 
### A voice from the Indian desert

Tan Dan about fights in the feudal age and the liberation of the feudal serfs

By Son Lal

Copyright 2013 by Son Lal

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This is a work of fiction. The names and characters come from the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Similarly, the locations and incidents in this book, which might resemble real locations and events, are being used fictitiously and are not to be considered as real.

*****

### A voice from the Indian desert

Tan Dan about fights in the feudal age and the liberation of the feudal serfs

Behind stonewalls in Rajasthan

Tan Dan's version of the feudal clan life of his home region in his youth and earlier. About an age which ended in the 1950s but still goes on.

As narrated to his friend Son Lal around 1980.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Tan Dan and his clan

Chapter 2 The fights with the Nilkhedi village lord

Chapter 3 The dispute about an ox cart around 1870

Chapter 4 The dispute about the Detha gate around 1900

Chapter 5 The fight with the police at the Chelana Thikana in 1927

Chapter 6 Dethas were pastoral warriors inexperienced to village life

Chapter 7 The sufferings of feudal subjects

Chapter 8 Dacoit activities around Chelana in feudal time

Chapter 9 Farmer life in feudal Chelana

Chapter 10 When the feudal tenants became landowning farmers

Chapter 11 Ecological aspects of the land reform

Chapter 12 The tradition of revenge among Rajput families in western Rajasthan

Chapter 13 The jagirdar who became a dacoit

Chapter 14 The end of dacoity in western Rajasthan

Chapter 15 Dacoit Pratap Singh at Chelana

Conclusion

Endnotes

Indian words used in this book are explained here.

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### Chapter 1 Tan Dan and his clan

This is Tan Dan's version of the feudal clan life of his home region in his youth and earlier. Others may have different ways of looking at these events. It is an attempt to get close to feudal victims, who silently suffered social injustice for generations. Who never got a chance to tell their own versions in public.

Who is Tan Dan?

Tan Dan Detha was born in a farmer family of the Charan caste in 1943. His native village is Chelana in Jodhpur District of Rajasthan in northwestern India. Tan Dan has lived in the midst of his strongly traditional environment all his life. He is a critical observer rather than a follower of that tradition.

Who is Son Lal?

Son Lal is my pen name. I was born in a Scandinavian country of northern Europe in the early 1940s. I have lived in India off and on for fifty years, since I first arrived at the Gateway of India in Bombay by ship in 1963. In the 1970s I met Tan Dan. We soon found we shared many views on the world, and had the same curiosity of village life. I saw a chance to learn how he experienced his rural environment. He did his best to explain, and I am grateful to him for having shared his knowledge and thoughts with me.

How this narration was done

Tan Dan told in English and I typed, while we sat together in long sessions. His many photos became a starting point for our discussions. Our knowledge of English was on the same level and we formulated the sentences together. Sentence after sentence, day after day. Most of it we wrote around 1980, but some additions were made in later decades. Afterwards I have edited the material and supplemented some sections with information from elsewhere. Still, it is Tan Dan's voice that is heard on these pages. It is a personal narration by a village farmer, and has no connection to any university.

The origin of the Detha clan that moved to Chelana

Tan Dan's forefathers were livestock breeders. In the mediaeval age they lived in eastern Sind, now in Pakistan. The men moved around over vast grassland stretches with big cattle herds and had homesteads in desert villages around Umarkot. Women and children lived permanently in mud huts with straw roof, while their men stayed there off and on. They were independent pastorals with no village lords around but themselves. Their economic strength they got from selling batches of male calves for oxen. These oxen were not only for ploughing and pulling carts but also for pack oxen caravans owned by Banjara transporters. To local rulers they also sold batches of horses to be used in armies. Some were delivered to rulers in Rajasthan, who gave the Dethas feudal rights to grazing land as a kind of payment.

The first Detha group moved from Sindh to Rajasthan in the 16th century. At that time Dethas kept supplying horses to the Hindu rulers of Mevar state in their wars against Moghul rulers. Once the Mewar ruler did not have enough cash for paying a batch of five hundred horses. Then it was decided that the Dethas and breeders of another Charan clan would be given good grazing land in the form of big estates in the troublesome border area between the Mevar and Marvar states. Detha kinship groups started to live there.

A few centuries later Tan Dan's ancestors left their native village Kharoda in Sind for Daulatgarh, a Mevar village close to the border Marvar border. From Daulatgarh they moved to Devli village in Marvar state near the Aravalli hills. In the early 19th century Tan Dan's greatgreatgrandfather Kan Dan got feudal land for grazing their cattle from the Marwar maharajah at Jodhpur. The land was at Chelana forty miles to the north and three of Kan Dan's sons started to live there. They had got bushy grassland in the wilderness in between three or four villagers, one of which was Chelana. In the beginning there was no problem to use that land, but later on the Thakur of the neighbouring Nilkhedi village objected to the presence of the Detha strangers, as he wanted to graze his own cattle on that land. He was the jagir landholder of the whole village and did not recognize the feudal land right the Dethas had got from Jodhpur. The dispute got hotter and hotter, especially after Tan Dan's grandfather started to cultivate rainfed crops on a part of the land in the monsoon season.

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###  Chapter 2 The fights with the Nilkhedi village lord

The struggle for land between the Dethas and the Thakur family of Nilkhedi continued for about a century until it culminated in a bloody feud in 1929.

Mahesh Dan at the Nilkhedi Thikana in 1929

Early in 1929 there had been a dangerous incidence, when Mahesh Dan, Tan Dan's uncle, had gone to the Thikana of the Nilkhedi Thakur for condolence at the death of the Thakur's mother. At the beginning of his visit all was normal and friendly as both parties had decided to settle the issue at court instead of by fight in the usual feudal style. But later the Thakur gave a sign to close the gate of the Thikana, and they handed over a legal document to be signed by Mahesh Dan, who was the most furious of all the Detha brothers. The document gave the land right to the Thakur and was written by his secretary (kamdar). Mahesh Dan took the paper, started reading it, and suddenly put it in the fire, that was burning at the condolence ceremony just in front of where he was sitting. Then he jumped to his feet and rushed in between the two lines of sitting mourners towards the Thakur, climbed the staircase and reached the top of the wall of the small fortress. From there he jumped down on the sand outside the wall. He abused them and ran home. This escape was considered a major heroic deed of the Detha family, and folk songs have been sung in its praise.

The attack on the Detha cultivators in the Nilkhedi field

A few months later, when the monsoon rains had set in, Tej Dan Detha (Tan Dan's father) and his brothers went to their fields in Nilkhedi village to start ploughing. Two times earlier in recent years there had been armed clashes, when the Detha brothers tried to cultivate their land. Both times the Thakur's people had been defeated, as the Dethas were well trained and had equipped themselves for fight. No one had been killed.

This time they had come without notice, and they tried to plough their fields quietly. A court case was going on between them and the Thakur of Nilkhedi about the ownership of the land. They thought they had nothing to fear, as long as the court proceedings were going on.

As soon as the Detha brothers had left Chelana in the early morning, with their oxen and ploughs, Chelana Rajputs hurried to Nilkhedi to inform the Thakur there that the Dethas were coming. They urged the Thakur and his people to fight for their feudal rights. The Dethas had been a threat to the feudal honour of the Chelana Rajputs since a fight about a bullock cart around 1870 and the Rajputs thoroughly disliked their independent manners. They saw a chance to get them finished, if a fight would occur, as many Rajputs would join. The Dethas would not retreat. It was a clan of cattle breeders, who had been fighting for their land rights for generations under insecure conditions. The Rajputs of Chelana had time and again teased the Nilkhedi Thakur about his inactivity and inability to wash away this shame on his feudal honour. They reminded the Nilkhedi Rajputs about the heroic deeds their ancestors had done in the battle fields.

The Nilkhedi Thakur decided to do something to save his honour. He ordered the bhar to be prepared. It means that all his Rajput warriors should get ready for fight. The drummer of the Thakur started beating the war drums from horseback, as a signal and invitation to fight.

Three to four hundred Rajputs and their supporters assembled and proceeded together with about forty horses towards the field, where the four Detha brothers and about five other relatives were ploughing the 50 acres of land under dispute. When they got near to the field the Thakur was surprised to see that the enemy was such a small group and hardly with any arms. He had been told by his informers from Chelana, that the Dethas were many and well equipped. Two relatives of the Chelana Thakur quietly disappeared, as they had been the ones, who had urged him most strongly to set his little army in motion. Other wellwishers of the Thakur told him not to miss this opportunity to finish the Detha family, who had given him much trouble. The Thakur felt embarassed of his big crowd of warriors, and told his men to take away the horses. He wanted the Dethas to leave the field without resistance. The atmosphere was getting excited and the Thakur could hardly return empty-handed to his village fortress, whether he liked to withdraw or not. Some rajputs in the crowd shouted mar kado, mar kado, mar kado, while they all took position at the edge of the field being ploughed by the Dethas. Seeing the crowd advancing, the men in the field got more and more excited, and started to discuss among themselves what to do. Sabal Dan was the eldest of the brothers, and he suggested they would go away, if possible. Mahesh Dan thought this was cowardly talk, which might lower the moral of them all, so he started reciting his own poem, which he invented at the spot, an old tradition among Charans, who originally might have developed this talent, while being alone grazing their cattle. That skill got appreciated at royal courts giving many a Charan a chance to serve as advisers to Hindu maharajas, as the Charans became known as wise and alert. Detha Charans at Chelana, however, have remained cattle breeders and farmers.

"The Champawat Rajput has invaded us, but we are in our own land.

It is cowardness to leave this land, our mother, to the enemies,

while we are still alive."

The second doha or verse:

"You are amassing wealth for your own children and rooting out the Charans and others.

Be satisfied you bigbellied Jaswant and control your greed."

Mahesh Dan recited altogether 13 dohas in Marvari, most of which still remembered in 1977 by those who survived.

The brothers stayed on, and there was no choice, as the crowd approached them from three directions. They unyoked their oxen from the ploughs, and untied the ropes, which kept the oxen of each pair together, and patted them on their back as a sign that they could go. The oxen slowly left them. "Please go, we will work again, if we survive."

Then they retreated towards the tree, under which they had kept their food and their lathis and two swords. The swords belonged to Mahesh Dan and Tej Dan's brother-in-law. They always kept swords as a precaution. Besides, it was a usual practice in those days among Kshatriyas like Charans and Rajputs to wear swords, when they were outside their house. Mahesh Dan did so by habit, wherever he used to go, and Tej Dan's brother-in-law Shakti Dan was a guest of the family coming from Bikaner, a Rajasthani desert town to the North. He surely carried his sword, which he never left, as he was far away from home. The other men had only lathis, big bamboo sticks, as they did not expect any fight. However, without a lathi hardly anyone walks around outside his home even today (told in 1977) at Chelana. Only those very few who have no enemies or hostile neighbours may go emptyhanded. A villager often praises his lathi for providing good security, being useful when meeting a dog or a snake, but seldom admits that he intends to use against his enemy, if necessary, as that in ifself might increase tension.

When the Dethas were retreating towards the tree, the Rajput crowd got into flutter. The drums started beating again, and people shouted that the scoundrels tried to flee. After getting their sticks and swords the Dethas quickly discussed their fighting strategy, and moved toward the middle of the field, where they soon were encircled by the crowd. The brothers and their friends formed a circle of fighters, keeping their backs free. In the middle of the circle were two boys too young to fight. Bhoja Ram, a Jat boy working for the family. He had come to bring food. And Harka Ram, another young boy, a son of the Detha brother's father through his concubine. They got protection in the middle and helped wounded ones taken inside the circle, after the fight had started.

(continues after next section)

The fight with the Jodhpur cavallery in 1924

In 1924, five years before the Nilkhedi fight, there was a another serious incidence which could have ended the Detha family.

The cavallery (risala) of the Maharaja of Marvar passed Chelana on its way from Jalagarh to Jaipur via Merta. The soldiers would participate in the celebration of a marriage between the royal dynasties of Marvar and Jaipur states. There were three or four Rajputs from Chelana in the Maharaja's risala, and they had persuaded the leader of the troop to camp the soldiers outside the Detha family's compound. The ordinary camping site was about one mile away from the village.

The soldiers camped in a field along the country road. On the other side of the road the Detha families had a large stonewalled orchard of ber trees. It was part of a compound which also included the big pol house for men and cattle, and it was adjacent to the living quarters for women and children.

Also this time the Chelana Thakur's relatives saw an opportunity to get rid of the Dethas without being involved themselves. They gave a feast for the soldiers and persuaded them to teach the Dethas a lesson the following day.

Next morning a dozen of soldiers climbed the stonewall and started to pick bers in the orchard as an excuse for picking up a quarrel. It happened after Jugti Dan, Tan Dan's grandfather, had completed his morning walk around the compound. When the Dethas got to know about the ber picking, they sent a messenger to tell the soldiers that they could get as many bers as they wanted without paying anything, if they came as their guests to the well of the compound. There the Dethas would arrange a free distribution. But the soldiers at the ber trees were not prepared to make peace that easily. They wanted a fight in which they could give the Dethas a beating. They told the messenger, "Let ut see the face of the one who wants to give us ber, as if we are dependent on anyone." They sent him away under abuses. Jugti Dan did not want to take the risk of going there himself, but shouted to the soldiers from the roof of his house in the orchard that they had been misguided, and asked them to come over and discuss the matter.

They did not come, so Jugti Dan found it better to call some of his friends in the village, and in their company he went to see the leader in charge of the risala troop. The officer told the soldiers had their leisure time at the moment, so he could not do anything.

The soldiers were drinking and enjoying themselves and liked to play mischief with somebody. When they found the Dethas in trouble more soldiers went ahead in high spirit and partly pulled down the stonewall, climbing into the orchard shouting to each other to kill the enemy. Meanwhile Jugti Dan hurried back to his house in order to organise a defence together with his sons and servants. They threw stones on the soldiers by gopan (a leather sling for throwing stones) and some of the soldiers got badly hit. The fight moved towards the house, which the soldiers tried to enter, as they had been informed by their local Rajput helpers, that there were no women in the big house inside the compound.

It was a part of the feudal moral code not to attack any house, in which there are women. If a house with women would be entered, it would be a great shame for that family. It would never be able to get over such a grief. An even greater shame for those Kshatriyas, who had invaded a house with women inside, and such persons would be outcasted in the old days.

One such Kshatriya rule, which was followed without questioning all over Rajasthan and probably most over India, was that you should not have a wound on the back of your body, if you are a Kshatriya, as it is taken as a proof that you have been trying to flee when being hit by your enemy, something which does not evoke compassion, but only ridicule. Women relatives would teasingly send their odhna (veil), brassiers and other feminine clothes and outfits to show their contempt. Another thing which the people at home had difficult to accept was when their Kshatriya relative came home defeated from the war, or any other fight, even just a simple village affair. In the old days the wife of a defeated soldier would tell him it would have been better he had died in the battle field, rather than putting her to shame, although she would have become a widow, a cruel fate in old India. The most quoted example is Hadija, the wife of Maharaja Jaswant Singh of Marwar, who closed the gates of the Jodhpur Palace, when her husband (in 1657 A.D.) returned defeated from a battle with Aurangzeb, the Moghul ruler. Whenever the feudal pride had been hurt for a Rajput or a Charan, he could not come over it, and his mind would always be set on taking revenge. Until he had taken revenge his food would be tasteless, and tears would come rolling from his eyes, whenever he got to think about the painful incidence. This kind of feudal pride is the main reason why family feuds can go on for generations, and why even well established and influential villagers can run away to the bush to become dacoits.

*

Before the soldiers could conquer the house for menfolk and cattle of the Detha family, the men rushed out from the house ready for battle, all except Jugti Dan himself. His sons thought it would not be wise to let him fight along with them, so they asked a respected wellwisher of the family, whom their father always obeyed, to tell their father to put on women clothes and disappear from the house towards safety, and that he did. They could not tell him directly, as in feudal setup a gap always had to be maintained between the father and his sons, as well as between an older and a younger brother.

A face to face fight started in the late afternoon and went on for two to three hours. Most of the soldiers were rather drunk at this time of the day, and did not fight very efficiently, especially as they could not use horses inside the compound. The stonewall blocked the way. The soldiers were on their way to an engagement (sagai) procession in Jaipur. They would celebrate the engagement between a Jodhpur princess, and a Jaipur prince, so they were equipped for feast rather than for fight. They had no swords, only spears. The risala (cavalry) of the Jodhpur Maharaja never carried swords even in action of war. They carried spears, according to the new tactics taught by the British, meant for taking over the artillery of the enemy, and they also had pistols at war, but only then. For engagement processions like the one they were going to attend no pistols were issued.

Thus the soldiers had to fight the Dethas on foot equipped only with clumsy spears meant for the horse back and whatever stones and sticks they could lay their hands on. The Dethas were fighting with lathi sticks on which they had a lot of experience and managed to hurt their numerous enemy severely. The clash suddenly stopped, when the uncle of the Chelana Thakur was hit by a lathi of one of the Dethas, and fell on the ground with severely bleeding wound on his head. Many thought he was dying.

Sensing that something serious had happened to them all, the village Rajputs run away leaving the soldiers in an embarassing situation, especially as a court case might follow, so they also left as quickly as possible. The Thakur's uncle died a few days later from his wounds, and in addition eight or nine soldiers were severely wounded, and had to be carried back to their camp by others. Five persons from the Detha family were also wounded, most of them by stones.

All the Detha brothers run away from Chelana as soon as the fight was over. Some of them went to get help from in-laws in other villages. (It is a major advantage of being marriage that you can get help from in-laws in times of crisis.). Sabbal Dan, the eldest brother, went to Jodhpur in order to present the case at the court of justice, and to approach the British adviser to the Maharaja.

The soldiers left the same night with ten horses less than before, as the Dethas had stolen ten horses out of revenge, which later were returned to the Maharaja, when Jugti Dan and his sons arrived at the Jodhpur Palace, telling the Maharaja that his soldiers were looting and killing people on the way. Eventually the case was settled and Jugti Dan got a large compensation from the Maharaja. Jugti Dan succeeded in this, as he did not charge the Maharaja directly, but instead some of the soldiers, and asked for the help of the maharaja in his case against them. As Jugti Dan was on good terms with the uncle of His Highness, and in addition a famous poet, who had got the highest literary award in the Marvar State.

The Maharaja also knew that the British law was on Jugti Dan's side.

A small farmer in the state would hardly have succeeded in this, but even in the old even more feudal days, Jugti Dan might have succeeded, if he had had equally good relations with the royal court. In any case, the soldiers were punished and dismissed, something which would never have happened in earlier times, when looting of villagers were the order of the day and almost a Kshatriya right.

The fight in the Nilkhedi field continues here

After this interval we shall continue Tan Dan's narration about the fatal fight of the Dethas against the Nilkhedi Thakur in 1929.

The brothers and their helpers had formed a circle to facilitate their defence. It was made of eight persons fighting and two inside. When they went to the field they had also brought four labourers for weeding out bushes in the field. When the crowd approached, the labourers got frightened. The others told them to run away towards Nilkhedi with the tools in their hands, so they would look like ordinary workers. To move towards Chelana would be dangerous, as the Rajputs might think they were informers, and would chase them.

The Nilkhedi Thakur had been misinformed about the intentions of the Dethas by the Rajputs from the Chelana Thikana. He had been told that the Dethas had come fully equipped for fight with the intention to insult the Haridhana Thikana. When they found out that the Dethas only had lathis and some swords, and were less than a dozen people, then the Thakur thought they could easily defeat the Dethas even without horses, and sent them away. However, the Rajputs, although desiring to hurt the Dethas, did not want to get hurt themselves, so they fought rather inefficiently, most of them. It was an unorganised mob, rather than a village army lead by the Thakur. The circle of Dethas managed to maintain itself intact by all the time moving from one place to another in the field. For them it was a help rather than a threat that there was a crowd of several hundred persons in the field, as it added to the confusion, and in confusion it is difficult to take advantage of numerical superiority. The Dethas all the time therefore tried to move to the part, where the crowd was thickest, as there were more cowards there feeling secure in the thick crowd. Those who tried to run away rather than attack. There the use of stones and weapons was difficult as other Rajputs might get hurt as well. The Dethas used lathis with the help of which they managed to ward off the angry crowd for hours. It got more and more frustrated, sensing defeat, which would have been a great humiliation to all the Rajputs.

They sent for their horses again, and about four o'clock in the afternoon three riders came galopping down the slope into the field with cavalry spears from the Thikana in their hand. The crowd made way for them. Mahesh Dan had been fighting with his lathi up to then. He asked one of the two boys in the middle of the circle to give him his sword, but the riders were so fast that he did not get time to take it out from the cover. When the horses run over the circle of men, it immediately got broken, as they could not stand against horses. The first of the three riders, who rode on line, was Gordhan Singh, a Rajput from Sinala village of the Nilkhedi Thikana. Mahesh Dan stood with his sword lifted and gave a blow, which cut off completely the leg of Gordhan Singh, as it was applied with such a force that it broke out of the cover of the sword. The next rider pierced the left arm of Mahesh Dan with his spear, and being wounded he soon got overpowered by the crowd, when he fell down. They cut off both his legs with three different swords, but they did not at that stage intend to kill him. The men with swords told those beating Mahesh Dan with lathis that they had better cut his legs, so he would not stand up and create trouble again. Harka Ram, one of the two boys in the middle of the circle had taken care of Mahesh turban, when it fell on the ground, but it was immediately snatched away from him by the Rajputs, who threw it on the ground and gave it kicks.

*

Among villagers in Rajasthan the fate of your turban is almost more important than the fate of yourself. In fighting, if you loose your turban and runs away, it is a very humiliating defeat. On the other hand, even if you yourself get killed, but your turban is brought back to your home, it is considered you have died in honour. In the old days, and in backward parts of Rajasthan even up to the 20th century, satti, that is burning of widows, was a custom among Kshatriya castes. Women burnt themselves to death on the cremation fire of their husbands. The funeral ceremony was only attended by grown-up men, mostly a big crowd from the whole village. Music was played to drench the cries of the dying widow.

Without the dead body of her husband the widow could not burn herself to death, unless the turban of her husband was brought back home. If it was brought, then the ceremony in which the widow burnt herself to death was carried out with the turban as a substitute for the dead body. It was important at wars, as the dead bodies of the soldiers mostly could not be brought back to the home village. The often young widow held the turban in her lap while getting burnt. Her children were left to the care of other members of the joint family, and were often given inferior treatment.

In addition to Mahesh Dan also Siv Ram, got severely wounded by the riders. He was a lower relative of the Detha clan, being a grownup son of the concubine of the father of the Detha brothers. The concubine had been given in dowry to Jugti Dan at his marriage.

Behind the riders, the crowd of Rajputs swarmed the broken circle, and each of the Detha brothers and their relatives had to fight individually against the crowd, who were intent to kill all the Detha brothers but not immediately, as they first wanted to tease and humiliate them and give them a painful death. However, Sabal Dan, the eldest of the brothers was known as a gentleman, so the Rajputs shouted to each others: "kill him immediately", which they also did. Other Detha relatives and helpers were also beaten to unconsciousness but not killed. Soon they were all unconscious or in a helpless condition. Gordhan fell off his horse, some distance away, and turned unconscious, at the sight of which people thought he was dead. Killed by Mahesh Dan. It made the crowd the furious. They killed Mahesh Dan by chopping him into pieces by sword. When his corpse later was found, it was in eleven pieces. Also the other brothers were killed by swords and lathi strokes, and they were all cut into pieces, except Tej Dan, Tan Dan's father. Tej Dan was only hit by lathi, as the crowd wanted to kill him by lathi. He was a very strong lathi fighter, and had wounded many persons in the field. They broke almost every bone of his body, and his right arm was especially under attack, as he was known for his strength in that arm, and many were keen on taking revenge. They did not leave him until they thought he was dead, bleeding from wounds all over his body.

The fight was over and the Rajputs started going back and took care of those who had got wounded. No one except Gordhan Singh, the rider, was unconscious, but it took seven oxen cart loads to get back all the wounded Rajputs to Nilkhedi village. The carts kept coming until eleven o'clock in the night. Some thought, they had better to cut Tej Dan into pieces also, so they went to search for his body in the darkness. But it was the thirteenth day of Krishnapaksh, and thus a very dark night without moonlight. Tej Dan's brother-in-law Shakti Dan was wounded, but not killed, as the Rajput villagers only wanted to kill the Detha brothers. He heard them searching for Tej Dan, who was lying unconscious beside him. He managed to hide Tej Dan in a bush nearby, and the Rajput never found him.

In the small hours of the night Hapu Bai, a niece of the Detha brothers, went to the field. She was in her teens. An unusual young lady, riding horses and wearing white dhoti, and a black shirt like menfolk, instead of the usual Rajasthani skirt, and she did not cover her face in pardah.

She rode on her horse with a sword in her belt to see what had happened, as no one had returned in the evening. A rumour was spreading at Chelana that something terrible had happened. Bika Ram Deval accompanied Hapu Bai on foot to the field. They heard Shiv Ram and Bhoja Ram groan in pain in the darkness, but no one else seemed to be alive. When others at home came to know about the tragedy, more came to help in medicating the wounded and cover the dead bodies.

Other villagers in Chelana and around were shocked by the tragedy, and many in Chelana kept talking until late in the night. From person to person, mostly by relatives visiting each other's villages, the news spread within a few weeks to many parts of north-western Rajasthan, especially among Rajput and Charan families. The the killing itself was bad enough, but caste emotions rose even higher as it had been a fight between a Charan and a Rajput family. By tradition these two castes had a very cordial relation. Many Charans were advisers and well-wishers of Rajput maharajas, and heroic Rajputs were praised in the traditional dingal poems made by Charans. Dingal was the literary language of court poets of Hindu Maharajas and most dingal poets were Charans.

Jugti Dan, the father of the dead brothers, was himself a Charan poet of this type. He had been honoured by a literary award by the Maharaja of Marvar, and was well known by Rajputs all over Rajasthan. At the time of the tragedy Jugti Dan was on his way back from a gathering of dingal language poets invited by the Raja of Khetri of north-eastern Rajasthan. Half way back from Khetri a messenger told Jugti Dan about a terrible fight. He reached home in great anxiety after having ridden on horseback all the night, and there he got confirmed that all his sons were dead. He immediately went out to the field where the bodies of his sons still were lying. Hapu had all the time been attending and organising at the site of the field, being completely exhausted, but without crying. Seeing Jugati Dan coming she rushed towards him, and burst into tears in his arms without uttering a word. It was early in the morning. Two days had passed since the fight. By now it was clear that Tej Dan was not dead, although seriously wounded and hardly able to survive. Meanwhile, Tej Dan's wife had started to live as a widow, unaware that her husband was alive.

Jugti Dan loaded a large ox cart drawn by four oxen with the dead bodies and those who were wounded. First they went to Chelana, but only stayed for an hour, as Jugti Dan wanted to show the dead bodies to the British Resident at Jodhpur, if possible. He did not trust the Marvari police officers, most of them Rajputs. They went to Jalagarh in the hope that the British Resident of the Maharaja of Marvari State at Jodhpur would come and look at the bodies, which he did not do. It was in the monsoon season, hot and humid, and the brothers had been dead for several days, so it was high time for a cremation. Jugti Dan invited about a hundred influential feudal lords, especially thakurs and officers from the Maharaja's court, and most of them came. He wanted them to see the bodies, which were completely mutilated, and in this way getting their sympathy. He thought it would prevent the Nilkhedi Thakur from having their assistance. In this he succeeded to a large extent, as he did not have to face a united Rajput conspiracy at the legal proceedings later on. Many Rajputs all over Rajasthan felt ashamed of such a brutal murder of Charans. However, this act of feudal brutality mainly got publicity, becuse Charans were the victims. Similar acts of violence had been done in the past against persons from lower castes including the Thakur's own feudal subjects. Both by the Chelana and Nilkhedi thikanas. BM It was not necessary to carry out such acts very often, as the villagers knew the importance of being meek.

The Diwan of Jalagarh was an old friend of Jugti Dan. He helped in sending seriously wounded Tej Dan to Jodhpur. There, Jugti Dan managed to get Tej Dan under the care of a British doctor, who gave him half a chance to survive. The doctor made a large number of operations on his broken and wounded body. He also agreed to admit Tej Dan to a special ward, as some persons wanted to harm him. Three companions were attending to Tej Dan day and night in shifts.

At Jodhpur Tej Dan was hospitalized for two and a half year. He was in bed for four years altogether. Even in the hospital the Rajputs from Nilkhedi tried to kill him, as his presence was a threat to them in the court proceedings. Once they bribed somebody working in the hospital for poisoning Tej Dan, but they did not succed.

Eventually Tej Dan recovered and lived a very long life.

Jasa Ram, a shepherd of Chelana had helped the Detha family in this crisis. As a child he had been married to a girl from Nilkhedi. When this calamity happened, she was still living with her parents. When the Nilkhedi Thakur got to know that one of his subjects had a daughter married to a friend of his enemy in Chelana, the daughter's father was ordered to break the relations without returning the marriage gifts. Jasa Ram lived separate from his wife for four years. Then she went on her own accord to Chelana to live with her husband. She could not go back to Nilkhedi, although it was only two kos away (four miles/six kilometers).

Jugti Dan and the Chief Minister of Marvar State, who he knew before, went together to the British Resident to present the case. The Resident allowed the case to be treated by a special committee, dealing with important crimes. The court proceedings became very lengthy, but eventually, after twelve years, as many as 62 persons were imprisoned. Many of them got life imprisonment. However, nobody were in jail for more than about five years, as on the day of Independence in 1947 the Indian Government issued a general order to release prisoners all over India.

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### Chapter 3 The dispute about an ox cart around 1870

The first clash between the Chelana Thakur and the Detha family had occurred a several decades earlier. It was about a Jat ox cart.

The Jats were agricultural tenants of the Thakur. They lived and worked as serfs. Most of these farm families stayed in straw huts at their leasehold fields. Water they had to bring by ox cart from the deep well at the edge of the village settlement. In the hot dry season they brought their load of clay pots filled with water every third day.

One day in the hot month of May around 1870 A.D. a Jat farmer had come with his ox cart to fetch water at the village well near the tank. On that day some ladies of the Thakur family wanted to go to a sacred shrine at Devatara village in order to worship the Banyasa seven sisters and their brother. The Thikana people had eleven carts for the whole party, which was to go in an ox cart caravan. They wanted one more cart, so they sent one of the faithful Thikana servants out in the village to search. All the eleven ox carts they had taken from their village subjects, which was the usual procedure at such occasions.

The Thikana took bullock carts in begar, whenever they had to go somewhere, as it was below their feudal prestige to keep bullock carts themselves. Thakurs used to own raths, mostly drawn by horses and sometimes bullocks. Although beautifully decorated they were big and clumsy and not as practical for going long distances in large parties as the ordinary bullock cart.

The man sent was the father of Naruji of the Daroga caste. Naruji later on became the kamdar of the Chelana Thikana. Naruji's father was a man of rough handling and seeing the cart of the Jat tenant at the village well, he told the Jat to bring the cart to the Thikana, as it was needed for an excursion. The Jat had a good cart and strong oxen, as was required for the long journey through tracts of loose sand. The Jat begged the Thikana servant not to take his cart, as he had to bring water to his home, where only his wife and an old relative lived. They were in great need of water, as his wife had given birth to a child two days earlier. The Thikana servant did not want to listen, as he had to oblige his master, who expected him to bring a cart somehow. He put down the pots on the ground and went away with the cart and the oxen. The Jat farmer followed the cart to the Thikana and entered the fortresslike building, where he tried to present his case to the Thakur from a distance (no subject was allowed to come close to his Thakur), even humiliating himself to the extent that he put down his turban on the ground, sitting on the ground barefooted, folding his hands towards the Thakur, as a sign of complete submission. But all was in vain as others at the Thikana tried to prevent him from explaining properly, and nobody was prepared to listen.

The people of the Thikana were busy preparing the carts for the journey. They covered them with bright cloth mounted on wooden bent sticks in order to protect the women from spectators. It took some time to complete the arrangements and for the caravan to start.

Meanwhile the harassed Jat went out in the village to find somebody who could lend him another cart. After having tried a few houses, he came to the house of Budh Dan Detha, the father of Jugti Dan Detha, who was a young man at this time. When the Jat farmer arrived, Budh Dan was not at home, but his sons and his younger brother had their morning meal, and prepared themselves for continuing their work. It was about eight o'clock.

The farmer told them his story. At first they did not want to help him with a bullock cart, but their mother told them to give. They sat talking in the open yard in the middle of the joint family house, so all could hear what it was about. Then the brothers agreed to lend him a bullock cart. All except Jugti Dan, who told the tenant he was a coward, who did not dare to fight for the welfare of his own people. Jugti Dan told his brothers, they should not help the Jat, unless he was prepared to join them in fighting with the Thakur to get back his bullock cart. Possibly he did not realise, how vulnerable the situation is for a small tenant being from a feudal family himself. The Jat tenant thought it was better to take this opportunity and agreed to fight. Jugti Dan, the Jat and a few others went to the Thikana, where they took position outside the gate. After a while the bullock carts came rolling out of the gate, and they waited until they got sight of the one which belonged to the Jat. On his cart four female relatives of the Thakur were sitting in pardah under cloth cover. Jugti Dan stepped forward, grabbed the nose rope of the oxen, and brought them to a halt. He told the Thikana people that the cart belonged to him, Jugti Dan. He wanted it back immediately. He told he had sent the Jat for bringing water from the well on the bullock cart, when it was taken by the Thikana. They did not know he had told them a lie about the ownership, as the Thikana servant who had brought the cart had gone away with the Thakur on camel. Jugti Dan could have requested the Thakur to return the cart, but he did not bother to talk to anybody else.

The men from the Thikana did not challenge him, but asked him to allow them to take the cart back so the ladies could get off undisturbed. Jugti Dan did not trust their intentions, but thought that once inside the Thikana the cart would never be given. He challenged them sharply, telling them that they had stolen his cart, and that the ladies could not go in stolen property. The bullock cart was not in their dowry gift, he told those from the Thikana. He said that the road was clean, and that the ladies could go back on foot, as they were still within the premises of the Thikana, and as they were all in pardah. Jugti Dan told them that the cart could go forward, but not backward, which made the Thikana men angry, and they overpowered him and dragged him inside the Thikana, while beating him with sticks. The Jat ran away without a word. He ran towards the Detha house to tell what had happened. Jugti Dan's uncle Kim Dan and two other relatives got disappointed when the Jat ran away, as they were fighting for his sake, but they thought they should bring the cart of the Jat to their home, as it now had turned into a matter of prestige. Kim Dan jumped up on the driving place on the wooden board at the rear part between the oxen, where he could itch them with his toes between their legs, a usual village practice to get oxen to run fast.

At that moment most of the crowd was busy beating Jugti Dan while pushing him into the Thikana, so it was rather easy for the two Detha relatives running along the side of the Jat's cart to keep people away while Kim Dan was driving, and the cart reached the Detha home safely. There the menfolk hurriedly left for the Thikana to get Jugti Dan out of that place, as they feared the worst.

A little later a large number of Detha relatives and servants rushed through the gate of the Thikana fortress. That gate is always open and mostly unguarded.

Thakur's people had thrown Jugti Dan into the pig stie, which was a large compound with high walls inside the Thikana building. Wild dangerous boars were kept there, some of them with sharp tusks. Jugti Dan narrowly managed to save himself by climbing a wooden structure in the middle of the yard used as a shade for the boars. There he sat when his relatives entered the fortress searching all around while shouting to get his attention. When they realised that Jugti Dan was in the pig stie, they tried to enter, but the door was locked. They found a wooden log in the big yard (chowk) outside the pig stie, and they smashed the door with it. The boars huddled in a corner of the yard frightened by the noise. Jugti Dan jumped down from the shade, and they all ran away from the Thikana.

While leaving the Thikana, the Dethas did not meet much resistance, but a few hours later the Rajputs came to their house for punishing them, and to bring the cart back. A large crowd of Rajputs equipped with swords and lathis arrived. Not the Thakur himself, as it was beneath him to fight with his own villagers like a common man.

The Dethas had meanwhile dismantled the cart into pieces, which they had spread all over the house. If the cart had been left in front of the house it could have been taken away by the Rajputs, and the Dethas did not want to face that humiliation. The oxen of the cart had been sent on grazing together with all the Detha cattle, so the Rajputs could not get hold of these either. The Jat farmer, the owner of the cart, had gone home to his dhani with water to his wife and children on another cart. That ox cart he had borrowed from the Detha family. Although he managed to escape the attention of the Thakur for the moment, the Thakur later on got to know the true story and the tenant was expelled from his land and had to move to relatives in another village. His children later on moved back to Chelana, where they still lived in the 1970s.

Some men of the Detha family went out of their house to meet the Rajputs and other villagers, who had assembled in hundreds outside. Budh Dan, the father of Jugti Dan, requested the Rajputs to settle the matter in peace, but Govind Singh, a cousin of the Thakur, hit Budh Dan with a stick, while Budh Dan was still talking. Budh Dan had kept Jugti Dan and other relatives inside to avoid provoking the Rajputs, especially as Jugti Dan was known for his short temper and harsh language. When Jugti Dan saw his father falling to the ground getting wounded, he could not control himself. He rushed out from the house, where he had been hiding, and hit Govind Singh so severely that he fell down unconscious. Govind Singh was taken back on a charpai, and he died by his wounds after a few days.

Then the fight against the Rajputs outside the house took a serious turn for the Dethas, as the Rajputs were too many for them. The fight ended, when all the Dethas were wounded and defeated. The Rajputs especially wanted to catch Jugti Dan, so his relatives persuaded him to flee. He left the village going to his uncle, a camel caravan owner in village Basani Sandwan. The route to that place passed through ravines and jungle, suitable for hiding.

A few days later, when Budh Dan got better from his injury, he sent a message to the Chelana Thakur for rajipa i.e. compromise, as he wanted to live in peace with the Thakur. Budh Dan thought of giving him the bullock cart the Jat farmer had borrowed from the Dethas for fetching water. As Budh Dan did not want to risk another row, he wanted somebody else than the Dethas to hand over the cart. Budh Dan's wife had a sister married to a Charan Jagirdar in a neighbouring village. He was on good terms with the Chelana Thakur and agreed to hand over the cart. The Charan Jagirdar gave the cart as a gift to the Chelana Thakur on the behalf of the Detha family at Chelana. The Thakur accepted the gift provided the Dethas would not interfere with the expulsion of the Jat tenant from the Thakur's land, or employ him. Budh Dan agreed to that condition. His sons and other relatives did not like the compromise with the Thakur, as they thought death would be better than yielding to somebody, who has attacked you in your own house.

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### Chapter 4 The dispute about the Detha gate around 1900

Originally Chelana was a small village of straw roofed mudhouses. A big social gulf was created when the village Thakur in the middle of the 18th century managed to construct a fortresslike building of sandstone and lime. That was his Thikana, i.e. residential place. The Thikana was lying as a giant in the middle of clusters of small huts. The growth of packa houses (i.e. houses built of stone or bricks) in the villages of Rajasthan did not start until the beginning of the 20th century. Before that even very rich villagers lived in mud and straw houses. Only forts and fortresses were of stone, and houses of rich people in the cities.

In the late 19th century another Rajput built the second stone house in the village. Around 1900 A.D. two more Rajputs built stonehouses at Chelana. At that time also Jugti Dan Detha decided to build two stone houses, one for women and children and another for menfolk and work.

The stones for the buildings they got from a stone quarry at a nearby mountain, where people of the area used to celebrate the spring festival. It was transported from there on ox carts.

Jugti Dan built the ravala for women and the pol for menfolk. The cattle was kept inside the stonewalled compound spreading over several hectares. The pol was built at the inner corner of that compound near the ravala. It was a big house with a large work yard and a godown. There Jugti Dan kept his grain, fodder and horses. He built a big gate in porch style, i.e. it was pointed in the top, and high enough for camels and horses to enter. In the porch was inserted a small door for men to pass through.

Inside the porch the men could prepare their meat. The women did not allow meat to be cooked inside the ravala.

The ravala stone house had been built by the Jugti Dan family somewhat earlier. The entrance had a small door, which did not embarass the Thakur.

But the Chelana Thakur objected to the porch gate of the pol building, which he thought was of too royal dimensions, only worthy of a Rajput. By custom only Rajputs were allowed to have porch gates.

Jugti Dan's impressive gate was clearly visible from the gate of the Thikana building of the Thakur, and the Rajputs felt it was a challenge and an insult.

At the time of construction Rajputs managed to pull down the pol twice. Both times at nights, when most Detha menfolk had gone somewhere. The third time the Dethas built a stronger, bigger and more fortresslike pol. All menfolk stayed at home and were on their guard until it was completed. The building still stands there. The sight of it was an annoyance to the Rajputs for many decades.

Since 1960 a large number of other stone houses belonging to welloff villagers have come up, and the porches of the Thakur and the Dethas no longer look at each other face to face, and nobody bothers any more.

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### Chapter 5 The fight with the police at the Chelana Thikana in 1927

At the death of his sons, Jugti Dan did not want to go with his case to the Jalagarh police station, as they were likely to be partial to the Rajputs, several of them being Rajputs themselves. Especially the following incident, which happened in 1927, two years before the fight in the Nilkhedi field, had turned the Jalagarh police against the Detha family of Chelana.

In one corner of the Chelana village on a little mound higher than the rest of the village, there was a temple for Rama and Sita, the hero and heroine gods of the Ramayana epic story. It was a large temple, which owned a lot of agricultural land under the doli (religious) land rights, and to which a big house was attached adjoining the temple on the mound itself. This house was meant for the pujari, the priest in charge of the temple. The priest always belongs to the Sad caste, a special caste for taking care of temple worshipping. Especially, he is active at sunrise and senset, when he worships at the temple for about ten to fifteen minutes each time in a noisy ceremony by beating two brass plates with wooden sticks and singing praises to the gods loud enough for the villagers in surrounding mohallas of Brahmins and Rajputs to hear, as it increases the chances of the priest to get better chappatis and other food, when he goes around asking for his Thakur Dakshina (alms for the god) after the ceremony. When the priest starts beating his brass plates, children and others come running as well as village dogs. The dogs are howling all through the bell beating ceremony. Afterwards everyone in the crowd gets a part of a tulsi leaf by the priest, which each has to eat by stretching out his tongue, in order to avoid any touch of the leaf by the teeth, as such a touch is considered a great sin.

In the 1920s a priest of this temple had a wife who died leaving two minor sons behind. He married another lady of the Sad caste, and she was young and beautiful. While going for Thakur Dakshina each morning to surrounding houses she got involved in various love affairs with villagers of the upper castes.

Together with one of the lovers the priest's wife made a plan to live together in peace and happiness without being troubled by others. They decided to poison the priest and his children in order to enjoy the facilities of the temple. The lover thought he would be able to move into the house next to the temple instead of the priest.

She was given datura seed, which is a very poisonous seed from the datura plant, a herb growing like a weed all around the village. She mixed it in the flour when making chapati for the family, but she did not take enough of it out of ignorance. With a sufficient quantity of the poison the death would have been instant, but now instead it became a very slow and painful death, which drew the attention of the whole village, as the priest and the children were wringing in pain for the whole day before they died, and it was clear to everybody, that they had been poisoned by datura seeds.

The young wife got frightened by what she saw, and ran away from the village. A few days later she was caught by the police at her father's home. The Jalagarh police had been called to Chelana village the day after the murder. The policemen had put their camp in the Thikana itself. Government employees visiting the village used to stay there. Besides, they were close friends of the Thakur. The priest's wife was kept in the Thikana during the eighteen days of interrogation, as she was the first one to be suspected, and they wanted her to tell, who had helped her.

The first name she mentioned they did not want to consider, as he was a man close to the Thikana. They had to search for others, and they pressed her to mention more names. They got her to tell names of other lovers that could be suspected. Some of them were called by the police to the Thikana for interrogation, but not those who were Rajputs. As the police stayed on in Chelana for many days, eating and drinking with their Rajput friends, there was plenty of time for conspiracy. The police wanted to earn some extra money, and with the help of the Rajputs they found out suitable persons to blackmail. So the police changed tactics and told the girl, which persons they wanted to be suspected. When such a person, who naturally was innocent, appeared in the Thikana, he was told by the police officer that he had been called, as the priest's wife had told them, that he also was her friend. Then the police officer turned to her, who had been rehearsed in advance, asking her, if it really was correct, what she had told them. Being completely in the grip of the police, she was prepared to do anything to please them in order to save herself, and she nodded feebly. The police officer would turn to the victim, telling him "Look here, you have seen yourself, what can I do in such circumstances? Being a Government servant I have to submit a report and take action." If the man would get angry at this unexpected blame, and shout that he had not seen her before, he was likely to be hit by a police stick, and told to behave himself. He should not to pretend to be honest after having done such things. Then the police officer did not have any more to say, but left him crushed and helpless, and he could expect the worst, even imprisonment. Rajputs and others, who pretended to be his wellwishers would tell him not to loose heart. After all he was a man, and everybody can make a mistake. Whatever was done was done, and now it was for him to try to set things right. "It is better for you to put your turban at the feet of Saheb (the police officer). He is a nice man. He is the only one, who can save you now."

Such persons were always ready to help others with their false sympathy, getting something for themselves in the process. They had enough leisure time to meddle into other people's affairs and were available in plenty on occasions like this one.

The police needed such "impartial" helpers from the village. They could be referred to as reliable witnesses (motbir) in the police record. Such a motbir then tells the suspected one, that he would help him to talk to the Saheb.

They go to the other side of the Thikana, where the police officer was sitting. The helper would get close and start a confidential consversation in a low voice, while the supposed criminal would stand a bit away anxiously waiting for the result of the negotiation. Eventually the "helper" asked him to give a certain amount of money to the Sahab (to be handed over by the "helper", which gives him a chance to get some money for himself). Either the money was given straight away, or if he did not have any cash he had to sell or mortgage something. On such occasions they mostly got money by mortgaging their ornaments with the village moneylenders and merchants belonging to the baniya caste, so police harassment also meant good times for baniyas, who could make handsome profit on deals with moneyless villagers in distress.

As often was the case, when some big crime had occured, the police from Jalagarh had come in a team of three. The Thanadar, i.e. the police officer, was the boss, who terrified the public by his speech and actions, and got the major part of the bribe. At his side was the munshi, the police clerk, who kept records of the proceedings, and the sipahi, the ordinary police man, often poor, and grateful even for a small bribe, which he is denied, whenever the police officer is present. The sipahi is sent as a messenger and has to do all kinds of crude and simple work, and is often the first to be killed, whenever there is a police clash.

The Thanadar, i.e. the police officer (flatteringly called Saheb), and his men managed together with the Rajputs at the Thikana to scare more than twenty villagers to give good bribes on charges everybody knew were false. For the Rajputs it was an excellent opportunity to get people with whom they had grievences into trouble. Among these were the Dethas who lived by themselves on a rather isolated side of the village away from the mainstream village life. It could be risky to ask for bribes from them directly. Instead, one of their close associates, a small vegetable supplier of the Mali caste, was selected as a victim. His name was Giga Baba.

In the 1920s only two families of other castes than the Charan lived near the house of the Detha family, One was that of Bika Ram Deval, a Chamar family, and the other was the Mali family to which Giga Baba belonged. The Mali house was situated in the direction of the temple, where the murder had been committed. By this time most villagers knew about the injustice being done by the police stationed at the Thikana, and Giga Baba understood immediately what it was about, when the sipahi arrived telling him that the police officer (Thanadar) wanted to see him. Giga Baba told the sipahi that he had to take care of some animals out in his field, and that he would come later. That night he stayed in a neighbouring village, in the hope that somebody would intervene on his behalf in his absence. When he came back to his house next morning he found that half of his family members had been summoned to the Thikana, accused of having helped him to abscond. Even women had been summoned to the Thikana.

Hearing that, Giga Baba got angry and went straight to the house of the Detha family. There he met Mahesh Dan, his friend, both being in their forties, strong and adamant. Already from a distance he started scolding Mahesh Dan for not doing anything, while the police was looting their village and taking away their honour. Then they went to Jugti Dan, Mahesh Dan's father, and they all decided to put an end to further harassment of the police. All the men from the joint families of the Dethas and the Malis prepared themselves for fight. Also two neighbouring Chamar men, (Bika Ram Deval's younger brothers) joined, and altogether forty strong seasoned fighters went up to the Thikana with lathis in hand to talk to the Thandar. (But Jugti Dan thought that the Thandar ought to be beaten by shoes instead of sticks, as it is a more humiliating form of beating in the villages, where feet and leather under Hindu influence is considered low and unholy.)

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Mahesh Dan and the others had instructed Giga Baba to go in advance to the Thikana and act as normal in order to find out what the Thandar wanted and then come back and tell them. Meanwhile they would wait outside the gate of the Thikana. But Giga Baba got so furious when he saw all the women folk of his family that he could not control himself, and shouted at the Thanadar: "Thari majian ne kyun bulai." (Why did you call your mothers?) He quickly got overpowered by some Rajputs and the sipahi after a short scuffle, in which one of the Rajputs got hit so severely on his chin by Giga Baba's elbow that he got crippled for life, probably another reasons for keeping hatred for Dethas and their followers alive among those Rajputs, who daily saw him with great difficulty taking food, with his mouth kept over his shoulder.

When the crowd outside the gate heard the noise inside it entered the Thikana. They shouted to Giga Baba: "Giga Baba, gedi hamb" (catch your stick). and threw a lathi towards him, which he caught in flight, and joined the others in the fight. The police and Rajputs were not more than a dozen and were soon overpowered. The ladies of the family of Giga Baba were asked to go home. The munshi (police clerk) quickly run away and took refuge in the temple in the middle of the Thikana, but was caught and beaten. The Thanadar got angry and started shouting and swearing at the intruders calling them insulting and degrading words and threatened them with severe punishment for bearing hands on a police officer. The Rajputs present asked Mahesh Dan in excitement, if he did not know the rules and regulations and understood the consequences of their action.

Mahesh Dan told the Thanadar, that they had come to catch a thief, and that they did not consider him as a police officer any longer. Another exchange of hot words followed. Mahesh Dan pulled the Thanadar by the hair and dragged him out of the Thikana. Outside the gate the crowd surrounded the Thanadar and a few told him in a harsh language that he should not think that people in the village did not know what had been going on in the Thikana for the last several days. While the talks were going on the Rajputs attacked after having gathered more people and soon the fight was in full swing everybody hitting each others with lathis (big hard bamboo sticks). The villagers had formed a circle around the police officer, and he shouted to the Rajputs to beat the mob so he could get free. But the fight was a tough one and many people got wounded including the police officer/Thanadar. He told the Rajputs to stop fighting, when he saw the risk of people getting killed, as Rajputs started drawing swords. The Thanadar knew that both he and the Thikana might be in trouble legally, if the case became more serious and would be looked into on higher levels. Still being a prisoner of the villagers under the leadership of Mahesh Dan Detha and Giga Baba Mali, the Thanadar and his two police assistants were accompanied to the Ram Devra temple of the Bhambi (leatherworker) caste. The temple was situated between the Bhambi mohalla and the village well. A central place where all villagers daily passed by, but at some distance from the Thikana and the Rajput Mohalla. At the Ram Devra temple, the Thanadar was told to rewrite the record of the murder case, as the earlier version was fake. The policemen were kept in the temple over the night, and nobody could visit them without permission. Hearing that the police had been brought out from the Thikana, the villagers lost their fear and gathered in hundreds to have a look, especially as anybody could pass by when going to the village well for fetching water.

That evening the Thanadar and his men got a very ordinary village meal.

Next day when the police records had been sufficiently rewritten to satisfy the villagers falsely accused, the policemen were allowed to leave for Jalagarh. They brought the young wife of the old murdered priest, and some relatives from her native village. They were the only ones who got arrested in the end.

The court case at Jodhpur

Later the Thanadar of Jalagarh filed a suite in court against Giga Baba, Mahesh Dan and many others for having mishandled a police officer and disobeyed his orders. He claimed the village mob had prevented him from making an impartial interrogation of the murder case. Many from Chelana were frequently summoned to the courts both at Jalagarh and Jodhpur, as a sort of harassment. Giga Baba and some of his friends settled as labourers in a suburb of Jodhpur for a few years in order to be close by and to avoid violence from Rajputs both at Chelana and on the road to Jodhpur. Giga Baba was tough and adament with a lot of self-confidence and a strong body. His will-power was unusually strong for a person from a low caste. He got employed in Jodhpur by a largescale house construction contractor of the same Mali caste as Giga Baba. The contractor realised that Giga Baba worked more than four men combined and Giga Baba managed to earn as much as forty Rupees per month. His enemy the Thanadar in Jalagarh only earned thirty Rupees per month, apart from bribes, so Giga Baba once sent the following message to the Thanadar through a Rajput some days before one of the court proceedings: "Your uncle is in good shape, earning a lot of money and more than you." Although charged for absconding, he assured the Thanadar, he would always be at his disposal whenever the police wanted to see him. At the work site he always carried his lathi, so people would get curious and ask him why. It would give him a chance to tell about the Thanadar at Jalagarh without raising the topic himself. Once the contractor asked him, as Giga Baba all the time had hoped for. Giga Baba wanted his help, and he got it. Giga Baba won the case against the police and got aquitted, thanks to the support of the contractor, who was an influential person known all over Rajasthan.

Giga Baba felt he had become a rich man, so he used to come to the court proceedings on horse back. In royal style. The horse he hired for four annas. (A quarter of a rupee.)

In Chelana the Charans and the Rajputs did not allow persons from any other caste to ride on horses. Once when Giga Baba came to the court at Jodhpur on horseback, some rajputs asked him, if he was a Rajput, as he was riding a horse. Giga Baba laughed at them and said he did not have any caste as such, but was a man of money.

The Thanadar thought he would win the case without difficulties, as the legal machinery was likely to be partial, and as everything was possible with bribes. Minor irregularities like the one he had done himself were likely to be overlooked in a case like this. Police corruption of the kind which occurred at the Chelana Thikana was common, but hardly ever reported, and it was not in the interest of anybody to draw too much attention to it. Several villagers of Chelana, however, dared to witness about the crooked behaviour of the Thanadar, when he stayed at the Chelana Thikana, and their testimonies were embarassing for the police. Finally all the fighters in Chelana got acquitted to the dismay of the Jalagarh Thanadar. He had to stand ridicule from his colleagues at other police stations, who asked him what a wonderful investigation he had done, as he had been able to fill his pockets so well.

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### Chapter 6 Dethas were pastoral warriors inexperienced to village life

The Detha cattle herders settling at Chelana

The root cause of the difficulties for the Dethas to live in peace with their jagirdar neighbours was probably their origin as cattlebreeders from Sind with more independent habits than the local people of Chelana and its neighbourhood. They were used to roam around over large sparsely populated areas, where they could be rugged individualists without being challenged. Although it was a large chunk of grazing land that the Maharaja of Marwar had given to Kan Dan Detha, the father of Tan Dan's greatgrandfather, in between Chelana, Nilkhedi and Patelnagar villages, the place soon proved to be suffocating for them, as they found themselves in the middle of strong feudal lords and other Rajputs, who did not want to accept anyone not falling in line. The incidence about the oxen cart, which infuriated the Chelana Thakur against the Dethas, was the lighting spark. Then there was one conflict after the other.

Jugti Dan was young and inexperienced, unaware of the danger of arousing the wrath of the Chelana Thakur. He had lived away from the village in most of his childhood, staying with his uncle, a rugged fighter and caravan owner of independent nature in Basani Sanwan village about fifty miles nort-west of Chelana.

Also his father Budh Dan was rather inexperienced in living a settled village life, where you had to adjust yourself to other communities like the Rajputs. He and his brothers had come to the Chelana area a few decades earlier in the 19th century. There they and their feudal dependents had moved around with their big cattle herd in the grazing lands in between the three villages. In the beginning their women (bahus) stayed back at their father Kan Dan's dhani at Devli village, which was far away. Kan Dan stayed on at Devli village all his life, but three of his sons including Budh Dan gradually established themselves in the Chelana area. First they lived in simple camps called dera, like other nomadic groups and their forefathers in Sind when out grazing cattle. Dethas stayed in Chelana with their cattle during the hot season, as Chelana had both a well and a tank, and the well never dried up. The dera at Chelana gradually became a dhani, i.e. a permanent settlement with huts, where also women lived.

Budh Dan built his homestead outside the southern tip of the Chelana village settlement. A strawroofed mud hut which later on was replaced by a stone house. The village well and the pond were near, which was important for the cattle. Water was a scarce resource and sometimes a life and death matter. For all villagers. Watering such a big cattle herd at the village well in competition with other water users could easily result in hot words and fights. The place around the village well was fairly small, considering the large amount of people gathering there for getting water.

A village well quarrel in the 1910s

Once a Rajput boy was washing his clothes at the village well, when the Dethas came along with their cattle, as the tank had dried up. It was in the hot season. The splashing of water of the Rajput boy frightened the cattle, who did not dare to come forward to drink. The cattle herders told the Rajput boy to hold up washing, until the cattle had quenched their thirst, but he did not want to do that. A quarrel followed with mutual abuses, developing into a prestigious village affair between the Dethas and the Rajputs. It happened when Jugti Dan and his sons were digging their own well, which became very useful to them.

Pastoral livestock breeders such as Dethas used circle fighting

The type of ring fighting the Dethas used in the Nilkhedi field in 1929 was a common method among shepherds, cow herders, and oxen caravan keepers. The Detha clan at Chelana managed three thousand heads of cattle, in addition to large numbers of sheep, horses and a few camels, at the time when this happened. They managed these herds together with numerous servants. They were men of action, and had taken care of many disputes with the village elite. It was said about the Dethas of Chelana that not more than five days passed between disputes and quarrels with one or the other feudal group, and their house was called by the villlagers jagara ri jhumpari, i.e. the house of quarrel.

Like many other shepherds and breeders, the Dethas felt that every threat to them was a threat to their existence, and they prepared themselves for victory or death, before going out to fight.

The Rajput warriers in a killing mood at Nilkhedi in 1929

The crowd of warriors, while leaving the Nilkhedi Thikana in the morning were drinking and worshipping, offering the first sip to the Devi, and shouting jai kar (make victory) and other mob slogans, according to an eye witness, a retired Government offical living next to the Nilkhedi Thikana. They behaved as if in a mood to kill.

The relationship between Rajputs and Charans

Charans and Rajputs belonged to the same feudal elite, both being kshatriyas, and there was mostly a cordial relationship between people of the two castes. Therefore, Rajputs and Charans all over Rajasthan got dejected, when they heard about the killing of the three Detha brothers at Nilkhedi. They had been killed by Rajputs, who by tradition should honoured and protected them. It was a bigger crime for a Rajput to kill a Charan than for a Charan to kill a Rajput, according to the Kshatriya code,

To take revenge was an act of repayment, according to feudal norms

The warrior code told in books and songs was different from the behaviour common among Rajput in Rajasthan, when involved in village fights. At least with regards to Rajputs and other soldier castes these fights mostly were about taking revenge for injured pride. Feudal norms clearly tells when your pride has been injured. When you have to take revenge to avoid ridicule from caste fellows and other villagers. Any kshatriya who had not yet repaid was satired.

Harming the enemy and opponent was the only acceptable way to repay. Even if the enemy begged for pardon or mercy, and promised never to do it again.

If the enemy seemed innocent and friendly not expecting an attack, it was usual village practice in most of Rajasthan to attack him without warning. Mostly with lathi sticks, as knives and swords only were used, if the fight took a serious turn. Rajputs and others of the feudal warrior tradition did not show their anger openly, as it was considered foolish to disclose your intentions, when you intend to take revenge on somebody, who has hurt your pride and honour. Rather, it was socially accepted to approach your enemy with smiles and flattery, and give him a blow, when he was not prepared. Villagers considered it a clever tactic.

Attempting a compromise with your enemy was among Rajasthani feudal villagers unacceptable social behaviour, which used to be satired. Your enemy would think you had become weak and tried to squeeze more conscessions out of you.

Very few among Rajasthan Rajputs manages to reach any lasting compromises, and those few, who managed to win the sympathy and cooperation of former enemies were considered to have achieved something superhuman, and treated as saints.

It was common among Rajputs to collect a sufficient number of supporters before attacking. Enough people to safely outnumber their enemy and victim, who could be a helpless, resourceless and lonely villager of a low caste and poor family, without a chance to defend himself efficiently. Those who had adopted a feudal ideology did not see anything wrong in crushing such a person. Their attack would resemble a rat hunt rather than a fight. The weaker the enemy the stronger the Rajput tended to beat him, exciting each others to furious deeds, when they saw their enemy was about to loose.

Without such a heavy backing this type of village soldiers did not want to risk a fight. If the enemy appeared to be on his guard and well prepared, they would not challenge him to fight. In minority or alone, they were even prepared to flatter and otherwise quitely accept humiliation, until the moment came when they get a chance to take revenge. Nothing was ever forgotten or forgiven even for many generations.

In spite of such unruly behaviour there are many strict kshatriya rules, which are always observed in the villages, such as not touching the women of the enemy nor any other woman.

Hapu, Yugti Dan's granddaughter

There was one more Charan clan at Chelana, that of the Mehrus. They had got their Jagirdar land at Chelana during the time of Akbar, as one their ancestors was a good poet, who pleased the Moghul Emperor with his talent. In the 16th century.

Around 1900 Riv Dan Mehru was a strong influential feudal landlord in Chelana. Six feet and five inch in height. He was a wellknown poet in favour with his highness the Maharaja of Marvar State and therefore difficult for the Thakur to harm, when Riv Dan took over one of the Thakur's concubines at her own request. Her name was Rang Shoba. She was a beautiful lady who had got fed up of getting raped by men at the Thikana. She left and Riv Dan gave her shelter.

After the death of Rang Shoba, Riv Dan started to drink and neglect everything, and the family fell in poverty, with their fields lying idle. That was the situation in the 1920s when Riv Dan's son Shiv Dan took over the house.

Hapu was Jugti Dan's granddaughter. Her father Fateh Karan had died a few months before the fight at Nilkhedi, so it was Jugti Dan's responsibility to marry her away.

She was an unusual girl, behaving like a boy, so it was difficult to get her married to any respectable family. Jugti Dan told Shiv Dan, Riv Dan's son, "She is yours if you want her." They married in spite of the poor and pitiful condition of Shiv Dan's family.

After Hapu had moved into Shiv Dan's house, they became better off than Jugti Dan's family, as Hapu was an energetic and well organised girl. Soon she managed to get some land of her in-laws under the plough. Shiv Dan's family had a lot of jagir land spread over a large number of villages far away. At the one year anniversary of their marriage Hapu and Shiv Dan invited all their kins from near and far to a big feast, which lasted three days. Therefore, in houses where the family had been considered crushed and finished, they were afterwards received with royal honour. People felt inferior to Shiva Dan's family, as Hapu had intended.

Hapu married only some months after the Nilkhedi triple murder, so people in Chelana said the good fortunes of the Dethas left with Hapu. Jugti Dan became unable to manage his big farm without his sons, and the family gradually fell into poverty, as the court proceedings became very expensive. Heavy bribes were necessary for winning the cases against the Nilkhedi Thikana.

Few villagers lived near the Dethas apart from a Bhambi family

In the late 19th century the Detha clan lived by themselves on the southern tip of Chelana village, away from the main cluster of village houses surrounding the Thikana. Only some Bhambis and two Mehru Charan families lived towards their side.

Most Bhambi families lived in a mohalla near the old village market. Up to 1952 the Bhambis worked as leather workers at Chelana, each Bhambi family serving a group of client families for whom they did leather work being paid in kind, mostly grain at the time of harvest. As the Detha family was the biggest cultivator and cattle breeder at Chelana, they had plenty of leather work to be done, and around 1900 A.D. one of the Bhambi families, the Deval family, came to work exclusively for the Dethas.

Hapu had since her childhood been close to Bika Ram Deval and his family, and after she had married into the Mehru family in 1930, she and her husband gave the Devals a piece of land adjoining their house. There Bika Ram's family settled. That way his family came closer to Jugti Dan's family, too, and the contacts strengthened further. Bika Ram was the man who had accompanied Hapu to the field at Nilkhedi during the night after the triple murder of her uncles.

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### Chapter 7 The sufferings of feudal subjects

The hair of feudal subjects

In Rajasthan it was a custom among lowcaste untouchables and agricultural tenant communities always to keep a clean-shaven broad strip across their head from forehead to neck as a sign of respect for the Maharajah and their obedience to the rules of his kingdom. The tenant castes had to do this along with the untouchable shudras as for the Kshatriya rulers tenant farmers and untouchable shudras such as Bhambis were in one and the same category.

When a Maharaja died, all his male subjects had to shave his head clean from all hair as a sign of mourning. Also their beards and moustaches. As late as 1952, when the Maharaja of Jodhpur died in an aircrash, this was compulsory carried out in all districts that earlier had constituted the Marvari state in Rajasthan. In Chelana village no head was left unshaven. If anyone would disobey, he would be beaten and forcibly shaved by the rajputs and other villagers loyal to the throne considering themselves the maharajah's representative in the village.

Before independence in 1947 the local Thakur who would have called his own soldiers or soldiers from the nearest royal force in such rare cases of disobedience.

Bal dena, the giving of hair, as it is called, was not only done when the Maharaja died, but also when the village Thakur or Jagirdar or any of their brothers, wives or mothers had died. Then all subjects of the local Thakur and Jagirdar had to shave their heads.

All male Hindus also shave their hair when a member of their own family has died, except when a child or an unmarried girl has died. However, in urbanized Hindu families under modern influence only the eldest male person of the family has to shave. Not the others.

Haircutting among lower castes in some Rajasthani villages in the 1970s

In villages haircutting is a traditional hereditary occupation and savarn Hindus were particular about who else got a haircut by the barber they used themselves. Although the barbers are shudras themselves, they are touchable Shudras, and do not cut the hair of untouchable shudras, as they then would loose their cliental support from savarn Hindus, who would never allow their family barber to pollute himself by giving hair-cuts to untouchable shudras.

Thus within untouchable shudra families they used to cut the hair themselves to the best of their ability. Scissors, blades and knives were all used in Rajasthani villages such as Chelana. Often they were rusty and often the person got a cut by the unexperienced hair cutter. Now and then people died in tetanus for this reason.

Hair of Bhambis and punishment of Harji

Harji was the son of Bika Ram Deval, the friend of Tan Dan's female cousin Hapu.

Harji was the first one in Chelana to break the custom of keeping the royal path on his head. He let his hair grow, as he was a young man keen on looking up to date. To have full grown hair on his head would look modern and nice on him, he thought.

It happened in the beginning of the 1950s, probably in 1951. The end of feudal rule was near in villages such as Chelana. The British had left and the Jodhpur State was about dissolve. At Chelana the feudal subjects were still kept in a state of suppression. All male Bhambis had the compulsory royal path on their head, raj ro marg. That is, the broad cleanshaven strip on their heads, the symbol of respect and obedience to the maharaja.

When the Rajputs of the village found out that he did not keep a royal path, they pleaded with him to cut his hair, but he refused. Then they tried to catch him by force and to summon him to the Thakur to be punished for his disobedience. This was going on for fifteen days, until Harji finally was caught in his own home, and carried away to the Thikana by a dozen Rajputs and their followers from lower castes, who were depending on the rajputs for their livelihood. They ordered him to come along to the small village fortress, where the Thakur waited together with about one hundred other persons.

Friends and associates of the Thakur had been persuading him for days to take stern action telling him that his laxity and softness in this case might spoil the whole village. When Harji Deval reached the entrance of the Thakur's fortress his escortees started kicking him to show the Thakur that they were alert and active. As usual on such occasions the Thakur sat on a raised platform meant for him only. It was situated on one of the buildings around the open ground in the middle of the fortress.

When Harji Deval had arrived and the crowd was anxiously waiting, the Thakur told Labu Ram, a strong and faithful sweeper servant of the Thikana, to go ahead and pluck the hair of the disobedient Bhambi. "Labu Ram, what are you looking at. Pluck the hair of the scoundral (chandal). The fatherless (i.e. the damned) Bhambi is trying to become a Rajput." This sentence of the Thakur is remembered even in 1977 by all middleaged and old people of Chelana , and also by the in-laws of Harji Deval living in other villages. Hearing the Thakur talk like this the crowd got active and many started to hit and kick Harji, so that he fell on the ground. The task of doing the actual work was thus given to Labu Ram, who was even more exploited and discriminated against than Harji, as Labu Ram was an untouchable Bhangi (sweeper), the most suppressed community in the whole village. Obeying orders he started plucking the hair of the helpless Harji, who was lying on the ground. Harji rolled back and fro out of pain. Labu Ram soon got the help of three or four volunteers. Out of anger they also started to pluck the hair from the bleeding head of Harji. His condition got worse of rolling in sand and dirt. Then the Thakur told Labu Ram to piss/urinate on Harji's head. It might have been done to save Harji from infections in his wounds as in rural Rajasthan urine is consideed to have an antiseptic effect. Sometimes people drink their own urine after getting sever burst and wounds on their body. What happened to Harji at this moment people who were eyewitnesses tell different versions. Some say that Labu Ram pissed in a shoe and then poured the urine on his head, others say that he did not manage to piss, so they had to bring urine from a donkey. While forcing Labu Ram to do this unpleasant job the Rajputs told jokingly that the erring Bhambi needed a good oil to his hair. For them treating Harji with urine was a way to humiliate him rather than saving him from infections.

After this was done the Thakur ordered a shoe beating on Harji's bleeding head. The customary one hundred and one beatings with a shoe was ordered, although it is difficult to say how many were actually carried out.

The one hundred and one beatings with a shoe was a form of punishment meted out by feudal lords. A special, really large shoe of hard leather was kept at the Thikana for this purpose.

After this the show was over and Harji was left to himself. People still kept coming to the Thikana to have a look at him, where he was lying on the ground in horror and pain. Eventually some of the Bhambis, who had been eye witnesses to the punishment, went to the house of Harji's family and told them to bring him home, as he was in a bad condition. Harji's father and uncle along with some more relatives approached the house of the Detha family for help. They asked the Dethas, as the Bhambis did not dare to go alone to the Thikana. The Detha family and the Devals used to help each others in crisis. Harji's father Bika Ram had worked for the Dethas since the time of Jugti Dan.

The Dethas and Bhambis went to the Thikana equipped with lathis as usual. They called friends to join them and many did so, getting upset by the cruel treatment of Harji.

An angry crowd of thirty forty men ran towards the Thikana. Some of them of low castes such as mochis (shoemakers), others of middle castes especially Jats and Mali's of the Giga Baba family, and many from the high caste Detha family. Also one shepherd family friendly to the Dethas had joined.

The village crowd was watching, when the men with lathis walked in, but the Rajputs did not stop them. The Thakur had gone out on his daily evening tour on horse back, and everything was quiet in the Thikana.

In the square they found Harji lying on the ground in a helpless condition.

In anger the crowd of stick fighters hit at anyone they saw inside the Thikana and several persons got wounded. There was hardly any resistence. They had come this much well equipped, as they had expected that anybody coming to take Harji would be attacked by the Rajputs. Being carried back to his home on the shoulders of others, Harji asked, if he was still alive, which he had hard to believe.

He was in a state of shock after that. Sick and feverish for several months he finally died. He died by persistant fever for a long time. Harji had been a strong and handsome man, one of the most handsome at Chelana, but after the treatment in the Thikana he was mentally broken. Too weak to do any work, although not all the time confined to bed. His head wound was covered by a turban.

Harji's wife was still alive in 1977. Tan Dan never saw her smile. She and other close relatives thought the Thikana had killed Harji. But nobody dared to say that in public, and the Thakur has never been accused of murder. The Rajputs did not show any feelings of guilt.

Rajputs as selfmade police force in feudal villages

Village Rajputs in western Rajasthani villages such as Chelana misused the basic function of their caste as military protectors of the state. As unchallenged feudal lords they could mishandle defenceless terrorised people of other castes in their own village, acting as a kind of selfmade police force. A brutality, which penetrated into the heart of most villages. As there were Rajput groups (or men from other similar warlord castes) in most villages, and they kept in touch with each others, somebody persued by Rajputs in one village, could be hunted and harmed elsewhere. If Rajputs in other villages got to know that he was passing by their villages.

Giga Ram Mali (Giga Baba) got such a treatment, when he was travelling to the court proceedings in Jodhpur, as an aftermath of the police fight in Chelana in 1927.

Abuses

Abuses in Western Rajasthan villages has a special vocabulary of sexually degrading expressions, mostly often concerning mother, father etc. of the abused. To say that somebody is a fool or stupid etc. is also a form of abuse, but of a different kind, which can be met by verbal replies. But for real abuses (it is enough with one of them) the reply must be with a stick or a shoe or a fist. Without a reply of physical violence, it is considered that the abuser has "cut the nose" of the abused, after which the abused can not show himself without shame in public.

Shoe beating as punishment

There are three types of shoe beating:

1.karau, the beating with the edge of the shoe,

2. unda juta, in which the sole is used,

3. sanwa juta, which means beating with the upper leather of the shoe.

Shoe beating was mostly done by a whole crowd, as a public punishment in village Rajasthan. A person, who has got a mass beating of shoes, is often considered a confirmed criminal in the eyes of the rest of the villagers, regardless of what he has done. It is commonly considered that the crowd is always right and very few villagers try to analyse or understand the reality on their own.

To hit karau shows that the person is very annoyed with you and is the most severe form of shoe beating with shoes used by somebody. The edge of the shoe is a sharp weapon and a karau beating can even cut off a nose or an ear. Once around 1960 in village Khawaspura, six miles from Chelana in Jodhpur District, two gangs of dacoits jointly punished three innocent villagers, who they thought had given information to the police about their whereabouts, by giving them a public shoe beating in the middle of the village, with the whole village looking on, without anybody coming to their rescue. The dacoits gave them a karau beating with the edge of the shoe and thereby while beating them cut off their noses and ears. It was a lifelong punishment. They were were not not only deshaped, but in addition people kept away from them in contempt, when they went outside their own village, where their background was not known. Strangers thought they had been punished for evil deeds.

This is the background of expressions such as "don't cut my nose",or "he has cut my nose" in Hindi nak katna meaning symbolically that somebody has insulted you in public and spoilt your reputation.

In really severe cases of public offences, when somebody has broken village rules and customs, he can be given a beating with thrown away outworn shoes. The weapon could be such a shoe, when beating with a shoe in use would be objectionable to its owner. When he does not want the indirect touch of the criminal via his shoe. Thrown away shoes are usually very hard, dry and dirty, and can hirt badly. This type of shoe beating is called kharda in western Rajasthan.

Feudal rules for maintaining social unequality

When a savarn Hindu had been polluted by an untouchable such as a Chandal, he had to be purified by somebody who sprinkled water in which some golden object had been dipped. The water got purified by the gold, as the gold itself is considered pure and sacred.

As gold is a sacred metal, to own gold was considered pious and honourable rather than selfish and materialistic among savarn Hindus.

However, neither untouchable shudras, nor touchable shudras except goldsmiths, nor the traditional agricultural tenant castes like the Jats were allowed to wear any gold ornaments. They only were allowed to wear silver ornaments in order not to threaten the prestige to the upper castes and to maintain a clearly visible gulf between them.

"If the low castes wear gold, what shall we wear?" This rule was strictly controlled/watched/supervised by the higher castes, which applied force, if necessary. Also using brass pots were forbidden for shudras and agricultural tenants of the feudal lords with the same argument, that if these people were allowed to use brass pots instead of the clay and iron pots, which they were using, then what pots could we use in order to maintain and show our superiority. Such feudal customs were general rules all over the princely states of India before 1947.

They still lingered on in backward and isolated villages of Rajasthan, Tan Dan told in 1978. In a small village called Gadhsuriya only four miles south-west of Chelana, which in 1978 still had no motorable road and no school, the ladies of the shudras and Jat castes used to take off their shoes and carry them in their hands while passing by on the lane outside the houses of the Rajputs and Charans in order to show their respect. Otherwise they would get a scolding from those living there.

The death of Fateh Karan before the Nilkhedi fight

The fourth brother Fateh Karan, who died a few months earlier, when he in the night went to get a midwife for a neighbouring Bhambi lady, perhaps of Devals, and got his khes shoulder cloth in the cold night caught in a stone wall, and felt as if somebody pulled the cloth and then gave a a loud scream when Fateh Karan pulled so strongly that the other one pulling fell to the ground, after which Fateh Karan rushed home feeling sick. He and everybody else convinced that he had met a bhut, a ghost, which wanted to kill him. He did not recover from the shock and died the same night being still young in his forties.

This untimely death of Fateh Karan and the bhut story was taken by many in Chelana as a sign that bad times had come to the Dethas Yugti Dan family, especially when thinking of Fateh Karan's incidence after the Haridhana fight.

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###  Chapter 8 Dacoit activities around Chelana in feudal time

The area around Chelana has always attracted dacoits BM as there is a wild and rugged landscape about ten miles long and a few miles wide to the west and north-west of Chelana with ravines, hills, valleys, creeks, and shrub jungle, which earlier was quite thick. It was easy to hide there from one's enemies. It was also far from police stations, the nearest one was at Merta twentyfive miles to the north of Chelana, and in Jalagarh, twentyfive miles to the south.

Organised robbing by dacoit gangs was common in western Rajasthan until the 1960s. In the 1960s the Rajasthan government with the help of the Central Government in New Delhi managed to crush all dacoit activities through largescale combing operations with the help of the Border Security Force of the Indian Army. Most dacoits got killed and some got imprisoned, but hardly anybody could continue.

From the Chelana Ravines many different gangs have operated, the latest being that of Kalyan Singh, who got killed in 1958. He had about thirty persons in his gang. Mostly the dacoits feared the enmity from other gangs rather than the local police, as the latter mostly cooperated with well-established gangleaders. Policemen had regular income from dacoit bribes for not interfering too seriously with the activities of the dacoits, and the police also sold weapons and ammunition to the dacoit. It was small thieves and beginners who had most to fear from the police, as the police had nothing to gain from them. Only occasionally anti-dacoit drives by threats that their salary increments and departmental promotions would be withheld, if they were not successful.

Most dacoits in western Rajasthan, did not start robbery out of poverty, or because they thought it was a lucrative profession. Rather, they became dacoits, when they no longer could live on in their home villages as a result of feuds, threats and grievences.

Most of dacoits, especially the dominating ones, came from the group of feudal exploiters, which can be found in every village. Having a warrior origin, they live very close to violence, and for them bloodshed is the only natural way to settle disputes. They had often personal enemies and after a clash it was common that somebody had to flee, as others wanted to take revenge on him, and it was not safe for him to stay on in his village. Sometimes he might only have hurt his enemies pride, which could be bad enough, but if he in rage had murdered somebody or done some other crime, he had to face the police and court proceedings, and become humiliated. To get handcuffs on his hands was worse than death for many proud village lords; it was as humiliating as getting your nose cut by your enemies.

Rajputs were in majority among the dacoits in western Rajasthan, as they were the dominating feudal caste there. Men belonging to the castes of Bisnoi, Jat, Rebari, Bhil, and Charans as well as Muslims could also be found in many dacoit gangs.

For people who run away in order to save themselves from the police and their enemies, to join a dacoit gang was almost the only alternative for those simple villagers, who did not want to become beggers or labourers in far away unknown areas, a disgrace which especially high caste Hindus like Rajputs tried to avoid. Being dacoits they were abiding their time for revenge and could weather the storms. It even happened that Thakurs and Jagirdars had to become dacoits, in spite of their power, and were compelled to leave their Thikana, and palatial buildings for the jungle in order to save themselves. Also the dacoit gangs lived with feudal moral values, and if a Thakur would join a gang, the leader of that gang was likely to step down and hand over the leadership to the Thakur.

*

Although many dacoits did not become outlaws because they wanted to rob, they had to rob to survive once out in the jungle. Such robbery was not considered theft, neither in their own eyes nor in the eyes of the villagers. Real despisable immoral theft is to steal something secretly, and run away as a coward, but to rob rich people, mostly baniyas, at the point of a gun in bright daylight was looked at as deeds of men of honour. Therefore a peculiar moral code developed among the dacoits, which reduced their efficiency in looting, but helped them to preserve their self-respect and maintain their popularity among common propertyless villagers. As a rule a dacoit gang informed one day in advance, when they intended to make a robbery in a village. They sent one member of their gang to the professional drummer of the village, in order to get him to beat the drum at the main place of the village and loudly shout that tomorrow "at absolutely white midnoon" a loot will take place in the village. The drummer gets money for the service. If he refuses, it is taken as a bad omen by the dacoits, and they will refrain from looting the village. But the drummer seldom refuses, because it was a common custom, and he did not want to be slapped by the dacoit.

Most villagers could feel safe, as the dacoits would only loot one or more baniya (merchant) family, whom they had got to know was extraordinary rich. But to the baniyas they could be very cruel, if they offered any resistance. Also a baniya in Chelana was robbed by dacoits as late as in the 1950s, during which Rajput families acted as mediators, as the dacoits were mostly Rajputs and were known to them. But they only managed to get twenty thousand Rupees that time. Also many of the surrounding villages have been looted many times in recent decades up to 1960. Mostly the merchants give up everything they have, as the dacoits torture them so severely. It was seldom necessary to murder anybody. Being busy lighting matches after the merchant had been denched in kerosene was enough for getting him to tell everything. And there were many other ways.

But the dacoit knew very well where to draw the limit in order to avoid hostility from the villagers at large. Rajput and Charan families were never attacked, however rich they were, as they were the lords of power in most villages, and often their caste friends. Neither were Brahmins attacked, as killing a Brahmin was a great sin, and therefore considered very risky by the dacoits, who all were great worshippers believing in God and religion. And poor common villagers were not worthwhile to loot.

So villagers in general were not afraid of the dacoits, and did not have any ill-feelings against them. When the children came running to their homes screaming to their mothers that the dacoits were coming riding on their camels with rifles on their back and cartridge belts all over their body, then their mothers would reply, "Why do you cry, there is no need to be afraid. They will only go to the baniyas, not to us."

But sometimes also a goldsmith family could be attacked, if it was rich. The lack of interest and concern for the fate of the robbed baniya family, was hardly ever due to a feeling of jealosy towards the rich baniya, neither was it a feeling of satisfaction that at last the man who had made his fortune by exploiting them had got his just punishment. Very few villagers in western Rajsthan has ever thought that way, neither today (1977) nor in the past. Instead, even the poorest and most exploited villagers think that the wealth of the baniya is the proof of his rightousness and the remuneration of his good deeds both in this life and in earlier ones.

The total passivity of the villagers in almost all cases, when dacoits have attacked, tortured, looted, and sometimes murdered the village merchants and moneylenders, have other reasons.

Through harsh treatment from their village lords the commoners of a village have learnt to keep away from everything, which do not directly concern themselves. A typical village of western Rajasthan is made up of two sets of people. One is the village lords and their caste fellows, especially the Rajputs and their direct feudal servants. Such persons are open and self-confident, behaving as if they have every right to interfere about anything going on in the village. It was from this group the dacoits themselves mostly originated, and the dacoits had made them to feel that they hand nothing to fear, so such persons played the role of keen and interested observers, when the dacoits were looting in their village. The other group of crushed and meek low caste villagers shut their doors and sat silently in their houses until the danger was over, feeling at ease that they did not have anything to fear from the dacoits at least. However, sometimes the bad luck also hit a few of the downtrodden ones, as the dacoits often took away a few goodlooking women from low castes for a few days, when they left for their hiding place out in the ravines. Afterwards they used to set the women free, and they could go home again. Being of low caste, the women, their husbands, and their caste fellows, they all had to swallow the disgrace, in spite of the contempt the ladies had to face from everybody after coming back like that. Their families could not say anything.

*

Thus the dacoits had a custom always to start their robbery in the middle of the day, when the sun stood at zenith. To start a robbery at any other time of the day or in the night was considered a sin. Dacoits were godfearing men, anxious to follow the rules of dacoit behaviour, which had been laid down by tradition. They worshipped the godess of Jagdamba, the godess of energy, who helped them to succeed, and they did not dare to invite her wrath by neglecting the rules of honour for dacoits. In the morning before the looting they had a worshipping ceremony, and after it was done they had a feast in a temple, if possible, otherwise in the open, and at the feast a goat was sacrificed.

To inform the villagers one day in advance of their intention to loot was not followed as strictly as the rule of looting at noon, but was done by powerful dacoit gangs, who did not fear the police or anybody else, and was taken as an act of bravery and chivalry and was admired also by the villagers.

While leaving the village in haste after the loot, the dacoits used to throw handfuls of coins down on the thatched houses of poor people from their seat ten feet high up on the camel. In this way they tried to keep up their popularity among the common villagers and avoid jealousy.

When the dacoits went to loot far away villages the dacoit gangs often dressed up as wedding parties in order to avoid attention. The gang leader acted as a bridegroom in beautiful clothes, ornaments and head decorations in bright colours. They hid their rifles in blankets on camel back. On such occasions the robbery was made with their wedding dresses on. The villagers used to say that "the wedding party of dacoits has come." But they entered the village in their usual ferocious manner, riding their camels at great speed, and made the usual two shots in the air, one for the godess Jagdamba and the other for the gang.

Wedding parties of baniyas (the merchant caste) were attractive targets for dacoits, as such parties were likely to have a lot of gold and other wealth in their dowry. But if there was a Rajput in the wedding party, it could not be attacked, according to the rules they had set for themselves. The Baniyas therefore often invited a Rajput to lead their wedding precessions. For this they used to pay him. He was called bholau. The bholau used to give a small compensation to the dacoits on the behalf of the marriage party, for the inconvenience. To attack and fight with a bholau would arouse the wrath of all the Rajputs of the area, and migh make further dacoit activities unsafe.

What a dacoit should and should not do was thus strictly regulated and always had to be adhered to in spite of the fact that they lived outside the law and had broken away from the society. It is therefore a paradox that the dacoits in feudal western Rajasthan were extremely law-abiding, when it came to carrying out the rules and norms set by the people themselves of this remote feudal world, in which robbery by organised dacoit gangs was considered a socially accepted profession. Often the dacoits were prepared to die rather than to break these rules. But the rules and laws by the Government they could not understand, and they did not feel any moral dilemma in breaking them. To murder as a dacoit was not a crime in their eyes. Folk songs were sung in glory of the deeds of the dacoits, to show how great heroes they were, and how they managed to defeat the police, who nobody liked, as they were considered bad and immoral people, harassing villagers and taking bribes. Alert dacoit gang leaders sometimes took singers of the Kalbelia nomadic group (Rajasthani gypsies) to their camps, and paid them for making songs about their dacoit hosts. Kalbelias are popular singers, and many of their dacoit songs became widely spread and sung all over Rajasthan.

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### Chapter 9 Farmer life in feudal Chelana

Agriculturists in Marvar were largely tenants, although there were some poor jagirdars, who farmed their land themselves.

The Jats were touchable serfs

The Jat caste was the main tenant farmer community of feudal Rajasthan. Most rulers treated Jat tenants as their slaves. More directly they were serfs of Jagirdars and the village Thakur. They had to do all sorts of compulsory manual labour and they had to part from a big of the crop they produced. As much as could be extracted from them. Their produce formed the economic base of the feudal state.

The Jats and other tenant communities were also important for the Brahmins, who got a constant flow of foodstuff and money in the form of donations from these producers of basic necessities. It was therefore not convenient for the Brahmins to classify agricultural tenant castes as untouchable shudras, although they were treated like that by the Kshatriyas.

The Chelana setting in the feudal age

A few centuries ago Chelana was a small and isolated village in the midst of a semi-desert. Towns were far away. About 150 families lived in the village. BM Around 1950 the number of families had increased to about 600. A third of the population belonged to the Jat caste and about as many were Rajputs related to the Thakur. The remaining one third of the population was spread out over a large number of small castes. That is what the villagers themselves used to tell in Tan Dan's childhood. The village area was about five thousand hectares out of which a several hundred hectares were cultivated. The rest was bushland and grassland. It was a low rainfall region with sandy soil. The underground water level was at great depth. Much of the farmland was full of limestone pebbles and stones. The main crop was pearl millet (Penisetum typhoides), a tough cereal that could stand the erratic rainfall pattern of the region. Bread of pearl millet, in Hindi bajra, was practically the only food for the many poor villagers in the feudal age.

Leasing land from the Thikana

A peasant in search of land to rent used to go to the Thikana, as the Thakur controlled most arable land in the village. Thikana selected the land for him. The tenant was given fallow or virgin land, which he had to reclaim himself. He could only lease land good enough to be classified as cultivable in the official land records, Tan Dan told. Because the land must be able to yield a substantial rent for the jagirdar, otherwise it would not be worthwhile to keep tenant farmers on it. The Thikana office gave the tenant a written proof of his lease. Such a paper was called patta.

It seems the agricultural tenants renting land from the Thikana were all Jats. Nevertheless, there were tenants of several other castes such as Bhambi and Mali, but these tillers rented land from other jagirdars or they were sub-tenants of Jat farmers who were the ones with assured tenures.

In the old days only a few hundred hectares were cultivated out of a total village area in the order of five thousand hectares. Around 1950 about one sixth of the total area was cultivated. The rest was bushy fallows and non-arable stretches of grassland.

Practically all cropped land was rainfed, as the wells were too deep for irrigation. Major crops were the staplefood cereal bajra (Pennisetum typhoides) , sorghum for fodder, and sesamum for cash and rent. Chana (Cicer arietinum) and other pulses were often intercropped on a part of the land.

Average peasant families could plough some ten to twenty hectares in the monsoon season. Joint families with several grown-up men could plough more. With good oxen one farmer could plough about one third of a hectare per day of rainfed sandy soil. Hence, a farmer ploughing for several weeks could cultivate some ten hectares, although it varied from five to perhaps fifteen hectares depending on circumstances.

The extractable surplus of the feudal land

Most tenant families at Chelana did not manage to keep more of the crop for themselves than required for minimum maintenance. The surplus was taken away by the feudal elite. For that elite it was only worthwhile keeping tenants to the extent such a surplus could be extracted.

In the feudal society of western Rajasthan the ability to live on the produce of land without working on it was a matter of honour. It marked the difference between the exploiters and the exploited ones. The social stigma was on the latter group rather than the former.

The way tenants paid land revenue

The havaldar BM and his assistents used to come to the village after harvesting the monsoon crops was over. He stayed for several days, as the land revenue collection took time. The tenants were called to the Thikana, where the havaldar had his camp. The village peasants got together in the Thikana Chauk, the large yard in the middle of the village fortress. The officers went through the list of Jat tax payers and called out their names, one by one. Every time a new tenant was ordered to produce the recorded amount, the person called left the crowd and slowly walked over to the officers in the most humble manner. His back was bent, his hands folded and his face showed no feelings under the big turban of white or yellow colour.

If the tenant had brought the stipulated money, he promptly announced his presence by the words hajir he sa, "I am here, Sir", and handed over the money, as soon as the havaldar ordered his assistant to take care of it.

Tenants without enough cash walked very slowly and stopped in front of the officers without saying a word. As he did not hand over any money, they started to scold him, but his only reaction was to cower. Trying to make himself small he prepared himself for the beating, which was bound to come. He might get five or six strokes of a cane stick in front of all the assembled villagers, a most humiliating experience. Then they had to leave him for the time being.

Sevoji was a Jat farmer, who got beaten almost every year in Tan Dan's childhood. He was too poor to pay, and he suffered his humiliation with tears rolling down his cheeks.

There were tenants who preferred a beating to parting from the crop they had raised with so much labour, and they did their best to cheat the officers. In Tan Dan's childhood Hapuji, another Jat tenant, was known for his tricks with the Thikana and the tax collector from Jalagarh.

It happened that the rent collectors later on went to the dhanis of the failing tenants in order to seize whatever belongings they could lay their hands on. Such raids were carried out to instill fear in the tenants, but seldom yielded any money. In case they could find any livestock, it would be taken away first. Harassed tenants anticipated such visits, though, and therefore sent away their animals to relatives in other dhanis. Stored foodgrain they put in claypots hidden in the midst of thorny thickets at some distance from the homestead. In the homes of poor tenants there were hardly anything else left than worn-out clothes, kitchen utensils and a few edibles.

Especially in the lean years the tenants suffered from the claims of the feudal elite. Then their families might go hungry. Only a few comparatively large and productive tenant families could feel safe. As a result, most peasants tried to look as poor as possible. Many tenants wanted as little land as possible to be recorded in their name, as they lived in constant fear of not being able to pay the bigodi to the Government and the hasal to the Thakur.

The gadotar method of protest

Apart from brutality and injustice at times of tax collection, the tenants sometimes had other grievences against their feudal masters such as lack of support from the Thakur, when they had a quarrel with a troublesome neighbouring tenant. He might have cultivated land rented by others.

When a tenant family was fed up of suffering and injustice, it happened they left the Thakur and his village in protest. Such cases were rare, though, as starting a new life elsewhere was difficult.

Before leaving, the tenant erected a big stone slab in the land he had rented. The stone was meant to symbolize a donkey, in Marvari gado. Therefore a field with such a stone was called gadotar. The tenant meant to say that they had been treated as donkeys by his feudal lord.

The gadotar stone was erected in a ritual manner, and it was firmly dug into ground. To remove a gadotar stone was considered an unreligious act. It was believed that a person removing such a stone would have no offspring. It was difficult for the jagirdar to get another tenant on such a land. However, when the tenant had had personal enemies among other tenants in the village, they might have liked to take over.

Such a social boycott was felt as a threat by the Thakur. His reputation might suffer. It was a deterrant to unnecessary harsh actions from jagirdars towards their tenants.

Thakurs put in such a situation might take revenge by creating trouble for the leaving tenant by informing his Thakur friends at neighbouring Thikanas. A peasant family might have to move hundreds of miles, before it found a place where it could settle as tenants again.

Such gadotar conflicts existed in western Rajasthan up to Independence in 1947. The last case known to Tan Dan in the Chelana region took place in Bari village four miles southwest of Jalaghar. About twenty tenants and their families left Bari together in protest against the Bari Thakur, who was a Charan by caste. They left Bari village in 1952 after having performed the gadotar ritual. Unfortunately, it was only a few months before the 1952 land reform law was passed. It would have given them the ownership right of the land, if they had stayed on.

Anji, a productive Jat tenant

Most peasants lived in poverty, but there were a few families who were well-off by Chelana standards. One such farmer was Anna Ram Badiyar, commonly called Anji. He was the head of a large tenant family of the Jat caste. That family lived at a large dhani some kilometres to the west of the village settlements right out in the wilderness. Anji had six or seven strong sons in their best age in the 1920s, and at that time he was the main agricultural producer in the village and on the same level as Jugti Dan. At Anji's dhani they cultivated at least fifty hectares each year, sometimes considerably more. Anji managed to save money to such an extent that he became a moneylender to other villagers. It happened that even the Thikana borrowed from him. His relation to the Thakur was good and his terms of tenure was better than that of most other farmers.

Children at Chelana playing the old Thikana life

Chelana children liked a game that reflected the feudal world of the grown-ups. It was called kakri ri pal (sharing the cucumber). They played that the Thikana people wanted to lay their hands on a long attractive cucumber, that some tenants cultivated with great enthusiasm. The cucumber was a long line of children lying on the ground, each grabbing the feet of the one in front of him. At the head of the line a boy sat crosslegged. He was the flower of the plant. Other members of the team were gardeners, who nursed cucumber with a lot of energy all the time shouting, "I put all my sweet efforts for you, I pour sweetness into you, I work hard to keep you green." Each of them buzzed around with a stick in his hand. It was the garden tool with which they they hoed and irrigated the soil.

And there was the team of the Thakur. One boy was the the kanvaria, the foreman of the Thikana. He was very active, all the time bringing new messages from the impatient Thakur to the gardeners, as the Thakur was eagerly waiting for his part of the coveted cucumber. The kanvaria boy announced his arrival at the kakri plant by shouting kukuru ku. The Mali gardeners rushed in and asked what he wanted. He replied:

"Half the amount of crushed grain, half the amount of pulse. Our village king also claim a part of the kakri."

The Mali gardener tried to evade the demand by telling that the kakri had to grow for a longer time. It could not be touched, as it was not ripe. The Kanvaria did not yield, though, so the Mali had try the cucumber in front of them by putting his foot on the back of one the boys in the row. When he pressed a little, the boy made a shrill cry. Then they realized that the kakri was not yet mature, at least not in that part. The Mali gardener went around and pressed various backs of boys who all shrieked loudly to prove that the plant was still unripe.

At last the kanvaria lost his patience and went to his to his Rajput friends at the Thikana and complained that he was getting fooled by the mean Malis. Thikana people was the other boys of his team. They had been looking all the time, and now they eagerly took the opportunity to join the game. When the kanvaria gave them the signal, they all rushed forward and grabbed the various parts of their kakri plant. It was torn into pieces in spite of the cries of the Malis and the whole garden became a wonderful mess. The men from the Thikana took away the kakri under a great tumult which was enjoyed by both sides as the peak and the end. Although a reflection of harsh feudal exploitation, the children played the game without thinking about good and bad.

It is probably a very old game, and variations of it was played also elsewhere in India. Tan Dan played the kakri game in his childhood around 1950, and children at Chelana still played it in the 1980s. There were seven to ten children in each team.

Thus the feudal world of kanvaria messengers, exploited tenants, village lords and rajas lived on for many decades after the feudal agrarian system had ended. When the Chelana children played this game.

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### Chapter 10 When the feudal tenants became landowning farmers

Some years after the British rule ended in India also the feudal rule ended, both at Chelana and the rest of Rajasthan.

The feudal land system was a horror to the cultivators, and the new democratically elected government decided to abolish it as soon as possible.

How the Chelana villagers got the news that feudal rule had ended

One day in 1952 the village drummer at Chelana had something important to tell the villagers. It was his duty to bring the villagers official messages, while beating his big drum, as he belonged to the Doli caste.

He shouted in Marvari:

"With the beat of the drum it is the order of the Government that the jagir land rights soon will end. Those who till the soil will become its owners."

Tan Dan's brother Ravi Dan remembered that event very clearly, when we talked to him about it at the back of his house four decades later. He had forgotten the year, but he was sure that the Doli drummer had delivered his message before the first election to the village council, which took place in 1953.

Tan Dan changed the words of the Doli drummer into a little Marvari doha meaning:

"Through the village lanes roll the words: The brothers of the soil will soon become its owners. Tradition has died now."

The land reform process started with the Resumption of Jagirs Act. The bill was passed in 1952. It provided for the resumption of jagir lands, their assessment to land revenue, grant of khatedari rights to tenants in jagir lands, and payment of compensation for the resumed jagir lands. (Agarwal,1979, p.317) It was when this law had been passed at the Legislative Assembly at Jaipur in 1952, that the Doli drummer at Chelana announced that the age of feudal rule had ended. That message was given in the same way in all other Rajasthani villages, too.

Was this a new way to harass the farmers?

In Rajasthan the work to transfer arable land to the agricultural tenants went on for several years in the early 1950s. It went on until all land in Rajasthan had been regularised in the new land ownership agreement, which the government needed for tax purposes. The intention of the land settlement was to put an end to the old feudal land ownership system with jagirdar land rights etc., and to distribute land from the feudal landlords to their tenants, but the tenants had been so used to Government harassment, that they found it difficult to understand the purpose of the drama going on during the 1952 land settlement.

In the beginning many Chelana villagers, out of fear of being taxed, did not want to admit that they had land, or told smaller amount than they really had. Most of the tenants who got land ownership rights had been tenants of the Thakur, but other jagirdars, the Brahmins, Mehru Charans and the Rajputs not related to the Thikana, also had to give land to their tenants. Many tenants were chased away by the feudal landowners, especially those who were alert unlike the Chelana Thakur. Then the jagir landholding was registered as land cultivated by the jagirdar himself in the patvari records being established at this settlement. Thus the former feudal lord got the land ownership right.

Jat cultivators managed better to get land than the untouchable cultivators

Gradually, after a few years, it was realised that this settlement was not meant by the Government for harassing the people, but for creating a new group of landowners of the former tenants. Most of the new landowners were of the Jat caste and similar peasant castes. Many lowcaste villagers such as Bhambis (chamars), Mochis (shoemakers), Malis and Muslims, were scared away more easily at Chelana, according to Tan Dan. They also had tenant rights in many cases, but were less in numbers of each group and were more divided than the Jat community and had no leadership, while the Jats, although being ignorant and illiterate in Chelana, got support from their caste panchayat, which covered 24 villages (a khera unit). Such kheras covered the whole northern India. The Jats had many well informed and powerful leaders in the state from the local all the way up to the national level, which through the caste channels could provide guidance to the Jat farmers in Chelana. They were told to stand firm and get their ownership rights registered by the amin officer of the Government.

The urge from the Jat caste leaders and politicians to Jat farmers to take care of their land rights was a gradual process. Sometimes after a few months a farmer approached the amin for getting his right, perhaps accompanied by some relatives or other well-wisher, who could explain properly, being better aware of procedures and opportunities. There could be many rounds from the initial confrontation with the amin and the landlord, when the tenant out of fear might have told, that he did not want to have land, and the last meeting, when the tenant's friend might have threatened the amin with the interference of some powerful Jat politician or officer on high level, if the land requested was not given to the Jat. Those who did not in time manage to get such help often lost their right completely and have been repenting for their cowardness, ignorance, and misunderstanding during the rest of their life, being forced to continue their miserable existence as agricultural labourers, and sometimes getting exploited by the new landowners, who earlier were tenants like themselves.

But by and large those who did not understand to take the opportunity still do not feel much, as they hardly have had anybody to explain to them what happened. They have been so much ignorant and confused, that they still do not realise that they really had an opportunity to get land and that they missed it.

(Told in 1978.)

Land tax collection before 1952

Before the 1952 land settlement practically all land in Marwar state belonged to the maharaja. He gave the land as jagir to individuals, jagirdars, who had to assist the haveldar BM in collecting rent from his tenants. For this work the land of the jagirdars were divided into blocks, and there was a farmer called chaudhri responsible for land tax collection in each block. Mostly the haveldar, the village Thakur and other jagirdars had no detailed knowledge about individual tenants. How much land he rented and how much tax he should pay. They called the chaudhri, who knew all the tenants in his block, as he was one of them. Even so, the Thakur had a close supervison of all his tenants in the daily routine and at crop collection through the kanvarias, a kind of field supervisers working under the kamdar of the Thikana.

The havaldar for Chelana had his office together with a group of other havaldars under a sadar kanungoo officer at Jalagarh. He came to Chelana once a year for a few days to collect money for land tax and during this visit he was correcting and updating his records of land ownership and tenant agreements, which he kept with him at Jalagarh. At the actual tax collection, though, the haveldar took more guidance from what the Thakur told him about land and tenant rights than what was written in the official records.

The amin officers carried out the land reform in the villages

For the 1952 land settlement in Rajasthan the state Government reorganised and enlarged the Land Revenue Department, scrapping the post of haveldar and putting a new Government officer called amin in charge of the implementation of the land settlement scheme. One amin was appointed for each group of two to three villages. It was a powerful post to be in charge of under the uncertain and tumultous conditions that existed in many villages, when land was shifting hands. Many amins managed to get very rich on bribes from villagers prepared to give large sums, in order to safeguard their future, and many had to pay also for getting right things recorded, as the amin was sometimes in the position to have a kind of auction between different parties interested in getting the same piece of land. Therefore, even an old landowner, sometimes, could not feel secure, and might have to ruin himself in court proceedings going on for many years to be able to establish his legitimate rights. It could become very expensive even without paying a bribe to the amin.

Farmer gratitude for jagir abolition and economic improvement

In spite of these difficulties, it was especially the abolition of the jagirdar system by the 1952 land settlement that created a feeling of loyalty and gratitude among the former tenants, after they had become landlords in their own right. Especially the Jats had a strong feeling of loyalty and gratitude towards the government and the ruling Congress Party. For several decades they continued to vote for the Congress, who thrived by pointing out the possibility that the old feudal lords might come back and supress them again. These landowning farmers had each of them less land then the earlier jagirdars, but in Chelana their land became much more productive due to newly found irrigation and other inputs.

The new landlord group thus benefited by new methods in agriculture, which coincided with the transfer of land ownership, and many of them became rich. It was a new richness based on overall development of infrastructure and natural resources in accordance with Prime Minister Nehru's dreams and the objectives of the Five Year Plans. An electricity line was drawn to Chelana. Supplies of high yielding seeds and chemical fertilisers became available. Schools, medical service and many other blessings started during the post-feudal decades after 1950, and the social group of new landowners got the advantage of that also. As a result of the continuing food shortage of the 1960s and 1970s for India as a whole, which in turn was partly due to the ever increasing population and urbanization, food prices especially in the urban areas were pushed upwards, to the benefit of Chelana farmers with enough land and water to sell farm produce to the market. Getting plenty of cash by selling good crops at better prices they have been gainers, like the increasingly affluent professional middle/upper class of the cities, who had their income based on the output from the industrial sector, estate ownership etc..

Villagers with modest means living on a much lower economic level than this group of newly rich landowning farmers may not have been that grateful. Underemployed exploited labourers. Only knowing that they were in trouble, this group of mainly lowcaste villagers tried to carry on to the best of their ability on an individual level, associating themselves with more fortunate villagers in semi-feudal relationships that still lingered on. They were ready to follow their directions how to vote and how to act in village disputes. They became the friends of anybody who could promise a little security and help in the struggle for food.

Laws for protecting the tenants

As the authorities considered jagir land without tenants to be cultivated by the jagirdars themselves, many jagir land holders hoped they could keep their land, if they evicted their tenants before the date of settling new land ownership rights. Around 1950 they started to evict tenants in large numbers in certain parts of Rajasthan. In reality the jagirdars seldom cultivated their land themselves, though, but used their feudal dependents.

The Government made new laws to protect the tenants from eviction. BM

Bhambis who became landowners

Bhambi families had leather work and weaving as their traditional caste occupations. As many Bhambi families were underemployed and very poor, it was common that Bhambis worked as agricultural tenants at the end of the feudal period. As a rule, the Bhambi tenants did not have as secure tenures as the Jat peasants. Still they were tenants, and those who had the courage to insist on their land rights got the status of landowners in the government records at the time of land redistribution in the early 1950s.

Consequently, during the decades after jagir abolition many Bhambi tenant families owned agricultural land. Most of the former Bhambi tenant families had about four to six hectares each. Some owned more. During the decades that followed they rose irrigated crops on much of these lands with water they bought from well-owners such as the Dethas.

Bhambi families who worked full time as weavers and other traditional Bhambi tasks in 1952 did not get any land, and as the years passed they got poorer than the landowning Bhambi families.

The attraction of the barren sanshan land

Up to the end of feudal rule around 1950 the shansan grazing land of the Dethas at Chelana was under the joint control of the whole clan. The number of families of the clan gradually increased since the middle of the 19th century. Each family used a particular part of the large land area for grazing their animals and other purposes. It was an informal division based on custom which the families within the Detha clan settled between themselves without any written record.

After the decline in Detha's largescale cattleherding, especially after 1929, most Detha families did not use that land much. They did not pay anything for it either as, it was exempted from tax unlike ordinary jagir land.

After the jagir abolition no land was mafidari BM any longer. Like many other villagers the Dethas denied their ownership of unproductive land of fear of having a 'white elephant', i.e. a chunk of land on which they had to pay tax without getting any income from it.

Later on they realised that land tax was very low in independent India under Congress rule, in fact negligable. Moreover, in days of increasing land scarcity, something which all India faced due to demographic and economic growth, almost any available land was considered attractive. People started to claim their old ownership rights from ancestor property, however barren. Even slopes or tops of the hills were eagerly recorded in the Patvari records as private land, being transferred out of the shrinking chunk of Government unauthorised land.

Therefore, in the 1970s the land along the old Detha hill to the south of the village was owned by many private persons, both Dethas and others, although of hardly any use to the owners.

The agitation of the former feudal lords against the land reform

After the abolishment of the Jagir system the land redistribution was carried out in two years, according to Jodha. However, according to ICAR (1968), the work was not completed until 1958 about, due an agitation among the Rajputs, which started in 1954.

The former Rajput jagirs had lost much land, especially to their former tenants of the Jat caste, and they agitated for getting their land back. That they did not get, though, but they got a higher economic compensation than they had been granted in the beginning. Among the Chelana villagers this agitation movement was called bhuswami andolan, i.e. the landowners agitation. The name implies that the Rajput still looked upon themselves as the real owners of the land.

The Nehru award

The Resumption of Jagirs Act was challenged by the jagirdars in courts of law, on ground of being unconstitutional. Simultaneously, a State-wide agitation against it was started by an organisation of jagirdars called Bhooswami Sangh. In Marwar the most aggrieved group was the very small jagirdars of who had subsisted on a small rent income from their lands. They would now become destitute.

It was agreed by both the jagirdars and the State Government that the Prime Minister of India, Shri Jawaharlal Nehru, would be requested to act as an arbitrator and give an award. Shri Nehru gave his award in 1955 which was accepted by both the parties and its terms were incorporated in the amended Jagir Resumption Act.

The process of jagir resumption then started in full swing and by 1958 all but the smallest jagirs had been resumed.

The Nehru award was much more generous to the jagirdars than the original Jagir Resumption Act had been, in payment of compensation for jagirs. In addition to compensation, which had been fixed at seven times the annual income of a jagir, it awarded payment of rehabilitation grants to the small jagirdars. The grants, fixed on a sliding scale, declined with rise in the income of the jagir.

Villagers, bureaucrats and the new welfare schemes

The villagers thoroughly enjoyed the much softer behaviour of the authorities in independent India ruled by the Congress Party than in British India full of feudal lords resorting to brutal punishments. All the same, the village farmers in general continued to have a non-cooperative attitude for several decades after 1947 towards Government officials. Jat farmers and other similar groups felt great gratitude to the Congress Party for implementing the land reform, but they continued to look upon government officers with distrust. They disliked the high-handed manners of the government officials who were to administrate the welfare orientated programmes of the Congress government. To a large extent the bureaucrats at Jalagarh and Jodhpur were the same kind of people that the villagers had met during the days of the Jodhpur State. The villagers were still afraid of them, although less than before. The landowning farmers as a group did their best to fool the Government by avoiding payments to all kinds of useful economic activities, although their own incomes grew. They lagged behind with electricity bills, water charges, Government and cooperative loans and taxes.

For hardworking tenants there was no land shortage at feudal Chelana

To get land to till was not a problem before 1950, as there were ample stretches of arable uncultivated land around Chelana. Banjar land was used for grazing cattle and brushwood collection. Further away wild animals roamed around.

At least ten hectares of rainfed land per farm family was required, in order to obtain a minimum livelihood, considering the need of crop-fallow rotation and the high rent level. That the rent level was very high has been pointed out by Jodha (1980) and many others. BM Hence, farming had been a most unpopular profession at dry Chelana, and those who could avoid it did so. All the same, in addition to Jats and Malis many villagers of low-ranked caste worked as tenant, as they had no other way to support themselves and their families.

The great increase in the demand of land after the land reform

The demand for land at Chelana increased dramatically in the 1960s, when underground water became available for irrigation. The lucky land owners now possessed very productive land. In the 1970s the demand for land increased further as a result of population growth. In addition to natural growth within the village there was an influx of people from other places. They had become attracted to this area due to its economic growth. Migration labour worked not only on irrigated farms but also at limestone quarries and lime kilns. Around 1990 even cement factories started to operate in the area. Almost any land had become valuable within the limestone belt of Chelana.

The fate of landless villagers

Many villagers at Chelana were landless or almost landless also after the land reform in the early 1950s. In absolute terms their income did increase, as they got jobs in Chelana's growing irrigation business and limestone industry, but they still lived close to the level of absolute poverty, and the growing distance between their standard of living and that of the increasingly well-off landowning farmers became more and more apparent as the years passed.

They could see for themselves that the money generated in the village went into the pockets of others rather than their own, but they could not do much about it. They felt that the best approach was to keep in good terms with those who had power and influence in the village. They associated themselves with better-off villagers in the semi-feudal relationships that still lingered on. They were prepared to follow the directions of their better informed and better equipped hitaishi ('wellwishers') both in times of election and in village disputes. They did so, as long as there was some hope that they would get a little timely help now and then in their daily struggle for food and other pressing needs.

Talavas, a dryland desert village

Villages with little underground water continued to rely mainly on rainfed agriculture. There the income from agriculture continued to be small and unpredictable. The new landowners through the land reform continued to be poor, although they did not have to share their meagre harvests with a feudal elite any longer. Those with large land areas were not necesserily better off than the rest.

Talavas, 150 kms to the west of Chelana, was such a village. During the feudal period villagers from Talavas used to go all the way to Malva in western Madhya Pradesh in times of drought.

When irrigation water became available at Chelana from the 1950s, Muslim shepherds from Talavas could graze and water their sheep and camels at Chelana. They did not have to go further east for saving the life of their animals. Tan Dan had many friends among the Muslim Sindhis of Talavas, which was situated close to the sand dunes of the Thar Desert in Barmer District.

In the drought 1979-1980 there were Mandava farmers with as much as twenty to forty hectares who were employed at Chelana as milkers, watchmen and other lowpaid jobs. The wells in their own village had gone completely dry.

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### Chapter 11 Ecological aspects of the land reform

Too much cultivation

As a result of the land reform in the 1950s, the farmers started to cultivate on more land than before. The portion of fallow land shrunk. Wasteland which earlier had been used for grazing and other purposes was now distributed to individual farmers.

The land reform increased the overexploitation of land for agriculture. It resulted in environmental overexploitation and increased ecological instability in the western Rajasthan region from the 1950s onwards.

Jodha (1977, 1980) points out that the land reforms were only concerned with the exploitative features of the feudal order, as they related to the tillers of land and not to the land itself. Thus the need for preventing too intensive land use was completely overlooked. The conservation needs of the land resource base never figured in the land-reform laws. Indeed, by distributing additional submarginal lands for ploughing the process of over-exploitation of lands had been accentuated.

No obligations were imposed on the new landowners regarding the regulation of land utilization or collective arrangement for land and water conservation measures.

Even worse, a law was passed which prohibited the farmers to have fallows on land where crops could be grown. If the land-owner failed to cultivate the land he was liable to penalty up to Rs 500 per case. Though no cases of implementation of this provision occurred, the law itself illustrates the government's ignorance of the nature of the problem of the arid lands, Jodha writes.

(The Rajasthan Agricultural Lands Utilization Act 1954.)

Even after the distribution of submarginal lands to private land-owners, their use intensity could be kept at a low level by following a rotation comprising a crop followed by a long fallowing. But this rotation requires a fairly large size of land-holding which can permit the fallowing of a substantial area on a rotation basis. The smaller the holding, the shorter the duration of the long fallowing, and, therefore, the less the chances of maintaining a low degree of land-use intensity.

Hence, the area under fallow shrunk dramatically after the land reform in the 1950s and there were many indications of environmental deterioration due to excessive land use in dry western Rajasthan.

Fortunately, the general economic growth in the area after 1950 lessened the food shortage in spite of the ecological imbalance created. Western Rajasthan was no longer isolated, and the all pervading transport system quickly made good temporary food deficiencies that in the old days would have taken many lives. Hence, in spite of the ecological mismanagement the food supply in western Rajasthan increased. What the future agricultural production will be in an area with unsustainable agriculture due to environmental mismanagement ought to be a matter of grave concern.

It should be remembered that the complete failure to control the rapidly growing human population by some kind of family planning is the root cause of the ecological imbalance that has emerged in western Rajasthan as well as India as a whole. With or without land reform.

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### Chapter 12 The tradition of revenge among Rajput families in western Rajasthan

During the feudal days several Rajput families at Chelana had disputes with each others which seemed to go on for ever. All family members were involved in the feud, as kinship feelings were very strong. Now and then a member of such a family harmed some opponent so badly that he had to run away from his village to escape personal enemies and the police. They often joined dacoit gangs living in the wilderness. Therefore, feuds between strong Rajput families was an important reason for the existence of Rajput dominated dacoit gangs in the Chelana area during the feudal period, as shown in earlier narrations.

The life at Chelana as well as other villages in western Rajasthan has since long been marked by a tradition of revengefulness, according to which the misdeeds of an enemy should not be forgotten.

Even if two enemies had become friends again, as one of them wanted to make peace, there was no guarantee that the other person did not only pretend they were friends, taking the peace effort as a good opportunity to be able to hit the peace seeking one, when he was unprepared.

This kind of stab-in-the-back behaviour towards your enemy was an old habit in rural western Rajasthan. You fooled him to believe that you had become his friend and then you hit him when he was not prepared. If you did so in order to save your honour, people did not see anything immoral in it. It was rather your duty to take revenge.

Many admired those who at last had been able to 'give back', those who managed to balance the amount of harm the two parties in the feud had inflicted upon each others.

Tan Dan thinks that this revengeful attitude was influenced by customs in places further to the west in Asia, such as Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and Iran.

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### Chapter 13 The jagirdar who became a dacoit

Umar Singh and his enemies

For some of the Rathor families at Chelana it was almost a family tradition to have feuds within their own kinship group. It was like that for Umar Singh. His father was a jagirdar at Chelana called Sher Singh, who lived around 1900. Sher Singh joined the British army and fought with distinction in the First World War. As he belonged to a warrior caste it was natural to him to become a soldier. He died at Haifa in the Middle East in 1917. His family was given a pension by the Government.

In the 1930s Sher Singh's son Umar Singh controlled jagir land he had inherited from Sher Singh. However, also other Rajputs of Umar Singh's kinship group had a claim on that land, as it was undivided property. Umar Singh managed all of it, as if it only belonged to him. Two of his enemies were Vir Singh and Dhokal Singh. Like Umar Singh they were strong jagirdars with many dependents.

Now and then the hostilities erupted in violent clashes.

Sometimes they agreed to become friends again, but Umar Singh did not give up his desire to take revenge for past deeds. It happened that he and his people tried to beat Dhokal Singh without a warning even when they were supposed to be friends. During the feuds Dhokal Singh got the help of Vir Singh and Tej Dan Detha, as they, too, felt the threat of Umar Singh.

Also Tej Dan made friends with Umar Singh after a long period of hostility. Then Umar Singh's relatives kept teasing Umar Singh for being meek towards Tej Dan. They told him he had been fooled. Tej Dan had fed him with great hospitality in order to pacify him and make him harmless. Umar Singh had to be brave and dutiful by taking revenge for all Tej Dan's missdeeds, Umar Singh's relatives told. Suddenly Umar Singh hit Tej Dan's head from the back with a lathi stick. The stroke was so hard that Tej Dan became unconscious and his life was in danger. Tej Dan recovered, but his family launched a case for attempt to murder.

A few years later. Umar Singh attacked Vir Singh in another dispute. Both Dhokal Singh and Tej Dan got informed and joined the fight.

In the fight that followed Tej Dan, Vir Singh, and Umar Singh had rifles. It was the first time that fire weapons were used in a fight between families at Chelana. Two camels got shot and Vir Singh got one bullet in his thigh.

Three or four days later Umar Singh came to the house of Dhokal Singh and shot at him through a window on the ground floor. Therefore, also Dhokal Singh launched a case against Umar Singh for attempt to murder.

After that he became a dacoit, as he had two court cases for violence and attempt to murder launched against him, one from Tej Dan and another from Dhokal Singh.

The death of Umar Singh

Umar Singh joined a dacoit band led by his cousin Abhay Singh. As a dacoit he continued to threaten his enemies at Chelana. The band lived out in the wilderness in the Chelana area. During the time Umar Singh was a member of the gang, they carried out five successful and highly profitable robberies, and Umar Singh had become rich in getting a share of the loot. Much of it was gold ornaments they had robbed from Baniyas.

He did not live long as a dacoit, though. Half a year later he got killed in an encounter with Jats at a village 20 kms from Chelana. He got a painful death, being killed in a very cruel way.

Umar Singh's son Bhan Singh

Umar Singh's wife never bore him a son. Therefore Umar Singh adopted Bhan Singh, his nephew, as son and heir. Bhan Singh inherited Umar Singh's land and other wealth.

It was considered common knowledge among the villagers in the 1940s that Bhan Singh had inherited a lot of hidden wealth from his father Umar Singh. In the 1950s he got the opportunity to use that wealth in a most profitable way when investments for irrigation in agriculture was carried out on a large scale in the village.

Umar Singh's family desired to take revenge on the Dethas

When Umar Singh got killed around 1940, his relatives suspected it was a conspiracy of his enemies. Especially, they suspected that Tej Dan had played some part in it. They wanted to take revenge.

It was therefore necessary for the Detha relatives to keep together and be very cautious.

Members of Bhan Singh's family did not say straight away that they wanted to kill anybody. Such intentions were only found out by various horrifying experiences. Death traps were arranged by dacoits who took instructions from Bhan Singh. He was often together with dacoits around Chelana in the 1950s. But he was never a member of any robber gang unlike his father Umar Singh.

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### Chapter 14 The end of dacoity in western Rajasthan

When dacoity activities were stopped in western Rajasthan.

Organised robbing by dacoit gangs was common in western Rajasthan until the 1950s, as we have told earlier. Many gangs have operated in the rugged wilderness full of ravines about ten kilometres to the west of Chelana and Durthal villages. The last gang was lead by the Rajput Kalyan Singh. He had about thirty persons in his gang around 1950.

In 1958 the Rajasthan Government managed to crush all dacoit activities through largescale combing operations with the help of the Border Security Force of the Indian Army. Most dacoits got killed. Some were imprisoned. Hardly anybody could continue their criminal activities.

The Central Government in New Delhi sanctioned these operations and assisted in the planning of them.

The dacoit gang led by Kalyan Singh

Fateh Dan and Kalyan Singh were two leaders of a dacoit gang, who operated in the Chelana area in the 1940s and 1950s. For many years they looted Baniya merchants of the neighbourhood and forced Jat farmers living in dhanis (mud hut homesteads) out at their lease holdings to help them with food and women. It was thus normal dacoit activities. Rajputs had nothing to fear, as they were never robbed or raped. Normally, people belonging to other martial castes were not attacked either.

Most of the members of the gang were Rajputs. They knew about the hostile relationship, which the Detha family of Chelana had with Rajput leaders of the area. Bhan Singh had made friends with many Rajput gang members including Kalyan Singh himself. For Tej Dan and other Dethas that relationship was dangerous. In the late 1940s Tej Dan's son Ravi Dan was a youth full of initiatives. He took a keen interest in various development activities and in local politics. Ravi Dan and his friends started a youth club at Chelana. The Rajput of the village disliked the new activities of the Dethas and considered Ravi Dan as potential trouble makers. In the 1950s Ravi Dan had become the main target for revengeful attacks from Bhan Singh and his Rajput friends in the village and in the dacoit gangs operating in the Chelana area.

Ravi Dan's attempt to reduce Rajput influence in local politics

The Congress Government ruling India after independence decided to replace the old feudal rule with democratically elected village councils, gram panchayats. At Chelana the first election of that kind was held in 1953, one year after the jagirdari system had been abolished in Rajasthan. A cousin of Ravi Dan became the first sarpanch. He stayed in office for three years. In the election in 1956 Ravi Dan became the sarpanch candidate of the Dethas and their friends. He won the 1956 village council election, as he was supported by the Jats and many small low castes of the village. He was known for taking many inititatives for developing irrigation agriculture in the village and several other activities such as starting a school.

The state election in 1957

The following year there was an election to the Rajasthan State Legislative Assembly. In Rajasthan there were two faction within the Congress Party. One was dominated by the Rajputs and the other by Jats. These two castes were the largest ones in Rajasthan, and their share of the total population was about one fifth each. Ravi Dan worked for strengthening the Jat-dominated anti-Rajput faction within the Congress party, as it was in the interest of his Detha clan at Chelana to avoid Rajput dominance.

At the general election for the Rajasthan State Assembly in 1957 Bheron Singh was the Congress candidate at the Jalagarh constituency in which Chelana was situated. He belonged to village Khejerla 20 km south of Chelana, where he had been the Thakur village lord of his village up to the end of jagirdar rule in 1952. He had been a minister of the Cabinet of the Maharaja of the Marvar State before Independence in 1947.

In independent India he became a Congress politician and he represented the party as a democratically elected member of the Legislative Assembly at Jaipur. As a Rajput in a strong social position he belonged to the Rajput-dominated faction within the Congress Party. In 1957 that section had the main say in the party. Bheron Singh was promised a post as a minister in the state government, if he won in the forthcoming election.

In 1957 Ravi Dan had been a member of the Congress Party for ten years, and he had good connections with many non-Rajput Congress politicians on the state level.

Due to disputes with local Rajputs, the Dethas of Chelana were on the Jat side in the factional disputes within the Rajasthani Congress party, whereas most other Charans supported the Rajputs.

To win the seat of the Jalagarh constituency it was necessary to get the votes of the Sirvis. They formed a farming community similar to that of the Jat. Although a small caste in Rajasthan as a whole, Sirvi had the second largest population within the Jalagarh constituency. Only the Rajputs had a larger number. The Jats were on the third place.

At the previous state election the Sirvis had voted for Bheron, the Congress Rajput from Khejerla, as the Divan at Jalagarh had told them to do so. Thus they voted on the rival of the Jat candidate, although the Sirvis belonged to the same social class as the Jats.

The Divan family at Jalagarh had been powerful Rajput jagirdars within the Marvar state. During the days of feudal rule, the Divan used to serve the Maharaja of Jodhpur in a high administrative position.

According to a local tradition, which appears to have both a religious and feudal origin, the Divan was the religious head of the Sirvis. As his words carried much weight, they would have voted for Bheron this time also, if it had not been for the interference of Ravi Dan and a few other anti-Rajput Congressmen. They came up with the idea of persuading somebody belonging to the Sirvi caste to stand as an independent candidate in the election. Chandar Singh Barfa of the Sirvi caste agreed to contest. Ravi Dan and his friends supported him.

Ravi Dan had got secret support from top Congress leaders in Jaipur belonging to the non-Rajput faction for the scheme to oust the Rajput at Khejerla from his MLA seat of Jalagarh.

It was considered a brilliant idea to have a Sirvi candidate instead of a Jat as opponent to the Rajput.

Bheron lost. He got only eighteen thousand votes, twelve thousand less than his Sirvi opponent. Two thousand votes had to be discarded, as many illiterate villagers did not know how to caste their votes. Bheron lost because the Sirvis voted for their own caste fellow.

The Jats did not vote for Bheron, either. They would never vote for a Rajput. The Jats were indeed very pro-Congress, as they felt grateful to that party for the land reform, which had been carried out a few years earlier. But they could not vote for Bheron, although he was the Congress Party candidate.

The scheme to remove the Rajput MLA had succeeded. Ravi Dan was cheered as one of those who had brought about the victory.

The Congress Party got the majority at the 1957 Rajasthan election and continued to form the government at Jaipur just as it formed the national government in New Delhi. But the composition of the MLA factions of the Congress slanted in favour of the non-Rajput side.

The Rajputs were dejected. Many dacoits with a Rajput background felt the defeat of the Rajputs in the state election was a blow also to them. They had taken advantage of being Rajputs. For years they had been able to take shelter behind the passivity of Rajput police officers, Rajput Government servants and Rajput politicians. Now less friendly administrators entered the arena of political power.

For many Rajputs in the Chelana area Ravi Dan became the target of their anger.

There were Rajputs who longed for taking revenge on him, especially as he belonged to the Detha family of Chelana, who had been so difficult for the Rajputs to handle since the days of Jugti Dan. Some of the dacoits in Kalyan Singh's gang planned to kill Ravi Dan as well as his father Tej Dan Detha, and Ravi Dan's elder brother Sukh Dan Detha. The latter was a police officer stationed at Jaipur. Umar Singh's son Bhan Singh kept close contacts with his friends in the Kalyan Singh's band, as he felt that his family also had a debt to pay back to the Dethas in the language of violence.

However, Fateh Dan, the other leader of Kalyan Singh's robber band, did not agree to the scheme. He was a Charan himself, although of a higher gotra than the Dethas. He told they should stick to the old dacoit rule of only robbing rich Baniya merchants and not to harm anybody belonging to the warrior class. To kill the Dethas would be against the code of honour the dacoits had set for themselves.Therefore, Fateh Dan and a few of his followers split away from the rest of the gang.

The search for Ravi Dan

Kalyan Singh's gang started to visit the Chelana village with rifles on their back. They secretly took rounds on the roads close to the Detha houses.

But Fateh Dan, also called Fatiah Rawal, had informed the Dethas of the danger. The Detha family was therefore very cautious, whenever the dacoits were seen in the area. At the entrance of Tej Dan's houses they kept men with rifles. Especially the Pol building was well protected. That stone house had been constructed at the time of Jugti Dan, and in 1957 it served as the office-cum-work centre of the large commercial farm of the Detha brothers and cousins. The dynamic irrigation enterprise of the Dethas had been running for about five years when the dacoits of the area started to threaten them.

Ravi Dan, the main target of the dacoits, was the sarpanch of the village at this time. He stayed indoors as much as possible or out of sight in other ways.

Whenever the dacoit gang of Kalyan Singh visited the Chelana area, they also kept watch for Ravi Dan and his relatives along the country side roads.

It happened that they stopped vehicles to have a search, but they never found their victim, as Ravi Dan always travelled at night, either on foot or on horseback. He went over rugged land to and from Chelana during these dangerous days.

In 1957 there were hardly any other means of transportation for village people than ox carts, horses and camels. The traffic of jeeps, trucks and buses was very thin in the whole region. No bus started to ply regularly to Chelana until 1960.

When the Government decided to stop the terror of the dacoits

After the 1957 MLA election also other politicians who wanted to reduce the old Rajput dominance were threatened and some were murdered. The victims were local leaders of the Jat faction of the Congress Party.

Many Rajputs still lived in the warrior tradition of the maharaja age. In their opinion enemies should be curbed by terror and violence. That is how opponents belonging to the depressed classes had been silenced for generations by the feudal elite in western Rajasthan.

For self-confident Rajput dacoits it was a matter of annoyance that simple rural folks such as Jats did not fear the long established feudal elite as much as earlier. Rajput dacoits only vaguely understood, that representatives of the simple people they felt contempt for, had got a decisive say in politics both at Jaipur and New Delhi.

They wanted to fight back. They did not understand that attempts to combat the new leadership and their sympathizers by oldfashioned Rajput violence were doomed to fail. Their violence only caught the attention of the authorities about the dacoit problem in western Rajasthan. It sped up the plans for a complete eradication of the dacoit activities.

Ministers of the Jat-faction of the Congress Party became anxious to reduce the feudal Rajput power still lingering on in Rajasthani villages. To stop dacoit activities was a part of that effort, as troublesome Rajputs often joined dacoit gangs. When some dacoit gangs started to harass local non-Rajput politicians in a spirit of revenge, the Jat faction of the Congress government at Jaipur found it more urgent than ever to put an end to the dacoit problem.

Ravi Dan and other politicians from western Rajasthan were therefore met with sympathy at Jaipur when they told about their personal problems. They made many visits to convince the Government representatives that something had to be done.

In 1958 the Government launched an anti-dacoit program with the assistance of the Central Government in New Delhi. A unit of the army was used for the campaign. It belonged to the well equipped and trained border security force stationed along the border to Pakistan.

The Rajasthan Government decided to start with Kalyan Singh's gang, as it had started to terrorise villagers in general. The gang had a record of high and increasing criminality, which had lead to anarchic conditions in the area around Chelana in the 1950s.

The government carried out its anti-dacoit operations on a large scale this time. The dacoits had no chance to realise how serious their situation had become until it was too late. As they were illiterate and lived in backward conditions they had no perspective. They were few in number and badly equipped compared to the army units. They were hunted like rats from one hiding place to the other. Kalyan Singh's gang continued to resist for a long time, though.

The role of the Dethas in the Government anti-dacoit operations

Both soldiers and specially trained police participated. They frequently visited the Detha farm at Chelana. It became one of the contact points of the dacoit combating force.

Tan Dan was fifteen years of age at that time and he followed the events with keen interest. Two of his brothers participated in the operations: Ravi Dan and Sukh Dan.

At this time Sukh Dan Detha worked as a police officer of the Central Government. He was assigned to fight organised criminality including dacoit gang robberies and murders. He therefore got an opportunity to participate in the field operations against the Kalyan Singhs gang, which for him also was of personal concern. He was one of those the gang planned to murder, as he was a Detha. Tej Dan's son and Ravi Dan's brother.

The last fight

Tan Dan saw the vehicles of the armed platoon drive away from Chelana in search of dacoits around other villages of the area. The men were ready for action. There were ten small trucks loaded with soldiers equipped with rifles, and a large number of jeeps for the officers. They also brought two wireless communication sets and several machine guns.

After a few months the platoon managed to find the Kalyan Singh's gang and prepared for a final encounter.

The robbers had been taken by surprise. They were feasting at a dhani (field homestead) of a Jat family. It often happened that they went to that place uninvited to enjoy the women of the family by force.

Twice before the police force had attacked the gang, but on both those occasions the dacoits had managed to escape. Now the gang had been found, when all its members were present. They were about seventeen in 1958, half as many as they had been ten years earlier.

The isolated farm house was completely surrounded by soldiers before the attack started. Kalyan Singh's men had been caught in a trap. But they gave a tough resistence, and the siege lasted for five days.

The soldiers attacked the dacoits in the night. Most of the latter were drunk. The police tried to get the Jats of the dhani to run away without notice, but three Jats were still in the house at the time of the attack.

Kalyan Singh was shot together with most of his gang. Four dacoits managed to escape under the protection of darkness. They could do so in spite of all the surrounding troops. Nobody surrendered.

The charges against them were so heavy that they hardly could expect any mercy. They had committed many terrible murders. They had chopped their victims alive by sword, starting from the leg side of the body.

When the fight was over most of the gang members had been killed, and several soldiers and police officers. Altogether about twenty persons had died.

Who killed Kalyan Singh?

One of the leaders of the army platoon had been a leader of a dacoit gang himself. His experience was now utilised for the dacoit eradication program. He was officially declared as the one who had killed Kalyan Singh, the gang leader, and he was amply rewarded for it. He got promoted to an important police officer, and in that capacity he served the Government for fifteen years until retirement.

However, according to some soldiers who were present on this occasion, it was in fact another police officer called Vir Chand, who had killed the gang leader Kalyan Singh. He was another leader of the platoon.

Vir Chand and Shankar Singh had been fighting together, when they both sighted Kalyan Singh at sunset. Vir Chand lay in a position slantwise ahead of Shankar Singh. According to the soldiers who helped Vir Chand, Shankar Singh shot Vir Chand, as soon as he saw that Kalyan Singh had been killed by Vir Chand. According to the examination of the doctor, the shot wound showed that Vir Chand had been shot from the back at a short distance. True or not, that is what people kept telling.

Further investigations were discontinued at the order of senior police officers and ministers, who did not want to face a scandal. It was a well-known affair in Rajasthan during the 1960s, Tan Dan told. It was hotly debated among politicians and in police circles in those days.

It is possible that these accusations against Shankar Singh were false gossip, as there was no proof at court. That Vir Chand's death was discussed in this way is evidently true, though, Tan Dan told, as he had heard these narrations from several persons.

Ravi Dan made peace with Rajputs to safeguard the agricultural development of the village

Although Bhan Singh earlier had cooperated with Kalyan Singh, he did not get any punishment for his role in the terror against Ravi Dan, Tej Dan and other Dethas. He had never belonged to a dacoit gang himself unlike his father Umar Singh.

At the time of the police action in 1958 Bhan Singh lived in peace with his old enemies among the Dethas and Rajputs such as Praduman Singh, the son of Dhokal Singh. Ravi Dan had taken the initiative to a formal peace agreement. He did not want petty village feuds to thwart the efforts to develop commercial irrigation farming at Chelana. Mechanized irrigation from deep wells had started in the early 1950s.

How the dacoits were tackled elsewhere in Rajasthan

The platoon who killed Kalyan Singh's band hunted dacoits also in other areas. The same well equipped platoon went around all over western and northern Rajasthan. In five months all dacoit gangs there had been finished completely. At the end of 1958 only a few individuals managed to carry on with robbery activities here and there, mainly in the Jaisalmer district near the Pakistan border.

Earlier efforts had all failed. The difference in efficiency was striking. Earlier attempts to curb dacoit activities had probably not been carried out in earnest, as many of those involved belonged to the same caste as the dacoit gang leaders, i.e. the Rajput caste. Not until the Jats got the main say in the Rajasthani Government did the dacoit menace stop. It did not come back, either, as the modernization of western Rajasthan gradually reduced the scope for oldfashioned semi-feudal dacoitry.

Jodhpur police anti-dacoity activities as stated in the Gazetteer

In the 1940s The police department of Jodhpur state had 85 Thanas (police stations) and a total staff of about three thousand persons.

"With a view to providing speedy and effective pursuit of the dacoits in the sandy and sparsely populated districts, a force of flying columns of camel sowars and horsemen under the supervision of a retired military officer, were added."

Retired army men were enrolled in the force. "It was this improved class of men, who ultimately succeeded in giving a battle to organized gangs of outlaws and clearing the country side of all serious crimes." When the countryside was cleared is not stated.

According to our narration a plutoon of the Rajasthan border security force finished the dacoit gangs in the Chelana area of Jodhpur District in 1958 as a part of a Rajasthan Government anti dacoit program. Somewhat similar to the "retired army men" of the Gazetteer. What the flying columns of camel riders and horsemen of the police managed to achieve is not clear. Probably very little. Some dacoity crimes occurred also later. In early 1960s there were about two dacoity crimes per year in Jodhpur District and ten years later about six per year. (Agarwal, 1979)

The peaceful surrender of dacoits in the Chambal valley in 1960

In the Chambal valley in eastern Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh there were plenty of ravines where dacoits could hide. It was the most dacoit infested area in northern India.

The Governments of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan created a Joint Anti-dacoity Police Command in 1953 to liquidate all the dacoit gangs operating in the Chambal ravines. Up to 1960 about 25,000 armed police had been posted at different place in the area for anti-dacoit operations. Both dacoits and police died in encounters in large numbers in the 1950s.

The press-note of U.P. Government dated February 11, 1956 says:

"By the end of 1954 six notorious dacoit gangs had been liquidated. The gang of Sultana was liquidated early in 1953 and it was in August 1955 that Man Singh and his son Subedar, Singh, whose gang was responsible for about 100 murders and 1000 dacoities, were killed in fierce encounter with the Madhya Bharat police. In all there were about 83 encounters in which 74 dacoits were killled and 105 captured. On the police side 61 persons were killed in action."

In 1960 twenty dacoits of that area surrendered to the police without fight. They had been persuaded to do so by Vinoba Bhava, the saintly Bhoodan leader, who had been a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi. A high military officer had played an important role.

At a ceremony the dacoits lay down their weapons at the feet of Vinoba. They admitted their crimes and were tried at court. Many of them spent many years in jail.

It happened in 1960, two years after the dacoit gangs of western Rajasthan had been crushed with much bloodshed.

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### Chapter 15 Dacoit Pratap Singh at Chelana

One day in the early 1950s, when the dacoits were still active in the Chelana area, a dacoit called Pratap Singh walked into the village. He came from the ravines nearby, and he intended to do some shopping all by himself. He was easily recognised as a dacoit, as he carried a rifle on his back and had cartridge belts around his body. He was big and strong, and he had terrifying curled moustaches.

Single dacoits often walked around like that in the villages. They had nothing to fear from the local population, who tried to avoid them as much as possible. They were treated like wild beasts, which should not be teased. Even when they were alone such dacoits sometimes entered the house of a lowcaste family, and enjoyed with the women there without any interference from others. Those who lived in adjacent houses thanked their own good luck. They had been spared this time, and kept out of sight. Those who had been hit were considered to have had ill luck. Nothing could be done about it, as nobody could rule over his own luck.

The dacoit Pratap Singh went to a Baniya shopkeeper's house to buy bidi (a kind of small cigarette) and matches and a few other things. By chance the door of the house was open, and the housewife was alone at home. When Pratap Singh had found out that he changed his mind and bolted the door without any preplanning. He tried to get hold of the lady for a few moments of enjoyment. But she was too fast and managed to run away up the staircase and escaped to safety via the roof. She ran to the next house, from where she shouted for help. Many persons heard her, but nobody dared to come to her rescue. Pratap Singh felt safe, and he did not bother. About fifty ablebodied men of the village passively witnessed the drama at a safe distance.

Then three strong young men appeared in the village lane. They had heard the shouts and came independently of each others. The first one was a Rajput soldier, Nen Singh, who was at home on vacation. The second one was Chen Dan, a Charan boy who often travelled around in Rajasthan and was on visit to his in-laws. The third one was a Muslim called Ishaka, and he belonged to a comparatively progressive village near Ajmer. He happened to be on visit to his sister, who had been married to a Chelana muslim.

All three had been exposed to a more modern life, and they were determined to catch the robber, although others tried to discourage them, shouting that their "father" (i.e. dacoit Pratap Singh) would shoot them.

Pratap Singh heard the shouts and sensed that the events had taken a serious turn. Therefore he left the Baniya house. He started to run along the village lane chased by the three men. They were strong, and now they had a chance to prove it. As the dacoit had been taken by surprise he had not got time to load his rifle, which he had kept unloaded, as he was on a peaceful mission to the village. He tried to do it while running, which was rather difficult, as the others were chasing him close on his heels. He could not stop for more than a few seconds at a time, so he neither managed to load his rifle nor to run fast enough. Chen Dan hit Pratap Singh on his thigh with his lathi stick, and Pratap Singh immediately fell on the ground rolling in pain. The three boys dived on the fallen dacoit. Nen Singh took away the rifle, and the other two tied the hands of the dacoit on his back with his own turban, while he was still lying on the ground. They ordered him to stand up and he walked along with them at gun point. In triumph they lead him through the village to the office of the gram panchayat (village council). It was a small office which recently had been put up near the village well. After some time also a few small shops opened there and the place gradually developed into a village bazar.

Pratap Singh kept cursing all of them in a very rough language in spite of his helpless condition. He told it might be their day today, but wait and see what would happen later. The village crowd did not like his threatening and arrogant talk. As he was quite harmless, deprived of his rifle and with his hands tied, many wanted to help in beating him. Food was brought to him, as the villagers did not want him to starve, but he proudly refused to eat. He gave the tray of food a kick, so it fell on the ground. The villagers were shocked at such pap (sinful act), and started to beat him again.

To kick food like that was considered an ill omen in the Hindu society, as grain itself was worshipped as a God. As it was sacred, many Hindu ritual ceremonies started with offering grains.

A few Rajput boys told Pratap Singh he had been caught in a trap arranged by the sarpanch office. It was an office run by the Dethas as their private property, the Rajput boys told him.

Pratap Singh started to curse the Dethas in general and the sarpanch in particular. He told the crowd that in one blow he would give back their one hundred blows some day.

Mehar Dan was busy on the Detha farm when Pratap Singh was caught. He got the news and ran to the panchayat office. When the dacoit started to abuse the sarpanch, Mehar Dan got very angry. He dragged the dacoit to the open place in front of the office to give him a public beating. Mehar Dan told the assembled crowd that the gram panchayat office did not belong to the Dethas. He was the sarpanch of the whole village. As such he was responsible for law and order at Chelana. Therefore, he would keep the criminal as a prisoner in the gram panchayat office until the police arrived.

Whether a sarpanch had a right to punish somebody by a public beating was uncertain, however, and Mehar Dan had a second thought about it. The Thakur had punished people during the feudal period, but times were changing. There was a risk that somebody would accuse Mehar Dan and the other Dethas for giving a beating on their own. A case might be launched against him at court. To avoid that Mehar Dan and the village crowd decided to take the dacoit to the Thikana and give the him a public beating there, with the blessings of the Thakur.

Bringing Pratap Singh to the Thikana in the midst of a big village crowd would also be a challenge to the Rajput. Then all could see with whom the villagers in general sympathised. The villagers were upset by the thought that Pratap Singh had tried to rape an innocent lady of such a high caste as the Baniya merchant's wife. If it would have been a poor woman from a low caste they would not have been so upset, but this was a real scandal. Also those of the Rajputs, who did not like that a Rajput should get a beating, even if he was a dacoit, felt it was better to keep silent.

When the crowd had passed through the gate of the village fortress, Pratap Singh was ordered to sit down on the ground in the big chauk, while Mehar Dan and a few others went to the Thakur to get his approval for carrying out a public beating of the offender.

Jhumar Mal Kothari, the merchant whose wife the dacoit Pratap Singh had tried to rape, sat already together with the Thakur, and explained to him what had happened.

The Thakur was in a dilemma, as the two main antagonists in the drama was a Rajput (Pratap Singh) and a Baniya (Jhumar Mal). The latter was also the accountant and cashier of the Thikana. The warrior and the merchant castes (Rajputs and Baniyas) had always been friends. They had had a symbiotic relationship.

The fact that Pratap Singh had not raped Jhumar Mal's wife, but only bolted the door of the house from inside did not calm the feeelings of the villagers much. They demanded revenge for the threatened honour of an honourable lady.

If Pratap Singh had succeeded in raping Jhumar Mal's wife, Jhumar Mal would probably have done his utmost to hush down the whole incidence. He might flatly have denied that any rape would have occurred. Otherwise he would have lost even more prestige.

Mehar Dan Detha and the other leaders returned from the Thakur with the consent to beat their prisoner, and they immediately started to hit him. As Mehar Dan was the sarpanch he had the honour of being the main hitter. It was a task which he carried out with great energy. The helpless dacoit was kicked and beaten without mercy.

The villagers took revenge on the dacoit themselves, as they suspected that the legal machinery would not consider this case as a serious one. The dacoit had not got the opportunity to do anything criminal this time. But Pratap Singh had injured their pride, and he had threatened the honour of respected villagers. For the villagers it was a bigger crime than theft, although such mental injury was difficult to measure.

Pratap Singh was handed over to the police next morning. He was never seen again in the village, but there were rumours he had joined Kalyan Singh's gang. Whether true or not he did not keep his promise of taking revenge.

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###  Conclusion

There were many fights at Chelana and its region in feudal age, but these fights were between strong groups, mostly belonging to the feudal elite. Weak groups, the feudal serfs such as the Bhambis and the Jats, did not fight against the feudal elite for their liberation, although some soft attempts to show their will for a change did occur, such as that of Harji. The liberation of the serfs was brought about in a non-violent way by the introduction of a land reform law that abolished the feudal rights of the jagirdars and brought the land to the tillers. It weakened the village lords to such an extent that also non-cultivating feudal serfs dared to stop carrying out humiliating tasks. Such as removing dead cattle. Work which they earlier had carried out against their wish, as disobedience would be punished by brutal violence.

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### Endnotes

**Meaning of Marwari and Hindi words**

Begar. Compulsory work by tenants for Thakurs and other Jagirdars.

Dacoit. Daku. Robbers with their own code of ethics.

Daroga. A caste which served in the Thikana. Daughters of this caste were often given in dowry along with the bride in weddings of feudal lords.

Gotra. A group within a caste. They have kinship feelings and only marry other gotras, not their own.

Kamdar. He was the secretary and manager of the Thikana. The kamdar was also called Thikanadar.

Lathi. Long bambu sticks of hard wood. Always with a length from the ground to the lower part of the ear of the owner when used for fighting.

Raj ro marg. The cleanshaven strip on the top of the head is called "raj ro marg" i.e. the royal path. Compulsory for Bhambi men in the feudal age.

Savarn Hindu. A person belonging to high ranked caste groups, especially the brahmin, baniya and kshatriya type of castes.

Shudra Hindu. A person belonging to a caste ranked below the castes of the savarn Hindus.

Thakur. The feudal village lord.

Thikana. The fortress and residence of the village lord.

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Translation of Marvari sentences

"Sau sonar ki, ek lohar ki" i.e. one hundred blows of a goldsmith, and one of a blacksmith. That is, the revenge will be terrible.

Marvari for "kill them, kill them, kill them". = mar kado, mar kado, mar kado

"Labura, dekhe kain he, chandal ra rungata padla. Bapada dhed hirdar bane he." (Dhed is an insulting word for Bhambi, and hirdar is an honourable word for Rajput in Marvari.) "Labu Ram, what are you looking at. Pluck the hair of the scoundral (chandal). The fatherless (i.e. the damned) Bhambi is trying to become a Rajput."

In the children game on feudal life and cultivation

Gul sinchu, galvani sinchu, chaptia ro pani sinchu.

Gul = sweet, jaggery, sinchu = irrigating. galvani = the sweet food food made of gur, ghee and wheat, chaptia = whip, i.e. leather strips on a short stick for driving oxen, ro = of; pani = water; sincho = irrigating.

"Adman dalio adman dal.

Rajoji mangai hai kakri ri pal."

Adman = half amount; dalio = crushed grain; dal = pulse; rajoji = king, maharaja, here: the Thakur; mangai hai = asked for; pal = part of, hissa.

Kakri is a kind of long cucumber and pal means part (hissa).

Kakri ri pal roughly means, "Give me some kakri."

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Reference

Agarwal, 1979, Rajasthan District Gazetteers

Bhatta, S.D. 1962. And they gave up dacoity. 302 pp. Sarva Seva Sangh. Varanasi.

Singh, M.H., 1990, The castes of Marwar. Census Report of 1891. Jodhpur.

Cover image

Two Banjara men at the head of their cattle herd, which were easy to handle, as the animals just followed them. Around 1970.

Photo: Tan Dan Detha.

***

That was all for the time being, but Tan Dan has more to tell.

If you have any comments on this book, please mail to me. Any suggestion for improvement is most welcome.

My e-mail adress is sonlal41@hotmail.com

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