Jat Sikh

Jat Sikh or Jatt Sikh (Gurmukhi: ਜੱਟ ਸਿੱਖ) is an ethnoreligious group, a subgroup of the Jat people whose traditional religion is Sikhism, originating from the Indian subcontinent. They are one of the dominant communities in Punjab, India, owing to their large land holdings. They form an estimated 20–25% of the population of the Indian state of Punjab. They form at least half of the Sikh population in Punjab, with some sources estimating them to be about 60–66% appx. two-third of the Sikh population.
The Jatt word is derived from Persian form of the ancient term Jit is Jatt (जट्ट) with short vowel and double short 't'.
Initially, some Jats started to follow the teachings of Guru Nanak, which did much to remove social barriers created by the sāvarṇa caste society. Jats were previously indifferent towards deep religious affairs.
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), the first large-scale conversions of Jats is commonly held to have begun during the time of Guru Arjan (1563–1606). 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. They formed the vanguard of Sikh resistance against the Mughal Empire from the 18th century onwards. While W. H. McLeod was of the position that Jats only began to convert in large numbers to Sikhism and influence the community by the time of Guru Amar Das and certainly by the time of Guru Arjan, Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech on the other hand opine that large scale conversions of Jats into Sikhism came about during Guru Nanak's time settled down in Kartarpur and living an agricultural lifestyle.
When Guru Arjan compiled the Adi Granth, three verses (in Asa and Dhanashree ragas) attributed to Bhagat Dhanna (born 1415), a Jat, were included in the scripture.
It has been postulated, though inconclusively, that the increased militarisation 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.
Dharam Singh, one of the inaugural Panj Piare quintet, was a Jat. 18th century Sikh literature claims he was the reincarnation of Bhagat Dhanna.
At least eight of the 12 Misls of the Sikh Confederacy were led by Jat Sikhs, who would form the vast majority of Sikh chiefs.
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. The relationship between the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communities of the Punjab region, and between communities such as the Jats and the Rajputs, has been ambiguous over many centuries. The various groups often claim similar origins while asserting their distinctiveness.
Irfan Habib has argued that Sikhism did much to uplift the social status of Jat people, who were previously regarded in the Punjab as being of shudra or vaishya status in the Hindu ritual ranking system of varṇa.
Kishan Singh says:
A. E. Barstow comments, that due to their diet and their fondness for wrestling and weightlifting, they possessed good physical attributes for soldiery. According to R. W. Falcon, Jat Sikhs (alongside other Sikhs) were seen as a good source for recruitment. According to Captain A. H. Bingley they were particularly loyal soldiers.
The Jat Sikh community has constituted an important source of recruits for the Indian Army. Many 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.
In Punjab (India), Jat Sikhs are associated with agricultural pursuits and land ownership. They own more than 80%, and possibly as much as 95% of available agricultural land in Punjab. They often reside in the rural areas, and are economically influential in the state. A unique quirk among Jat Sikh clans is the agricultural practice of not allowing Jat Sikh women to work in the fields.
Jat Sikhs have various clans, known as a got (clan or sub-caste; gotra in Hindi), which come under a particular zaat (tribe or caste; jati in Hindi), in Punjabi. These clans generally claim descent from a common male ancestor, are usually exogamous (with some exceptions), and historically entire villages, and even clusters of villages, were often inhabited by entirely by a single clan. The purpose for this was to provide protection for members of a clan by watching over each-other and uniting as a common group against any potential adversary. Another reason is that members of a clan socially preferred their neighbours to also be from the same background as them. However, modern Jat Sikhs no longer feel affinity to others just because they share the same clan, as clan solidarity has died-out as a practice. Some Jat Sikh clans overlap with Hindu and Muslim Jat clans and clans may also be shared with other caste groups, such as Rajputs. Clans can be further subdivided by muhin (sub-clan or locality) and patti (street). However, the practice of recognising and being cognizant of smaller sub-divisions of a got (clan) has since died-out in the present-age and is no longer commonly practised among Jat Sikhs. The only practical function of Jat Clans in this present-day are for the purposes of selecting a marriage partner.
According to Joyce Pettigrew, the Jat Sikh clans traditionally claim patrilineal descent from a Rajput ancestor and purport to have settled in the Punjab in the 16th century. While Jat Sikhs as a whole marry endogamously within the Jat community, they marry exogamously based upon got (clan), meaning they marry other Jats belonging to a different clan. Furthermore, there is no established hierarchy of clans, even though the various clans are typically uneven in-size. Jat clans cannot also be linked to specific regions, as adjacent villages are often inhabited by different clans. Thus, the clan cannot be described as "localized kinship groupings". The "ranking" of a particular clan was evaluated in a specific category, not in a general sense. An example given by Pettigrew is the Grewal clan being renowned for having many of its members in military and administrative roles. While the Sidhus were prominent in the Malwa region of the Punjab, with many ruling families of the cis-Sutlej states, such as Patiala State, belonging to this clan, and the ruling house of Attari in Majha also being Sidhus. The fact that many Sidhus were ruling polities increased the prestige of the clan in the eyes of their fellow Sikhs. Furthermore, there exists idiomatic phrases which propound upon the supposed superiority of one clan over another, an example being: Sandhu, Sidhu, ik baraabar, Gills tore uchera (meaning "Sandhus and Sidhus are equal but Gills are a bit superior to both"). Another tradition regards the Mann, Chahal, and Bhullar clans as being asal Jats ("genuine Jats") since the rest of the clans were supposedly "degraded Rajputs". According to Pettigrew, groups such as the Mazhabi have adopted Jat Sikh clan names in an attempt to seek higher social-status by affiliating themselves to Jats, a unique practice.
Iftikhar Ahmed observes that the Jat clans of zamindars recorded in the late-16th century Ain-i-Akbari correspond to the population of the clans in particular tracts of the country, when compared with British census data recorded centuries later in the 19th century. Zamindars coming from particular clans tended to hold power in areas where the population of peasants from their same clan was high. By the time of the recording of the Ain-i-Akbari in circa 1595, around thirty-two percent of the total parganas were under Jat zamindars, making them the largest zamindar caste. Ahmed came to these findings after researching the Chima, Chatta, Ghumman, Bajwa, and Kahlon clans in the foothills west of Lahore (western submontane), the Langah, Kharral, and Marral clans located in the western plains west of Lahore but excluding the Salt Range and submontane tracts, and the Sidhu, Sindhu, and Bhular clans in the "Sikh Tract" (central district of the Punjab, the upper Sutlej, and the Sikh states to the east).