological kinship that it carried, was defined by political pragmatism
rather than by blood alone. The fourth section will therefore turn to the political context
within which the boundaries of lineages took form.
Geographical Context: The Delhi frontier
8
The analysis presented in this piece pertains to the countryside west of the city of Delhi, a
space enclosed by the Yamuna River on the east and the Sutlej River on the west. On the
south and southwest it merges with the hills of Mewat and the Thar Desert, and to the
north-east with the Siwalik mountains. This irregular strip of mostly flat and arid land
today falls largely within the states of Haryana and Punjab. At the turn of the nineteenth
century, as in the present, it carried no single name. It fell within the jurisdictions of a
number of different states, including, from 1803, that of the East India Company. Nor was
it possible to assign this area a single ethnic or linguistic character. A variety of languages
and dialects were spoken here, brought by mobile populations that circulated between
Central Asia, Sind, the Deccan and the Gangetic Plains. Indeed, there was even a common
saying that both bani aur pani (language and water) changed every forty kilometers
(Wilson 1884:120).
9
The hybridity of its ecology, political and cultural traditions mean that there are few
appellations for this region that fit well. I have chosen here not to refer to it as “Panjab”
or “south-eastern Panjab,” both of which seem insufficiently precise. They also carry
linguistic and ethnic connotations which obscure the cultural heterogeneity of this space.
“Haryana” is an equally poor match, for although it existed as a territorial category in the
nineteenth century, it referred specifically to the arid prairieland that stretches west of
Rohtak, merging with the desert near Hisar (Fagan 1893:3; Wilson 1884:29). 3 In the
absence of a fully satisfactory name, I have chosen to follow Jos Gommans (1998) in
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The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier
referring to the region as the “Delhi frontier” (p. 17–18). For Gommans, this is a tract
whose specific historical unity derives foremost from its position as a hybrid frontier, or
as what Bernard Cohn ([1987] 2005) has referred to as a “shatter zone” (p. 109). Gommans
identifies three ways in which this region was a frontier. First, it was a climatic frontier,
located between the humid Gangetic Valley to the east, and the western fringes of the
vast Arid Zone that stretches across much of Central and West Asia and reaches east and
south into the Indian subcontinent. Second, and relatedly, it was a subsistence frontier,
where cultivation had historically overlapped with mobile pastoralism. Finally, it was a
political frontier, where the control of formal states had always been limited, power
resting instead in the hands of a variety of warlords and chieftains.
10
These three facets of the Delhi frontier’s “in-betweenness” in fact fed into each other. Its
limited ecological suitability to sedentary cultivation as opposed to pastoralism meant
that its rural populations led a mobile existence. As a consequence of its vulnerability to
drought and the absence of any perennial rivers except at its extremities, the cultivated
extent in this frontier fluctuated greatly from year to year. Demographic pressure in
neighboring regions periodically led to a flux of cultivators taking parts of the savannah
under the plough. However, these settlements were ephemeral and, in years in which the
monsoons failed, they would be abandoned, to be repopulated in a more favorable season.
The uncertainties of cultivation in turn meant that this region did not serve as the
revenue base for states dependent upon agrarian revenues. Rather, the polities that
tended to thrive in the Delhi frontier were frequently diffuse, nomadic lineages, who
exploited this arid but rich country for its excellent pastures, and for its proximity to the
wealthy raiding grounds of the Doab.
A Window on Rural Society
11
In order to explore the ethnic landscape of the Delhi frontier in the early nineteenth
century, I have in this article relied considerably upon two historical accounts dating to
the 1820s, authored by James Skinner. Skinner was one of the many elite mercenary
soldiers active in the subcontinent during the Mughal “twilight.” Born in 1778, his father
was a Scottish ensign in the English East India Company’s army, and his mother the
daughter of a Benares landlord. Before he, too, came to fight under the Company’s flag,
Skinner had led Daulat Rao Shinde’s Maratha troops in battle, working alongside English,
Scottish, Irish, French and Savoyard mercenaries (Fraser [1851] 2012a:43). Despite the
important role he played in the establishment of Company rule in northern India
(Alavi 1993), the British were sparing in the tributes and recognition they extended to
him. At least in part, this appears to have been for fear that any apparent partiality to
their own compatriots—to which Skinner numbered when it so suited the Company (Alavi
1993:448)—would open them up to renewed charges of corruption (Fraser [1851]
2012b:44)
12
Short-changed by his employers and patrons, Skinner nonetheless established himself
not only as a gifted military commander, but also as a patron of the arts in the
countryside west of Delhi. Based at his estate in Hansi, he seems to have maintained a
fully functioning manuscript workshop, as well as to have periodically commissioned
different artists from the region for specific assignments (McBurney 2014:2). Part of his
literary and artistic testament includes two beautifully illustrated and illuminated social
and political histories of the region. A total of three copies of each text were produced,
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The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier
and Skinner gifted a pair of these mutually complementary histories to three separate
British officers. One of these men was John Malcolm, whose earlier ethnographic
accounts of Central India may possibly have inspired Skinner to embark upon his own
literary enterprise (McBurney 2014:7). However, both Skinner’s choice of writing in
Persian and the considerable expense of producing such high-quality manuscripts
(McBurney 2014:2) seem equally to have been motivated by his acquisition of various
Mughal titles in May 1830 (McBurney 2014:8).4
13
The first of Skinner’s histories, the Tashrih al-aqvam (An Account of the Peoples, c. 1825),
provides a description of a variety of different ethnic groups, beginning with a short
summary of the origins of each that is drawn from folklore and mythology. Skinner then
describes the hereditary occupations of each qaum, their religion (dharam) and their rites
and customs, particularly those pertaining to marriage. In addition, he pays attention to
their nature (svabhava, khasiyat zati) and their karam (actions). Every account is further
accompanied by a painting of a member of the concerned group that, so Skinner claims,
realistically depicts its garb and craft. Although some of the groups described—such as
Rajputs and Brahmanas—were found across much of South Asia, the Tashrih’s focus is
broadly north Indian. It was intended, as Skinner mentions in the preface, as an account
of “Hindi people of all distinctions resident in Hind.”5 Even within this circumscribed
geographical context, the richest ethnographic (as opposed to mythological) portraits are
those of the landholding and martial populations of the country between the Sutlej and
Yamuna Rivers and northern Rajasthan. This is natural enough, given that it was here
that Skinner established himself as a magnate and a man of note.
14
This geographical bias is articulated even more clearly in the Tazkirat al-umara (Biography
of the Nobility, c. 1830), the companion (and likewise richly illustrated) history that
Skinner wrote for the Tashrih. The Tazkira provides an account of a broad cross-section of
the gentry and nobility of the Delhi frontier. A considerable chunk of its narrative
appears to be drawn from lore and royal genealogies, especially in the case of the more
illustrious and established royal houses. Thus, for instance, Rajput lineages such as the
Chauhans of Bikaner are treated by Skinner as the descendants of the Chandravansha
(lunar race). By comparison, the accounts of minor chieftains are somewhat more sober.
For instance, Skinner narrates the manner in which Nawab Khan Bahadur Khan, the
Bhatti chieftain of Fatahabad, began his career as a professional soldier in service of the
kingdom of Bikaner, subsequently betraying his patron and giving himself up to a life of
plunder (gharatgari).6 However far back its origins, each lineage’s history is traced down
to Skinner’s own times, often including mentions of recent battles. Each dynastic account
is concluded with a description of the precise extent of its domains and the revenues
earned from these, as well as the strength and composition of its army. Together, the
Tashrih and the Tazkira provide a window into rural society in the Delhi frontier in the
transition to colonial rule. They are used in this analysis primarily to reconstruct ethnopolitical fault lines in the early nineteenth century.
15
If Skinner’s accounts indicate where ethnic tensions lay in the Delhi frontier, their focus
does not extend all the way down to the grassroots and they contain little by way of
material explanation for ethnic conflict. In this respect, the large body of official
correspondence and reports left by the colonial state in the region is a fuller source. This
material includes the annals of conflicts at the level of the village and thus provides a
wealth of information about the political life of rural communities and their relationship
with political actors outside the village walls.
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The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier
Social Categories: From Qaum to Caste
16
The Tashrih al-aqvam, as its name suggests, provides a good point of departure to anyone
seeking insights into the ethnic landscape of the Delhi frontier in the early nineteenth
century. A half-century before the heyday of Victorian ethnography, it sheds light on
those groups that colonial bureaucrats were subsequently to identify as “castes” and
“tribes,” categories that have proved extremely enduring. The communities of whom we
find accounts in its pages, 118 in all, are nominally organized along the principles of
religion (dharam) and baran (from the Sanskrit varna; Brahmanical caste). The primary
differentiation made is between Hindu and Muslim peoples. Once its religion has been
specified, each community is further assigned a varna affiliation, a task rendered
somewhat awkward by the fact that the number of groups mentioned in the text far
exceeds the fourfold Brahmanical stratification. Skinner explains this incongruence as
the product of the intermixing of varnas (baran samkara) brought on by the depravity of
the times. As we shall see, however, this is only one instance of how the Tashrih’s neat
façade is consistently undermined in the text by the hybridity and fluidity of its
foundational categories.
17
In fact, contrary to its formal schema, the social groups identified as “communities” (
aqvam) in the Tashrih do not conform to any single organizational principle. 7 Rather, they
are each constituted around at least one of three common traits: a shared occupation (
peesheh) and more generally, actions; customs (towr, tariq), specifically related to religious
observance and marriage; and finally, a common geography. Skinner, borrowing from his
sources, then superimposes a single origin myth upon this foundation and seals the
category with a few remarks about the temperament of those belonging to it. It is worth
noting that while religion could influence marriage customs and worship, it did not
necessarily undermine the category of qaum itself, as long as one of the other two strands
—occupation and geographical distribution—were present. Of the camel herding Rabari
community, for example, Skinner says: “Many of the original Rabaris became Muslim
[and therefore] came to be called Muslim Rabaris. Their beliefs and customs are separate
(but) their work is the same.”8 Given this diversity of principles, it is unsurprising that
Skinner mostly uses the generic Persian qaum and the terms farq (sort, kind, division) and
zat (tribe, kind) to refer to community, even while paying token deference to Brahmanical
categories.
18
Not only do the communities that feature in the Tashrih appear heterogeneous, but the
boundaries between different qaum are frequently hazy as well. This is largely because
the traits that serve to bind each together in the text were far from unique, and were in
fact common to a broad cross-section of society. This holds less true of the service and
artisanal groups that appear in the Tashrih, for their respective crafts serve as clear
identifiers. By contrast, social groups who earned their livelihood from the soil or by
herding livestock are much less precisely defined and internally quite disparate.
Skinner’s account of the Jat qaum illustrates this point well. This category is perhaps the
broadest of any social group mentioned in the Tashrih, tenuously bound together by a
common purpose alone. This purpose, writes Skinner, was to take the land they inherited
from their fathers and increase it until they became rajas themselves. To achieve their
goal, they engaged in both cultivation (kisan) and trade (dad-o-setad). As zamindars, they
also took care of their cultivators (ra’iyats). Their occupational diversity was matched by
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The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier
their confessional pluralism. Jats, writes Skinner, variously revered Brahmanas, the cow,
Vishnu, various Shaiva ascetic orders, Guru Nanak and the Prophet Muhammad. 9
19
The Jat qaum that is portrayed by the Tashrih is not only a motley category, it also shares
much in common with other landholding groups like the Ahirs, Gujars and Bhattis.
Indeed, Skinner suggests that the Ahirs and the Gujars were simply a particular kind of
Jat, whose distinctness as a category was rooted partly in their occupational
specialization as cow- and goatherds, and partly in their geographical concentration on
either bank of the Yamuna River. As such, writes Skinner, they were not recognized as a
different qaum by the Jats, with whom they ate, smoked and drank without compunction.
10
Meanwhile, “Bhatti” appears as another umbrella category, somewhat similar to “Jat,”
although more specific in geographical focus. Skinner writes that the Bhattis were found
mainly between Bhatner (now Hanumangarh) and Hisar, but half a century later, Denzil
Ibbetson ([1883] 1916) observed that it was simply a common identification claimed by
landholding communities from Jaisalmer to the banks of the Chenab River (p. 144). Like
Jats, Bhattis too included a number of different segments, and practiced a mixture of
cultivation, livestock breeding and plunder.11
20
Skinner’s Tashrih provides one more indication that ethnic categories in pre-modern
South Asia, which would later be recognized by the colonial state as distinct “castes,”
were often simply regionally-specific appellations for those who engaged in a particular
trade. In the Delhi frontier, the use of “Jat,” “Bhatti” and “Ahir” to refer to groups whose
subsistence was broadly agro-pastoral, was akin to the use of the term “Rajput” to refer
to soldiers (Kolff 1990:71–72). The salient differences between these groups, therefore, did
not pertain to status or religion, but to geography. For the rest, their customs and social
organization were extremely similar. For instance, each of these groups was said by
Skinner to practice widow marriage (karao/karewa), a practice looked down upon by
respectable (ashraf) people. Jats and Ahirs ate meat and drank alcohol, while amongst the
Bhattis, little distance seems to have been maintained between men and women. Each
group additionally partook of the broadly syncretic religious culture of Panjab, within
which the emphasis lay upon personal devotion (bhakti) to the divine. Amongst the Jats,
this bhakti had a Vaishnava, Shaiva and Sikh color. Amongst the Bhattis, devotion to Baba
Farid Ganjshakkar was popular. Perhaps most notably, each of these communities was
further subdivided into lineages or gotas, whose relationship with each other—as we shall
see below—was often contentious.
21
In light of this hybridity and overlap, it is little wonder that colonial ethnographers later
in the nineteenth century struggled just as much as Skinner to place the rural
populations of the Delhi frontier within a single sociological category. Amongst British
administrators, the trans-Yamuna territories in general were regarded as exceptions to
the rigid caste norms that were common further east in the Hindustani heartland.
Although the term “caste” was still used in official reports on the region, it carried a
specific connotation here, as a synonym for “tribe.” The latter, in turn, was used
differently than in, for instance, central India, where communities identified as tribes
were believed to be primitive peoples, as yet unexposed to the Brahmanical mainstream.
By contrast, west of the Yamuna, many landholding groups identified as Rajputs or of
Rajput origin and Brahmanical ideas about social stratification and distance were both
known and observed to varying degrees. However, stratification seemed just as much to
follow the lines of descent and kinship as it did those of occupation. The local apparition
of caste, wrote Denzil Ibbetson, was thus of the “tribal type” (Caton 2004:44). 12 Rather
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The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier
than seeking to resolve the tension between Brahmanical caste and local forms of
stratification therefore, most colonial ethnographers simply used the term “caste”
elastically, across a diversity of contexts.
Land control and lineage formation
22
Their syncretic, egalitarian and “common” religious and social practices placed each of
the landholding groups in the Tashrih on roughly the same social footing. A powerful
rural presence, they appear in Skinner’s works as superior in status to menial service
peoples, and inferior to those martial lineages who controlled enough land that they
could abstract themselves from cultivation, living instead from their agrarian rents,
protecting their ra’iyats and enhancing their territorial possessions through conquest. As
both the Tashrih and the Tazkira suggest, however, in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, the gap between middling peasant-pastoralists and martial elite
landlords was narrowing. This had led to the sprouting of multiple chiefdoms and royal
houses from amidst the ranks of such “ordinary” qaum as the Jats and the Bhattis,
including the Sikh Jat rajas of Patiala, Nabha, Jind and Kaithal, and the Bhatti nawabs of
Rania and Fatahabad.
23
In this transition from middling peasant-herdsman to local notable, the clan or lineage (
gota; also referred to generally as qaum) was an important vehicle. As a military and
political unit—a war band, no less—the clan established the material basis upon which
charismatic opportunists from within its number could seek to establish themselves as
warlords, and ultimately, as kings. Once this material foundation was in place, these
arriviste rajas would emulate the customs and rituals of established elites, in an attempt
to consolidate their status and thereby distance themselves from their humble origins.
For instance, according to Skinner, the many Jat notables who dotted the Delhi frontier
had stopped practicing widow remarriage (karao), taken to veiling their women and
dressed in the elegant manner of respectable Brahmanas and Vaishyas. 13 Karao had
likewise been given up in the family of the Bhatti nawabs, who also claimed to be the only
“true” Bhattis, related to the Bhatti Rajput lineage of Jaisalmer.14 Social status, however,
followed, rather than preceded, effective political and military power. A powerful gota
might not succeed in erasing its peasant provenance; however, its influence and clout
could be sufficient to overshadow its social origins.
24
To establish itself as a powerful rural presence, however, a clan was dependent to varying
degrees upon larger actors and entities in the local political orbit, as well as upon the
rural communities that constituted its manpower as a war band. As such, it exemplified
the political continuum that linked the village with the state. In order to keep itself afloat
and to consolidate its power, the clan was therefore obliged to balance the interests of its
members with the interests of larger polities. This balance was extraordinarily delicate
and in a political frontier such as the Delhi frontier, subject to frequent change. Were, for
instance, a state to show signs of complacency or frailty, were its power to decrease or its
attention be diverted, this would provide an opportunity for its client lineages to
consolidate their position at their patron’s expense. This is precisely what Skinner
indicates led to the mushrooming of local landlords and magnates in the Delhi frontier.
As was mentioned previously, the Bhatti nawabs began as clients and subordinates of the
Bikaner raj; however, when in the eighteenth century, the kingdom began to show signs
of sluggishness (sosti), Khan Bahadur Khan seized the opportunity to break away from his
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The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier
patron and establish himself as an independent warlord. Similarly, the Raos of Rewari,
who first served as agents of the Mughal state and were appointed the title of chaudhari
(generic title for a notable), subsequently took advantage of their patron’s waning
strength to establish themselves as autonomous chieftains.15
25
Usurpation, however, also transformed the clan as a polity. As its star rose, the clan
would itself become a patron, which might extend its support and protection to smaller
political fry, in return for the payment of tribute and military manpower. Moreover, clan
elites might see their growing influence as an opportunity for personal enrichment and
seek to establish themselves as the leaders of their kinsmen, which could cause rifts
within the clan, altering its boundaries. Once more, instances of such fission abound in
the Tazkira. Not only had the Jat Sikh Khalsa ultimately splintered into twelve distinct
streams (misl), but these in turn had further split into numerous sub-branches. Thus,
there were four distinct states of the Phulkian misl in the Delhi frontier (Patiala, Nabha,
Jind, Kaithal).
26
Similarly, an offshoot of the Karora Singh misl had, in the late eighteenth century,
developed a small fiefdom at the village of Kalsian, south-west of Amritsar. This tiny raj
subsequently split into two, and a second center was established nearby and christened
Kalsian Khord (Little Kalsian), while the parent settlement was renamed Kalsian Kalan
(Greater Kalsian). Subsequent tides of war and migration eventually carried part of the
Kalsian family to the banks of the Yamuna River, where they established yet another
offshoot of the Kalsian raj at Chhachrauli. 16 The relationship between different branches
of a clan were tempered by pragmatism. Amongst the Bhattis, for instance, Skinner writes
that it was the sustained onslaught from the rajas of Bikaner and the Mughal state that
led to the reconciliation of Khan Bahadur Khan and his son Zabiteh Khan, who had
previously been fighting each other.
27
While the examples so far have focused on lineages sufficiently large to receive mention
in Skinner’s Tazkira, the same dynamic—of balancing the interests of smaller and larger
political entities with the purpose of political aggrandizement—shaped every link in the
chain that was the lineage. This dynamic operated, in other words, at the level of the
village and pargana as well, molding the boundaries of rural communities at the very
grassroots. In the Tazkira, Skinner provides us with a glimpse of some of these even
smaller lineages and clans that still ruled as brotherhoods, from where a notable or
magnate was yet to emerge, or whose elite were still too minor to be counted as nobility.
These included, for instance, the Sangwan Jat gota, whose seat (sakunat) was between the
towns of Jhajjar and Bhiwani, and consisted of 88 villages of which Charkhi and Jhojhu
were the most important. Similarly, in Gohana near Rohtak, a block of 52 villages
belonged to the Phogat Jat gota, and directly to the north, another 40 villages between
Sanwar, Ranila and Bandh were held by another clan claiming to be affiliated to the
Panwar Rajputs.
28
The larger a clan territory (occasionally referred to in colonial literature as a khap,
although I have not yet encountered this word in Skinner’s accounts), the more
intricately it would be subdivided. Even clans that were no more than a single large
settlement, were often subdivided into segments called pannahs or tholas of individual
families. Within larger territories, such as those of the Phogats, Panwars and Sangwans
mentioned above, it was not uncommon for clusters of villages—variously called thambas
and tappas—to be demarcated (Ibbetson [1883] 1916:74). In principle, every gota, from the
lineages of large states to village-level clans, developed from migration to a single parent
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The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier
site (variously, called malikan deh and tappadari mauzah), followed by natural increase. In
practice, however, this was not the case. The weight of political considerations, the
pressure of individual ambition and the resultant brittleness of the clan meant that its
boundaries were not determined by kinship or blood ties alone.
29
In principle, representatives of older settlements had a greater say over newcomers in
the governance of the clan and its various segments, which included taking decisions
regarding matters such as the distribution of spoils from plunder, the right to break up
new land and the use of pasture. Moreover, new settlements would be compelled to pay
older settlements a tribute, called a chaudhriat (the tribute due to the chaudhari or
overlord). The same principle applied within the confines of a single village as well,
where a distinction was made between the “original” residents (variously called maliks,
pattidars, muqaddams and biswadars) and newcomers.17 The latter might have equal right
to access of land, but a subordinate say in village affairs. When smaller clans were
integrated within the domains of larger lineages or states, these divisions were frequently
maintained, for they enabled the larger polity to govern its new possessions through the
existing network of village and tappa elites. This arrangement was convenient, for
established elites had an authority that state-appointees perhaps lacked; but, as the
example of the Raos of Rewari mentioned above indicates, it could also prove to be
dangerous for the state.
30
In the Delhi frontier, every segment of a lineage had a corresponding expression in
resources. For states, the most important of these resources were men and revenues. For
smaller lineages, who served at once as their own army and their own revenue base, these
resources included arable land, ponds and pasture; and every thola, deh (village) and tappa
had its corresponding share of these. Quarrels over the partition of such resources could
lead to fragmentation and protracted feuding. This friction also indicated that, while in
theory at least, the component segments of a lineage were organized hierarchically, such
that the village was subordinate to the village cluster (tappa), the village cluster to the
clan elders or the raja (if there was one), and the elders or the raja in turn to the state, in
reality, the center of power shifted between each of these different segments. This has
already been demonstrated by the examples of the Bhatti nawabs and the Rewari rajas
cited above. The same dynamic was, however, also replicated closer to the grassroots.
31
The case of Abdul Samand Khan, a jagirdar (revenue-farmer) appointed by the East India
Company to supervise the hinterland from Rohtak to Hisar, provides an excellent
illustration of this point. When, on the force of the Company’s authority, Abdul Samand
went to declare his rule in his newly acquired fiefdom, he was met with widespread
hostility. As he recounted to the Company’s representative (“Resident”) at Delhi,
Archibald Seton, the more intransigent villages belonging to martial Ranghars of an
unspecified clan had met his declaration of overlordship with outright hostility. He had
been told that “since the decline of the (Mughal) Empire no established authority had
ever been acknowledged in their country, that every Governor who had come into it had
been compelled to sit down like a petty Thanedar [policeman], that nearly forty Noblemen
had at different periods arrived as Governors for the purpose of returning the province to
subjection but that they had all been slain and that their graves could be pointed out.” 18
Abdul Samand’s account was perhaps embellished to garner the Company’s support; but
it is worth noting that he willingly relinquished his position as jagirdar and governor,
because the intransigence of the rural communities under his supervision had worn down
both his morale and his resources.19
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The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier
32
This is, however, not to say that landlords or local notables had no recourse in the face of
rebellion and dissension (fasad, fitna). Travelling through the qasbah (town) of Beri in
1808, Edward Gardner, an Assistant to the Resident of Delhi who the labor-starved
Company had invested with a broad range of judicial and fiscal powers, was witness to
one such conflict. The local zamindar of Beri, a notable named Faiz Talab Singh, had
reportedly taken nine hostages from the people of the surrounding villages, whose
revenues were in arrears.20 The conflict had become violent and Gardner had been forced
to intervene, to restore the hostages to their families. Similarly, before he had conceded
defeat and petitioned the Company to be relieved of his revenue farm, Abdul Samand
Khan had attempted to enforce his mandate in the face of popular recalcitrance by force,
an endeavor that had eventually bankrupted him. There is likewise plentiful evidence of
conflicts between village and village in the colonial archive. In the largely pastoral
economy of the Delhi frontier, where livestock—particularly bullocks—were a cherished
possession, such conflicts often took the form of cattle theft. Indeed, cattle theft
remained rife well into the twentieth century, serving as a way for rival villages and clans
to score symbolic points against each other (Gilmartin 2003).
33
Against this background of frequent conflict, it is little wonder that rural settlements in
the Delhi frontier were commonly fortified. Clans like Khan Bahadur Khan’s Bhattis used
abandoned forts like those at Sirsa, Rania and Fatahabad as their strongholds,
disappearing behind their walls after returning from a cattle raid or other plundering
expeditions. However, it was common even for smaller villages to erect mud fortifications
along their periphery. Watchtowers were also built outside the village walls and manned
by men with matchlocks, to guard over wells and to make sure that cattle sent out to
graze were not carried off (Fortescue 1911:112). In case a threat was spotted, guards
would beat a large military drum called a tamak, to summon attention. 21 The response to
the alarm could be surprisingly rapid. One Company surveyor whose proximity to a
village near Patiala caused the drums to be beaten reported that within a matter of
minutes, “between 2 and 500 people appeared without the Town, stationing themselves
under the protection of its walls.”22
34
Yet, if it was such apparent solidarity that led Charles Metcalfe to describe Indian rural
communities as “little republics,” the village was, in fact, a far less cohesive polity than
he conceded. Conflict was as common within the village walls as it was outside of them
and the village itself was therefore prone to ruptures. One of the most common sources of
friction pertained to the rights of individuals within the village to its land and pasture.
This was a subject that the colonial state was at first unwilling to intervene in, since, as
one Company servant put it, property rights were “blended with feelings of family and of
ancestry.”23 Nonetheless, while conducting early revenue surveys, revenue officers found
themselves repeatedly called upon to arbitrate between rival claims to the office of
muqaddam (village headman). For the British, the office of headman was an important and
dignified one, to be filled by a candidate of requisite influence and temperance. They
were therefore surprised at the sheer number of persons who put themselves forward as
prospective muqaddams (Edmonstone 1846:20).
35
It was only gradually that the colonial state realized that there were as many muqaddams
as there were tholas (segments) in a village, and that the role of the muqaddam was
primarily to ensure that the families within his thola received their fair share of the
village wealth, rather than simply to serve the welfare of the village as a community. The
same transactional logic pervaded every link of the lineage chain. Indeed, kinship
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The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier
categories in general served as a kind of political coalition, to which biological kinship
offered one, but not the only, path of entry. New members entered into the clan
territories through conquest, migration, and compromise, while fragments of the clan
would separate due to internal disagreements.
36
The coalition-like nature of the clan is well illustrated in the account of the origins of the
Dahiya Jat gota. By the 1870s, the territories of this clan extended from Karnal to Sonepat,
and encompassed not only villages where Jats were in the majority, but also several that
were predominantly Gujar and Chauhan Rajput. The roots of this multi-qaum lineage,
according to Denzil Ibbetson, could be traced back to the days of Mughal dominance,
when imperial governors had put their weight behind another Jat gota called Ghatwal, to
counter the growing local influence of a recalcitrant Rajput gota called the Mandhars.
Such was the success of the Ghatwals, however, that they posed a threat not only to the
Mandhars, but also to other Jat clans in the area, such as the Dahiyas. In response to this
threat, the Dahiyas began to consolidate their ranks, forging ties with several minor Jat,
Gujar and Rajput lineages (Ibbetson [1883] 1916:82). Although the Mandhars had been
politically eclipsed, the rivalry between the Ghatwal and Dahiya Jats persisted into the
nineteenth century. Indeed, as one revenue officer noted, for members of both factions,
the gota affiliation served as the primary identification, regardless of whether they were
Hindus or Muslims, Jats, Rajputs or Gujars (Maconachie 1882:86).
37
To stress the importance of pragmatic considerations in the drawing of clan boundaries is
not to say that Brahmanical norms pertaining to varna and kinship were irrelevant to
social and political life. On the contrary, as has been mentioned above, honoring these
codes with overt gestures—whether by refraining from widow marriage or veiling one’s
wife and daughters—signaled respectability and conferred high social status. Moreover,
the language of family and varna was considered a necessary window-dressing to confer
legitimacy upon relationships founded upon convenience. Ibbetson noted that in Karnal
district, although it was not uncommon for non-kin members to be absorbed within the
village as coparceners and fellow proprietors, “the fiction of common descent” was
maintained. If such a newcomer were asked to explain how he had become a coparcener,
he would respond “bhai karke basaya” (by making me a brother; Ibbetson [1883] 1916:75).
In other words, “traditions” sanctified pragmatic associations, but did not determine
their structure or boundaries.
Conclusion: Rural Polities and the Malleable Bonds of
“Kinship”
38
The preceding account has sought to demonstrate that in the Delhi frontier, rifts in rural
communities from the village upward were common and that the source of these rifts had
a clear material basis. The way in which communities disintegrated had consequences for
the manner in which they were created as well, that is to say, not so much in accordance
with “tradition” as with pragmatic interests. In a subsistence and political frontier, the
absence of a single political center and the frequency of warfare meant these interests
were regularly realigned and villages, as well as the clans or lineages that they were part
of, accordingly reconstituted. The language of caste and kin would subsequently be
graphed onto what were, effectively, coalitions. In this respect, then, the village as a
polity was no different from the state, and kinship categories served as vehicles of
political consolidation.
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The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier
39
While this limited foray into village politics cannot claim to yield novel theoretical
insights, it does reinforce two known maxims for the broader study of caste and society in
rural South Asia. The first of these is that although larger categories, such as Jat, Rajput
and Gujar have served administrative and political purposes (and continue to do so), as
categories of analysis, they belie as much as they reveal. The preceding analysis has
demonstrated that caste formation is a continuous, ongoing process that occurs at
multiple different levels at once (Guha 2013:51). An appreciation of this dynamism
ensures that we do not, by default, keep returning to static “tradition” to explain sociopolitical life. The second point is that some of the attention that we bestow upon the
language in which caste is expressed—in other words, the practices and gestures of
inclusion and exclusion—might more fruitfully be invested in an exploration of the
particular material context in which such behaviors occur. This in turn fosters attention
to the way in which ecologically-specific forms of community have lived on under the
modern guise of “caste.”
40
I will conclude this piece with a reference to the present. A glance at the politics of caste
and kin in present-day Haryana, especially the numerous honor killings that have made
the news, might suggest that the contemporary weight of “tradition” is far greater than
in the nineteenth century. Yet, practical considerations continue to inform how
“tradition” is interpreted. Perhaps the best example of this comes from 2014, when the
Satrol khap in Haryana announced that intra- khap marriages (hitherto considered
incestuous) and inter-caste marriages were now acceptable to the community. The khap’s
decision was rooted in pragmatism: Haryana’s skewed sex-ratio (approximately 877
women for every thousand men) means that such restrictions make many men bachelors
for life. Moreover, as one of the leaders of the khap admitted, it was a way to enable men
to find brides locally, women who would already be familiar with their husband’s family’s
customs and would therefore adapt more easily. In this way, a first blow was struck to a
marriage taboo, under the protective shroud of “guarding regional culture.”
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Haryana State Archives, Panchkula
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Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Manuscripts/Mixed Material (Library of Congress)
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NOTES
1. My thanks to Delphine Thivet, Joël Cabalion and the anonymous reviewers whose comments
have helped me refine this article.
2. Although there is great variety in the ethnography of this period, some of which is more
sensitive to local peculiarities and divergence from “classical” scriptural principles than has been
conceded by generic critiques of colonial ethnography as a whole (for instance, Dirks 2001). A
good example of this is the rich settlement literature of the nineteenth century, which by virtue
of genre, as well as the “ethnographic intellectualism” (Leonard 2016:187) of colonial officers at
the grassroots often contains detailed accounts of the diverse permutations and combinations of
“caste” practices found within a particular district.
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The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier
3. In fact, “Hariana” was only one of a number of sub-regional divisions that were popularly used
in the Delhi frontier. Others included the “Bagar,” or the desert tract stretching south-west from
Bhiwani and Fatahabad; the “Rohi” and “Budlada” or “Jangal” which, like Hariana, referred to
specific stretches of prairie; and the “Nali,” which referred to the arid bed of the Ghaggar stream.
Further, in the Delhi frontier (as across much of the Indo-Gangetic Plains), it was common to
distinguish between the uplands (bangar, dhaia, utar) and lowlands (khadar, bet, hitar) cut by the
shifting courses of rivers. Settlement reports from the late nineteenth century provide rich
information on the ethno-ecological connotations of these different terms.
4. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer who urged me to reflect upon Skinner’s intended
audience.
5. “Shareh-e-haqiqat-e-baramad-ye-aqvam az har farq-e-hanud ahl-e-Hind.” Library of Congress,
Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Manuscript/Mixed Material. James Skinner, James Watson
(owner), Tashrih al-aqvam. 1825, f.16v.
6. For Skinner’s account of the Bhattis, see his Tazkirat al-umara, ff.254r-261r. British Library,
Oriental Manuscripts, AD MS 27254.
7. Although the plural form of the word “qaum” is aqvam, for simplicity’s sake, I have restricted
myself to the use of qaum throughout the text, regardless of class.
8. “Basiyari ke az qaum-e-rabari-ye-asli musalman shodeh-and. Musalman rabari gofteh mishovand.
Dharam o tariq-e-har ek joda-st. Karam yek-ast.” Tashrih, f.312v.
9. Tashrih, ff.106v-109v.
10. “Hukka-o-nan-o-ab-e-ahir-o-jat ek-ast,” Tashrih, f.101v.
11. Tashrih, ff.422r-424v.
12. Constraints of space prevent a full treatment of the evolution of colonial ethnographic
categories. For a comprehensive overview, interested readers might consult Caton (2004).
13. Tashrih, f.119v.
14. Tashrih, f.424r.
15. Tazkira, f.155r-155v.
16. Haryana State Archives, Other Records, Tarikh-i-riyasat-i-kalsia, vol. II, f.4v.
17. Muqaddam was in fact used for village headmen, but in many of the villages of the Delhi
frontier, this title was simply granted to every individual who owned land in the settlement.
18. British Library (BL), India Office Records (IOR), Board’s Collections (BC), F/4/212/4735, 15
June 1807.
19. BL, IOR, BC, F/4/305/7014, 7 February 1809.
20. BL, IOR, BC, F/4/305/7015, 24 March 1809.
21. BL, IOR, BC, F/4/305/7014, draft petition, 19 March 1809.
22. BL, IOR, BC, F/4/237/5453, 18 July 1807.
23. BL, IOR, BC, F/4/274/6109, 3 April 1808.
ABSTRACTS
This paper traces the shifting loci of community in rural Haryana (“the Delhi frontier”) in the
early nineteenth century, focusing particularly upon caste and kinship. It suggests that
categories later identified by bureaucrats and scholars as “caste” and “tribe” in this region were
in fact simply broad ethnic labels that represented only very abstract communities. It will
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The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier
further demonstrate that in this mobile agrarian frontier, kinship categories (such as the clan)
had historically crystallized around the control of land. By implication, kinship was a vehicle of
resource consolidation, whose boundaries were determined at least in part by this pragmatic
consideration. An appreciation of the political dimension of kinship brings complexity to our
understanding of rural politics, highlighting that the “village community” was far from being a
historically stable polity.
INDEX
Keywords: kinship, caste, gota, Delhi frontier, resource consolidation
AUTHOR
GIRIJA JOSHI
Institute for History, Leiden University
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