Reply to NONICA DATTA (Prof. of History , Delhi University)

I sent this mail to Ms. Nonica Datta , prof. of history, Delhi university on Jan,17,2010. But haven't received any reply .

There is one common trait in all these self styled Social researcher , they believe in monologue NOT in Dialogue , because they know the shallowness of their comments and work and know ,they can’t defend these against iota of reasoning and facts.

So a crop of Yellow journalist and historian is flourishing these days …..
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Nonica ji,

There is one article on FT.com , 8th Jan'10 'Love and dishonour in india ' .

Articel have some of your references , those are not going well with me.

(1) " Controlling Women became a part of Jat identity ." . :

For me it's far from truth .
§ Only in Jats, women help their male counterpart in field without any restriction. You can witness this fact by visiting the Jat area.
§ This is complete 'No' among Muslim , Rajput and Brahmin household . How you will describe it.
§ As per the article , girl was well educated and given permission to live away to pursue her education so by these facts , “Controlling Women…” is irrelevant conclusion.

(2) “ A Jat Woman just can’t go and marry a lower caste Man “

n Nonica ji , first of all in india which community or family will be happy to marry his daughter in a community , which they perceive as lower . Where marriage is treated as relationship for generation between families , even in same community marriage, a lot of deliberation goes . All communities give preference to same community/cast , anybody can pickup the Sunday newspaper and see the ‘Matrimonial’ , where all emphasis is on caste & community .This is very common observation so why we are picking only Jats when everybody else is behaving in cast conscious manner.

n In Indian context , a woman or for that matter a man “just can’t go and marry” , if we have seen our society with close quarters we know how much deliberation goes into it and it’s true for every community and area in india. So why this phrase is only for Jats ?

So such comments are far from social sensibilities. We are OK till the time such incidence published from reporting point of view . But recently , we have seen such articles where a family case is projected on entire Jat community and some self styled social scientist/writer make derogatory remarks about Jats, and such reporting become a tool for tarnishing the image of Jat community . However , such cases can be very easily found invariably in every town and area in India .

The said case has nothing to do with Jats and their traits. The case primarily related to
(1) Wrong handling of a matrimonial case , first by young couple then by their families . In such cases stack of girl is always high if anything goes wrong , considering Indian social norms.

Could have been better if boy asked his family to visit girl’s family with marriage proposal , but boy didn’t muster that courage on the contrary girl showed more determination and slip away from her house . We all know going a girl like this is a very embracing situation for every middle class household in this country.

(2) Limited acceptability of inter caste marriage in our country , financial support by govts. Is not helping either. Recently govt. of Maharashtra has increase the incentive from 15,000 to 50,000 Rs for inter caste marriage , it shows that this common mentality is across India and it’s not specific to any community and area.



Having said all these , the question arises why we pick only the jat community and why attempts are made to project such cases on entire community.

Is there any particular mindset is working behind it or the writers get fascinated about the “masculinity “ of Jat community.

Amy Kazmin, Nonica Ji , If you have the temerity of making Jat synonyms of such cases then come out with pan India data and show that Jats are really ahead in absolute nos than other communities. Till the time hold your fire and stop selective distortion.


Please share this with the writer of Article .

On a different note .

Few loose comments are made about the Jat community.

……. Jats consider themselves part of the high-status warrior caste, an image reinforced by their colonial-era recruitment into the military by the British, who viewed them as one of India ’s so-called “martial races”.

They want to show that they are a ‘superior caste’.

These are very shallow comments , not able to comprehend the real meaning whether they are establishing what they are saying or denying it. This is because of logical fallacy by using the words , ‘consider themselves’ ,’viewed’ ,’want to show’ . We should avoid such fallacies in serious writings.

But let me speak out my mind on these considering you are not affirmative on above comments.

Jats are not part but jats are the only High-status warrior in India , they are not the creation of puranic Brahmins through some agnikund and Bramins called them ‘Rajput’ make lofty things about them as they were helping them in their religious scheme of things against buddhists. Jats remained loyal to their vedic heritage .These agni kund ‘warriors’ were queuing in mogul courts offering their daughters .

Jats don’t need any Image makeover , their glories history is evident in every era of this country. Deliberately I’m not mentioning anything here as lot of history references have been digitized can be found on internet by making simple search.

As far image and “Forming of identity” is concern , it was done and being done for these above mentioned ‘Rajput’ and Khatris , even though being a Punjabi trader community they don’t hesitate in mentioning that this word is derived from ‘Khastriya’ sans any history.

Are you saying Jats were recruited by brits only ? . Infect Jats have history from Mahabharata era till date and forming part of every successful armies . So this image made brits to recruits Jats in their army not other way round.

This rightful image and identity is establish and verified by various , travelers , foreign and indian history writers . On the contrary you talk about forming of identity.. , I don’t know at which time Jats were without their natural identity.

I Haven’t read your thesis work (later on published as book) , seems publisher has stopped publishing it as for the last 1year as it’s out of stock. But I came across few excerpt which seems to me “Fallacy of False assumptions” .

I’m not a professional historian like you , but an engineer , management professional by education and have an instinct for history . Dare to challenge anyone on Jat history.

With warm regards
Arvind Malik