Settlers, Saints and Sovereigns: An Ethnography of State Formation in Western India 1138044520, 9781138044524

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Settlers, Saints and Sovereigns

Critical Asian Studies

Series Editor: Veena Das Kreiger-Eisenhower Professor in Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University

emergent

Critical Asian Studies is devoted to in-depth studies of social and cultural phenomena in the countries of the region. While recognising the important ways in which the specific and often violent histories of the nation-state have influenced the social formations in this region, the books in this series also examine the processes of translation, exchange, boundary crossings in the linked identities and histories of the region. The authors in this series engage with social theory through ethnographically grounded research and archival work. Also in this Series Living with Violence: The Anthropology of Events and Everyday Life Roma Chatterji and Deepak Mehta ISBN 978-0-415-43080-7 Enchantments of Modernity: Empire, Nation, Globalization (Ed.) Saurabh Dube ISBN 978-0-415-44552-8 The Intimate State: Love-Marriage and the Law in Delhi Perveez Mody ISBN 978-0-415-44604-4

Settlers, Saints and Sovereigns An

Ethnography of State Formation in Western India

Farhana Ibrahim

First published 2008 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 4RN 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business First issued in paperback 2019 Transferred to Digital Printing 2009 Copyright © 2009 Farhana Ibrahim Typeset by

Star Compugraphics Private Limited 5–CSC, First Floor, Near City Apartments Vasundhara Enclave Delhi 110 096

All rights reserved. No this book reprinted or orreproduced part of may be utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-415-44556-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-17626-6 (pbk)

Contents List of Photographs List of Maps Note on Transliteration List of Abbreviations

Glossary

vi vi vii vii viii

Preface

xvii

Foreword by Veena Dasxii

Acknowledgements

xx

1 Region

1.

Imagining

2.

Migration, Memory

a

to Asmitā

and Affect:

Counter-Perspectives

3.

Defining

and Nation

77

4.

Pastoralists, Islam and the State: Religion and Settlement of the Border

111

Settlement, Sovereignty and History

151

5.

a

Epilogue Bibliography Index

Border:

Religion, Region

51

198 202 212

List of Photographs (between pages 110–11) 1. Buffalo feeding time at Fakirani Jatt settlemen settlementt 2. Ashapura temple, Bhu Bhujj Bannii 3. Bann 4. Daneta Jatt man with signature ajrakh p ajrakh wra wrap n women 5. Daneta Jatt wome h 6. Fakirani Jatts receiving fodder, Asira Asira Wand Wandh a_\ 7. Garasia Jatt women at Mai's Mel\l= Mela Māi nā h 8. Gathering of the Jam'at at Mäi nä pad padh h 9. Mai's Dargā Dargäh

10. 11.

Ruins of Aina Mahal after the earthquak earthquakee i in Banni Wandh Bann Typical

List of Maps h Kachchh Map 1: Kachch

Map Map Map

2: Cutch and Neighbouring Territories, 3: State of Gujarat, 1960 4: TharParkar Location

2 c.

1942

3 14 81

Note on Transliteration In transcribing Gujarati, Kachchhi and Urdu words, I have followed a few of the guidelines set forth in John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English, Lahore: Sange-Meel Publications, Fourth Impression, published 2003. vowels are transcribed with the mark above them, e.g. in 'father', ī as in 'police', and ū as in 'rule'.

Long ā

as

ίβ/îl and X

are

all transcribed

3 is transcribed

'kettle')

as q,

while

as ś £

/5

(pronounced 'sh')

are

transcribed

pluralised vernacular dargāhs.

For convenience, I have

English,

e.g. pīrs,

as

words

List of Abbreviations BJP MSA ΝΑΙ RSS VHP

Janata Party Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai National Archives of India, New Delhi

Bharatiya

Raśtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (World Hindu Council)

Viśwa Hindu Pariśad

k

(as

in

as

in

Glossary adālat. ādīvāsī

Akhand Bhārat

āfal

ahimsā ārtī

aryavratā asl asmitā āsthānā

atak barakat baechhrā bāwā bāī

community court lit. original inhabitant or indigenous peoples undivided, inclusive India

chaos non-violence Hindu devotional prayer the heartland of Aryan civilisation in India original or authentic

pride, glory, identity memorial those who share the grace, a

same

blessing

community name

kid; young goat

special

suffix used for Muslim

Saiyyed families suffix to woman's

men

name, to convey

from

respect

ben lit. sister, a respectful suffix to a woman’s

name

bet raised islands of grassland in the Rann of betā bhāi, bhaktī Bhārat Mata bhaviśyavānī

Kachchh

child lit. brother,

respectful suffix to a man's name faith, devotion, piety; also a religious within Hinduism movement Mother India divinations for the future

bhayyad

lit. ‘brotherhood,’ this refers to the ruling

bhūkamp

earthquake

bīdī burkhā

family alliance consisting of brothers, distant cousins and sons of the royal house tobacco rolled

body

buzurg elder chādar chaklā

up in dried leaves outer garment consisting covering and face veil

women's

ceremonial

offering cloth

square-like formation

of a

long

chāy,

chās

buttermilk

charyā Dadimā dohī

crazy

darbār

royal court (darbār royal palace complex

paternal grandmother yogurt

darbārgadh dargāh

dār ul harb dār ul Islam derāsar deś desī dhobī dhol du'a

court,

gadh

=

fort),

fortified

shrine place of war, injustice, apostasy, non-Islam abode of peace, Islam, perfection, justice small Jain temple

country

native washerman drum

blessings hill

dūngar dupattā

scarf covering women's

'ekta unity

faliā fātihā gaddī nishīn gānda bāwal ghamand ghī 'gotā gyarvīn

hajām halāl

‘hijrat hośiyār

=

quom

hukūmat,

upper

body and head

street with a few houses along it of the Qu'ran occupier of seat or position/title wild or 'mad' bāwal or acacia conceit clarified butter gold and silver thread and brocade work the practice of setting work aside on the eleventh of each month according to the Islamic calendar barber slaughtered in accordance with Islamic ini unctions a

verses

migration within the Islamic discursive

frame

clever people governance

īmān

belief, faith

izzat,

honour

jāgīr

rent-free estate obtained perpetuity from the ruler

as

a

grant in

jāgīrdār jāhilāt. jam'āt jān jānazā kalimā

administrator of jāgīr lands

ignorance congregation; collective marriage procession from

the groom's side coffin affirmation of the Islamic faith; verses of the

Qu'ran

kanthīKachchhi term for coastline

kārīgar

khīr kor kuldevī

lagan vyavahārrmaelartioagnes

artisans milk in Kachchhi; rice

leprosy lineage deity

pudding

in

Gujarati

incense lobān

laśkararmies

madrassā

Islamic school

mahal

palace

māhārāo title of ruler māldhārī pastoralist māmā mother's brother māmerā ritual wedding gift, to the bride from her mothers' brother manokāmnā s desire heart entertainment manoranjan maryādā character pride; mātā mother goddess maulvī maulānā Muslim religious teacher khāno mehmān front

melā

mujāwar mulk

murīd

musāfir Khāno Nāg Panchamī Navarātrī

nazar

room

for

receiving guests

fair; usually used

to describe a religiousoccasion, but the word also connotes entertainment keepers of the shrine

home, country families of followers

rest house monsoon festival tor the Hindu serpent god literally 'nine nights this refers to the annual nine day and night long festivity and prayer dedicated to the Hindu goddess Durga and her incarnations ,

gaze

dārgahs

niāz

consecrated food distributed at

nikāh

'urs celebrations Muslim wedding ceremony celebrations

especially during

consists of people with the same family name light,

nukh a level of classification within the atak; glow justice Pancharī grazing taxes

nūr

nyāy

paradharmī of another religion follower Patel headman

respected elder; pīr

of the pīr pithe tribhūmī land of one

saint

Pīrānā

s

faith

the land of one's punyabhūmī

faith

pūjā prayer

qāfī qāfilā qawwālī qāydā rājā rājāshāhī

Rāodā rāshtra

rāstragīt

ras ūl

sādhū man holy

Saiyyid

rhyme,

verse

entourage of travellers sufi songs

or

traders

custom

king princely

rule of the Rāo nation national anthem

prophet

high-born Muslims who trace descent directly

from the Prophet sandūk trunk

Sangh

Parivār

family of organisations that, follow the Hindu nationalist agenda (e.g. BJP, VHP, RSS, Bajrang Dal) confluence sangam chain sānkar

sant priest

sarkār government

sasurāl in-laws; marital home

royal procession sawārī

śerī a street

service sevā

with

a

few houses along it

shari'ā

the

sher

a

shuddh śikār silsilā

pure

Sunna,

legal

tradition of Islam of genre poetry

hunting

lineage

of pīrs; also chain of transmission of

grace sunnat

swābhimān

tradition of obligatory actions in Islam self-pride and pride in one's native place

a

religious lecture takrīr

tāluka sub-district,

administrative unit

path tarīqā way coolness thandak mark tilak on forehead dītrikshāshul of tridents distribution or

upvās ustād 'urs

vakīl wād wādī

fast(s) acknowledged

master

anniversary

commemoration of a saint's death at his/her dargāh minister abode orchard and farm

faithful, loyal wafādār wilāyā spiritual kingdom yakīnfaith; belief yātrā journey or pilgrimage zamīndār

landowner

Foreword Settlers, Saints and Sovereigns is a remarkable study of the history and ethnography of the Kachchh region which lines the western border between India and Pakistan. Farhana Ibrahim meticulously tracks the border-making practices through which this region came to be defined over a long period of time, showing how different kinds of state formations were legitimised through such practices. Simultaneously she gives an account of the ways in which inhabitants enacted different forms of belonging within a milieu defined through both material and formations. The region thus emerges as a movement of various kinds of forces and intensities that might be caught at a particular moment of coagulation yet defies representation through stable structures.

different cultural

There are two kinds of theoretical imaginations that, have marked recent scholarship. One takes its inspiration from a mathematical imagination of structures developed from a given set of axioms in which the ambition is to render differences as variations in sequences or as transformations of a given set of stable elements. The other is interested in capturing movements and intensities it asks how we might account for the waning and waxing of affects that, define political and social formations. For instance, how is it that concepts such as asmitā (national pride) could mobilise Hindu middle class sensibility against Muslims in Gujarat in recent years while earlier the same kinds of concepts were articulated in the Hindu nationalist —

affective imagination

but did not carry any force? This book then what is the goes beyond asking genealogy of concepts through which regional or national sentiments are articulated and instead (or in addition) asks how we are to render the history of a region in terms of flows and movement s of various kinds that

define

changing boundaries between people and places. Since so much knowledge in the social sciences uses statist ever

categories, many scholars assume that the physical boundaries of a state coincide completely with the conceptual and affective boundaries of its inhabitants. Kachchh now belongs to India, and Sindh, its adjoining region, to Pakistan. Ibrahim shows that

this is not simply a matter of the colonial state having drawn arbitrary boundaries behind what was a unified territory earlier. Rather, there is a long history of boundaries that flow within the region defined by natural factors such as movements for fodder or water; alliances between the princely states and the colonial state that went beyond political boundaries in maintaining order especially with regard to nomadic groups so that the effective territory of control was different from the political territory defined through formal pacts or conquests. The performance of for instance, the sovereignty drew on different imaginarles made with the states alliances princely religious organisations such as the dargāhs of prominent saints. These alliances were both material as in the obligations put on the inhabitants to give taxes to religious organisations as well as to the princely as enacted in royal processions and the state, and symbolic for the obligation ruling king to offer his respects to the pīr of a even when the physical structures Sometimes dargāh publicly. have not changed, the meaning they carry for the performance of sovereignty might have changed. In the post-independence period, the linguistic reorganisation of states placed Kachchh within Gujarat, but in affective terms Kachchh is regarded with ambivalence within Gujarat. Some of it comes from a suspicion about the loyalty of its Muslim inhabitants towards India. Ibrahim gives a subtle account of how the politics of borders puts pressure on the inhabitants of these borderlands to constantly perform their allegiances to the nation even as memories of movements between Kachchh and Sindh continue to provide a different landscape of relations than one sanctioned by the modern state. Larger transnational movements, for instance the reform movements in Sunni Islam, also make earlier practices like pīr worship suspect. The suspicion with which Muslims have come to be viewed in Gujarat, especially after 2002, makes some groups such as the Jatt Muslims of this region wary of going to other parts of Gujarat in search of work. Therefore patterns of seasonal migration have altered and anticipation of violence and fear tends to confine people rather than allowing them to negotiate multiple boundaries. It is thus that larger political events get folded into the everyday life of the inhabitants, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. —

—

One of the great achievements of Ibrahim’s book is that she shows how identities are constantly undergoing transformation in relation to changing ecology and political formations. So, for instance, the Meghwal Harijans took the opportunity of crossing over to India from Sindh during the turmoil of the Indo-Pak war of 1965. They claimed to have been reconverted to Hinduism taking advantage of a political climate in which the state could use this ‘publicity’ for its own legitimacy. On the other hand, in the locally embedded publics, it is myth and poetry (like the poetic compositions of the beloved Sasai–Punnu) that circulate and defy exclusions enacted through state boundaries. Thus people in Kachchh might express their desire for Sindh in their longing for cloth originating from Sindh, or its embroidery or even linguistic expressions that bear testimony to a past that was shared even when fraught with various conflicts.

Ibrahim's book is of great importance for our understanding of the dilemmas faced by India and Pakistan today. The kind of imagination of the state that creates a past from which one or the other group has been completely excluded cannot but be violent. Muslims are held in suspicion in Gujarat by those who think that the emotional unity of India can be crafted only out of an imagined past, from which Muslims are completely excluded. Simultaneously, a pan-Islamic imagination of a reformed modern Islam has little patience with shared histories—the institutions of ritual exchange, poetry or the celebration of the saintly dargāhs are all objects for 'reform' within this definition of 'Islamisation'. Modern forms of sovereignty do not, depend upon the elaborate ritual exchanges and mechanisms of redistribution through which kingly power came into partnership with heads of religious institutions with whom they shared sovereignty in

the past. So how is one to render that past? Ibrahim does not, use the well-known metaphors of syncretism or hybrid identities to capture other forms of relatedness than those sanctioned by the state in imagining how one might craft, one's belonging to a region. Instead she gives us a different way of tracing affects, showing that human belonging is a matter of agreement to a form of life in which solidarity and conflict are simultaneously embedded an agonistic belonging, if you will. It is my hope that, her book will help us to generate a different, vocabulary, a different conceptual framework for understanding

political —

how one might draw from a different region of the past to rethink what it is to ‘belong’ to a place, and to accept that experiments with multiple boundaries must come to be incorporated in the modern nationalist imagination of what it is to be a nation. Veena Das Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology Johns Hopkins University

Preface This book has been through a few incarnations already. It is based on my PhD thesis that in its turn first started out as an investigation into embroidery and artisanal production in Kachchh. I first visited Kachchh in the summer of 2000 and found myself fascinated by the richly embroidered clothing produced and worn by the pastoralists who lived and roamed through the Great Rann of Kachchh, along India’s western border with Pakistan. I was also struck by the fact that although this embroidery was central to the way Kachchh presented itself to the outside world, to the extent that it had come to signify ‘authentic Indian tradition’ as it circulated—via a network of NGOs—among elite circuits of consumption in India and abroad, the producers of this ‘tradition’ seemed to be absent in much of this discourse. Embroidery, as material production, seemed to have become alienated from the conditions of its production, to signify something else altogether. I became interested in the manner in which postcolonial

nation-states sought to legitimise themselves through cultural production. Since the producers of this cultural form were also among the most marginalised and stigmatised populations within Kachchh, living literally on the interstices of the nationstate, I hoped to account for the manner in which they were made visible to the nation through their embroidery; a process that simultaneously domesticated them into the hegemonising discourse of the nation. I returned to Kachchh in the summer of 2001, five months

after a devastating earthquake had struck the region. Kachchh bore the brunt of earthquake-related casualties and much of my time was spent tracking down friends and acquaintances from my last visit, to make sure they were still alive and well. Many thousands had perished in the rubble of collapsed buildings, but many had survived and were even more determined and resolute to rebuild their lives. The politics of aid and rebuilding assistance in Kachchh only served to re-inscribe the already deeply entrenched social hierarchies of caste, class and power. As I spent time with artisans in remote villages, far from the glare

of the international disaster management network as well as the local administration, I became attentive to the fact that they had stories to tell that were even more interesting and complicated than I had ever imagined. Their stories needed to be told. By the time I returned a year later to begin dissertation

research, Kachchh had been through yet another trial; in February–March 2002, the state of Gujarat was engulfed by extreme violence between its Hindus and Muslims, later described as a planned pogrom against the state’s minority Muslim populations. In the aftermath of these two events, social interaction in Kachchh felt palpably more strained than I had remembered it from my first visit. Society seemed polarised across religious boundaries as never before. Although people were at pains to explain how Kachchh was still a bastion of peace as compared to the heinous communal violence that had taken place further east in central Gujarat, something seemed to have changed irrevocably. This book is a product of its times, as it reflects the social,

economic and political conditions in Kachchh in the aftermath of recent events that may well have a decisive impact on the course of its history. Even as I went in with questions relating to and its commoditisation, people were more interested in talking about other things that, as it turned out, were not entirely disconnected from the questions that had occupied me as I had framed the original research question. The world was indeed a different place from a few years before. The United States had announced its ‘war on terror’ and had co-opted Pakistan as a key ally in the task of hunting down the terrorists responsible for bringing down the World Trade Center. In India, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party was in power in Gujarat and had adopted much of the global discourse on Islam and terrorism. Kachchh was too close to Pakistan, an entity that along with Islam had suddenly become the primary alter ego for the Hindu nationalists in India. The Muslim pastoralists, who continued to embroider exquisite creations for larger and more diverse markets, became caught up and implicated in these discourses in novel ways.

embroidery

In the following pages, I examine how different people in

Kachchh construct meaningful narratives of place and region. I present ethnographic and archival evidence from the area to

lay out some of the defining characteristics of border production and state formation in this region. Settlement policies initiated by the postcolonial state from the 1950s reveal the modern state’s imperatives to define the border not just territorially, but also socially and culturally. Categories of insider/outsider, India/Pakistan that play out along this border also map onto the categories of majority/minority and Hindu/Muslim within Gujarat. Within the larger dynamic of state making, this book asks, how do people create place, endowing it with meaning and legitimacy, even as their constructions cut across and occasionally unravel state projects?

Acknowledgements Like most endeavours, this book is the outcome of a series of collaborative relationships. The research and writing have been facilitated by a number of people and institutions, to all of whom I express my deepest gratitude. While writing it up initially as a PhD thesis at Cornell University, I had the good fortune to work with an outstanding set of advisors. Viranjini Munasinghe, Shelley Feldman, Ann Grodzins Gold, David Lelyveld and Andrew Willford were all generous with their time and comments throughout. I am grateful to Veena Das for her encouragement and detailed comments on the text as well as to the anonymous reviewer at Routledge for comments and suggestions for revision. I received generous financial support at various stages of this

acknowledge

project; at Cornell University, I would especially like to the Graduate School, the Department of Anthropology, the South Asia Program, the Comparative Muslim Societies Committee, the Program for Gender and Global Change, and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, and Howard Brentlinger of the Olin Library for help with the maps. A large chunk of the fieldwork in Kachchh was enabled by a dissertation fieldwork grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Research. In Kachchh, I met some truly extraordinary people and it is impossible to acknowledge all of them here. Judy Frater me to Kachchh and to some outstanding artisans in the area. I am grateful to her and to Kala Raksha for their hospitality and introductions. MohmedHosain and Sherbanu Khatri provided me with a wonderful home in Bhuj. MohmedHosain was an exemplary research assistant and his enormous network of contacts throughout Kachchh was a useful resource at all times. I am indebted to his entire family for their help and hospitality.

Anthropological introduced

In Bhuj I would like to especially thank the late Kavi Abd, Naresh Antani, Dr Siddiq Bayad, Maya Dave, Haroonbhāi, Dr Hirani, AliMohamed Isha, Mushtaqbhāi Isha, Sushma

Iyengar, the late Himmatsinhji Jadeja, Umesh Jadia, Yusuf Jatt, Rafiq Jatt, Pramod Jethi, Kirtibhāi, Khatri. Ranjuben, Arifbhāi

Sumra and Nargis, Amba Prasad Trawadi, Dilip Vaidya and Pushpaben, Jamiat Vora and A. Wazir. In Mandvi, I am indebted to Zain-ul-Abedin, Ama Ma and

grateful

their entire family for their help and generosity. I am also to Saleh Mohammed Jatt for his introductions to the Jatt community of Mandvi and beyond. In Anjar, I would like to thank Nazim Jatt for his enthusiasm

generous and help. Maimunabai Khatri and her family were always with their hospitality.

I would also like to acknowledge Prakashbhāi Bhanani, Dadima (Nagor), Ali bhāi Jatt (Ghorpar); from Sumrasar Jatwali, Ibrahimbhāi Jatt, Fatimabai and Naathibai; Ismailbhāi Khatri (Ajrakhpur), Ramju Dada, Chandaben Shroff, Tusina (Hodko), Haji Suleiman Wazeerani, and Shamsuddin Wazeerani.

In Ahmedabad, I am especially grateful to Achyut Yagnik for

taking such an interest in my work and for being so generous with his time. Fr Cedric Prakash and his colleagues were also extremely welcoming at all times. In Mumbai, I must thank Mariam Dossal at the Department of History, Mumbai and to the always helpful staff at the Maharashtra State Archives. The staff at the National Archives of India, New Delhi, also deserves special mention for their courteous and efficient service.

University

Amita Baviskar, Jason Cons, Mahesh Rangarajan and Edward Simpson gave me excellent comments on initial drafts I am deeply grateful to Yogesh Chandrani for helping me think through the notion of Gujarat nī asmitā. .

Wonderful friendships have sustained me through the writing

process. Rasna Dhillon, Radhika Gupta and Rohini Kohli have been part of the journey from the very beginning. Nosheen Ali, Aparna Balachandran, Ramila Bisht, Elana Chipman, Sienna Craig, Alexandra Denes, Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi, Ritambhara Hebbar, Brenda Maiale, Nandini Manjrekar, Mona Mehta, Dia Mohan, Karuna Morarji, Vijay Nagaraj and Krithika Srinivasan have been indispensable as friends, advisors, confidantes and critics. Jamal Rizvi has been good in more ways than he can know; finally, thanks to my family, especially my parents and sister for their love and support.

1 Imagining a Region INTRODUCTION A curious folktale is recounted with great regularity throughout Kachchh, a border district in the western Indian province of Gujarat. During the supposedly unpopular reign of an early king, Jam Punvro, a group of 73 people landed on the western shores of the kingdom. They were called Jakhs, their entourage consisting of 72 brothers and a sister. The seaside town of Jakhau, once a significant port in western Kachchh, is named after them for they are said to have first landed here. To the local population, they were rather exotic as they were fair of skin, light-eyed and spoke a language none could understand. They were also skilled in martial and equestrian arts and brought with them a specialized knowledge of medicine and healing. Not only did the Jakhs thus endear themselves to the populace at large, they are also popularly credited with the death of Jam Punvro and the liberation of Kachchhis from his evil rule. Subsequent to the king’s murder, they were collectively put to death by Punvro’s queen by way of punishment. Thus the Jakhs came to be martyred and worshipped across Kachchh in a series of temples built in their honour. The theme of mobility, and the relative positioning of Kachchh

vis-à-vis an ‘outside’, are recurrent themes both in the way the history of Kachchh is told by its people as well as in the way contemporary social life is structured within it. This is perhaps inevitable, given its location along the sea in an otherwise relatively arid ecological zone that was also an island for much of its recorded history. Most natives of Kachchh emigrated at some point or another in search of livelihood opportunities; others forged a living from the sea or across the Rann, as merchants or pastoralists. Similarly, it was no novelty to see ‘foreigners’ in Kachchh. Early writings depict the ease of movement outsiders had in Kachchh, particularly in its coastal towns. Languages, and phenotypes mixed with an ease that was perhaps

cultures

1: Kachchh

Source: Author.

Map

2: Cutch and

Neighbouring Territories,

c.

1942

Source: Detail from 'Map öf India and Burma", n.p., 1942 (Map and Geospatial Information Collection, Olin Library, Cornell University).

Map

Settlers, Saints and Sovereigns

unique when compared with more inland societies. For example,

James Tod describes his sojourn in the southern port town of Mandvi as he awaited permission from the British Resident at Bhuj to travel north to that city: I passed the day in perambulating the town and quays, all presenting new and interesting scenes, with groups of persons from all countries; the swarthy Ethiop, the Hindki of the Caucasus, the dignified Arabian, the bland Hindu Banyan, or consequential Gosen, in his orange-coloured robes, half-priest half-merchant (Tod 1839: 449). Kachchh's location along the western border of India and its historic orientation to mobility and cultural flows makes it a particularly interesting site for a study of state formation and cultural production for it is situated along the interstices of entities that are taken to be discrete, at least within the nation-state paradigm. In recent times, the province of Gujarat has witnessed extreme parochial politics of nativity, place and belonging. These politics find expression in the discourse of Gujarat nī asinitā the pride and identity of The of Kachchh on the border between India location Gujarat. and Pakistan have meant that in the past few years, struggles over questions of place and indigeneity have led to essentialised constructions of 'insider' and 'outsider', 'Hindu' and 'Muslim', 'Kachchh' and 'Sindh', 'India' and 'Pakistan', and so on. This kind of rhetoric maps itself onto how mobility is experienced in

dominant —

Kachchh today. While cert ain kinds of transnational mobility are endorsed (notably the kinds of 'cosmopolitan' consciousness that are ascribed to transnational mobility in and out, of the western hemisphere), other kinds of movement, notably across the border with Sindh, are denounced as 'illegitimate'. To understand this, we need to focus on the question of the state to examine the manner in which it. performs its sovereignty on a recurring basis as it delineates its borders and boundaries, authorising itself in the process. —

BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES This work takes the boundary as an important analytical episteme. In an early anthropological work, Fredrik Barth

Imagining a Region

emphasised the relevance of the boundary when he remarked, ‘The critical focus of investigation […] becomes the ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it encloses’ (Barth 1969: 15). An ethnographic investigation that is located physically and conceptually along boundaries the border as vital to the production of culture, rather than a product of prior cultural difference. The latter view is manifested in the nation-state’s essentialised view of borders. Modern territorial nation-states are ideologically invested in imagining themselves to be, at the level of nationalist discourse at least, territorially discrete and internally homogenous entities (Handler 1988; Williams 1991). K. Verdery (1994) has observed that the organisation of difference that is entailed in boundary making is linked to the process of state formation. In other words, nation-building is not merely a mode of organising or managing difference, but producing it as well. Ethnographic vignettes from within Kachchh reveal alternative notions of place making, sovereignty and belonging. As an ethnographic exploration into the political contexts of memory, the subjective experience of place and the socio-cultural production of a political border, this book examines how nation-states and the people within them construct meaningful narratives of place; how they at once establish and transgress the boundaries within which they are able to act as meaningful agents.

reengages

My analyses take place along various kinds of boundaries

that I encountered as a researcher, and those that my research subjects experienced in their own lifetimes. These boundaries are dynamic and changeable; they shift continuously through time and in response to various stimuli. Thus categories of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ expressed through these borders, for instance, those of nation-state, religion, sect, culinary practices or affiliation, wax and wane to include or exclude different sets of people at different points in time and under different regimes of state. Underlying the production of territorial are processes that are deeply social and cultural. In a recent contribution to anthropological understandings of the state, Veena Das and Deborah Poole (2004) point out that it is not just territory but also the bodies of its people that are the recipients of the state’s disciplinary power. In the context of the now transnational — and therefore transgressive — relationship

citizenship boundaries

between Kachchh and Sindh in Pakistan, I undertake an analysis of some settlement policies undertaken by the princely, colonial and postcolonial states along the border to argue that border management most obviously is about control of territory; it is also about managing the identities of the people who live on the borders. This ethnography views borders as socio-cultural and political processes that shift through time. So at certain key junctures in the biography of the postcolonial Indian state in Gujarat — such as 1947, 1965, 1971 and 2002 — I examine how the border, and concomitantly the state, was imagined and produced in each instance.

State formation and religious identification come together

analytically in this work if we look at them once again through the prism of boundaries. Both processes are invested in boundaries of their own. This ethnography asks how hegemonising and universalising discourses such as those of the nationstate or of religion consistently produce boundaries that constantly determine who must belong and who is to be excluded at a particular point in time. The production of religious along this border is particularly instructive for a study of the state because of the intersections between religion and the state in this area. Certain religious institutions emerge as an integral part of the discourse of state making; religion then does not stand above the state as in the classical paradigm of the modern state. The state emerges as only one among many potentially competing institutions that determine sovereignty and the rules of statecraft. When opened up to an ethnographic enquiry, the state is never the all-encompassing monolith that it aspires to be and sovereignty becomes culturally determined, extending at times beyond the confines of the state, usually considered to be its sole custodian. A more systematic study of religious institutions and their interface with the state would be crucial for an understanding of the manner in which they become integral to the state as the latter establishes its sovereignty in partnership with them.

identities

ETHNOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES ON THE STATE The anthropology of the state is still a relatively under-explored subfield, despite some recent noteworthy additions to the genre.1

One of the initial questions that come up when attempting ethnography of the state is — where do you find it? Some have sought it in its effects (e.g. Mitchell 1991; Gupta 1995; Hansen and Stepputat 2001; Trouillot 2001). These authors have variously discussed the everyday practices of the state, how it is constructed in public culture, and its effects across multiple sites. The sociologist Philip Abrams drew attention early on to some of the inherent problems in viewing the state as an object of study. For him, it is better understood as an idea rather than a thing, for it is at best, a ‘triumph of concealment’ (Abrams 1988: 77). One of his suggestions towards a productive study of the state is to view it as a historical construct. Only a process of seriously historicising the state, of seeing it as a social fact, a constructed fact, can escape the perils of taking the state for granted. In this book, I attempt an ethnographic analysis of the state

by opening it up to scrutiny at certain key moments in its selfpresentation. I suggest that one of the ways in which we may also be able to study the state is to address the way in which it produces itself as it defines its boundaries and who it includes or excludes over time. This would involve more than an intellectual history or discourse analysis of nationalist ideologies, which nevertheless remain important; in addition, it can also be tracked ethnographically. HISTORY AND ETHNOGRAPHY IN A STUDY OF THE STATE This book draws on considerable historical material, garnered both as oral historical accounts in Kachchh as well as from colonial and postcolonial archives. When the subject one is in search of is the state, something that tends to be naturalised in everyday discourse as a homogenous monolith, historical techniques are particularly useful, for they enable a more nuanced picture of the state and its effects over time. Combining a study of the past, as it is available through archival materials, with the more traditional ethnographic project, one is able to discern more subtly how the ‘production of the past’ becomes a critical tool to expose and render more transparent the myriad processes which factor into what we begin to understand

anthropological

as ‘history’ as well as the present. Far from being the ‘objective’, scientific record of past events, history reveals itself to be imbued with multiple levels of ideological, political and other interests (see, for example, Trouillot 1995). Methodologically, I am much inspired by Ann Laura Stoler’s ethnographic approach to the archives and by her belief that as anthropologists, ‘we can do still more nuanced readings of the “storeyed” narratives in historic texts for what they reveal about colonial epistemologies’ (Stoler 1992: 183). Perspectives from subjects who either live along the border

or have crossed it in recent memory give us nuanced accounts of a highly variegated and not always consistent policy of state formation along this border. Each regime of state I discuss, the princely, colonial and postcolonial, has faced its own imperatives of border definition and population management. Further, more contemporary events such as the deadly earthquake of 2001, or the experience of state-sponsored pogroms against Gujarat’s Muslim populations in 2002, or more distant events such as the Partition in 1947, become events through which the constitutive strands of the state become somewhat exposed and it is through these moments of crisis or ‘critical events’ (Das 1996) that we are able to track the state ethnographically through its manifestations in the present as well as the past. analysis focuses on state making and place making, i.e. subjects' responses to the former, as inherently dialogical and processual. I also underscore that both processes are emergent and inherently unfinished. This work interrogates the presumed The

its

monolithic nature of the state to suggest that its actions are as phenomenological as those of its subjects. Rather than present state projects as objective constraints within which border the create a sense of place, this work treats both of asmitā as well as to it as politics people's responses in the making. To reiterate, the state is not, a taken-for-granted entity for this study, naturalised neither as benefactor and facilitator, nor as intrusion and constraint. The discussion of the politics of asmitā and the secret workings of the state as manifested through boundary disputes of the 1800s as much as in the 1950s, postcolonial police reorganisation in border spaces, and settlement policies of the 1970s, demonstrate the production,

populations processes —

—

indeed the performance, of the state in practice. It is in this endeavour that ethnography benefits the most by adopting a historical perspective, not merely in the attempt to historicise the state and its constituent ideologies such as asmitā, but to also take the ethnographic stance into the archive.

Of Boundaries and Regions Territorial boundaries of the modern state, whether internal or are not so much unanimously given as based on distinct and often competing notions of sovereignty. The following chapters argue that a region may be more productively thought of as an experiential category, i.e. subjectively experienced rather than objectively given. Each competing experience of the region is also associated with its own legitimising discourse. For instance, the formulation of Gujarat nī asmitā setting up the ideal of a unique regional patriotism for Gujarat as a whole creates its own historical and political context as it seeks to project a homogenous and internally consistent regional identity for Gujarat. An analysis of the discourse of Gujarat's asmitā tells us much about how the region of Gujarat has been idealised, as well as experienced, over time. But then we will also see that there are other competing experiences of territory and that underscore alternate views of the region. In such as, chapters, I argue that there are other idioms

external,

sovereignty

subsequent instance, Kachchh's —

for

that tutelary goddess Aśpurā Mātā Kachchh as constituting a distinct space from —

seek to establish Gujarat; others such as cloth and poetry authorise the transborder Kachchh—Sindh connection as a distinct space, while yet other histories such as those of the Meghwals are based on

dichotomising Kachchh

and Sindh

as

very distinct spaces.

EXPERIENCING A REGION In examining region as an analytical concept, I refer not only to its geographical, political or legal referents. In an early essay, Bernard S. Cohn pointed out some of the complexities inherent in the use of the term ‘region’ or ‘regionalism.’ He argued that ‘[…] regions are far from fixed, enduring things, especially if any historical perspective is taken. They are not

absolutes and they are difficult, if not, impossible, to define by objective criteria' (Cohn 1967: 32). He proposed a typology of regions that, went beyond a physical sense of space: for Cohn, regions were best understood as historical, linguistic, cultural or structural. Inherent in each of these types is some subjective element that determines the coordinates of a region. Thus, as the anthropologist E. Valentine Daniel (1984) remarked, the culturally significant conception of territory is not concerned with boundary lines as much as it is concerned with what lies within the space marked out by the boundary. Speaking of the cultural construction of anūr in a Tamil village in South India, he writes, In the end, we return to the underlying concern of the Tamil for establishing a relationship of identifying compatibility with an ūr, whether byūr he means a country, a state, a district or a village. This concern with compatibility results from the belief that, an ūr is an entity composed of substance that can be exchanged and mixed with the substance of human persons. Such concerns with compatibility were noticeably absent in the case of [...] purely political and legal definitions ,

of territory (Daniel 1984: 101).

The cultural construction of territory becomes a subjective enterprise that presumes a multiplicity of constructions, of which is concerned with notions of compatibility between and territory. Of course, this last point is also problematic, for it relies on notions of substance exchange that come precariously close to suggesting an essentialised relationship between persons and territory based on shared This caveat apart, Daniel’s point is still useful to think about the subjective construction of territory and belonging; it is also important to the extent that it foregrounds the between structure and affect. Instead of a fixed and immutable space, the meaning ascribed to place can perceivably morph and change depending on perspective, memory and experience. While this is not in itself a particularly problematic assertion, it is also clear that subjectively experienced aspects of territory, home or region, borne out of particular structures of experience and affect, must also inevitably contend with their

inhabitants somewhat substance. relationship

political and legal counterparts that may look quite different on an objectified map. Within these political and legal constraints, I would argue that a region is experienced rather than encountered a priori. What is required, therefore, is an unsettling of the fixity of ‘region’ in its political and legal referents, in order to engage the uncertainty and fluidity of the concept when viewed as a subjectively experienced category. Within the administrative unit known as Gujarat that presently includes Kachchh and Saurashtra, there are numerous subdivisions that have their own historical, linguistic and cultural patterns and that achieved different rates of approximation to the imagined ideal of Gujarati-ness over time. For example, within the tradition of modern western style historiography that is said to have begun in Gujarat with A. K. Forbes’ Ras Mala: Hindoo Annals of the Province of Goozerat in Western India, first published in Britain in 1856, the history of ‘Gujarat’ tended to exclude Saurashtra and Kachchh, properly speaking. The histories of these latter regions were produced as particularised, local histories, not subsumed under the umbrella of ‘Gujarat’ at all. We need to examine these varying ideas of the region, what they mean for the inhabitants of these regions and how some versions triumph over others. Within the imagined community of Gujarat, the constituent unit of Kachchh occupies an interesting space that allows it to serve as an illustrative analogy for the point I am making here. In fact, this ethnography takes as one of its points of departure the ambivalent relationship between the adjacent territories of Kachchh in Gujarat and Sindh, now across the border in Pakistan. I explore this ambivalence for what it can tell us about how regions may be imagined and counter-imagined. On the one hand, the district of Kachchh is legally a constituent of the state of Gujarat. In this capacity, officially it is squarely within the space of the Indian nation-state and defined clearly in opposition to what lies beyond the territorial boundaries of this state. Sindh is, from this perspective, an ‘outside’. But it is not an unequivocal ‘outside’. About a year and a half after I conducted the largest chunk of the fieldwork on which this book is based, an Indian scientist filed a Public Interest Litigation with the nation’s Supreme Court, petitioning for the removal of the word Sindh from the Indian national anthem. In its invocation of the

various constituent parts of the nation, the concerned line in the anthem goes, ‘Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha…’ The English language press reported on this case: […] the petitioner […] approached the court stating that the recitation of Sindh in the National Anthem was an infringement on the sovereignty of Pakistan. Such singing for the last 54 years and eight months was also hurting the feelings of more than 100-crore [one billion] people in India. He said the petition was to avoid any international dispute as such flaws in the National Anthem could bring dishonour and disrespect to the nation. He sought a direction for deletion of the word ‘Sindh’ and substituting it with the word Kashmir.2 Some months later, the Supreme Court dismissed the petition. The same newspaper reported, The judges said a national anthem was a hymn or song expressing patriotic sentiments. ‘It is not a chronicle which defines the territory of the nation which has adopted the anthem’ […] ‘Nor is it necessary that the structure of the national anthem should go on changing as and when the in the internal distribution of geographical regions or provinces undergo changes.’ 3

territories

While the petitioner was acting upon a popular notion of territorial sovereignty, making a case for the deletion of Sindh, now in Pakistan, and the inclusion of Kashmir, part of which is still contested territory between India and Pakistan and a symbol of popular nationalism on both sides of the border, the court’s pronouncement radically challenges any organic relationship between territory and nationalism or ‘patriotic sentiments.’ It does so partly to prevent a potentially embarrassing precedent for amending the anthem to continually reflect the internal reorganisation of the nation’s territorial map, but also because of the vastly complicated relationship between Sindh and the Indian nation-state. This was alluded to in an earlier response to the petitioner, when the Home Ministry of the Government of India declared that:

The word ‘Sindh’ refers not merely to the province of Sindh but also to the Sindhi culture, which is an inalienable part of the rich and diverse culture of India. Moreover, the contribution of Sindhi people in the making of modern India has been extremely noteworthy and cannot be overlooked. It may not, therefore, be appropriate to delete the word ‘Sindh’ from the National Anthem.4 This brief debate touches upon some of the anxiety that surrounds the relationship between the Indian nation-state and the Pakistani province of Sindh. Even though Sindh is now territorially a part of Pakistan, large numbers of Sindhis live in India, where they moved after the Partition of British India in 1947. Their territorial affinities and ties are bound to be more complicated than what is presented on a physical territorial map of the subcontinent. Further, unlike the two other provinces affected by Partition — Bengal and Punjab — Sindh was not bifurcated between India and Pakistan, so that migrants to either India or Pakistan were still able to participate in their regional cultures, broadly defined, if they were Punjabis or Bengalis. For Sindhis coming into India, all of Sindh was left behind in another country. For Kachchh, on the immediate border with Sindh, with which it has deep shared connections of history, culture, language and population flows over time, the construction of Sindh as an 'outside' is particularly problematic. The official regional patriotism of Gujarat, formulated in its notion of asmitā, seeks to include Kachchh within its parameters, excluding Sindh outright as part, of a different cultural and political landscape. For various constituencies within Kachchh, however, this cohabitation under the mantle of asmitā, with its attendant notions of insider and outsider, is not, a particularly easy one.

MODERN GUJARAT AND GUJARAT'S ASMITĀ consider Gujarat's contemporary regional

of Gujarat patriotism formulated asmitā, I suggest

we

as

pride, glory

or

in the idea The notion of

identity.

nī

Gujarat's

i.e. its asmitā goes

Map 3: State of Gujarat, 1960 Source: © Survey of India, 2003.

back in time to long before even the creation of Gujarat as separate provincial unit within the Indian nation in 1960.

a

asmitā, during Although layers analysis fieldwork there are many period of my

of

to

(2001—2004), it was most readily a as recognisable regional variation of right-wing Hindu nationalist ideology. Central to its agenda at that time was the exclusion of the Muslim 'other' in the constitution of the Hindu Gujarati subject. This exclusion takes place in many forms, some of which I argue are the re-articulation of Gujarat's medieval history, its re-territorialisation within a firmly Hindu mythic-historical space, anti-Muslim policies in the present, and the othering of Pakistan as the quintessentially Muslim 'outside' in relation to which a primordial Hindu self maybe imagined. Cross-border relationships with Sindh occupy an uncomfortable position within this regional imagination, which seeks to contain Gujarat within the idiom of its asmitā, premised on a celebration of a Hindu past, However, I also emphasise the discursive production of a regional narrative of identity such as asmitā. Its notions of indigeneity and boundaries are not always already there; these ideas are actively produced, and contested from within as much as from without. Before I turn to a systematic understanding of asmitā, I will briefly underscore why it is an important concept and what a critical discussion of the politics of asmitā can tell us about the nature of the relationship between Kachchh and Gujarat from the point of view of borders and regions. the

essentially

Hindutva5 and Cultural Mobilisation

The year 2002 marks an important watershed in the social and political landscape of Gujarat. Following the state-sponsored genocide of its minority Muslim populations, this period the unabashed rise to prominence of right-wing Hindu nationalist policies. One of the manifestations of this in the political arena was the victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (henceforth BJP) in the state’s legislature and the routinisation of anti-minority, particularly anti-Muslim, policies amid various other everyday forms of discrimination. Most of these policies, indeed the genocide of early 2002 itself, are not isolated phenomena but the result of a sustained build-up of polarisation

witnessed

and communitarian violence that has rooted itself in Gujarat for the past few decades. To this extent, it is not correct only to blame the BJP for the current climate of religious intolerance, but what has perhaps changed uniquely in recent years is that the terms of political and social discourse have made a distinct rightward shift, so that the spaces of dissent and moderation have steadily shrunk over time. Shortly after the worst of the violence had simmered down in

2002, and scores of Muslims were living in refugee camps all over the state, the BJP called for early elections to the state assembly, hoping to capitalise on high Hindu nationalist sentiments in the aftermath of the riots. As the only Indian province in which the BJP was in absolute majority at the time, the anti-Muslim violence was seen to confirm the perception of Gujarat being the ‘laboratory for Hindutva politics (Bunsha 2002a). The widespread success of the Hindu nationalist movement

in India since the 1980s has been attributed variously to the power of electoral mobilisation and an organised, cadre-based party system that has facilitated a broadening in the social base of what started as an essentially upper caste Hindu movement in western India (Jaffrelot 1988; Jaffrelot 2003: 453–91), to historical and cultural arguments that examine the Hindutva movement as a product of the successful marriage between discourses of religion and the nation brought about through new means of communication, facilitated by conditions of modernity and globalisation (Van der Veer 1998; Zavos 2000). John Zavos traces the genesis of the Hindu nationalist movement even further than the conventionally agreed date of the 1920s. He argues that it was in the nineteenth century that the conditions of a colonial modernity enabled a re-organisation and objectification of ‘Hinduism’ as a singular objectifiable category. Thomas Blom Hansen (1999) brings these variegated strands together to lay out the historical and discursive conditions under which it became possible to ‘enunciate the notion of a ‘Hindu nation’ (Hansen 1999: 4). He asserts that Hindu nationalism emerges neither in the field of politics or religion per se, but in the domain of public culture, facilitated by democratic electoral procedures. The success of the BJP in Gujarat certainly bears out this

observation. Elections to the state assembly were held in

December 2002, 10 months after the burning of a train in the central Gujarat town of Godhra, the original trigger event that led to the 'revenge' killings against Muslims. lucking off his statewide election campaign, Chief Minister Narendra Modi announced a Gujarat Gaurav Yātrā (journey for Gujarat's pride). Yātrā or journey also has the connotations of a pilgrimage. Modi began every new leg of his journey through the state from a temple (Bunsha 2002b), identifying himself exclusively with Hindus at every step of the way. That Hindus were his main target audience was no secret. As he travelled across Gujarat, he did not refrain from lashing out at Indian Muslims, 'Islamic terrorism' or the neighbouring state of Pakistan.

Fear of the Muslim and demonising the Muslim ‘other’ forms

the imagery that is quite central to the popular reach and success of the Hindu nationalist movement. Thomas Blom Hansen (1999) has suggested that the ‘othering’ of the Muslim within Hindutva discourse takes place at two levels: (a) a geographical other (Pakistan and the Muslim world in general) that is projected as the external enemy to India and Hindu civilization; and (b) an internal other, comprised of Indian Muslims who are regarded as being culturally alien to the Hindu ethos. These ideas are developed from V. D. Savarkar’s early formulations of the Hindutva philosophy. In 2002, barely a year following the United States’ declaration of a ‘War on (Islamic) Terror’ global political discourse hinged around an anti-terror, Islam-phobic, selfprotective agenda. Hindu nationalist discourse in India was no to this global trend, and in Gujarat, located as it is along India’s border with Pakistan, these ideas produced highly particularised forms of speech and action. The BJP’s election propaganda in Gujarat through September–December 2002 interesting material for a discourse analysis of this sort. At a rally in North Gujarat, Narendra Modi’s comments about Muslims, picked up by the media, sparked off a minor national controversy. When asked what his government intended to do about the predominantly Muslim riot victims, he retorted infamously:

exception provides

What should we do? Run relief camps for them? Do we want to open baby-producing centres? But for certain people that means ‘hum paanch, hamare pachhis’ (we five and ours 25).

We must teach a lesson to those who multiply like this (Bunsha 2002b). At the core of the Hindutva propaganda machine is the fear that Muslims have a higher growth rate than Hindus and they will therefore soon outnumber the Hindu population in India. This abstract fear is given a concrete face in view of the widely publicised fact that Muslim Personal Law in India allows Muslim men up to four wives at a time. This is the source of Modi’s pun — a man and his four wives average a total of 25 offspring. Most often, these elaborate fantasies spring from an insufficient knowledge about the ‘other’ that are then woven into elaborate imaginative and psychological statements such as the above. Within Gujarat in particular, the inter-communal polarisation so dramatically played out over the past few decades has meant that in practice today, it is rare for children to attend mixed schools even in the larger urban settlements in Gujarat such as Ahmedabad or Vadodara. After 2002, it is impossible for a Muslim family, whatever their economic or social profile, to be ‘allowed’ residence in a Hindu residential area. Housing societies in Ahmedabad print leases that state clearly that no Muslim or Christian should be allowed to buy or rent an apartment on the premises. With this kind of schizophrenic imagination at work, it is unlikely that the fear fantasy constructed around the ‘other’ is likely to diminish in the coming years. Provocative remarks peppered the Chief Minister's speeches throughout his election campaign. His rousing speeches focused heavily on the person he cm lied Mīyān Musharraf, his campaign reference to Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf. Although it can be a respectful form of address, mīyān is also used as a derogatory reference to Muslims and Narendra Modi's usage plays with this duality. Declaring that these were no ordinary elections, he chanted, 'It is a fight for Gujarat's pride' (Bunsha 2002a). The election theme was articulated as a fight to reclaim Gujarat nī asmitā in view of its supposed defacement following the violence. Gujarat's asmitā thus came to be firmly put on the agenda in 2002, providing as it did the theme for the elections and the very future of Gujarat as envisioned by the states

political leadership. Far more than being a temporarily resurrected political theme in 2002, an understanding of the concept of Gujarati asmitā is

in fact

people

its germane to questions of identity in Gujarat well as its borders and to understand the manner

quite as

—

—

in which notions of self and other have developed over time. Even if its current manifestation is, as I have suggested above, displayed in terms of a sharply polarised society along the lines of Hindu versus Muslim, creating ideal conditions for an efflorescence of Hindutva politics, the notion of asmitā is not completely encompassed by a Hindu nationalist ideology that demonises Muslims alone. Asmitā should instead be related to a complex understanding of state, region, nation and sovereignty. Early formulations of Gujarat's asmitā were shaped under the colonial state where self-determination and pride in the homeland had rather different connotations from more recent articulations. Asmitā has, in fact, stood for different things at different times, and has not always been internally consistent. In the late 2000s it is much easier to think of asmitā as a regional variant of the Hindutva ideology, but this would only be one part of the story. A historical perspective on asmitā reveals that it is pre-eminently linked with the idea of Gujarat as a territorial, historical and linguistic regional entity. Nationality, territory, religion, language and culture coalesce within the formulation of asmitā; but this is a formulation that has developed over time and not always in a linear fashion.

HISTORICISING ASMITĀ Narendra Modi's re-appropriation of the concept of asmitā in late 2002, it appears fairly regularly in public and political discourse in the larger cities of Gujarat such as Ahmedabad, its cultural and commercial capital. Billboard hoardings, political campaign posters and other forms of print media make liberal use of the idea of Gujarat nl asmitā to the extent that, it has entered popular discourse in these places. Shortly after the electoral victory of the BJP in 2002, a public

Following

vindication of its avowed desire to make Gujarat strong and proud of its asmitā, a subtheme of asmitā, became highly influential. This is the notion of 'Vibrant Gujarat', a clarion call to global investors to put Gujarat at the forefront of modern industrial

development in India. 'Vibrant Gujarat' or another popular slogan, 'āpnū Gujarat,āgvūn Gujarat.' (Our Gujarat, Unique Gujarat)

close allies of Gujarat nl asmitā, for they seek to ground Gujarati pride and identity in something distinctive that sets it are

apart from the rest of the country. Industrial growth is less

controversial than Hindu identity, for it builds upon Gujarat's history of strong mercantile activity that cuts across class and religious lines and is an attempt on the part of the BJP to move away publicly from a strongly Hindutva agenda to one that is projected as a more inclusive model of growth and prosperity. This theme was played up during the BJPs second consecutive election victory in Gujarat in late 2007. 6 There is barely any systematised work on asmitā in Gujarat's

present, although there are occasional references to it earlier texts. It is not entirely certain who first coined the term in reference to Gujarat, but it is generally agreed that Κ. M. Munshi's writings helped popularise the concept,

past in

or

some

especially

his historical work

Gujarat

nl asmitā. In its

early

manifestations in the nineteenth century, asmitā remained

a

of litterateurs and historians writing about Gujarat's It became past. part of the political agenda only from the 1980s with the rise of the BJP (see, for example, Shah 1988). concern

,

Asmitā

and Notions of Homeland

Asmitā translates, as mentioned before, into pride, the assertion of identity and one's place in the world. Gujarat's asmitā thus, in the very first instance, begs the question—what is Gujarat? Early literary explorations on this theme in Gujarati date back to the century. Of course, even prior to this, for instance, in

nineteenth Persian chronicles dating Sultanate period perhaps to the

earlier, there

place.

The

and even idea of Gujarat as a of the well-known Sufi poet of Gujarat who lived

was a

name

fairly well-developed

at the end of the seventeenth century—Wali Gujarati—indicates that already by this time there was some notion of Gujarat as a place as indicated by the fact that it served as a suffix for a 7 name. What, is less easily agreed upon is what area was referred to under the rubric of Gujarat. The Mughal Empire had an division known as Gujarat, and from at least the nineteenth century onwards there have existed a plethora of texts in Gujarati that are titled histories of 'Gujarat'. However, in most of these usages, the geographical extent of 'Gujarat

administrative

as such remains confined to what we know today as central and south-central Gujarat. Much of south Gujarat, and the entire stretch of Saurashtra and Kachchh, tended to be excluded from these early conceptualisations of Gujarat. In fact, even until the mid-nineteenth century, a ‘history of Gujarat’ typically meant a history of the area around Ahmedabad. When histories of other areas were written, they were presented as particular, local histories, e.g. a history of Kachchh or a history of Kathiawar (later renamed Saurashtra) (see, for example, Isaka 2002). By the middle of the nineteenth century, there were some significant developments in the landscape of Gujarati literary production that had an important bearing on how Gujarat came to be visualised as a region. With the entry of the colonial state into Gujarat, the development of western education and the publication of A. K. Forbes' Ras Mala, a series of young intellectuals began to debate and write about Gujarat in a

intellectuals,

historical vein. Of the more influential of these young for the subsequent mark they left on the literary and historiographical canvas of Gujarat and thus for the way in which we can envisage the early development of a sense of Gujarat nī asmitā, would be the Gujarati poet Narmad. At this point in the nineteenth century, it was increasingly recognised that in order to develop a well-defined sense of des (country) and swābhimān (self-pride), one needed to critically understand one's past in a methodical manner. As a result, there came to be produced during this time a lot of literary productions that talked at length about how Gujarat may be envisioned. My discussion will be based on an analysis of the transformations in the idea of asmitā or more broadly, the idea of Gujarat, as it was enunciated between the time of Narmad (mid-nineteenth century) and Κ. M. Munshi (early to mid-twentieth century). This period alone gives an idea of the range of perspectives that have been incorporat ed into the development of the idea of Gujarat's asmitā. The range of opinions, however reflects a variation on a basically familiar theme, i.e., the quest for a homeland and how it should be defined. Narendra Modi's appropriation of asmitā relies rather heavily on Munshi's version, but the conditions for the la Iter's enunciation were already set in place by earlier iterations of scholars such as Narmad. However, even though Gujarat's identity as viewed through the prism of asmitā provides for a relatively clear sense ,

of boundaries and regions today, it has also contained within itself a considerable degree of fluidity and plurality, reflecting the complex social organisation of Gujarat.

Narmadashankar Lalshankar, popularly known as Narmad, product of the new system of education introduced into the Bombay Presidency by the colonial state. 8 A Nagar Brahmin from Surat, he not only wrote prolifically, but also was at the forefront of the movement for social reform in the mid-nineteenth century. Today, he is regarded as one of the pioneers of Gujarati literature and his works have contributed greatly to a feeling of pride in the Gujarati region and language. He put together one of the first systematised Gujarati lexicons known as Narmakosh Jai Jai Garvī Gujarat. which begins with an invocatory poem This poem has since become an important anthem of Gujarat, delineating its virtues as a region. The poem's subtitle refers to it as Gujarat's raśtragīt or national anthem. Significantly for Narmad, a strong and proud Gujarat includes Saurashtra, as evidenced by the reference to the Somnath temple as one of the geographic limits of Gujarat. Although Narmad's poem refers to the ancient heritage of Gujarat as epitomised by the Chalukya period rather than the subsequent Muslim Sultanate rule, his conceptualisation of Gujarat does not hinge as exclusively on a glorification of its Hindu past as K. M. Munshi's later iterations would do. In another landmark poem, Gujarat Komī? he asks konī konī chhe Gujarat i.e., to whom does Gujarat belong? In this rhetorically styled poem, Narmad asks a series of questions, asking to whom it is that Gujarat truly belongs. Rejecting the names of particular castes religions and gods he declares that Gujarat belongs 'to those who speak Gujarati; to those who observe Aryadharma of all varieties ; and also to those who are but nurtured by this land; and to those who follow other religions (paradharma) but are well-wishers of Mother Gujarat and therefore our brothers' (Yagnik and Sheth 2005: 201). If these conditions were met, then 'no matter what caste or creed', Gujarat belonged to them. was a

—

,

,

foreigners

This is an important formulation, for it situates Hindus,

Muslims and Parsis squarely and legitimately within the social fabric of Gujarat. With the emphasis on the Gujarati language, the scope of Gujarat immediately becomes far wider than

what had conventionally been regarded as Gujarat prior to the nineteenth century, for it would include Saurashtra, southern Gujarat and even parts of Kachchh. At a later period, when the political movement for the establishment of a separate state of Gujarat would gather momentum in the 1950s, once again the emphasis on a shared language would become an important principle for carving out the new state of Gujarat from the Bombay Presidency. Although Narmad’s formulation does contain within it the seeds for a more exclusive Hindu nationalist reading in that he identifies a category of people who follow ‘other religions’ (paradharma), at this stage, he clarifies that as long as they have been nurtured in Gujarat and wish her well, they are Gujaratis.

existing

important contributor to the idea of Gujarat as primarily linguistic community was Indulal Yagnik. Chairman of the Mahagujarat Parishad, he was one of the more vocal leaders of the Mahagujarat movement that sought linguistic autonomy for the Gujarati speaking areas within the Bombay Presidency. Clearly, the recognition of the supremacy of the Gujarati language as the basis for determining Gujarati identity or asmitā owed much to the prior formulations of Narmad. Yagnik and K. M. Munshi were among those who subsequently took over where Narmad had left, translating his ideas into the practical exigencies of the postcolonial moment of states' reorganisation. It was at this time that it became clear that the work of producing Gujarat not, just, politically but also affectively remained to be done. During the Mahagujarat movement, it was recognised by Munshi, for instance, that the work of producing Gujarat was a labour of love that must subsume particular loyalties to subregions in favour of an overarching sense of Gujarati-ness (Skaria 2001). Thus the focus turned to the idea of a greater Gujarat, one that, would, for perhaps the first time ever, stretch Another a

—

to

—

include Kachchh within it.

Modern Gujarat emerged in its contemporary territorial

configuration, including both Saurashtra and Kachchh, on 1 May 1960, following an administrative reorganisation of the Indian states. The then bilingual state of Bombay was bifurcated into two states — Gujarat for the predominantly Gujarati speaking zones and Maharashtra for the Marathi speaking areas. The modern state of Gujarat, thus identified, consisted of three

broad divisions — a strip of ‘mainland’ Gujarat,9 the southern peninsula of Saurashtra and the western arm of Kachchh. The movement for Maha, or greater, Gujarat derived a special boost from the writings of Κ. M. Munshi, prolific not merely as Gujarati language writer and novelist but also a prominent Hindu nationalist ideologue in post-Independence India.

relationship Although Mahagujarat. his

movement remains to the for towards the end of the complicated, agitation, Munshi's in national involvement level politics made him increasing the to potential perils of too strong an ambivalently disposed on at the the emphasis region expense of the nation, I choose to discuss his influence at length here, for Narendra Modi's latest appropriation of the idea of asmitā derives most immediately from Munshi's version. In 1955, Munshi wrote that there were two ways in which Gujarat could be understood:

In one, it denotes the mainland between Mount Abu and the river Damanganga, distinguishing it from Kachchha or Saurashtra on the one side and Marwad and Malava on the other. In the second and wider sense it connotes the much larger linguistic zone in which the language known as Modern Gujarati is spoken at the present time. The boundary of this Gujarati speaking area touches Sirohi and Marwad in the north and includes Kachchha and Saurashtra as well as the districts of Thar and Parkar in Pakistan (Munshi 1955: 10; emphases added). The first is primarily a territorial and historical identity while the second is pre-eminently a linguistic one. For Munshi, a predominantly territorial and historical definition of Gujarat would exclude Kachchh, but a more inclusive linguistic definition would embrace it. The linguistic criterion prevailed in the eventual territorial demarcation of modern Gujarat as it did in the general reorganisation of provincial units all over India along a linguistic basis. Sardar Vallabhāi Patel, leading Congressman from Gujarat, in charge of the Ministry of States, a special position charged with the task of overseeing the affairs of former princely states that had become independently ruled entities following the transfer of power from the British to India and Pakistan. was

These states were to join either India or Pakistan, a decision that was based on territorial contiguity and population structure. The princely states of Kashmir, Junagadh (in Saurashtra) and Hyderabad (in the Deccan) became contested regions, for they either had a Muslim majority population or were ruled by Muslims. From the point of the Indian leadership, this posed a challenge for national unity, for these states might have chosen formal affiliation with Pakistan, ostensibly created as a for South Asian Muslims. In a speech delivered at Jamnagar in February 1948, following the formal accession of the princely state of Junagadh to India, Patel lauded the coming together of the numerous small princely kingdoms of the region to form a single united entity of Kathiawar; he urged the people to now strive towards a larger, united Gujarat.

homeland

Our dream has been realised, namely, the United States of Kathiawar. The next objective should be to attract the neighbouring States, including Kutch, and pave the way for the realization of a greater dream — a Mahagujarat — which you can achieve by being strong and self-reliant (Patel 1949: 32).

ultimate

From Munshi’s account cited above, Kachchh and Saurashtra are already ambivalently positioned within the idea of a united greater Gujarat. They are included linguistically, as they are seen to constitute Gujarati speaking areas,10 but historically. It is to the historical and emotional Gujarat entailed in the work of ‘producing’ Gujarat as a region — both affectively and historically — that I now turn.

excluded reinvention Two Enduring Symbols of Region: Patan and Somnath

A number of histories of Gujarat produced in the 1950s and 1960s are situated within a cultural-nationalist framework. Two evocative and enduring symbols of Hindu nationalist pride in Gujarat that find expression in asmitā are the city of Patan and the temple at Somnath. These histories re-territorialise Gujarat within a mythico-historical Hindu space, the symbolic centre of which lies in the medieval city of Patan, approximately 70 miles

north-west of the modern state capital, Gandhinagar. In these narratives, the city of Patan epitomises good governance and Hindu pride in an age where a 'pure' Hindu dynasty ruled Gujarat, before the period of Muslim rule. The area directly ruled by the medieval Hindu Chalukya dynasty (the tenth to the thirteenth centuries) is referred to as 'Gurjara-bhumi or Gujarat' (Munshi 1955: 9). Patan was their capital city. The ruling clans are described as 'connected by blood, tradition and by the country of their origin Gūrjaradeśa' (ibid.: 13), ruling out immigration or cultural mixture. The period of Patan's ascendancy between the tenth to the thirteenth centuries is hailed by cultural historians of Gujarat like K. M. Munshi (1955) as the 'golden age' of Gujarati Hindu rule, when the kingdom is thought to have reached its zenith in the sphere of cultural achievement. This is the kernel of Gujarat's asmitā as celebrated today. In Patan is anchored a primordially imagined Hindu identity. The medieval city of Patan thus becomes the symbol of a territory that is primarily animated by a Hindu cultural—nationalist ethic: its past royal grandeur is associated with the pomp and splendour of what retrospectively emerges from these texts as an

essentially Hindu state. At the first. Independence Day celebrations in August 2003,

following

his initial election victory, Chief Minister Narendra Modi decided that he would unfurl the national flag not in the state capital of Gandhinagar, as protocol might suggest, but in the northern city of Patan. On this occasion, he planned a series of cultural events with the cooperation of various Hindu temple committees and religious organisations. It has been pointed out, that in making these choices, Modi drew his inspiration from one of K. M. Munshi's novels, Pātan nī Prabhutā (The Ascendancy or

Supremacy of Patan).

Like the city of Patan, the medieval temple of Somnath has

also become, over the years, a key symbol of nationalist pride in Gujarat. Plundered for booty by the Afghan king from Ghazni, Sultan Mahmud, in AD 1026, it has aroused Hindu nationalist passions for many decades. The temple is dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva and is situated on the southern tip of the Gujarat peninsula. Richard H. Davis (1997) shows in his work that the shrine of Somnath is a site where multiple historical claims and counter-claims converge. Destroyed in AD 1026, it

rebuilt several times in the following centuries by different constituencies who wished to stake claim to its grandeur and civilisational allure. Following Indian independence, it was K. M. Munshi who took up the task of its reconstruction with great fervour. From the perspective of Munshi, the ruins of Somnath were a potent reminder to Gujaratis of the loss of their former glory at the hands of the 'invading' Muslims. Reconstructing the temple became a matter of national pride for him. His novel Jaya Somanāth describes his own personal and emotional attachment to the temple cause. Elsewhere too. he describes the importance of Somnath: was

Somanatha was the shrine beloved of India […] In maintaining it with magnificence, she felt a throbbing zeal to maintain the core of her faith, tradition, and collective greatness […] As often as the shrine was destroyed, the urge to restore it sprang up more vividly in its heart […] That is why for a thousand years Mahmud’s destruction of the shrine has been burnt into the Collective Sub-conscious [sic] of the race as an unforgettable national disaster (Munshi 1976: 89). In K. M. Munshi’s writings, there is a constant slippage between Somnath being the key to the restoration of Gujarat’s regional glory,11 its sovereignty and identity, and on the other hand, the shrine’s symbolic importance for the Indian nation at large. Reclaiming the temple’s desecration at the hands of a Muslim king serves the dual causes of restoring Gujarat’s regional pride as well as healing national wounds. In his quest to rebuild the temple, he enlisted the support of Sardar Patel. One of his key books on Somnath bears the dedication: ‘To Sardar Patel: But for whom Mine eyes would not have seen the shrine of Somnath Rise again’ (Munshi 1976). The role of a secular state in the reconstruction of the temple was debated despite Munshi’s own commitment that the rebuilt temple was firmly tied to nationbuilding. At the end of a long and protracted exchange on the matter, the new shrine of Somnath was inaugurated in 1951 during a ceremony presided over by the first President of India, Rajendra Prasad. The emotional power of Patan and Somnath — both enduring symbols of the sentiments contained within Gujarati

derives from the basic ideological formulation of Hindu nationalism, i.e. a xenophobic fear and othering of Muslims and Christians as alien to the Indic (understood here as primarily Hindu) cultural ethos. As with the destruction of the Somnath temple, the decline of Patan is also ascribed to the incoming Muslims. The arrival of Muslim rulers after the decline of the asmitā

—

past, historiography glorious downfall after

described in this cultural—nationalist Hindu the 'shameful' decline of a 'the of Hindu sway in Western India more than thousand [sic] years' (Rajyagor 1982: 141). Another writer that it was the lack of a 'national feeling' combined with the prevalence of Buddhist and Jain ideas that allowed for a effortless conquest of Gujarat by the Muslims' (Majumdar 1965: 106). He clarifies this point in a footnote: 'Jainism, with its insistence on non-violence, and Buddhism, with its call to renunciation, combined to create an atmosphere in which and the martial virtues withered and drooped naturally'

Chalukya dynasty is as

asserts

'comparatively

patriotism —

(ibid.: 106, fn 30).

In a series of ideological transformations, religious dispositions — Hindu, Buddhist, Jain or Muslim — are set in opposition to ‘patriotic’ or ‘national’ dispositions. Buddhism and Jainism

are assimilated with Hinduism in these accounts to paint an ethos of non-violence and passivity in the face of the invading Muslims who are then described as more aggressive and martial, given to destroying temples while the Hindus remain unable to defend themselves or their homeland. The emasculation of the Hindu is a central theme in Hindutva ideology, a ‘lack’ that can only experience redress through the masculine ideology of the Hindu Right. Once Hindus and Muslims are constructed as indigenous or exogenous to a territorial formation, the next step in the formulation of a nativist claim to territory is to argue for the exclusion of the ‘outsiders’. Central to these Hindu nationalist constructions of nationality

are primordial nationalist assumptions that take territory and cultural identity to be isomorphic in the construction of nationalist consciousness. 12 These concepts found early expression among European writers on nationalism such as Carleton Hayes (1926). For Hayes, as for modern-day Hindu nationalists, nationality is essentially cultural. Like the German model presented by Herder and Fichte, nationality emerges out of a pre-existing and shared cultural core.

nationality

[...] nationality rests upon cultural foundations [...] a is any group of persons who speak a common language, who cherish common historical traditions, and who constitute, or think they constitute, a distinct cultural society in which, among other factors, religion and politics may have played important though not necessarily continuous roles (Hayes 1926: 21). The above discussion of Gujarat's asmitā as popularised by K. M. Munshi and subsequently adopted by Narendra Modi in

2002 indicates the resonance between asmitā and more universal

cultural—nationalist ideologies. However, the ideas expressed within the notion of asmitā have been produced through the

intertwining

logically

of

multiple strands,

interrelated in

a

not all of which are

always

seamless whole. The discursive

trajectory

of asmitā has been one marked by disjunctures and contradictions as much as by a broad agreement on its key tenets. Munshi's formulation of Gujarat's identity eventually triumphed over previous iterations; more precisely, it built upon manifestations, subtly transforming them in particular

earlier

directions. Within the context of Hindutva ideology in Gujarat, asmitā has come to be presented as a call to re-appropriate a Hindu pride, glory and identity; in the process, it has subdued some

of the

inclusive iterations of the cultural region in Gujarat,

more

nationality

and

politics

of

INSIDERS, OUTSIDERS AND THE IMAGINED REGION For Κ. M. Munshi, a firm ideological commitment to identifying glory of Gujarat with pre-Sultanate Hindu Chalukya

the

rule sets up a significant precedent for contemporary Hindu nationalist arguments relating to indigeneity and nationality. As appropriated in recent years, the ideological and emotional underpinnings of asmitā are firmly located in the medieval Hindu past,

a

past seen as unceremoniously replaced by Muslim

rule. To reclaim Gujarat's asmitā is simultaneously to excavate its Hindu antecedents. The anti-Muslim violence in 2002 that has been understood as

an

attempt to symbolically purge Gujarat

of its Muslims and the subsequent election campaign based on Gujarati asmitā become instances of the same kind of theme.

One of the consequences for the present of the kind of cultural history presented by the ideologues of Hindutva is for its proponents to become invested in notions of indigeneity and authenticity. At the core of most nationalist ideologies, there is an in-built ambivalence to the idea of historicising the modern nation. Nationality, territory and belonging are necessarily presented as alwayS-already constituted. We have seen how iterations of Gujarati asmitā seek to anchor territory and identity in an unambiguously Hindu past. This past excludes Muslims and non-Hindu 'others' just as it denies the notion of cultural flows and mixture across territories. Thus, Patan and Somnath become seductive symbols of this Hindu nationalist pride, the recovery of which becomes central to the idea of its pride, glory and identity. Gujarat's asmitā However, the identification of insiders and outsiders in

contemporary reestablishing —

Gujarat is not, an easy task, despite the overtly simplified formula followed by the custodians of asmitā.As elaborated above, early formulations of Gujarati identity such as those put forward by Narmad in the nineteenth century, were far more flexible in their defining criteria. For Narmad, it was the fact of residence in Gujarat, speaking Gujarati and an amorphous sense of loyalty to an abstract sense of Gujarat that was

enough qualification to

if one's forefathers came from outside or one was a so-called paradharmi (follower of another religion). Arguably, this definition does set up the Hindu religion or more broadly aryadharma, as the accepted norm, deviations from which (as suggested in the notion of paradharmi) may be tolerated, but it remains a more inclusive definition of Gujarati than what followed, with non-Hindus becoming more and more marginalised within the ideally imagined civilisational fold. In fact, the question of the 'outsider' has always been present within Gujarati history. Its geographical location along the west ern seaboard of the Indian subcontinent has meant that waves of immigrants arrived into Gujarat as a first stop on their way further into the mainland while many stayed behind in count

as an

insider,

even

culture

Gujarat, contributing over time to its perhaps uniquely mixed and pluralistic social structure. However, who constituted the outsider has not always been static. If today Muslims and

Christians are seen as external to the ‘authentically Gujarati’ cultural fold, in earlier historiographical traditions it was the Marathas who were held in far greater contempt as the while the various communities within Gujarat — Hindu, Muslim and Parsi were seen as being tied together by their common mercantile histories and entrepreneurial spirit (Yagnik and Sheth 2005; Isaka 2002).

foreigners, GUJARAT'S ASMITĀ

AND KACHCHH

Kachchh sits somewhat ambivalently within the regional historical narrative of Gujarat, animated by the notion of asmitā. not only because it remained relatively marginal to the assumed centre of Gujarati Hindu culture in medieval Pat an, but also because it shares a long border with Sindh, across which waves of inward migration have taken place over the centuries. The identification of Gujarat through the lens of asmitā is uncomfortable with these cultural flows across Kachchh and Sindh, for it seeks to ground Hindu identity firmly in space and time

as

'indigenous',

while Muslims

are

portrayed

as

the

'invaders' and quintessential 'outsiders.' Sindh is associated

with Islam in this kind of nativist discourse not- only because it is today a province in the Islamic state of Pakistan, but because Sindh was one of the main transit zones through which Islam was introduced into western India. Following the Arab conquest of Sindh in the eighth century, incoming traders, mendicants and pastoralists came into Kachchh and western India as the bearers not only of goods and services, but also new forms of 13 religious beliefs and practices. Within Kachchh, the sites that produce popular narratives containing shades of asmitā and the idioms in which they circulate provide the contextual background against which the relationship between the adjacent spaces of Kachchh and Sindh has been played out historically and sociologically. This will in

region that is endowed with from the nativist of discourses of regional perspective legitimacy other that and pride compromise those discourses. perspectives I will argue, based on ethnographic evidence in later chapters, that from the perspective of many people who circulated between Kachchh and Sindh prior to the merger of the princely state turn illustrato the tension between a

of Kachchh with the Indian Union in 1948, and before the emergence of the province of Gujarat as a distinct entity in 1960,

could, arguably, say that Kachchh and Sindh constituted region in imagination and affect, even though they did not share the same political system. In any case, as we have seen, one a

prior

to 1960 Kachchh was not

directly

ever

spoken of as being

part of Gujarat; it remained peripheral to most constructions of Gujarati-ness. After 1960, Kachchh became a constituent unit a

province of Gujarat and its relationship with Sindh was of anxiety in the official discourse of Gujarat, which strives to render itself as a discrete and homogenous unit, I have already discussed some of the historical precedents for the of Gujarat as a distinct province within the Indian nation-state. I now address the creative tension generated by the position of Kachchh within it. This tension would apply to other subregions within Gujarat as well, such as Saurashtra for example, but that remains outside the scope of this work. I shall discuss some of the sites through which ideas pertaining to asmitā of the

a source

emergence

circulate within Kachchh and more particularly, I will examine the manner in which regimes of contemporary historical in Kachchh construct its relationship vis-à-vis Sindh and how narratives of indigeneity and boundaries play out through such discourses as Sindh becomes re-aligned as a cultural and territorial 'outside' for the region as a whole.

consciousness

Sites of Asmitā in Kachchh: Contemporary Narrations of the Past ambivalence that the Kachchh—Sindh issue poses to asmitā is in the context of the latter's investment in the idea of an anchored and bounded territory; of swābhimān or pride in oneself and one's native place that can encompass the nation, as well as a more parochial sense of homeland. 14 Here, I am most interested in asmitā for an understanding of what might be the implications of this philosophy of roots and anchored homeland for a place like Kachchh that has defined itself primarily through mobility and cultural flows, especially across a border that is rendered firmly sealed under the gaze of the modern nation-state. The

core

Gujarati

Published sources of Kachchh’s history are not numerous. The most abundant are colonial histories and accounts which are inflected by the interests of their authors as well as the biases of their sources which were all affiliated to the royal court.15 The most cited official history of Kachchh is one by L. F. RushbrookWilliams (1958). Written by an Englishman, it was commissioned by the last ruler of Kachchh after Indian independence. As in other states with strong traditions of kingship, the written sources for Kachchh have remained very state/ruler-centric. Accounts such as these subsequently became the basis for the dominant versions of historiography in Kachchh. The narratives and accounts first penned by a number of European visitors to Kachchh from the late nineteenth century onwards are faithfully reproduced in the vernacular press, in recycled, locally produced histories and in homes across Kachchh among those with an interest in the past. Thus, by ‘official’ or ‘dominant’ historiography, I refer on

the one hand to histories produced and sanctioned by the royal court. On the other hand, during the time of my own fieldwork, I take it to mean, for example, the views presented by the local newspaper in Kachchh, Kachchh Mitra,16 which is a good source of mainstream intellectual and political discourse in the region. The Kachchh Mitra (literally, ‘Friend of Kachchh’) was described to me on more than one occasion as ‘the bible of Kachchh’. This is a suggestive analogy for it refers both to the professed of its authorial voice, the networks of power and patronage that its editorial team is embedded in (its reputed access to the political centre, the state capital Gandhinagar; their proximity to the BJP), as well as its wide circulation in even the smallest village in Kachchh. Needless to say, its stories are accepted as gospel truth by some more than others, but if there is one source of contemporary historiography in Kachchh that professes absolute truth value, this is it. Put differently, I indicate by ‘dominant’ that ideology that determines in a given society the ‘criteria of the historic’ (R. Guha 1996: 1), the parameters within which History becomes enunciable as such. The accounts I have based my analyses on are popular to the extent that they enjoy far-reaching purchase amongst the middle classes. Espoused by leading members of Kachchh’s

definitiveness

stories have, over time, been established as authoritative versions of Kachchh's history. In later chapters, I challenge these constructions through other narratives garnered from sources whose voices are less readily heard over the din of the urban intelligentsia. Those rendered here are closely tied up with dominant notions of asmitā and official perspectives on the regional history of Gujarat. Present-clay accounts in Kachchh focus on a supposedly ageold enmity between the kingdoms of Kachchh and Sindh. The sixteenth century walled capital city, Bhuj, still the district headquarters, was a well-garrisoned town. The walls of the old city are still extant in parts. During princely rule in Kachchh,

intelligentsia, these

five majestic gates provided entry into the town and closed at sunset everyday, locking the city safely inside. Today these gateways stand alone; markets and residential areas have sprung up all around them, bursting out of the old city wall where they had been originally confined. An eighteenth century military fort built high on a hill about a mile away overlooks the town and once served as a strategic look-out. This hill-fort,

Bhujiya, from which Bhuj derived its name, is still a military stronghold, as it was during the period of the British Residency. The distinctive plateau-like shape of Bhujiya dūngar (hill) dominates the low landscape of Bhuj and is visible from known

as

almost any part of town. The ramparts of the fort that run along the length of the hill have been damaged by successive earthquakes, most recently in 2001. The army continues to keep

its supplies of ammunition up in the fort and it is out of bounds for casual visitors except once a year on the annual celebrations of Nāg Panchamī, the monsoon festival for the Hindu serpent god. At this time, devotees throng the temple on the hill amid closely supervised security arrangements. The high degree of military preparedness revealed by the built environment speaks of the caution that the state of Kachchh would have had to take with regard to its neighbours, both from Sindh in the west as well as from the rulers of Gujarat in the east.

Kachchh was always somewhat of a frontier area. Prior to the

British conquest of Sindh in 1843, Kachchh was an important base for them as they attempted to make preliminary surveys of Sindh. It was an important buffer state for Britain in the Great Game politics against Afghanistan, to curb Russian

expansionism in that region. British relations with the court of Kachchh began officially in 1809. Between 1809 and 1819 a series of treaties were signed between the two parties, negotiating the terms of their relationship. By the terms of the treaty of 1819 it was decided that a British Resident would be based in Bhuj. It was also declared that: [T]he Hon’ble Company engages to exercise no authority over the domestic concerns of the Rao or of those of any of the Jhareja chieftains of the country; that the Rao, his heirs and successors, shall be absolute masters of their territory and that the civil and criminal jurisdiction of the British Govt. shall not be introduced therein.17 This, at least theoretically, was the basis for the British presence in Kachchh, for it was never a directly administered territory of British India. While the princely state of Kachchh was to continue as before, according to the terms of the treaty, they were to provide a ‘friendly’ base for colonial representatives, to agree to a permanent force of British troops stationed in Kachchh, and to pay a certain fixed sum of money as annual tribute to the British government.18 Good relations with the ruling house of Kachchh were crucial for imperial designs further west in Sindh. Prior to the British conquest of Sindh, the Resident in Kachchh also held the dual charge of Agent for the affairs of Sindh and reported to the Governor of the Bombay Presidency. 19 Travelogues and diaries maintained by the British officials in Bhuj betray a deep desire to secretly map the course of the river Indus and acquire a foothold in Sindh.20 A base in Kachchh was the perfect opportunity for gradual reconnaissance missions into Sindh. After the absorption of Sindh into the British administered Bombay Presidency in 1843, the post of Resident in Kachchh was moved down a notch to Political Agent, perhaps an indication of the altered political realities in the region. The Battle of Jhara

Much of contemporary Sindh-related history telling in Kachchh focuses on the middle of the eighteenth century. The second Battle of Jhara between the kingdom of Sindh, ruled then by the

Kalhora dynasty and the Jadejas of Kachchh in 1762, has for the custodians of Kachchhi history in current times, a condensed symbol of the relationship between the two sides. The battle has become an icon of official Kachchhi nationalism as recalled from the perspective of the present. Historical narratives — both oral and written, and the latter continue to mould the former — tell the story of a battle that took place on the hill of Jhara on the Kachchh–Sindh border in 1762 where a forewarned Kachchh army awaited the forces led by the Sindhi ruler Ghulam Shah Kalhora. Here is L. F. Rushbrook-Williams’ account, fairly representative of public opinion in Kachchh today:

become,

The Kutchis fought heroically; there were even women battling side by side with the men in a passion of patriotism […] Small groups fought heroically but they lost touch with one another in the fog and were overwhelmed, one by one, by the superior discipline of the Sindhis. The slaughter was […] Kutchi historians claim that 100,000 persons perished on the hill of Jhara in the most frightful disaster of which the records of their country take notice (RushbrookWilliams 1958: 154; emphasis added)

terrible

Jhara and Jumara are twin villages in Lakhpat tāluka on the north-western border of Kachchh just below the Rann. If it were possible to cross into Kachchh from Sindh in this direction, these would even today be the first villages encountered. Jhara dūngar is a small rocky and barren outcrop that comes into view suddenly as one turns a bend in the road across the undulating landscape. Beyond it, the Rann shimmers blue and white in

the bright sunshine. The villages of Jhara and Jhumara nestle below this hill, disappointingly small after the heroic narratives about them that I had heard prior to my first visit. These two that lie at the furthest end of a long dusty track are not served the district bus service and are home to a few Muslim families, by all tracing their descent from a common agnatic head. Some years ago, in the late 1990s, these villages were rescued from relative oblivion by a resurgent patriotism in Kachchh. Once a year, the anniversary of the battle of Jhara is commemorated on this hill. A statue of the ruler of Kachchh at the time, Rao Godji II (r. 1761-79), and a few memorials to the martyrs of this battle have been erected on it and each year in the Hindu

villages

lunar month of Māgsar, corresponding with the supposed date of the event, prayers are conducted and offerings made by the local politicians and officials.

However, there is more to the story of the battle of Jhara.

According to local sources cited by L. F. Rushbrook-Williams, the victorious Sindhi ruler began to negotiate with Kachchh in the aftermath of battle. He was offered a settlement that included money and the hand of a Kachchhi princess in return for his assurance that he would not march on the capital, Bhuj. at the last minute he realised that he was being tricked by the Kachchh authorities and decided to return home in fury. As Rushbrook-Williams tells us:

However,

But he also did his best to injure Kutch by raising an earthwork which diverted one of the branches of the Indus from the Lakhpat district, where it had been used for irrigating the rice crop. It is not easy to estimate exactly what damage he did, because his original undertaking has been entirely obliterated by seismic disturbances early in the nineteenth century. These had very serious effects indeed upon the entire water resources of the Abdasa district and a low mound, known as Allahbund, or God’s Dyke was thrown up; and the course of the Indus and of all of its waters was diverted right away from Kutch. Popular repute still saddles Ghulam Shah with the blame for the whole catastrophe, although in fact the worst part of it occurred long after his death through the operation of natural causes (Rushbrook-Williams 1958: 159–60). The relative veracity of popular history versus geology is difficult to ascertain here and is not really the point. Scholars and colonial observers have described these events variously. There appear to be at least two separate issues involved that over time have come to be repeated as part of the same sequence of events. The first issue is whether the uplifted mound known as Allah Bund has anything to do with the actions of Ghulam Shah and second, whether this embankment is related to the drying up of the eastern branches of the Indus river, a one-time source of freshwater supply to western Kachchh. Popular imagination in Kachchh today links the actions of Ghulam Shah with the drying up of the Indus channels, and this is a view that can be traced back to some colonial sources (e.g., Burnes 1829; Burton 1851).

Recent geological evidence suggests that the embankment known as Allah Bund (God’s Dam, thus indicating its miraculous provenance and not put up with intent) was almost certainly thrown up by the 1819 earthquake, even though it built upon uplifts in the same area caused by prior seismic activity (Rajendran and Rajendran 2001: 416). Thus, this strand of evidence situates the embankment firmly within a geological explanation. The second issue is the more relevant one for this discussion

and relates to the question of freshwater supply to the region. If we leave aside the relationship of the Sindhi ruler to the Allah Bund, sources mention that the earthquake led to the inundation of low-lying areas by salt water: lakes and rivers were filled up as water gushed out (Campbell 1880). A fort near Lakhpat was submerged (Rajendran and Rajendran 2001: 416) and a saline lake was formed there. However, by 1826, it became a lake due to the Indus floodwater piercing through the Allah Bund (Campbell 1880: 11) as the river ‘re-established its course through its original valley across the bund’ (Rajendran and Rajendran 2001: 413). Consider also an account of the 1819 provided by Captain James MacMurdo, British resident in Bhuj at the time:

freshwater earthquake readmitted

The Allibund has been damaged; a circumstance that has of a navigation which had been closed for centuries. The goods of Sindh are embarked in craft near Ruhema Bazar and Kanjee Kacote; and which, sailing across the Bhunnee and Runn, land their cargoes at a town called Nurra on the north of Cutch. The Runn, which extends from Luckput round the north of this province to its eastern boundary, is fordable but at one spot, at this period of the year, at which it has heretofore been dry; and should the water continue throughout the year, we may perhaps see an inland navigation along the northern shore of Cutch; which, from stone anchors, &c. still to be seen, and the tradition of the country, I believe to have existed at some former period (MacMurdo 1820: 103–104; emphases added). James MacMurdo’s reference to the ‘Allibund’ might provoke some confusion. MacMurdo is probably referring not to the Allah Bund, but to the Ali Bunder, an old port across the Rann

in Sindh. In these accounts, the waters of the Indus would seem to have already left the western banks of Kachchh by 1819. Further, the years following the earthquake seem to have readmitted some fresh water into the region. Therefore, there would seem to be no historical basis for continuing to hold the Allah Bund responsible for the desertification and water shortage in Kachchh today. That this continues to be the dominant explanation for the desertion of the Indus waters reflects not so much on actual historical events as on how events in the past are recalled in the present. We do not have any accounts of Ghulam Shah’s revenge in the form of intentionally putting up a dam to divert the Indus waters prior to the midnineteenth century. At this time, the earthquake had already taken place (in 1819), and therefore what is far more likely is that Ghulam Shah’s actions are in fact imaginatively produced by the geological forces of the earthquake that created this embankment. Nostalgic accounts of a lush and green past in a land that is

today almost a desert must be probed for the other histories and tales they tell. No doubt the earthquake had a significant impact on the fluvial systems of Kachchh, as waterways and channels dried up and new ones were created as the groundwater table shifted and transformed. But these changes both precede and post date the earthquake. By continuing to hold the actions of Ghulam Shah as a foundational event responsible for the diversion of the Indus and the perpetual drought in the land, Kachchhis are blaming a ruler of Sindh for wilfully denying them what was their due by nature. It is when the king’s revenge, attributed to the 1760s, becomes fused in the popular mind with the earthquake in 1819, that it creates an association between Muslims, vio-lence and destruction in a manner that reproduces itself to the present day. So the popular and state sanctioned violence against Gujarat’s Muslims in 2002 also becomes rationalised in this mindset as a ‘just retribution’ against past misdeeds. The associations between Allah Bund, Ghulam Shah and destruction are so endemically a part of collective representation in Kachchh that they are shared also by Muslims who give the events in question their own interpretation. A Muslim pastoralist and poet familiar with the Rann associates the 1819 earthquake not with creating but destroying the Allah Bund, leading to the formation of the Rann

by flooding out the cities in the area. ‘The cities were ruined and divided into two, some on one side of the Rann, and some on the other. It is said that the Sindhi king was cruel, and Allah never condones injustice, which is why this destruction must have come about.’ Narrating the epic battle of Jhara and Ghulam Shah’s

revenge in its aftermath acquires a particularly charged political cadence in Kachchh. The Hindu nationalist discourse that directed most official narratives in Gujarat during this period constructs Pakistan and Muslims as the chief aggressors and destabilisers of the territorial integrity of India. The battle of Jhara thus becomes an over-determined symbol of conflict today. The entities at stake are not just those of Sindh and Kachchh as political units in the eighteenth century. These are today overlaid by the contemporary identifiers Pakistan and India, Muslim and Hindu. It is significant that the ‘martyrs’ of Jhara were first identified for commemoration by the Congress Party government of Gujarat that preceded the BJP-led one. The battle and emotions it evokes are thus unifying ones as far as the official bearers of historical memory are concerned. Thus has the official history of Kachchh appropriated into its grand narrative of patriotism and territorial nationalism, the events of a distant epoch. Narratives of Indigeneity: The Saraswati Another narrative popular in Kachchh today will also underscore the tenaciousness of contemporary notions of indigeneity and belonging. After the creation of Pakistan, many Hindu Sindhis moved into India and large numbers of them were rehabilitated into Kachchh. One of the ways in which Sindhis in Kachchh have been able to lay claim to complete assimilation within the Indian nation-state despite their origins in Sindh which would otherwise mark them as a problematic category of immigrants, is their adoption of certain political positions on ideas of mobility and territory that are associated with the mainstream Hindu nationalism of asmitā. An overt identification with political and religious symbols associated with the Hindutva ideology enables this uprooted community to attempt to align itself with nationalist histories in order to insert itself into a primordialist narrative of territorial belonging.

In the aftermath of the deadly earthquake that struck Kachchh in 2001, numerous geological changes were observed. It was noticed that streams of water had temporarily emerged in the hitherto dry areas of the Rann. The Rann of Kachchh is believed to have been covered with water at some point in the distant past, and the possibility of it being an inland arm of the Arabian Sea, elevated due to ancient tectonic and geological activity, has not been discounted (Rajendran and Rajendran 2001). I was, however, given a very particular interpretation of this occurrence by my Sindhi informants and one that fit closely into a widely shared opinion among the nation’s revisionist historians. Earthquakes are frequent occurrences in Kachchh, and in

2002–2003 they were discussed in every home in Kachchh, especially in view of the government proposed ‘town planning’ scheme that would rebuild the major cities. One day, in Bhuj, I went to the internet café and office supply store that I visited frequently. It was owned and run by two Sindhi brothers whose families hailed originally from the city of Hyderabad in Sindh. The reason for my visit was to photocopy an article on the 1819 earthquake, from which I have quoted above. I handed over the article and settled down to wait for the young man to process it even as a young boy scurried off to fetch us all a round of tea. The young Sindhi was intrigued by the subject of the article and we were soon engaged in discussing his own views on the recent earthquake. He turned to me and said, Do you know that the River Indus is actually called the Sindhu? The Sindhu is the first river of India and we [the Sindhis] belong to this river. We lost this river to Pakistan when Sindh went to them but we will get it back. The Sindhu flowed with the Saraswati River, on whose banks the Hindu texts were recited. The Saraswati disappeared underground, but this area was where it flowed through. Tell me, after the earthquake, how did fountains of water emerge miraculously from this desert? It is no accident; it is because the Saraswati River flows here, deep under this land. The earthquake is just the beginning; slowly the two rivers will meet once again, and they will meet here.

ancient

Revisionist history in India has long been concerned with establishing the ‘original’ inhabitants of India. V. D. Savarkar, the architect of Hindutva, had identified the key terms of to Hinduism and the Indian nation. In his writings on the subject, the river Indus (Sindhu in the vernacular) constituted the western boundary of the Indian nation. In Savarkar’s subsequently the backbone of Hindu nationalist ideology, a Hindu is

belonging rendition,

[H]e who looks upon the land that extends from Sindhu to Sindhu — from the Indus to the Seas — as the land of his forefathers — his Fatherland (Pitribhu) […] and who above all, addresses this land, this Sindhusthan as his Holyland [sic] (Punyabhbu), as the land of his prophets and seers, of his godmen and gurus, the land of piety and pilgrimage. These are the essentials of Hindutva – a common nation (Rashtra) a common race (Jati) and a common civilization (Sanskriti) (Savarkar 1969: 115–16). Secular scholars and academics have posed a direct challenge to Hindutva's version of history. V. D. Savarkar's definition of Hindu depends on a deliberate coincidence of pitribhūmī (ancestral land) and punyabhūmī (the land of one's faith), Muslims and Christians from an equal claim thereby severing on India as their homeland. In an important discussion of the political constructions of indigeneity in contemporary India, Nandini Sundar (2002) presents the conflictual relationship the Hindu Right's notion of indigenous people with the parallel claims to indigeneity by ādīvāsī groups who participate in global discourses of indigenous peoples and their rights. Arguing that what counts as 'indigenous knowledge' is a product of the political networks it is imbricated in, she writes.

between

Indigenous knowledge’, for the Sangh Parivar 21, is “Hindu knowledge” or more specifically, ‘Vedic knowledge’” […] “Sanghis greet the idea that adivasis (lit. first settler) are any more indigenous than Hindus with consternation and indignation, viewing them merely as “backward” Hindus (Sundar 2002: 374). In Kachchh, the debates over indigeneity are particularly charged, especially as some of the larger archaeological sites of

the Indus Valley civilisation have been excavated here. The Indus Valley culture has been appropriated by Hindutva ideologues as proof of an ancient ‘Hindu’ civilisation. Early historical theories that had accounted for the demise of this civilisation by an Aryan invasion from the north were revised by the Hindu Right. Their political investment in demonstrating that this was an Aryan civilisation, their commitment to the Vedic Hindu construction of India as aryavrata or land of the Aryans, led them to debunk available historical theories on the Indus Valley. As one historian of Ancient India explains, ‘[s]ince Hindus sought a lineal descent from the Aryans, and a cultural heritage, the Aryans had to be indigenous […] that there is a range of possibilities between the two extremes of invaders or indigenes does not interest them’ (Thapar 2000).

The revisionist view, since it holds that Hindus are descendente of the Aryans, had to now prove that it could not have been an Aryan invasion that destroyed the Indus civilisation, for this would make Hindus exogenous as well. In their attempt to prove beyond doubt the indigeneity of present-day Hindus as an Aryan race and within the territorial boundaries of modern India, the Indus Valley civilisation was renamed by the proponents of Hindutva history as the Sindhu-Saraswati civilization. Sindhu is the vernacular name for the Indus and the Saraswati is a mythico-historical river said to be mentioned in the Rig Veda, the foundational text for Hindu civilisation in this view. The mystery of the Saraswati River has engaged much debate and discussion both in the academy as well as in political circles in India. First supposedly mentioned in the Rig Veda, it is subsequently mentioned in the epic poem the Mahābhārata, where it occupies centre stage for many episodes and then vanishes underground. It is popularly believed in India that the Saraswati is the hidden third stream that joins the sacred Ganges and the Yamuna at the holy sangam at Allahabad in the northern Indian Gangetic plains. The sangam is venerated by pious Hindus who take a dip in the sacred

confluence of holy rivers. However, among scholars of Indian mythology, it is accepted that the association of the Saraswati with the sangam is a secondary and more likely imagined connection. 22 According to them, the Saraswati is primarily with north western India, as one of the eastern branches of the five Punjab rivers, flowing somewhat parallel to the Indus.

associated

The source of this assertion is the Mahābhārata. In this account I rely on the exegesis provided by Alf Hiltebeitel (2001), an ,

acknowledged specialist

on the epic. The Saraswati features in the Mahābhārata a number of times. One key account is of a 42 day pilgrimage along 36 sacred sites along the river. The pilgrimage is undertaken by Balarama when 'he departs in a rage when Krsna rejects

his prewar proposal to aid the Kauravas as well as the Pändavas' (Hiltebeitel 2001: 120). The pilgrimage route along the river has been interpreted as a re-enactment, of an earlier such during Vedic times (ibid.: 121). Present-day Hindu nationalists' appropriation of the Saraswati is symbolic of their larger commitment to an upper-caste Brahmanic Hinduism. In the legend, the river disappears underground because of her hatred of lower castes. It is to avoid contamination by the low caste Shudras and Ahirs (ibid.: 122) that she goes This is based on

pilgrimage underground.

Sarasvatī's inherent responsiveness to Brahmans, which comes from her being not, only preeminent, among Vedic rivers and the purifier of the heartland of early Vedic culture, but in classical times the and speech (ibid.).

goddess

of Brahmanic

learning,

arts,

Alf Hiltebeitel points out that the Saraswati is thus coterminous with Vedic learning. The river is also a Symbol of Aryan-nesS as the heartland of Aryan civilisation in India (āryavrata)

is considered to be the land bounded by the two rivers Saraswati and Ganges, The Saraswati is thus a potent symbol for Hindutva's claims to history and territory. Hindu, Aryan and the Indus civilisation are all tied together into a Vedic cultural complex from which the Hindus of today are believed to be lineal Hiltebeitel consciously avoids entering into debates of the Indus Saraswati civilisation other than to point out that such a civilisation was 'unknown to the epic poets' (Hiltebeitel 2001: 142 n). It would be safe to assume that these associations are the latter day appropriations of revisionist historians in India as they seek to naturalise claims to nationality. In this project they are assisted by Orientalist writings on India that made 23 early claims in this direction in the nineteenth century.

descendents.

The narrative of the second generation Sindhi migrant in Eachchh with respect to the Saraswati river aligns himself and his ancestors within the sacred geography of India. In Hindu nationalist narratives of Indian history, the fetishisation

number of discursive tropes such as Akhand Bhārat, Bhārat Mālā and so on. In this instance, by referring back to the Indus civilisation and linking it to the of the

geo-body

24

occurs

through

a

Saraswati, he is simultaneously reiterating Hindu claims to indigeneity. By aligning Sindhis with this narrative, they too become insiders and indigenous inhabitants of the Indian motherland, which is defined as the primordial homo of Hindus, glossing over the potentially politically embarrassing fact of their recent migration into India from Sindh.

The implications of this kind of political culture for the writing

of history more generally and for Kachchh in particular are manifold. In the South Asian context broadly, David Ludden (1994) has argued that this kind of investment in indigeneity leads to an undervaluation of mobility in history (cf. Markovits et al. 2003) in favour of a sedentary and bounded civilisational community. Discussing the way in which archaeology has been co-opted by political concerns, an archaeologist has recently pointed out that ‘Indian archaeology focuses too narrowly on an imagined Indianness, in brief, on ‘roots’, with the result that general cultural laws and cross-cultural references are shut out’ (Ratnagar 2004a). An ideological commitment to indigeneity leads to the formulation of essentialised ideals of insider and outsider, autochthonous native and invader; and these ideals become assimilated into contemporary political discourse. As Ludden argues: The idea of civilization necessarily (if not intentionally) induces a reading back of ‘present-national sentiments’ into a timeless past; it thereby prevents history from working against cultural hegemonies in the present by stultifying our analysis of mobility, context, agency, contingency, and change (Ludden 1994: 3). What

the implications of the kind of regional patriotism in asmitā grounded in notions of territorial and

are

implied

—

symbolic rootedness — for Kachchh? Although Kachchh is a constituent subunit within Gujarat, it is a place that has been primarily through mobility, where Hindu and Muslim identities have been less easy to tease apart historically, even if only for rhetorical purposes.

constituted

Kachchh owes as much, if not considerably more, of its

historical identity to Sindh as to mainland Gujarat. The major ruling dynasty of Kachchh under which it emerged as a political unit in the sixteenth century came, like many other early settlers in Kachchh, from Sindh. After the Arab conquest of Sindh in the eighth century, pastoralists from Sindh and Arab merchants settled in Kachchh. Some of these pastoralists — the Samas — were to eventually rise to be the ruling power in Kachchh under the name of Jadeja in the mid1500s. At the time, there were Samas in Kachchh as well as Sindh. While the Sindhi Samas tended to be Muslim, the Samas in Kachchh were Hindus and it is suggested that they might have moved into Kachchh in order to resist conversion to Islam (Rushbrook-Williams 1958). Whether or not this indeed was the cause for their movement into Kachchh 25, the geographical location of Kachchh on the western seaboard made it the chief point of entry for itinerant traders, pastoralists and mendicants into Gujarat and western India more generally.

consolidated

As I have been arguing above, close ties existed between

Kachchh and Sindh, fuelled in part by history and in part by geography — for prior to the drying up of the water channels that flowed into the Rann of Kachchh at some point in the nineteenth century, Sindh and Kachchh lay across a relatively easily fordable body of water, far less formidable than undertaking a sea voyage the waters of the Arabian sea, known to be infested by piracy. At this time, access to the Indian mainland involved a journey across water. The most common route between Kachchh and the mainland was by sea between Bombay and Mandvi.26 Even today, better connections to Kachchh are available from Bombay with daily train and air services. The overland route into mainland Gujarat is far less organised; few decent passenger trains run the route. The best option is to take an overnight bus to Ahmedabad, less comfortable than the pleasant train journey to Bombay. Even this journey into mainland Gujarat was only made possible with the construction, in 1968, of the

across

Surajbari Bridge across the Little Rann, connecting Kachchh to Saurashtra and central Gujarat. Before this, there was no contact between Kachchh and the mainland. Certainly, in the past, Kachchh was better connected with Sindh. Trade flourished across the riverine channels as well as the Rann. This proximity also made it relatively easy to flee between Kachchh and Sindh during times of war, persecution, royal feuds and court intrigue.

overland

After they settled in Kachchh, the Samas who seized royal power took the name Jadeja and modelled themselves along the lines of Rajput kingship that existed further north in Rajasthan. Rajputs are the quintessential martial and ruling class in western India, and laying claim to Rajput status was an important aspect of royal consolidation for the Jadejas. They married Rajput women to consolidate their claims to the caste and adopted Rajput practices such as female infanticide, and the controversial practice of scrii. 27 Like the Rajputs in Rajasthan, they formalised goddess worship and blood sacrifice in Kachchh.

They

also established a kin-based system of administration on the extraction of agrarian surplus. Adopting symbols of Rajput life was important in the 'rajputisation' 28 of the Jadejas, especially to maintain an imperial aura in the face of their subjects. Although Rajasthan was the kingly model they aspired to, the fact that the Jadeja rulers of Kachchh had come originally from Sindh is widely known and acknowledged, especially by the older members of the erstwhile royal family. At the former jāgīr 29 of Roha, about 30 miles west of Bhuj, I met the sole descendant of the estate, a feisty woman in her late 70s. The village sits at the foot of a hill, on top of which lie the ruins of a majestic old fort, destroyed by successive earthquakes but still retaining echoes of its former grandeur. Roha was the largest jāgīr in Kachchh after the capital, Bhuj. and at the height of its glory according to this family descendant, had 43 villages paying tribute to it. 30 Bapulal Ba, originally named Kishore Kuvar Ba, of the twelfth generation since the fort, was built some 300 years ago, had lived up on the hill, in the manner of her forefathers, until about 35 years ago, when she moved down. Widowed at the age of 16, she returned to her natal home where she lives all alone, with a single maidservant, amid rumours of a wild cheetah which prowls on the hill when the sun sets. As she spoke of Rajput based

,

valour, fearlessness and pride, she stressed the need to the code of conduct that was distinctive of Rajput birth : 'if you take the sweetness out of sugar, then what is its use? Similarly, if you take the maryādā out of Kshatriyas, there is nothing left.' To maintain this distinctive maryādā of their birth, the

maintain Jadejas

of Kachchh married women from the Sodha Rajput clan in Sindh. Bapulal Ba's mother was a Sodha woman from TharParkar in southern Sindh. In this case, Sindh is linked with Kachchh in a productive way, as a generative power associated with the maintenance of purity and distinctive birth. Because they came originally from Sindh, it was only by returning to it that, their lineage and the essence of their Rajput maryādā maintained. Marianna Postans (1839) writes in her travelogue of her audience, with the reigning Rao's 31 mother in the first, and perhaps only description we have of the royal harem. Here, she remarks on the beauty of the Sodha women from Thar in Sindh (Postans 1839: 52). In Chapter 3 I discuss the move ,

into Kachchh of the inhabitants of TharParkar, the southern district of Sindh. The Sodha Rajputs were a part of this move in 1971: today this kin-based link with Sindh is as much a matter of the past as is formal Rajput kingship in Kachchh. In the following chapters, I look at other experiences that structure the relationship between Kachchh and Sindh from a rather different perspective. If, from the point of view of a animated by regional patriotism for Gujarat as a whole the politics of asmitā the border is portrayed as a zone of impermeability and silence, there are others that see the Kachchh—Sindh landscape as united in history, language and culture. It is to some of these renditions that I now turn. —

—

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

E.g., Das and Poole (2004); Fuller and Benei (2001). The Hindu, 4 January 2005. The Hindu,14 May 2005, emphases added. The Hindu, 4 January 2005. Hindutva or ‘Hindu-ness’ has come to denote a particular form of Hindu cultural and religious nationalism (see Hansen 1999). The term was coined by V. D. Savarkar in a book first published in 1923, titled Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?

6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

See, for example, Jaffrelot 2008. thanks go to Achyüt. Yagnik for pointing this out to me (personal communication, 14 April 2007, Ahmedabad). See Achyut Yagnik and Suchitra Sheth (2005) for a more comprehensive treatment of the theme. 'Mainland' because the two wings of Saurashtra and Kachchh are separated from it by a marshy desert like formation known as the Rann. This is a complicated claim for Kachchh, for although standardised Gujarati is the language of schools and administration, as a popularly spoken language it predominates more in eastern Kachchh, in the area known as Wagad. Elsewhere in Kachchh, the spoken language is Kachchhi, a language closely associated with Sindhi. He mentions that Somnath was the guardian deity of the Chalukya rulers of medieval Gujarat and also of the people of Gujarat (Munshi 1976: 49). Thomas Blom Hansen (1999: 60-89) provides a succinct summary of some of Hindutva's early ideologues. Samira Sheikh (2003) points out in her study of medieval Gujarat that Islam was not the only proselytising force in Gujarat, She argues that. Islam, Vaishnavite Hinduism and Jainsim provided a range of possibilities in an increasingly variegated religious marketplace that was articulated by constant movement and migration. See Skaria (2001) for an elaboration on this theme especially with regard to the work of Narmad. A good example is Postans (1839). Published in Gujarati. Treaty of Alliance between the Hon'ble East India Company and His Highness Maharaja Mirza Rao Shree Dessuljee, his heirs and successors, concluded by Captain James Macmurdo at. Bhooj, 13 October 1819, NAI, Foreign Dept. (Pol. A), Oct 1868, nos 9-13, Rao Daisuljee to Sir Charles Napier, Governor of Scinde and Beloochistan dated Bhooj 20 March 1845, MSA Political Dept, vol. 146/2153, 1848. Guide to the Records in the National Archives of India 1992: 248, New Delhi. For example, Alexander Burnes' memoir, NAI, Foreign Dept., (SC ) 14 October 1830. nos 3-8. See also Burnes (1829): The Sangh Parivar (literally Sangh family) refers to the conglomerate of organisations that, enact India's Hindu nationalist, agenda. Three organizations the VHP (Viśswa Hindu Pariśad or World Hindu Council), RSS (Rāútriya Sivayamsevak Sangh) and the Bajrang Dal provide a cultural-religious scaffolding to the more directly political agenda of the BJP. Apart from these national-level organisations, smaller units operate at. local levels. I am grateful to Christopher Minkowski for pointing this out to me. See, for instance, Oldham (1893). See Thongchai (1994) on the concept of the nation's geo-body. Fear of conversion especially to Islam and Christianity is more likely to have been a part of political discourse at. the time L. F. RushbrookWilliams was writing than of the period he was writing about, He was

My

—

22. 23. 24.

25.

—

—

26.

also commissioned to produce this history of Kachchh by the royal house, so its objectivity is obviously compromised in many respects. However, in the absence of other written histories on Kachchh, this one is Still widely quoted from in an everyday context. Marianna Postane' (1839) account begins with a description of this

journey. See, for example, Marianna Postans' (1839) eyewitness account of a Jadeja widow immolating herself on her dead husbands funeral pyre. 28. See A. M. Shah (1982) on rajputisation, a variation on sanskritisation, where lower castes adopt Rajput status by marrying into the lower rungs of Rajput society and adopting their lifestyles. 29. Kachchh was administered feudally; more distant descendants of the central court at Bhuj were given domains that they administered semiindependently as jāgīrs. 30. Also mentioned by lit Col. G. L. Jacobs Political Agent in Kutch, to H. L. Anderson, Secretary to Government, Bombay, dated Bhooj 28 April 1856, MSA Political Department, vol. 69 of 1856; compl No. 774. 27.

31.

Title of the rulers in Kachchh.

Counter-Perspectives Affect: and Memory Asmitā Migration, 2 to

The northern landscapes of Kachchh, shading into Sindh

pillars gradually relatively imperceptibly Pakistan,

and but for the that mark out the territorial border between India and are constituted primarily by the Great Rann of Ivachchh, a unique barren, desertlike formation. Patches of slightly elevated islands of are frequented by nomadic pastoral populations that have settled over the centuries into semi-permanent villages on both sides of the border. Of the many pastoral groups in this region that straddle the boundary between Ivachchh and Sindh, I describe the Jatts, a Muslim pastoral community. A close ethnography of two subdivisions within the Jatt community help illustrate the ambivalent position of Ivachchh within the discursive frame of Gujarat's asmitā.Nrratives gathered from the pastoral Jatts reveal deeply felt cultural and social between Ivachchh and Sindh, a marked contrast with the rupture that exists between the two in official

grassland

intimacies discourse. precisely intimacy shared between

It is this Ivachchh and the chief political 'other' for the Gujarati 'nation-view' that transforms Ivachchh into a zone of ambivalence within a regional patriotism for Gujarat that is dominated by notions of asmitā.

This space of ambivalence may be likened to James C. Scott’s

(1998) ‘non-state spaces,’ for I argue that the Jatts negotiate a remarkably different relationship with statist narratives of border and region. For the pastoralists of northern Kachchh, Sindh explicitly structures everyday patterns of life. I use Scott’s term as an analogy, not to suggest that the state is somehow absent here, for as I will show, this is far from the case in terms of the way this border has been produced and managed in the past as in the present. Rather, I acknowledge Scott’s work to index the fact that this is a space where the epistemological categories naturalised by the state falter somewhat, even as its power of surveillance are heightened in everyday contexts. The Greater Rann of Kachchh is one such space. This area extending

Settlers, Saints and Sovereigns north along the Indus River is intimately linked with patterns of migration and mobility that have existed for some centuries. 1 In the borderlands of Kachchh, immediately south of Sindh, Muslim past orálist,s negotiate a very different relationship to the or to questions of sovereignty and homelands, than those naturalised by the discourses of asinitā and popularly adopted by the ruling intelligentsia and state apparatus in Kachchh. On the other hand, the Jatts create a sensory landscape of space and sovereignty through expressions of migration and symbolic attachment that embrace Sindh as intimately as it is othered by official discourse in the region. The Dānetā Jatts are Sunni Muslim pastoralists who live in small hamlets called wāndhs, averaging about 10 or 15 agnatically related families each, scattered across the Rann on both sides of the border. Due to geo-political contingencies, I was unable to gather any ethnographic materials from Sindh. My is based on intensive fieldwork from Ivachchh, but I was

border,

account also able to travel with my interlocutors' narratives and memories of the 'other' side. In many ways their

movements were

mine, and they brought me richly nuanced of about the place that was as much a part of their ways thinking before it was within a different nation-state as it relocated past continued to structure their present. Especially when I moved among those who lived right along the border, in villages deemed by the local authorities as 'sensitive' and therefore prone to I did not have the option of anonymity that I might otherwise have imagined (and hoped) for myself in a more bustling urban setting. As a visible outsider in these areas, I not as constrained as

surveillance,

did not have the fluidity of movement that my informants had negotiated for themselves, either by circumventing bureaucratic barriers altogether, or by actively engaging with them in a furtive yet complex net work of arrangements that allowed them to play creatively with space and mobility in ways that I could not. This is, of course, the inversion of the classic position where the ethnographer is assumed to be mobile and her informants fixed in time and space (cf. Clifford 1997;

anthropological Ghosh 1992).

In addition to oral narratives that I collected from the Jatts,

I have also been able to reconstruct aspects of their crossborder mobility before the decisive sealing of the border in

Migration, Memory and Affect

1965,2 through a rich collection of traveller’s tales, personal memoirs and political treatises produced by British colonial administrators and travellers as they moved from Kachchh into Sindh in the nineteenth century. After 1819, with the of the British Residency at Kachchh, under the supervision of the royal court, there was a regular succession of British Residents and Political Agents, who reported from Bhuj to the Bombay Presidency on matters of internal governance and finances. Until the colonial annexation of Sindh in 1843, Kachchh was an important frontier space for the British, and this interest in Sindh is largely the reason why the colonial administration was keen to cement friendly relations with the rulers of Kachchh. A firm presence in Kachchh ensured that the colonial officers could maintain an eye on the affairs of Sindh, seizing the right to intervene and conquer. Potential control over Indus commerce was one of the major incentives for the colonial state to tap the resources of Sindh, and there are lively accounts of the region dating from the first clandestine attempts to navigate the river (Burnes 1829). While these accounts must be read keeping in mind the larger project of imperial state making that them, in the absence of more contemporary work, they constitute an invaluable source on the ecology and local mercantile and pastoral economy in the area.

establishment

moment occasioned The

Rann

of Kachchh

The Rann of Kachchh attracted a good deal of attention from nineteenth century English visitors who reiterated that they had never seen anything quite like it. Marianna Postans has a description from the 1830s that varies little from today’s conditions:

detailed

Throughout Western India, nothing could, perhaps, be found more worthy the observation of the traveller, than the great northern Runn; a desert salt plain which bounds Cutch on the north and east, and extends from the western confines of Guzzerat to the eastern branch of the river Indus; approaching Bhooj at its nearest point, at about the distance of sixteen miles. This tract is of large extent, and between the months of May and October is flooded with salt water. During other parts

of the year it is passable; but the glare is so great from the encrustation of salt, caused by the evaporation of the water, that it is seldom attempted, unless from the inducements of trade, or the necessities of military duty. [...]There are several islands on the Runn, and a bright oasis of grassy land, known by the unromantic name of the Bunni. Thither, in style, the shepherds take their flocks, and lead a sunny pastoral life, although surrounded by a desert marsh (Postans 1839: 90–91).

patriarchal

The term ‘Rann’ is believed to derive from the Sanskrit irana or irina, meaning desert or waste. It has certainly provoked inspired and dreamy reflections from those who have written about their encounters with it. More recently, it has been as ‘a spectacle of a vast saline stretch, treeless and [...] scorching sun and swirling storms [...] a silent world broken by an occasional sight of a wild ass [...] smuggler or a spy or a cattle breeder’ (Gupta 1969).

described trackless

The Rann is a low-lying stretch of saline land that extends

over approximately 23,309 sq. kilometres (about 9,000 sq. miles) between Kachchh and Sindh (Vaishnav 1987). It is unclear whether it was originally an inlet of the Arabian Sea or an ancient river, although present trends within the telling of local history are wont to identifying this area with Vedic Hindu geography. During the monsoon this lowland becomes marshy, floods over and looks astonishingly like the water body it may once have been. Towards the end of the year that I spent in Kachchh on fieldwork, the monsoon was spectacular. The rain after over three years of drought came as a much needed relief to farmers and pastoralists alike. Lakes that I had seen dry through three consecutive monsoons filled up overnight and the countryside erupted in a burst of greenery. The Rann area was flooded in a couple of days’ rain and the army had to be summoned to airdrop food packets to its stranded inhabitants.

torrential

The nature of the Rann was a hotly contested topic in the

1950s and 1960s when the newly postcolonial states of India and Pakistan came to dispute its ownership.3 At this time, it was debated whether it was an ‘inland lake’, a ‘dead sea’ or a ‘marsh’. Each side claimed it to be one or the other, and staked a more or less exclusive claim over it. After an armed conflict between the two countries in 1965, the matter

accordingly

was referred to an international tribunal, where it was declared that the Rann was neither land nor water, but ‘a unique phenomenon’ (Gupta 1969: 388). On the Rann, there are some raised islands called bets where the topography makes habitation possible. These bets have some amount of non-saline groundwater and have been grazing lands for pastoralist populations. On the Kachchh side the largest bet is known as Banni, a Sindhi term for forested field, a reference to its once flourishing grassland ecosystem.

geographical

the

Pastoralists

Jatts

in

Historical

of the

Great Perspective

Rann:

among the larger of the pastoralist, groups or in the Rann. They are distributed across three Dānetā, Fakīrānī and Garāsiā. A fourth group, found in Saurashtra, is known as the Hālārī Jatts after a site in the region, Hālār, Each of these subgroups is a discrete endogamous unit today but all of them are Sunni Muslims. The Dänetä a largely pastoral life along the northern areas of Banni. The Fakīrānī also continue to be pastoral to a large degree, but they live along the coastal areas of western Ivachchh, specialising in herding water buffalo. 4 Due to their preference for the coastal and deltaic regions they are also sometimes called the Kanthī Jatts, kanthī being the Kachchhi term for coastline. The Garāsiā Jatts, on the other hand, have almost completely sedentarised what seems like a fairly long time ago. The Jatts as a whole have a somewhat elusive presence in The Jatts

are

māldhārīs subgroups —

continue

documented history. It has been suggested, for example, by historians like Richard M. Eaton (1984), Irfan Habib (1976) and Chetan Singh (1988) that they were a single tribal group that moved across a large geographical terrain, eventually picking up local characteristics peculiar to the regions they began to frequent. Thus, some moved into the Punjab after the Arab conquest of Sindh (Habib 1976; Mayaram 1997) and went on to become agriculturalists. These became known as the Jāts who came to be regarded as almost synonymous with settled 5 agriculture. In historical work on the shifting frontiers of Eaton Islam, (1984) suggests that the Jatts migrated into the the of plains Punjab from Sindh and gradually, over centuries, some of them converted to Islam under the influence of a saint,

Baba Farid, whose charisma had become institutionalised in his shrine located in Pakpattan, Punjab. In Eaton’s analysis, the Jatts’ transformation from pastoralism to becoming a powerful agrarian group in Punjab is paralleled in religious terms with conversion and a gradual absorption into the larger universe of Islam through the shrine and belief system that surrounded it.6 Irfan Habib, leading historian of Mughal India, has closely tracked available historical evidence on the Jatts. First by the Chinese traveller Hsuan Tsang in the seventh century, they next appear more definitively in the Chachnāmā, the history of pro- Arab Sindh. In this eighth century text, Habib

mentioned writes,

are said to have lived on the bank of the Indus, which divided them into western and eastern Jatts [...] they are designated dashtī i.e. belonging to the steppes or wastes. There were no small or great among them [...]. Besides

They

pastoralism,

the only other occupations they pursued those of soldiers and boatmen (Habib 1976: 94-95).

were

In the next, century, we hear that they had been summoned by an Arab governor of Sindh to pay the jiziyā tax that was obligatory payment for non-Muslims (Habib 1976: 95; Burton 1851: 47). Scattered though they are, most of the available writings on the Jatts are focused on their migration away from Sindh into Punjab and then delve into their socio-economic life in Punjab. Even the rich historical detail that we have on them in the work of Irfan Habib is rendered as a contribution to a history of Punjab where they were co-opted by the expanding Mughal state. The following paragraph from Habib (1976: 96) is representative:

The four centuries between the eleventh and the sixteenth not only saw a great expansion of the Jatt population; these also apparently witnessed a great transformation in their basis, there being a remarkable conversion from to agriculture. In Sind, where the Jatts first appear in historical record, their name is now borne only by a small caste of camel-breeders — 77,920 in all by the 1901 census — clearly mere survivals of what was once a large pastoral population. But in the Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, the name Jatt or Jat is borne by the most vigorous peasant castes.

economic pastoralism

Having entered the historical record as pre-Islamic pastoralists in Sindh, as soon as large sections of them take up sedentary lifestyles, they also conveniently exit the historical record as pastoralists, re-entering it as sturdy agriculturalists of Punjab. This is, of course, representative of the larger bias in scholarship that unwittingly conforms to the sedentarising vision of the state system, valorising the settled and permanent at the cost of the contingent and changeable. Mobile and pastoral populations are frequently ignored in favour of peasant-based societies that are seen as constituting the state’s ‘real’ politico-economic base (Ratnagar 2004b). Following extensive evidence from pastoral populations all over, it is not really productive to propose that they are somehow ‘outside’ history, entering it only when they transform their economic base into an agrarian one. This assumes pastoralism and agrarian systems are at two ends of a dichotomy. On the contrary, pastoral populations do not subsist in isolation. Instead, they have complex systems of exchange and cooperation with other types of economies. Chetan Singh (1988) also draws attention to this bias in the writing of Indian history when he exposes the fact that the pre-colonial Mughal Empire is typically glossed as having an ‘agrarian system’,7 quite eclipsing the significant tribal and pastoral populations that formed an equally significant part of its socio-economic system. Singh (1988, 1995) analyses the role of tribal and pastoralist populations such as the Jatts in the so-called 'agrarian system' of the pre-colonial Mughal Empire. He argues that the sedentarising Mughal state eventually brought many pastoralists into the ambit of settled agrarian systems, in Punjab. Therefore, it would seem that while the Jatts who moved up into Punjab and its surrounding areas took up agrarian lifestyles, those in Sindh and Kachchh retained a largely pastoral or agro-pastoral character. Here, he suggests that they may have entered into a 'pastoral-sedentary exchange' with surrounding settled economies. The trade in ghī formed a part of the economies of exchange that- pastoral populations entered into with their neighbours. Additionally, services such as labour on agricultural land or manpower for fighting in armies would also have been provided by these populations in exchange for agricultural and tertiary products. Chetan

especially

In colonial survey documents of Sindh, the Jatts find mention

as superior camel breeders of the Rann. An ethnographic survey

notes, ‘They drive camels and tend camels, and their association is almost entirely with these animals. An Officer’s ‘Jutt’ is, in fact, his camel driver, the word being as commonly used for the calling itself, as for the tribe which pursues it.’8 To this day, the Jatts retain an association with their animals, often with derogatory overtones. When I introduced myself to people as a researcher interested in working among the Jatts, I typically elicited a sense of total shock and bewilderment. Especially from the point of view of townspeople who have scant idea about the Jatts, they are perceived to be backward in every sense — socially, economically and from the religious point of view, not ‘proper’ Muslims. This latter view is particularly adhered to by other Muslims and I return to this point in a later chapter, when I discuss the landscapes of Islam in Kachchh. In fact, the term ‘Jatt’ is also used as a derogatory term for anybody held in by the speaker, often for those in a relatively more menial social position.

contempt

Apart from providing camels to the armies of the rulers,

the pastoralists of the region also supplied the caravans of traders moving between Afghanistan, Multan and Rajasthan (Bhattacharya 1995). This suggestion is corroborated in an of some the Jatts’ poetic narratives, which I consider in a later section. Thus, it is not realistic to suggest that they were pastoralists alone, either today or in the past, for it is clear that they have had a series of relationships and transactions with various categories of others.

analysis

Most of the Dānetā Jatts in the Banni area call themselves Malek, which they explain as their nukh or surname. According to

Jatt marriage regulations, marriage ought to take place within the same nukh, i.e., the next level of kinship classification within the (atak, which is used as a 'caste' name. Thus, all Jatts share an atak in common, as Jatts, but within that, there are various nukhs, which is the unit within which marriage, preferably between patrilateral parallel cousins, must take place. 9 However, the circle of Jatts that called themselves Malek was, in my

experience, far larger than particular agnatically related communities with different nukh names that selected marriage partners from within it. Thus, it would be more appropriate, to regard Malek as a title that emerged out of particular kinds of landed relationships, once again signifying their own

perhaps,

interaction with a wider economic system. The Mughal state is known to have appointed some semi-pastoral tribes in Sindh as de facto revenue collectors (Zaidi 1989). In the same colonial ethnographic survey quoted above, the author writes of the ‘Chief of the Jatts’. ‘He has the title of Mulluck, as owned also by the Noomrya and Kurmuttee Chiefs. It is evidently from the same root as ‘Malik’, a master, and signifies ownership, possession and chiefdom.’10 Pastoralism and Trade Networks Revenue earned from the sale of milk and clarified butter the main source of income for the Jatts, Each morning their settlements in Banni, milk is collected and loaded onto

remains across

trucks at the crack of dawn. Men then drive it to wholesalers in major towns within easy access of Banni, such as Bhuj or Nirona. The wholesalers in turn distribute through their retail networks. In Bhuj, by half past six or seven in the morning, milkmen are already doing the rounds of neighbourhoods on their motorcycles or bicycles, large milk and ghī containers strapped to the sides, as they do their delivery route, dispensing milk to their regular customers. During the heavy monsoon downpour in 2003, one of the first effects of Banni's flooding was felt in Bhuj as an absence of the daily milk supply, since the pastoralists had no way of transporting their milk into the

individual

town centres.

Apart from milk, ghīhas been widely associated with nomadic populations, for it stores and carries well, unlike milk, which is perishable and can only become the main source of income

when the animals and their tenders are within easy access of a market to sell it to. When the cross-border trade with Sindh was thriving, the Jatts engaged in wider circuits of trade, and do not appear to be restricted to their present role as milk suppliers. In the past, the Jatts emphasised that they never sold milk in its raw form. Milk was consumed within their households but in order to sell, it was always converted first into something else, like ghī which was a valuable trading commodity. Milk in

therefore something of an 'inalienable item. to such items not through exchange as has been conventionally understood in anthropological understandings its

raw

Value

state

was

accrues

of exchange relationships, but by consciously withholding them from exchange.11 The Jatts emphasise that milk was the basis of their income and wealth and it had to be treated with due deference and respect. Withholding it from the sphere of exchange in its pure form was believed to add to its bounty when converted into milk products for sale. Historically, there was a robust trade in ghībetween Kachchh and Sindh. In 1827 James Burnes, the Residency doctor at Bhuj

and brother of Alexander Burnes, then assistant to the Political at Bhuj, was invited to the court, of Sindh to cure the ailing Amir, the ruler of Sindh. This was the first ever officially

Agent

sanctioned visit of foreign agent into Sindh, and Burnes' account, of a

trip became the basis of subsequent British interest in that region. As he made the journey from Bhuj, riding westward into Sindh with mounting excitement, borne of his 'feverish anxiety to cross the forbidden frontier, and particularly to view the classic river Indus' (Burnes 1829: 11), he campedatLakhpat, a point of crossing between Ivachchh and Sindh, as he awaited instructions from the other side. When permission to cross was granted, he made his way with his entourage across Lakhpat, into Sindhi territory. As he crossed what remained of the eastern arm of the Indus following the earthquake of 1819 and landed on the other side of the stream, he notes '[...] about a hundred camels on the beach, which had come laden with ghee from Sinde, together with several merchants who were planning to embark for Cutch (ibid.: 31). Several miles further inland stood the customs gate where '[a] few Sindhian soldiers, not above eight or ten, whose only place of residence is an open wooden shed, and whose chief the

food is camel's milk, are stationed at Lah to collect, merchandise which passes [...]' (ibid.: 32).

of the

a

tax

on

the

valued products that were 'transported in large leather 12 (Postans 1843:96). For this purpose there were roads that cut across the Rann, providing the Ghī constituted

one

more

traded between Kachchh and Sindh, bottles from one country to the other' chief overland

access between Sindh and Kachchh. There were three such routes, frequented by those who made it their to cross back and forth. To cross the Rann was never an easy business. James Campbell, author of the 1880 edition of

business the Gazetteer

of the Bombay Presidency, informs

us

that

[w]ithout a good guide the passage is at all times dangerous, travellers being sometimes lost even in the dry season. In the hot season, from the overpowering heat, and in the cold weather to avoid the blinding salt glare, the passage is generally made at night. The travellers, guided either by beacons or by the stars, generally spend from the evening to the morning in crossing (Campbell 1880: 14–15). More than a century later, it is still advisable to undertake the at night, if attempted at all, for quite apart from the weather conditions, the region is now heavily patrolled by units of the army and police on both sides of the border. 13 Besides the trade in ghī, other commodities also made their way back and forth in the overland trade between Ivachchh and Sindh prior to the sealing of the border after 1965. Sindhi coarse rice, inflected with red, was a particularly valued in Kachchh and commonly available in the markets until 1965. Qāfilās of camels laden with goods such as rice, dates, silks and cottons crossed the Rann during the trading season between mid-September and mid-June. The safety of these caravans was no small matter, and immunity from wayside looters was bought from the particular tribes of each area as the traders passed through. As Kachchh maintained its own customs tariffs that, were lower than the rate for the rest of British India, the trading route through the Rann was a highlyvalued one. It is clear from this review that pastoral populations of the region were major players in the cross-border trade between Ivachchh and Sindh before Partition. Their migratory routes took them into Sindh not simply in search of pasture lands when the grasslands of Banni became deficient, but also in their role as traders ghī and possibly other commodities that they brought back from Sindh and beyond. The Jatts' narratives also speak of trade with Baluchistan, on the Afghan—Pakistan border, and it is quite likely that their networks extended further north into Afghanistan. Historically, the Jatts tended to have been oriented towards Sindh in search of economic and ecological resources. Following the reorganisation of political borders in

journey

distinctively

commodity

the

region after Partition,

these networks of trade and

routes became inaccessible for

political

reasons.

grazing

Recasting

the

Border

In documenting the experiences of Jatts who are inhabiting the interstices of the nation-state, both literally and figuratively, for they are itinerant Muslims along the border in a state that is avowedly Hindu nationalist in orientation, I draw attention to some of the ways in which their perceived alienation from the modern state system is manifested through their nostalgic about the past. These narratives invoke stories of migration and incorporate Sindh through material and symbolic expressions such as cloth and poetry in ways that serve to unsettle the official status ascribed to Sindh as an ‘outside’. By casting their migration as hijrat — i.e. within an Islamic frame — their narratives are illustrative not just of an apolitical nostalgia for the past, but also an incisive critique of the present political structure.

narratives pastoral discursive

Under cont emporary regimes of state and border management qualitatively different kind of supervision and border patrol from what used to exist under the princely state means that the Jatts cannot move as before into Sindh when they were faced with drought dike conditions in Banni. An international boundary now separates them from the pasture lands that once served as their safety net during droughts. It was fairly for entire villages or qāfīlās of wandering māldhārīs to ,

a

common

cross over into Sindh until the rains returned to Kachchh. Over half a century later, the māldhārīs still recite poetry modelled on the lines of the Sindhi qāfī that speaks of how Partition took these migrants unawares. Having crossed into Sindh, hoping to return with the rains, they were trapped there, their and belongings subsequently ransacked and auctioned by their neighbours and agents of the state. Scarcity-driven migration always occurred into Sindh more often than into Gujarat or Rajasthan, the two other borders of Kachchh, a consequence of the better irrigated land in Sindh. This seems as true for the immediate pre-Partition years as it was for the

possessions

preceding century

or more.

deteriorating in stages following the Partition, and completely cut off after 1971, 14 if māldhārīs wish to move in search of water and fodder, they have to now move around Kachchh or into mainland Gujarat and neighbouring With

access

to Sindh

In some of these places, they are often taken tobe pastoralists from Sindh. Living as they do in Banni, along the border with Sindh, most of them speak either Sindhi or Ivachchhi that is heavily inflected with Sindhi words. An engineer in Bhuj recalled that when he lived in South Gujarat and these pastoralists passed through during their migrations inland, people mistook them for Sindhi māldh\la_\r\l=i_\s. 'I would know immediately that they were our Ivachchhis but the local people there could not tell the difference. This indexes the fusion, at least in the popular mind, of northern Kachchhi Muslim pastoralists with Sindhis. Even in Bhuj, people would sometimes refer to the Jatts in Banni as the 'Sindhi Jatts'. In this chapter, I examine how the trope of mobility, expressed through the Islamic idiom of hijrat, and attachment to particular cultural icons such as cloth and poetry, enables the Jatts of Banni to renegotiate their relationship to the border. If the dominant discourse on the border, as manifested through the official regional patriotism of Gujarat, is one of impermeability and silence, this alternative relationship to the border is one that is borne out of cert ain histories that experience the border in a qualitatively different way. The border between Ivachchh and Sindh, in this perspective, emerges as a continuum rather than a rupture.

Rajasthan.

Mobility and Political Critique The Dānetā Jatts are looked down upon by both the other māldhārī groups of the region as well as the sedentary Jatts precisely because of their associations with mobility. Another pastoralist woman in Banni who was not a Jatt, laughed openly when I told her my research focused on the Jatts. 'They are all charyā [crazy]. They keep roaming about like crazy people; they follow their animals men, women everyone.' When I asked —

was different from her own group who were also pastoralists, she was clear about the difference, 'Yes, we too are māldhārīs, like them. But, we have always stayed in one village and the men went out with the animals and then they came back. We are not like the Jatts; they pick up their houses and wander about here and there.' In a near-universal valorisation of the sedentary ideal, it is often said by the sedentary Garāsiā Jatts that the Dānet\la_\ Jatt lifestyle of wandering is the outcome of a

how that

causal explanation for mobility (cf. Rao and This is one of the ways in which the separation

curse, a common

Casimir

2003).

of the two groups of Jatts by the latter:

—

Dānetā and Garāsiā

—

is

explained

We were one group once upon a time, but, the Dānetā Jatts were cursed by Māī [ancestral figure worshipped by the Garāsiā Jatts], Māīhad a lamb, which was eaten up by the Dānetā Jatte. When she asked where her lamb had disappeared to, none of them owned up to having eaten it. This lamb was named Tītar, which means partridge, and she began calling for it. As she called her lamb's name the t wittering of a partridge began to come out from the stomachs of all the Dānetā Jatts present At this, she realised that they had eaten her lamb and had lied to her, so she cursed them saying, you will always wander from place to place, you will never establish a rooted home and you will always beg from others. If you fail to beg, the burden on your head [their possessions that they carry from place to place] will never lessen and will remain as it is. ,

.

For those whom the Jatt māldhārīs come into contact with, movement represents a lack of fixity and an element of danger embodied by something that has the power to transgress and boundaries. From the point of view of those Jatts who constitute such mobile networks, however, movement is valorised as a religious and cultural ideal. The Dänetä Jatts choose to speak of their tradition of const ant movement with their animals in search of pasture as a religious injunction. In placing

categories

Islam, they migration drawing

within the discursive frame of are much larger symbolic repertoire that hints at the political strategies that they see underlying their desire to remain mobile. Within the framework of Islam, the Jatts refer to their as hijrat, In so doing, they are simultaneously referring upon a

migration seasonal associated

with ecologically driven migration but also a moral pastoral groups, signifying larger injunction to Muslims to migrate, following the foundational and paradigmatic migration of the Prophet between Mecca and Medina. The idea of hijrat, in the Islamic worldview, has to do with the moral duty of all Muslims to migrate from a space described as dār ul to the

(place of war, injustice, apostasy, non-Islam), and into a space conforming to the Islamic ideal of dār ul Islam (abode of peace, Islam, perfection, justice). When migration is presented through the symbolic trope of hijrat, it acquires powerful underlying political connotations Faced with short ages of water and pasture in Banni, the Jatts have no option but to move to a relatively more fertile farm elsewhere in Kachchh, or move outside of Kachchh into mainland Gujarat, Saurashtra or even Rajasthan, to bide time until they receive word of rainfall back in Banni, at which point they return to stay for the rest of the year. But the Jatts also associate mainland Gujarat as a space of conflict, where Muslims are not likely to prosper. Despit e the hardships of Banni, it was still 'home' and they often reiterated this fact,. Yunushā,15 Jatt resident of a village in the middle of the Rann, explained, 'now there is a war in Gujarat; harb

.

go there in search of work as we are Muslims and you know what, that means. So we stay here, in Kachchh. Even if there is no work, we stay here in peace.' There is a clear consciousness that a move east into Gujarat, should be avoided at, all costs. Even if one had to move in search of water and it was better to stay as close as possible to 'home' within the confines of Kachchh. When this movement is described as hijrat, it underscores the fact, that, migration should not, be driven merely in search of economic or material gain. As mainland Gujarat occupies an ambiguous relationship to Islamic notions of legitimate hukūmat, peace and justice, migration towards it was to be avoided even if materially and ecologically it, is more our men cannot

pasture, —

prosperous. A Jatt elder in another settlement in Banni recounted a story of how a couple of generations ago, their pīr would come riding his camel to their village and stay for days and months on end with them: One time we were faced by a drought and many of the villagers had left the village and migrated into Gujarat with their animals. Some people were left behind and they were faced with the prospect of their animals dying of starvation those that did not die this way were eaten up by wild animals. They were in a very wretched state and were what to do. And at that time, the Bāwā sahib [pīr]

everyday; contemplating

ancestors that we should not leave our land; those leaving to go to Gujarat would eventually lose their cattle, while those who stayed here through difficult times would do well and their animals would grow strong and healthy. And then because of the prayers and blessings (du ā) of the pīr, a fence of spider webs came up overnight to protect the animals from the wild predators, and the rains came back and everyone was happy. told who

our

were

This narrative expresses not simply nostalgia for times gone by. It is also a critique of the present, for it reiterates the ability to bear hardship as long as one remains in an ideologically and justifiable space. Rather than migrate into Gujarat where they might have had better economic prospects, it was better to stay where they were relatively better off — politically, if not materially. Although the story is supposed to have occurred a few generations ago at a time when Sindh was a potential destination for scarcity driven migration away from Kachchh, my informant chose to talk about Gujarat instead. The decision to stay through difficult times on one’s own land thus acquires a potent ideological charge not because of the ecological statement it is making, but for its political comment. For it is only in the context of the current socio-political environment that this statement has meaning. Bad luck would descend on those who chose to leave their own land to go to a space that was ecologically better off but politically, morally and ideologically unjust, and therefore untenable.

politically

Migration as hijrat is thus crucially intermeshed with the

larger administrative and ideological structures that the Jatts engage with and does not merely follow from ecological constraints. 16 Yet the idea of mobility cannot be presumed to be axiomatically a source of resistance and critique. Mobility does not in and of itself endow its adherents with the power of critique or anti-structure. To argue that pastoralists are ‘naturally’ predisposed to move, or to value a free and unfettered existence, is to essentialise and reify those very values. As Lila Abu-Lughod (1986: 40) has argued for the Bedouin, despite their attachment to the desert, they think of territory ‘primarily in terms of the people and groups who inhabit it’. Ecological niches and that direct the lifestyles of pastoral peoples, though

constraints

evaluations contribute

they are significant, cannot substitute for the political of other competing groups and networks that also towards how mobility is negotiated on a day-to-day basis. The ideological underpinnings of movement among the Jatts come not from any ‘inherent’ desire to live freely, but are instead directly attendant on the processes of nation-building that they are caught up in, on the border between two nation-states. By casting the desire to move as hijrat, these subjects are able to reinsert themselves as actors with a certain agency of their own within national projects that seek to define and control the border in which they might otherwise be derided as unworthy citizens. In the following chapter I give more concrete examples of state-sponsored border settlement policies that do not favour constituents such as the Jatts. By locating their choices within the discursive framework of Islam, however, they are able to command some respect as adherents of certain kinds of modern, transnational and global religious movements. I return to this theme again in Chapter 4. Expres ions

Material

and

Symbolic of the

Border

For condensed material and symbolic expressions of the cultural celebration of Sindh in the lives of Banni’s pastoralists, one needs to examine the role of cloth and poetry as cultural icons within their universe. It is through such symbols of affect such as cloth, poetry or language that a desire for Sindh can be expressed by Muslim pastoral communities, for it cannot be articulated within the political realm. Ajrakh

Ajrakh is an indigo-based type of block printed cotton cloth common in Sindh and Kachchh and especially widely used among pastoralists. Although it is widely available within Kachchh, among Jatts, ajrakh from Sindh is valued more highly. Ajrakh circulates within spheres of exchange that are entirely male and usually Muslim. 17 It is produced by Muslim men in Sindh and Kachchh and is worn fairly exclusively by Muslims.

High caste Hindus in Kachchh do not use ajrakh because of a taboo on the use of indigo (Varadarajan 1983: 53), and Harijan men only use it occasionally. In both Kachchh and Sindh, the ubiquitous ajrakh wrap is multipurpose piece of cloth; it çoukl be tied as a turban, as a waistcloth (lungī), used to cover oneself at night when sleeping, or just flung across the shoulders as a shawl. Journeying through the Rann, Jatts would frequently assert that they could not sleep at night unless they had an ajrakh sheet to cover with only ajrakh would do. Echoing my own experiences with ajrakh in a

—

Kachchh, Noorjehan Bilgrami (1990: 11) writes of Sindhis:

A Sindhi feels ill at ease without his Ajrak; for him it is an all purpose cloth. It is used as a turban, ‘kummerband’ [waistcloth] and as a shoulder cloth. Women use it as a ‘dupatta’ [scarf] and ‘chaddar’ [body wrap], as a shawl, and sometimes it is converted into a hammock for a child, slung from the trees. It is very commonly spread on the beds as a bed sheet and coverlet. The term ajrakh is thought to be derived from ‘azrak’, the term for blue in Arabic and Persian (Bilgrami 1990: 11; Varadarajan 1983). Indigo has remained the traditional dye used in ajrakh printing. Grown in Sindh in vast quantities (Bilgrami 1990), indigo was a common dye for cotton cloth, especially used for their clothes by ‘all classes of Mohammedans’ (Postans 1843: 93). It was also one of the chief exports from Sindh in the nineteenth century. In Kachchh, the Khatris, a Muslim dyer community, specialise ajrakh printing. IsmailbhāiKhatri, a master printer and dyer and recipient of numerous national and international awards, recounts that their ancestors were asked to come into Kachchh from Sindh by the Rao of Kachchh in the seventeenth century. Blue, red and white are the three typical colours one would find in an ajrakh pattern. Today, chemical dyes are used more often to cut, costs. Jatt men display a particular fondness for ajrakh and they refer to it. as their 'original' garb, even though today many of them have given up ajrakh turbans and wa ist cloths for wear, keeping the former for special occasions. Ajrakh is particularly associated with the māldhārīs and there is a certain economy of authenticity at play here, where in

everyday

ajrakh from Sindh is valued higher than the ones locally produced. I enjoyed buying and using locally produced ajrakh, but it. was soon relatively easy to pick out unusual patterns and the

colours that I knew must have come from across the border. When shown actual pieces that I was told had indeed come from Sindh, I was able to confirm the Sindhi 'type Sindhi ajrakh is .

cloth that is first bleached a stark white, and then produced the dyed colours appear much brighter and more vibrant than on

the hues

the Kachchhi cloth, which are more muted and of groundwater also makes a big difference to the final colour tones. Dhamadka was the only village in Kachchh that produced vegetable dyed ajrakh. Ismailbhāi on

subtle. The

quality

and his brothers ran their ancestral craft from this village, producing exquisite vegetable dyed ajrakh for buyers across the country and overseas. They also produced cheaper chemically dyed ajrakh for local consumption. In the 2001 earthquake, this village was almost completely destroyed. The surviving members of the Khatri family moved to a new location because of the destruction to their homes and workshops. But the move was also necessitated because the earthquake had changed the table in the old village. The unusually high iron content in the water prevented the ajrakh colours from attaining their fullest potential, and so they moved to a new location called, appropriately, Ajrakhpur. Ipart,icularly mention this dimension of water quality and colour specificity to the discussion of ajrakh in order to make the point that it is relatively easy to spot a piece of ajrakh that has come from outside Kachchh. Most of the men in Kachchh wore ajrakh waist and shoulder cloths that looked like they were from across the border. One day, waiting for a bus in a small town in western Kachchh, I saw a man walking by with a particularly outstanding ajrakh wrap. I had never before seen those particular colours, and when he walked by, my research assistant and I commented on its beauty and asked where he had bought it from. 'From here, he said quickly, and walked away. Some minutes later he appeared by my research assistant's side, looked both of us over and asked 'who' we were (Ker Āyo?). When my research assistant said he was a Khatri (who also are the ajrakh printing community), the man quietly said his wrap was from Pakistan before he slipped away again.

groundwater

In Kachchh, as in many other areas in South Asia, it is not unusual to be asked ‘who’ you are, i.e., your religious and caste If classification is ubiquitous among all human in Kachchh too, people would like to be able to classify you in order that they may be better able to comprehend you, your status and motives. In this case, our casual acquaintance in a crowded street had to ascertain who we were before he would credit us with this information, for it was only to be passed on to those who shared those ‘regimes of value’ (Appadurai 1986) that endowed Sindhi ajrakh with its cultural value. Outside of those shared values, ajrakh from Sindh is an illegally smuggled item. Sindhi ajrakh is a prized commodity among Muslims in Kachchh, and it makes its way surreptitiously across the border with regularity. One of my Jatt interlocutors explained to me that no matter how hard they tried in Kachchh, they would never quite get the ajrakh the way it was in Sindh. ‘It is the whiteness of the star that is crucial,’ he explained, referring to the white star in the centre of most traditional ajrakh patterns. ‘Anyone who knows their ajrakh will be able to tell a genuine [i.e. Sindhi] one by looking at the white star,’ he added.

affiliations. societies,

The value of a commodity does not inhere in it but evolves

instead from the social contexts of its production, so ajrakh from Sindh is valued precisely for its connections with that place. In this instance authenticity, as it is expressed for Sindhi ajrakh by some of its consumers in Kachchh, is a product of perceived cultural traits shared in common with Sindh rather than on a premise of cultural distance as Brian Spooner (1986) suggests for the positive western evaluation of authenticity in Persian carpets, where value increases in direct proportion to its from the cultural context of the consumer, allowing the latter to earmark it as something unique.

difference Poetry

Another domain where cultural ties with Sindh are expressed freely by pastoral populations of the Rann is poetry. A largely illiterate population, the Jatts excel in the recitation of qāfī —

classical poetry of Sindh. The most famous poet of this region by far is Shah Abdul Latif of Bhit in Sindh, also called Shah Bhitai, who is said to have lived approximately between 1689-1752 (Sorley 1940: 170). The compositions of Bhitai and others, still

recited today, form a huge mass of oral-historical accounts for the region. The genres known as the qāfī and slier are sung

and are central to the mādhārī ethos. As young and old men sit around a campfire at night or during the day, wandering about the desert after their animals, it becomes a good way to pass the time in this environment. Reciting poetry is presented as a fundamental marker of the pastoral life of ease and independence (cf. Bhattacharya 1995: 81). Apart from reciting classical verses, some well-known poets among the Jatts even compose new ones, keeping the traditional metre and verse style, but imbued with contemporary narratives such as of the or the aftermath of the anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat.

earthquake

The traditional narratives provide a wealth of information, especially in the absence of much historical or ethnographic research done in the region.

One story that illuminates with vivid detail the trade and

social ties that existed across the Rann is taken from the genre of Sasui–Punu, a tragic love story and perhaps one of the more famous compositions by Bhitai. In Sindh, Hindus and Muslims alike have identified with the poetry of Shah Abdul Latif and Sasui. Sasui’s ceaseless wandering in search of her lover was one of the metaphors of exile used in early Sindhi Hindu literary productions following the Partition and their move to India: ‘wandering aimlessly like Sasui,/criss-crossing mountains and streams,/we shred our shoes [..]’ (Zia 1998: 29). More

recently,

Sasui has been

incorporated by

ethnic

nationalist forces regional Sindhi heroine in Pakistan (Verkaaik as a

35).

Bhitai's verses are widely known, recognised and Banni today. The following is a prose version of the sung Sasui-Punu tale as narrated for me by an acknowledged master (ustād) of the genre. It is a fairly representative version of the story reprinted elsewhere (Bhattacharya 1995; Sorley 1940; Verkaaik 2004). Before the actual story, my narrator provided his own contextualisation: 2004:

across

About two hundred years ago, there were flourishing cities in the Rann. Today the Rann is a silent desert but it was not always so. An earthquake some two hundred years ago broke the Allahbund and waters gushed out, drowning all the cities in its wake, and creating the Rann. The cities were ruined and

divided by the water — some on one side of the Rann, and some on the other. It is said that the king of that age was cruel, and Allah never condones injustice, which is why this must have come about. I have seen the ruins of these old cities with my own eyes. If you walk in the Rann, you come across old artefacts — vessels of iron and other such things. As a child I saw them with my own eyes. I don’t know if they would still be there; perhaps when measuring and securing the border, the officials would have removed them; I do not know.

destruction

At the time when these cities were flourishing, traders used

to go back and forth. They would come here from Baluchistan and places up north, hawking their wares, perfumes, silks and opium. In Lakhpat, there used to be a city called Bhambhor. It would be in Sindh now, but then it was all one land. In this city lived a childless Brahmin couple. They went to a seer who predicted that they would have a daughter but that she would end up marrying a Muslim. They were thoroughly distraught when they heard this; they were inconsolable at their fate. How could this be, they kept asking. Sure enough, after

some time, a baby girl was born to them. The wife saicl to her husband, 'it is better that, before she blackens our name [by marrying a Muslim], we set her free. So she put the baby into a small sandiik, and floated her

happened that at that time there was a was washing clothes by the sea. He saw this trunk floating by and thought to himself, 'this trunk must surely contain treasure.' He picked it up. As soon as he opened it, he saw the tiny baby girl in it. The dhobī did not have a child either, so he took the baby home and he and his wife brought, her up as their own. She was named Sasui and grew to be extremely beautiful. Everybody envied her looks, but her father would not agree to give her in marriage into the

sea.

dhobā,

Muslim, who

a

It

so

to anyone.

About the same time, in an area called Makran in Baluchistan, there was a Jatt king by the name of Ari, who was given the title of Malek. Ari had five sons, of whom the youngest was named Punu. One day, their vakīl, a Hindu of the Lohana

caste, was going to Bhambhor on business. Punu said, ‘Now when you go to Sindh, you must find me a bride.’ The minister reached Sindh, and saw all the women who had to buy perfumes and silks from the traders passing

come out

through. He saw Sasui there and liked her immediately. But he could not take her away, so he decided to summon Punu to Sindh. Punu came, won Sasui's heart and the nik\la_\h was completed.

However, when Punu's relatives back in Baluchistan heard what had happened, they were annoyed. Enraged, they asked,

washerman? saying, they loaded

how

can a

So

Jatt's

son

marry the

daughter

of

a mere

up their camels and rode into

Sindh to fetch Punu back. In the dead of night, they gagged him and carried him back to Baluchistan, leaving poor Sasui behind. Sasui woke to find her husband gone. She pined for him for years, and wandered about all over Sindh looking for him in vain. She used to wander about with a goat that looked after her and gave her milk, and wandering thus, she finally met with her death somewhere in the hills of Sindh, near

where Karachi is

today.

She asked the

up and receive her, which is what happened, the tip of her dupattā above ground.

ground to open leaving merely

When Punu finally received word of this, he came to look for her. On coming upon this scene, he was so overcome with grief that he too died on the spot and today their graves lie side by side in Sindh at the spot where they died, united finally in their grief. There are many themes that are worthy of analysis in this complex and multi-layered story and one that is reminiscent of folkloric themes in many cultural contexts. I shall merely point to a few. In the first instance, the story is interesting for the detailed descriptions of the trade connections between Baluchistan and Sindh. Like other well-known narratives in the Sindh–Punjab region such as Hir–Ranjha, which is also a love story that ends in tragedy, these folktales have been analysed as describing an encounter with the outside world. Neeladri Bhattacharya’s (1995: 80) analysis of Sasui–Punu deals with

this theme. He writes, ‘Sassi is fated to love a stranger who will desert her. Her love for Pannun ends in tragedy for both. This kissa [story] powerfully expresses the popular fear of relating to outsiders. The stability and security of the knowable community appears in contrast with the instability of the outside world.’ The positive valence that is given to transgressors of societal norms who are then united only in death is suggested as a way that pastoral communities attempt to hold on to their livelihoods in the face of potential sedentarisation. What is more significant for my own analysis, however, is

the context within which this story was repeated for me. As the present is the most powerful filter through which we recall events of the past, the poet started by locating the popular folk tale within a landscape of a border and security guards who are measuring the land. When he mentions Bhambhor being in Lakhpat, he is not entirely correct, for Bhambor is mentioned as a possible ancient site in Lower Sindh. Richard F. Burton wrote, [t]he town is supposed to have been built upon the plain and was destroyed by divine wrath in one night as a consequence of its ruler’s sins. To judge from appearances the place must at one time have been rich and populous: even now after heavy rains the people find coins, ornaments and broken pieces of metal amongst the ruins of the Fort (Burton 1851: 389, 25n). In his imagination, Sindh and Kachchh remain tied together inexorably. When he says for instance, ‘then it was all one land,’ again he is not strictly correct. For Kachchh and Sindh, even before they nested within two separate national entities bitterly opposed to each other, were always involved in how best to demarcate their borders from each other, as we know from evidence of grazing and boundary disputes. However, what is clear is that in the imagination of these migrant pastoralists, the land was one land, for the state did not insert itself into their lives in quite the same way as it does now. Despite border disputes at the official level, pastoralists came and went without giving the question of a border much thought. Significantly, these narratives, as they are recited today, continue to reflect territory as it was

thought of in the past, allowing them to temporarily suspend the current geo-political reality. By narrating these stories in an everyday context, the pastoralists of northern Kachchh are subscribing to a somewhat different notion of territorial inclusivity than that which is imagined in official narratives of the region which draw a firm border between Kachchh and Sindh.

Another popularly recited genre is that of Umar—Marai, a folk a short, verse called 'Motī Μī (heavy rain), Marai is a young girl from Sindh, held captive by Umar. In some versions she falls in love with her captor, and in others she is already in love with Umar and abducted by an evil king Hamir Sumra. 18 In 'Motīi Mī, she details the arrival of the rains in her hometown, Malir. 'It has rained; the trees are in bloom and the fruit, is ripe for picking; my friends are in the gardens waiting for me to pick the fruit with them; please let me go,' she pleads with her captor. This narrative is evocative for ite description of the landscape of lower Sindh, of the arrival of the rains in Malir. The remembered landscape that, rich scaffolding to all these narratives is a landscape that belongs in Sindh.

tale from the Thar region in Sindh. In

provides

Stories like these are narrated and sung in an everyday

context in Banni today and deal with the proximity of Sindh in a manner quite different from the manner in which the official regional narratives have chosen to deal with it. In an analysis of Bedouin poetry, Lila Abu-Lughod (1986: 185) argues that a ‘discourse on sentiment’ can also be a ‘discourse of defiance’ when poetic narratives embody elements that contradict the system from below. For those links with a territory that cannot be freely expressed in everyday political or economic contexts, poetic narratives or attachment to cloth become a way in which the system can be critiqued from within, in terms that are borrowed from other lexicons of resistance. Poetry and ajrakh ways in which Sindh becomes present in an everyday sense for the Jatts. This form of cultural flow across a boundary that is officially presented as discrete and impermeable provides an interesting twist to the collective imagination of a region. The Jatts’ subjective experience of a region encompasses Sindh and Kachchh and occupies a qualitatively different register from the official political and territorial reference points for Kachchh and

become

Sindh Sindh

as as

two discrete and distinct entities. The Jatts embrace intimately as it is othered by the regional discourse

of Gujarati asmit\la_\.

Notes 1.

2.

3. 4.

See, for instance, Ludden (1994) ; Zaidi (1989). Although Pakistan came into existence in 1947, it was only in 1965, following a war with India, that the Kachchh-Sindh border became less fluid and came under a rigid system of surveillance that has continued ever since.

Chapter 3 has

There is

a

a brief history of this conflict, brief monograph describing the Fakīrānī Jatts in Pakistan by

Westphal-Hellbusch (1964). See, for instance, Darling (1925). In chapter 4, I discuss in some more detail the role of shrines and saints in the contexts of pastoral life. 7. His reference here is most. directly to Irfan Habib's classic text, The Agrarian System of Mughal India. 8. Description of Remarkable People and Places of Sind, MSA General Department 1862-64: vol. 26, Compi, no. 31 of 1862/63, 9. FBD marriage is the ideal, often compromised in practice; see Abu-Lughod 5. 6.

(1986). 10. Description of Remarkable People and Places of Sind, MSA General Department 1862-64: vol. 26, Compi, no. 31 of 1862/63. 11. See, for example, Weiner (1992). 12. For references to the trade link between these regions and the commodities exchanged, see Campbell (1880) ; Postans (1843). fictional account of crossing the Rann, albeit brief 13· For an evocative see Daruwalla (1979). 14. Chapter 3 describes the significance of this date. 15. Bhāi (brother) is attached as a suffix to male names as a way of showing —

—

respect, For similar arguments among pastoral societies who engage with political structures in addition to ecological ones, see the work of Agrawal 1999 ; Ahmed (1983); Bhattacharya (1995) ; and Rao (2003). 17. On the contrary, Hoskins (1989) gives an example from eastern Indonesia, where indigo dyeing and weaving is strictly confined to women and transmitted in the matriline as a 'cult of female secrets'. In either case, however, the use of indigo dyed cloth seems to follow strictly prescribed patterns of use and exchange. 18. See Harald Tambs-Lyche (1997 : 184) for narratives from Saurashtra that also mention Hamir Sum ra as an evil king of Sindh. He appears as the villain in so many tales across the board that this may be a metaphoric reference to the state and structures of power rather than a particular historic figure as such. 16.

1 Nation and Region Religion, Border: a Defining 3

The Jatt example is a stark contrast with another group in Kachchh that also has a history of transborder ties with Sindh but commemorated quite differently in either case. The Meghwal Harijans, who moved into Kachchh from Sindh in 1971 and after, prefer to think of each place as distinct and would rather not celebrate their cross-border history, unlike the Jatts of the last chapter. An analysis of Meghwal migration into Kachchh is important also because it helps to articulate an ethnography of the state during its crucial early postcolonial years. A close reading of archival sources reveals the unsettled and fluid nature of the boundary between Kachchh and Sindh from at least the nineteenth century onwards. It was precisely this fluidity that enabled a section of the population to make a determined move across the border from Sindh into Kachchh. I should clarify here that this was not in any way an isolated The Partition of the subcontinent led to large-scale population exchanges across the newly demarcated border. For instance, a large number of Hindus from Sindh crossed over into Kachchh too. But the case of the Meghwal migrants is somewhat different, not least because this move was about two and a half decades after the events of Partition. This move has an important bearing on the manner in which frontier populations are able to make creative use of the state’s settlement polices on the border to redefine their own with religion, region and nation. This chapter will also some historical contextualisation for the manner in which the border has been enunciated over a period of time, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of the present.

occurrence. permanently negotiated identification provide

Lack of closure on the issue of boundary demarcation during

political

the period of the princely state in Kachchh led to heightened debates on the border issue after the Partition in 1947. The question of defining a clear and unambiguous border between Kachchh and Sindh has occupied top administrative priority in

Settlers, Saints and Sovereigns the

area

since then. The material in this

chapter also gives some

historical depth to the political concerns that animate Gujarati asmitā.Itwill become clear that policies concerned with border definition and the essentialist views on Hindus and Muslims articulated by the Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002 are not new, but were put into practice in some instances soon after Partition took place. Thus, I revisit some of the debates that engaged this region during the nineteenth century colonial state's in Sindh, for these meticulously documented debates are a critical precursor for subsequent policies on the border. In the nineteenth century, a triangulated debate took place the colonial authorities in Sindh, the princely state in Kachchh, and the British Residents who were stationed at Kachchh. The contours of this debate provide remarkable insight into the more recent border conflicts of the twentieth century and also allow us a window into the mechanics of border settlement and definition, the essential tools of modern state formation.

interventions between

Ethnographically, this chapter examines the movement from

Sindh to Kachchh of Meghwal Harijans2 in 1971 to suggest that borders are defined not just territorially but also socially. Formerly known as the Untouchables, or the Depressed Classes, these low and traditionally outcaste populations crossed the border from Sindh into Kachchh during the India–Pakistan war of 1971. In making this move, they were faced with the prospect of negotiating a new identity for themselves within a new social and political context. Crucial to this negotiation was the fact that these migrants attempted to assimilate as a part of the majority community of Hindus in India, re-inventing their identity within a more sharply focused ‘Hindu’ paradigm. The Meghwals remain a socially disenfranchised group. Even as they remain socially victimised, their move into Kachchh brings them the advantages of affirmative action and a different kind of power. They now attempt to identify within regional Gujarati political discourse as Hindus, an identity that replaces not without irony, the low caste marker that has traditionally alienated them from the of mainstream caste Hindu society.

perspective The

Border

In March 2003, a 60-year-old Harijan man was arrested by the Indian Border Security Force as he attempted to illegally cross

Defining a Border

into Kachchh from Sindh in Pakistan. When interrogated, he admitted that he was moved to do this in order to see his older sister who had been married into a village on the Indian side of the border when he was a young boy. Complaining of ‘harassment’ back at home, he expressed a desire to live with his sister. The District Superintendent of Police in Kachchh initially ‘Since he is Pakistani and has illegally crossed the border, an offence has been registered against him’ (Maheshwari 2003). The Indian police and border forces routinely apprehend people trying to cross into the country illegally. What is about this case, however, is the special treatment given to the illegal border crossing and the high profile coverage in the local and regional newspapers. Newspapers in Kachchh seem to enjoy covering cases of illegal border crossing and nearly every day there is some mention or the other of ‘Pakistanis’ apprehended, the discovery of telltale ‘footprints’ that belie the innocence of their owners as they skulk across the forbidden border, and gruesome stories of foiled escape.3 Like all other such cases this story was covered in the local newspaper, Kachchh Mitra, but it also received substantial coverage in the English The Indian Express published for the region from Rajkot. In the end, the police declared that he was ‘at liberty to apply for Indian and that his application would be considered with due respect (ibid.). He was eventually told he could stay in India and the apparent illegality of his move was soon forgotten.

pronounced,

noteworthy

citizenship’

In an important contribution to borderland studies, Peter

Sahlins (1998) has argued that nation-building is often seen as the unilateral imposition of a ‘national’ culture onto all the constituents of the nation, including its peripheries. In a study of the Catalan borderlands between France and Spain in the and nineteenth centuries, he makes two key points. First, local communities retain ties of locality even as they partake of the national culture, i.e. they do not accept the latter imposition uncritically; and second, borderland communities can actually help in the definition of national boundaries even as they negotiate their own village level disputes and issues of local In his argument, local claims in demarcating village level boundaries and negotiating territoriality map onto and, on occasion, even precede what is to eventually become a national aspiration of border definition.

eighteenth territoriality.

Peter Sahlins’ point is important because it alerts us to the fact that local communities can indeed enable the more centralised project of border definition. However, in his work, boundaries remain defined essentially as territorial. Thus, it is from local ideas of bounded village communities that he sees more abstract notions of national territoriality emerge. Although borders are in a basic sense, they also have a social dimension to them. In the context of Kachchh and Sindh, the border remains socially fluid even after decades of its territorial demarcation. There is little differentiation between one side and another in terms of language, religion, appearance or kinship and peoples’ routine of the law as they cross back and forth to meet friends and family, or to buy and sell, compromising the political, territorial border with its legitimising ideology of impermeability.

territorial transgressions

whether modern or pre-modern, is about territorial boundaries in one The border question, from the point of view of the state,

sense, but in another sense, it is also about social boundaries. ‘Frontiers of culture’ (Wilson and Donnan 1998: 11) that transgress political boundaries often pose the greatest threat to the vision of a bounded sovereign state. State regimes inevitably attempt to domesticate such threats to its vision of boundedness. Below, I discuss some of the ways in which early attempts to carve out a social boundary were implemented after the political between India and Pakistan had already come into effect. The migration and resettlement of the Meghwal Harijans becomes an element in the larger scheme of the postcolonial state’s adoption of settlement practices and border management. This particular settlement policy ought to be situated with regard to the larger project of the settling of ‘anomalous’ populations and securing frontiers of rule. There is a lot of inspired research on the of frontier populations in South Asia through the direct or indirect agency of the state.4 The growing field of ecological history, especially rich in research based in Africa, constitutes excellent source for examining how state discourses of and sedentarisation become aspects of social control and consolidation.5 These case studies discuss the manner in which settlement rights are conferred by the state upon particular groups of people as they attempt to expand the frontiers — both physical and conceptual — of their rule. The inhabitants of frontier areas need not always passive subjects in such projects (Bhattacharya

nationalist

boundary

settlement another conservation

Map

4: TharParkar Location

Source: Detail from 'India and Adjacent Countries', © Survey of India, 1972 (Map and Geospatial Information Collection, Olin Library, Cornell University).

1995; Sahlins 1989; Sauli 2003). On the other hand, as I discuss below, local subjects need not always contest the state project either; in fact, they might make creative use of the state such that they are also able to further their own more localised ends, such as the example cited above of the man crossing into Kachchh to spend time in his sister’s village ending up with citizenship benefits without much fuss. This entitlement is certainly not available to all those who might wish to melt the border away. The state’s initial response to his crossing was to identify him as a Pakistani and thereafter to register an offence against his as duly required by protocol. The same would have been done for a Muslim pastoralist in a similar situation. But rather than languishing in prison as others might have, in this case, the Harijan man actually obtained Indian citizenship. Who is at the receiving end of the state’s largesse in such matters and the timing of such episodes are important markers in the of the state as it seeks to establish its identity and create its borders.

transgression biography On the

Margins

of Sindh

TharParkar, from where the Meghwals moved to Kachchh in 1971, is a southern district of Sindh, just across the Rann from northern Kachchh. Under British administration, it existed as Thar and Parkar, subsequently joined into the single district of TharParkar. Thar is the desert that extends across the border divided between Sindh and Rajasthan, while Parkar is the more fertile lower area. TharParkar emerges, for much of the period that we have accounts of it, as an indeterminate zone stretching between Kachchh and Sindh, completely integrated into neither one nor the other, but with links to both regions. In this sense, it could well be a typical ‘frontier’ as described by Thomas M. Wilson and Hastings Donnan (1998: 9), a zone of possibilities that are an aspect of any border. Wilson and Donnan describe frontiers as ‘territorial zones of varying width which stretch across and away from borders, within which people negotiate a variety of behaviours and associated with their membership in nations and states’. During the colonial period, administrators were also puzzled by its elusive nature, as the region under the nominal authority of

separately

transition extending meanings

Hindu chiefs of the Sodha clan continued to elude the authority of the precolonial Amirs as well as the British after the colonisation of Sindh in 1843.6

There was a long tradition of deeply institutionalised ties

between Kachchh and TharParkar. The Jadeja rulers of Kachchh cemented marriage alliances with the Sodhas of TharParkar, who also styled themselves as members of a Rajput social elite. they happened to come under pressure from a political authority in Sindh, either from the Amirs or later on from the state, the Sodha chiefs of TharParkar would often seek refuge in Kachchh, where the benefit of marital ties with the ruling Jadejas assured them full protection (Raikes 1856; Zaidi 1989). A history of close kin ties across the border in Kachchh and a supposedly attenuated relationship with the central authority in Sindh contributed to TharParkar’s unsettled status between Kachchh and Sindh, neither here nor there as far as hard and fast political allegiances were to be measured. Under the colonial state in Sindh, TharParkar’s ambiguity was heightened even further.

Whenever colonial

Colonial Interventions

In colonial documentation, Thar and Parkar are described as outlying areas, replete with robbers, bandits, and ‘inhabited [...] by independent tribes addicted to plundering’ (Raikes 1856: 14; emphasis added). This is, of course, reminiscent of the colonial discourse on ‘wild’ and ‘criminal’ tribes, a discourse designed to curb resistance to colonial authority (see, for example, Nigam 1990a, 1990b; Radhakrishna 2001). In the present con-text, it should be kept in mind that at the time that Thar and Parkar were being written about as ‘disturbed’ areas, the British authorities were just beginning to establish treaty relations with the princely state of Kachchh, from their point of view an frontier post for access to Sindh. Colonial policy in Thar and Parkar should, therefore, be situated within their more general expansionist project in Sindh.

important Contentious Borders

The border between Kachchh and Sindh remained ambiguously defined throughout the nineteenth century. This further added to

administrators

the unsettled status of Thar and Parkar’s affiliations, colonial and map-makers not quite sure where exactly to situate it. In 1856, Stanley Napier Raikes wrote, Consequent on the Thurr and Parkur administration having been conducted from Bhooj, together with the general want of information regarding these out-of-the-way districts, it has often been supposed that they form a portion of the hereditary States of the Kutch Principality, or have been transferred to His Highness the Rao of Kutch by the British Government. In the map of Sind prepared in the Quartermaster General’s Office, the Thurr and Parkur districts will be observed to occupy a nondescript position; while the Thurr and Parkur is only occasionally spoken of with the three other Collectorates as forming an integral part of British Sind (Raikes 1856: 1). In 1885, a party of the Survey of India was engaged in surveying and mapping the princely state of Kachchh. During this time, it was brought to the notice of the Commissioner in Sindh at Karachi by his subordinate in the southern districts of Thar and Parkar that Colonel Pullan, in charge of the Kutch Topographical Party, had extended his survey to ‘the Sind side of the Runn for the reason as he believes that the Cutch Darbar contend that the whole of the Runn is part of their territory’.7 Thar and Parkar were affected the most by potential border disputes with Kachchh, situated as they were just across the Rann. A few years earlier, the Political Superintendent of Thar and Parkar had recommended that some boundary marker be decided upon. ‘[...] there are here and there certain spots in the Rann which are by custom generally accepted as showing the line of boundary[...…] but I think it is desirable on all grounds that accurate boundaries be determined ...…].’8 Despite a few feeble attempts at clearly demarcating the border

between Kachchh and Sindh, nothing concrete had materialised and the British Government had made it clear in no terms that they were not interested in getting involved in boundary disputes of any sort.9 As long as there remained some kind of customary agreement between Sindh and the rulers of Kachchh on the sharing of grazing lands in the Rann, the Government declared that sleeping dogs ought not to be disturbed. Yet the debate raged on. The crux of the problem arose

uncertain

because the map of Kachchh that was being outlined was titled ‘Cutch and the Runn’. This led to debates over possessive rights; who did the Rann belong to? How could the state of Kachchh claim the entire Rann? Sindh finally declared that the claims of the Kachchh state were quite preposterous and based solely on the fact that the Rann was called ‘The Rann of Kachchh’. This gave them about as much claim to its entirety, declared the of Sindh, as the Nawab of Cambay might claim to the whole of the Gulf of Cambay because of its name! 10 The boundary issue was never quite resolved and a number of subsequent maps, including Colonel Pullan’s, were issued without boundary marks in the Rann at all (Gupta 1969).

Commissioner

The skirmish of the late nineteenth century became the basis

for a series of periodic claims asserted by either side, but for the most part, the question of delineating a secure and final boundary between Kachchh and Sindh was ignored after a few heated letters exchanged between officers across the Rann. After the withdrawal of the British from this region and the consequent of charge to the independent states of India and Pakistan, the boundary issue could not be shelved any longer. At issue was the nature of the Rann itself. Pakistan claimed it was an ‘inland lake’ or a ‘dead sea’ and according to international practice such bodies, ought to be divided down the middle. India repeatedly claimed it was a ‘marsh’ and that all maps of the region including those in the colonial gazetteers showed that the Kachchh boundary ended at Thar and Parkar in Sindh, i.e., the Rann was theirs entirely. The basis on which these claims and counterclaims were made was various colonial cartographic and ethnographic productions. 11

devolution

regarding

The problem of the Rann’s ownership thus long precedes the

armed conflict over it between India and Pakistan in 1965, or even the Partition of the country in 1947. It is in the debates taking place over the Rann and its adjacent territories in the nineteenth century that we can discern early versions of the idea that the creation of boundaries is about territory in one sense, but also about the kinds of people that live in them — i.e., their social dimensions. TharParkar remained an ambiguously claimed territory

throughout the colonial period. Situated as it was on the border between Kachchh and Sindh, somewhat on the periphery of the

central authority in Sindh, under a deployment of British forces from Kachchh and related closely to the neighbouring states of Kachchh and Marwar in Rajasthan, their political and allegiances were somewhat ambiguously defined. In short, ought they to be more properly integrated into Kachchh, or allowed to retain allegiance to Sindh? In 1856, the Political Agent in Kachchh wrote,

territorial

The Desert [TharParkar] has no affinity with the alluvial plains of Sind; it stands apart from them in every respect, in soil, and produce, and in the language, habits, and feelings of the people; it constitutes, in short, a portion of Rajpootana, but with a larger sprinkling of Mahomedans consequent on its proximity to Sind 12 (emphasis added).

differing

Stanley Napier Raikes further added that the Hindu residents of Thar and Parkar must have a ‘natural antipathy to their Mahomedan rulers’ (Raikes 1856: 30; emphasis added) and so should be considered closer to Kachchh. The debate was rapidly boiling down to TharParkar being a Hindu dominated area in Muslim majority Sindh. Early census figures, though of accuracy, do indicate a majority of Hindus in the region. In 1854, they were said to constitute 67.8 per cent of the total and in 1856 they were 60.5 per cent of the total (ibid.: 46–47). However, census categories, as we know, deal with that can be unambiguously enumerated. These documents mention that the population of TharParkar at this time consisted of Sodha Rajput chiefs, ‘Banians and Lowanas’ who were Hindu merchants, Memons — Muslim merchants, and a variety of Muslim ‘tribes’ such as the Noray, Raoma and Khosa. Besides these are mentioned Muslim pastoralists and then Bhils and Kolis who are also called ‘tribes’ but are of ‘indeterminate religion’ (ibid.). When describing the Bhils and Kolis, Raikes admits that they are not acknowledged by either the Muslims or Hindus, but that they consider themselves to be Hindus. Similarly, the Sodha Rajputs were enumerated as Hindu in census and their women married into the Hindu Jadeja royal family of Kachchh, but some of them also married into the ‘Raoma and Noray tribes [...] of Mahomedan origin’ (ibid.: 6). The term ‘Rajput’ itself has been used to denote both Muslims as well as Hindus (Mukta 1994: 51). What administrative documents

questionable population identities

documents,

record as ‘Hindu’ or ‘Muslim’ therefore does not give substantive information about those included within the category. What becomes clear is that over a period of time, the subjective disposition of a population (such as religion, cultural affinity) became the basis for determining how a region’s territorial boundaries ought to be drawn. Although largely a desert tract with limited cultivation, the district of TharParkar was by no means useless for the colonial state. Its records noted that administered the area stood much to gain by virtue of its being a superior ‘cattle-breeding country, and the agriculturalists of Guzerat, Kutch, and Hyderabad are supplied with a cheap and excellent breed of cattle’. It was also on the most direct line of trade between the port of Mandvi in southern Kachchh and Marwar in interior Rajasthan.13 Although they were agreed upon the fact that the ‘anomalous state of things’14 in TharParkar should be brought to an end, colonial authorities in Sindh and successive Political Agents in Kachchh could not agree on the outcome. If the Agent stationed at Kachchh claimed that it was closer to them because of cultural and religious affinity, the Commissioner in Sindh responded that it was an integral part of Sindh as it had always, albeit nominally, rendered allegiance to the court of Sindh.15 The colonial authorities wanted to the issue by suggesting that the British Agent in Kachchh be handed over the additional charge of Deputy Collector of Thar and Parkar, the said districts being handed over nominally to the ruler of Kachchh. 16 This arrangement was not acceptable to the ruler of Kachchh, and Thar and Parkar remained with Sindh, under the charge of a Political Superintendent especially nominated for the area, who reported to the Commissioner of Sindh.

whoever

resolve

This early history of TharParkar and the various claims

and counterclaims on it provides an important insight into the larger problematic of how borders are defined and maintained. TharParkar officially remained with Sindh after 1947 but to maintain close ties of marriage and trade with Kachchh, especially in its northern and north-eastern areas. This until 1965, when the border dispute flared into an armed conflict. At this time, the border between Kachchh and Sindh transformed from a ‘soft’ border to a more rigorously policed one. Official17 travel and trade contacts were brought to an

continued continued

end at this time. The weekly steamer service that connected Karachi with Bombay via Kachchh undertook its last voyage in 1965. Six years after these events, in 1971, a large contingent of Meghwals from TharParkar decided to cross the border into Kachchh where they were to settle in perpetuity with considerable assistance from the Indian state. The rest of this chapter presents their story and reflects on its implications for a theory on state formation. Meghwals Meghwals are one of the former ‘Untouchable’ communities and today are referred to in Kachchh by the generic term Harijan. In postcolonial India, the term ‘Harijan’ or more properly ‘Dalit’ has replaced the individual community names of the former Untouchables who are legally and constitutionally known as Scheduled Castes. I use the term Meghwal to indicate the specific group concerned and to avoid collapsing their identity into a generic Harijan, Dalit or Scheduled Caste identity. The Meghwals in Kachchh are further divided into four endogamous — Maheshwari, Marwara, Charania and Gujara — all of them tracing different routes through which they arrived and in the district. According to the 2001 census, Meghwals constitute 6.77 per cent of the total population of Kachchh, and they account for as much as 71.38 per cent of the total Scheduled Caste population in the district. According to where they claim origin — Marwara from Marwar, Maheshwari from Sindh, Gujara and Charania from Gujarat (Kochara 1996) and when they arrived into Kachchh, there are minor variations in dress and language between them. They also conduct themselves as endogamous groups.

subgroups settled

TharParkar Meghwals refer to themselves as the Maru

Meghwals because they trace their origins from Marwar, but would like to distinguish themselves from the Marwara Meghwals who also trace their origins to Marwar but did not come from TharParkar. The style of dress and social habits of the Maru Meghwals tend to approximate those of the Sodha Rajputs amongst whom they lived in close but strained proximity in TharParkar. It ought to be emphasised that the movement of the Meghwals between Kachchh and Sindh has been taking place over a long period of time and has been circulatory in nature.

My discussion of their unidirectional move in 1971 is not meant to obliterate the centuries of coming and going between Kachchh and TharParkar. Colonial ethnographers refer to them in Kachchh in the nineteenth century and local historical memory associates them with the ruler Khengarji I (r. 1510–86), who is credited with the consolidation of the state of Kachchh with its capital at Bhuj in 1510. Meghwals in Kachchh's History complex political and familial feuds that marked the early struggle for power, the young Khengarji I, future king of Kachchh, was said to be in flight from a wicked uncle. This uncle, Jam Rawal, went on to eventually found the independent kingdom of Nawanagar or Jamnagar in present-day Saurashtra. to erase all opposition to him, he was targeting his young nephew. During his flight from Jam Rawal, the young Khengarji took refuge in Saurashtra as well as in Ahmedabad while it was ruled by Sultan Mahmud Begada. Oral sources in Kachchh hold that during his dramatic escape, he was helped by a loyal Meghwal. In return for saving his life, and by extension the life of the entire lineage, for Khengarji was the first of a long lineage of Jadejas, a Meghwal was always present as facilitator at the of the ruler in Bhuj. Many older residents of Bhuj who were able to recall the coronation of the last ruler, Madansinhji, in 1948 18 asserted that it was always a Meghwal who performed the rājtilak 19 (Kochara 1996). Meghwals have been associated with Kachchh for some centuries at least, if we go by local In the

Determined

coronation

historical renditions such as these. Even as I focus on the 1971 migration from TharParkar, the longue durée of movement in this area must be kept in mind.

population

As former Untouchables who worked as leather tanners and

shoemakers, the Meghwals were and continue to be considered as a low caste from the perspective of the Hindu caste hierarchy. Leather work is ‘impure’, for it involves dealing with dead cows. In TharParkar, Sodha Rajputs constituted the socially and dominant group. Low castes like the Meghwals, Chamars and Dheds were strongly discriminated against as ‘polluting castes’. In his survey of the castes and tribes of the Bombay the colonial ethnographer Enthoven (1922: 44) remarked of the Meghwals,

economically Presidency,

Their touch is defiling. They are not allowed to draw water from the village well. They are obliged to live beyond the outskirts of villages. The village barber will not shave them. The village washerman will not wash their clothes. They are not allowed to enter recognised Hindu temples and to take part in orthodox Hindu ceremonies. Even after Independence and subsequent policy interventions meant to uplift the Scheduled Castes in India, social taboos against them tend to persist. As they benefit from reservations in service and state-run educational institutions, they are occasionally economically and politically well-to-do. The social sanction against them is relatively harder to overcome.

government

Maniben.20 who moved to Kachchh in 1971, explained that, while in TharParkar, they developed a distinct style of their clothes with ribbons and coloured thread because the upper caste Sodhas did not, permit them to on their use gotā gold and silver thread and brocade work a for the reserved castes. clothes, prerogative upper Today, these have earned international for the intricate repute Meghwals they produce in imitation of the Sodha style. Having broken away from the social context that restricted the expression of their freedom, they are now able to establish their identities afresh in Kachchh. Social identities become subtly transformed through the medium of bodily adornment In her social history of post-abolition Zanzibar, Laura Fair (2001) describes how clothing practices defined and transformed social identities. the formal abolition of slavery, former slaves were able to experiment with their new-found identities as free persons; one of the media through which they chose to express this liberty was in the realm of clothing practice. Fair observes that 'former slaves and their freeborn children began adopting elements of free dress that they had formerly been forbidden from wearing, particularly head coverings and shoes, as well as creating new forms of dress as a public and daily expression of their growing autonomy and economic might' (Fair 2001: 65). The Meghwals have similarly managed to break away from the clothing taboos that they were formerly subjected to, and in fact clothing has instrumental to their new-found economic success through the work they perform for Kala Raksha, an NGO under which they are organised for artisanal production. ,

embellishing

embroidery —

—

embroidery .

Following

become

Often barred from entering into higher caste Hindu temples, Meghwals, like other Untouchable castes, developed their own structures of ritual worship. Every Meghwal quarter in villages across Kachchh has a small shrine dedicated to Rāmdev Pīr, the

deity worshipped by all members of this community. Rāmdev's main temple is located in Ranuja in Rajasthan, where Meghwals go on pilgrimage in large numbers every year during the annual festival (see, for example, Mukta 1994). In what is perhaps the only contemporary in-depth, albeit controversial, analysis of Meghwal ritual beliefs and practices, Dominique-Sila Khan (1997) traces the development of the cult of Râmdev through the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries. According to her, the cult of Râmdev originated with the Ismaili Muslims, gradually becoming independent. She concludes that the Rāmdev cult should be seen as 'a 'forgotten branch' of Indian Ismailism' (Khan 1997: 61), a tradition gradually appropriated and transformed by the Hindu Rajputs. In her analysis, the Meghwals retain aspects of the earlier syncretic religion. She argues,

It is instead among a much more limited number of devotees, mainly the untouchables of the Meghval community, that one can still perceive the traces of an ancient tradition which has retained most of the embarrassing elements gradually wiped out by Rajputisation: links with the untouchables, Tantrism and Islam (ibid.: 66). Dominique-Sila Khan identifies the Meghwals as the bearers of a mixed tradition, tenaciously holding on to it even as it was reformed at the higher social level, among its higher caste followers. Parità Mukta (1994) suggests another interpretation

getting

of the Râmdev tradition when she suggest s that Rāmdev was a Rajput warrior martyr who became deified over a period of time

through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Beginning as a Rajput figure, he slowly became accepted by a variety of peasant and artisan communities who inevitably imbued him with different meanings and social contexts. According to Mukta (1994: 58), Rāmdev moved from a Rajput hero to a 'champion of the dalits', suggesting an opposite trajectory from that of Khan's.

Rāmdev category, In either

represents a hybrid interpretation, on of Muslim, aspects drawing equally Rajput as well as the Hindu bhakti symbolism. Iconic depictions of Rāmdev Pīr in Kachchh today retain the flavour of his Rajput martial past, for he is always depicted as a warrior seated on a horse. Rāmdev temples in Kachchh depict him along with the more mainstream Hindu pantheon. Prevailing temple iconography among the Meghwals, especially the iconic representations of Ramdev in Kachchh, suggests that they see themselves firmly participating in the wider Hindu belief system. This is also in keeping with the more general political position adopted by the dalits in Gujarat who have tended to adopt the Gandhian position on dalits, pushing for a reform of Hindu society placing themselves firmly within it instead of favouring B. R. Ambedkar's strategy of emancipatory conversion out of Hinduism. ,

Meghwal Resettlement: A Case Study

In the extensive academic and popular discourse on Partition and the attendant ethnic and religious violence that took place in the massive exchange of populations, the predominant remains on the polarisation of religious identity around the moment of 1947 which is taken to be a national, political and social rupture. In the aftermath of the events of 1947, one was either Hindu or Muslim, moving therefore either to India or to Pakistan. While this bipolar identity was certainly the dominant political rhetoric of the time of Partition, this position does not take into account those who lived in territories that were affected by the Partition, but who were not Hindu or Muslim but rather somewhere in between. The ethnography in this chapter deals with precisely such an in-between category. The Meghwals based in TharParkar district were not Muslim, but they had no simple claim to Hinduism either, given the nature of their contested relationship to the Hindu caste hierarchy. Analysing their move into Kachchh, this chapter also extends the terms of discourse away from the moment of Partition in 1947, to attend to those experiences of migration that were slower and somewhat more removed from the first moment of Partition. 1971 is not an accidental moment either, for national identities were reshuffled in the region once

emphasis

immediately unambiguously

again with the creation of Bangladesh as a separate nation-state. But my aim is to argue that by picking up various strands of movement that were not all clustered around 1947, we the idea that Partition was experienced in the same way by all the members of a given community (e.g., Feldman 2003).

complicate

Pratapdas and his seven brothers lived in a village called He Adigam in TharParkar district's NagarParkar his secondary education in TharParkar and in 1959 was appointed a teacher in the local High School. He stayed with that job until the war in 1971, during which period he moved into Kachchh with his immediate family. Unlike a lot of the Hindus from other parts of Sindh, notably the cities of Karachi and Hyderabad, most, of the residents of TharParkar stayed on

tāluka. completed

in Pakistan after 1947. The Sindhi business elite had more at stake, perhaps and based their decisions on a more careful andforesight. The less economically powerful groups such as the Meghwals, for instance, had no particular stake in moving to India, at least not in 1947, although this was to change by 1971;

planning ,

the rationale for their move became more apparent, perhaps even themselves, by 2002, when Gujarat was defined by an entirely different set of political and religious concerns, Pratapdas their decision to stay back in TharParkar as follows.

to

explained

Our elders said it will be very difficult to leave our homes and move to a new place. So we stayed on. And in any case it was not that we were like the rich moneylenders and other classes. We were poor; we did not have the kind of resources that the richer people had. In 1947 about a third of the people from our village left, but the majority stayed back. At the time we had little sense of what is India and what is Pakistan. We moved back and forth across the border freely, visiting friends and relatives, even though we had to travel on a passport That was the only difference, really. Some people would cross into India and stay on with their families, never returning, but we did not ever think of doing that. Then in 1965 there was a war and then these huge pillars were constructed in the Rann, the border. Then we slowly began to feel that these are two countries and we thought that, it would have been better if we had crossed over in 1947 when we had a chance. After 1965, we did not feel the same. Ab man sab kāuth gayā .

demarcating

thā vahan se [our minds were not at. ease in that place]. We lived right on the border and it became difficult to conduct our

daily activities without facing harassment from the Pakistani Rangers who patrolled the border. Then in 1971 we got a golden opportunity. During the war, our forces [the Indian army] had taken temporary control over TharParkar.

At this point, his elder brother took over the conversation, quite excited by the conversation. Our [the Indian] flag was raised on TharParkar; temples conducted grand ārtīs; it all became a part, of Hindustan [India]. India could have kept TharParkar but Indira [Gandhi,

Minister] said that we would have to return captured territory according to law. But before this even happened, we seised our opportunity and crossed the Rann [into Kachchh], the then Prime

Pratapdas recalled that even before the ceasefire agreement between the two countries was signed in 1972, 17 families from Adigam decided to cross into Kachchh. 'The faujī wāle [army soldiers] told us, if anybody wants to go across to India, this is your chance now.' Realising that once the monsoons broke, they wouldhave to make the much longer journey via Rajasthan, they crossed over early in the dry season when the Rann was still crossable. Under cover of darkness, they made the over-night journey. 'We were on foot, riding on camels, horses, carts, anyone had, they brought along.' After a 15 hour journey on foot and camelback, they arrived in Lodrani on the northern border of Kachchh at daybreak. They were eventually put up in an Indian government relief camp in Jura where they were

whatever

provided for by the government until 1979. After the official ceasefire

agreement, many more refugees came from TharParkar and set largest in Kachchh, there were about 45 refugee families from TharParkar, including up in camps all over. At the Jura camp, the

Sodha

Rajputs,

Lohanas and

Meghwals.

In a few years the refugees from TharParkar formally

obtained Indian citizenship, received land, money for cattle, and job opportunities as citizens of India. Pratapdas, along with his four other brothers and their families, moved into a village north of Bhuj. One brother had died by this time and the last one

was still in TharParkar. With government assistance, the new migrants received jobs in various government establishments such as schools, banks, post offices and so on.

appreciated with the help of the following indicators. During 1971–81, The scale of the migration into Kachchh may be better

increased increased

the total population of the Scheduled Castes in Kachchh by 39.42 per cent and that of the Scheduled Tribes by 56.76 per cent, while during the same period the total population of the district grew at the more modest rate of 23.58 per cent.21 Becoming 'Maru

Meghwals' in Kachchh

Sumrasar, the village that Pratapdas and his brothers moved into, is about 15 miles north of Bhuj, and is located just south of the Banni grasslands. Although the government allotted them land in the neighbouring village of Loriya, they decided to that land for farming purposes, preferring instead to move in elsewhere. Loriya is dominated socially by Rajputs, Sodhas, Bhanushalis and Durbars, land-owning castes that, have great amounts of social and political power in the region. Sensing potential trouble against the newcomers from these well-entrenched groups, the new arrivals from Sindh decided to move elsewhere. At the time that they moved into Sumrasar in

retain amassed

1979, the village was already a multi-ethnic one comprising of Muslims as well as Hindus from different caste groups. By 1991, the village had 660 enumerated households and the percentage of the Scheduled Caste population in the village was 22.5 percent. 22 Called Sumrasar Shaikhwali, it gets its name from the Muslim Shaikhs Shaikh wālī literally meaning 'of the Shaikhs' who In in there live here considerable numbers. was already 1979, a small group of Gurjara Meghwals living in the village who welcomed the idea of more Meghwal residents, for it would bolster their numbers. The Meghwals established their homes at the very end of the village. They named this enclave within the village Pārkar Vās, i.e. 'abode of Parkar', reminiscent of the home they had left behind in TharParkar. Although the village has expanded in size since the late 1970s, there is still a noticeable spatial distance between Pārkar Vās and the rest of the village. —

—

I have already made the point that the Meghwals are considered by orthodox Hindus to be outside of the traditional caste hierarchy, and as such an ‘impure caste’. Within the village most other Hindus and even Muslims for that matter refuse commensal relations with them, not even sitting down together over the ubiquitous cup of tea with them. However, this is not just

because of caste-based social sanctions. In this case, traditional caste-based animosities are also over determined by other that have marked these Meghwals out as targets of animosity.

conflicts

In giving this ethnographic insight into the Maru Meghwals of Sumrasar, I attempt to highlight some of the changes this

community lifestyle consciously adopted

subsequent

into its choices into Kachchh. I argue that while some of these changes reflect on local politics and social relations they find convergence in the larger statist project of settlement and creation of a model citizenry. Their desire to move away from a past that bears within it shades of marginalisation and disempowerment is related less to some abstract identification with Kachchh, Gujarat nī asinitā or the Indian nation-state writ large and more to their desire to break away from the low caste status traditionally ascribed to them. Even though I has to

negotiating the

move

,

suggest particularly by

their that their actions are not motivated to the abstract sense of the nation but far more loyalty by locally embedded concerns, it is true that their decisions have in some cases mapped onto the larger nationalist concerns in the area. As such, it might not be far fetched to suggest that they have been unintentionally co-opted in the task of state making. Paradoxically, even as they acquire an identification that finds them favour with the state, they have never quite been into local village life. Despite their achievements in many

assimilated spheres, they

are still tagged as being from 'across the border. The Maru or Parkari Meghwals, as they are also called, distinguish themselves from the other Meghwals of northern Kachchh. These differences are reflected and maintained through signs such as dress, language, religious practices and marriage rituals. The Parkaris only intermarry within their TharParkar group. It is recognised that the closed international border makes it difficult to maintain regular kinship networks across it, so marriage relations (lagan vyavahār) take place between those families who crossed over in the 1970s. They are concentrated

in four villages of which three are in Kachchh — Sumrasar, Pharadi and Pragpar, while Tharad is located in Banaskantha district of North Gujarat. In 1993, the Maru Meghwals from Parkar established, with the help of a scholar and activist, an organisation to develop and market locally produced traditional handicrafts from across Kachchh. Kala Raksha (literally, 'the preservation of craft') is a registered cooperative society managed by the Meghwals and based out of Sumrasar. Over time, it has gained considerable repute in India and abroad for handcrafted goods that are now marketed on a vast scale. Income generation through handicraft is combined with a health and educational programme for all kārāgar (artisans). It is currently one of the main players in the field of producing and marketing local handicrafts in

affiliated Kachchh.

In Kachchh, fabric is embellished ornately by women to create

spectacularly coloured and textured clothes for both men and women. Each ethnic group has their own distinctive style of dress and embroidery, so that it is possible to tell at a glance which group people belong to when they are wearing their traditional dress. In an ethnography on dress and social identity in rural Gujarat, Emma Tarlo (1996) remarks that due to their social identity vis-à-vis other castes, the Harijans failed to develop group-specific clothing for themselves. She states further that this absence of a specific ‘tradition’ of dress makes them more adventurous in their adoption of modern and western-style clothing, as they are not constrained by a specified lexicon of traditional clothing. Tarlo writes,

stigmatised

The absence of a coherent caste dress in the past, combined with the relatively high levels of education and urban among Harijans today, gives them more freedom in their choice of dress than many other villagers, for they have neither a caste tradition to protect nor a good reputation to in the eyes of others who do not respect them anyway. The future of the Harijans lies not in the maintenance of tradition but in breaking with it and trying to forge a new, more acceptable identity independent of the hierarchical of caste. [...] Harijan identity is built on the principle of building a new, more anonymous identity in the future (Tarlo 1996: 281).

employment preserve foundations

In villages across Kachchh, it does appear that Harijans and other stigmatised caste groups have come to mimic the behaviours of dominant castes amongst which they have lived. This is evident not just in the imitation of upper caste values and practices but also in the traditions of embroidery and embellishment. In Kachchh, Harijans seem to mimic the embroidery done by their closest neighbours. Thus in the northern areas, they decorate their clothes like the Mutuwas, a Muslim pastoralist community of the area. In a village in western Kachchh dominated by the Jatts, the Harijans create embroidery following the intricate crossstitch of the Jatts. In other places they imitated the mud work on the walls of their huts, following the pattern of the Rabari herders. In TharParkar, the Sodha Rajputs dominated socially and economically. They were related to the Jadeja royal family in Kachchh and modelled themselves along the lines of petty chiefs and feudal lords in TharParkar. The Sodhas were a model for upward mobility and social aspiration for the Parkari Meghwals. Thus, they took to imitating their style of dress and social customs that are strongly patriarchal and reminiscent, more generally of ‘Rajput’ culture. In Kachchh, they have even taken to calling themselves Rajputs in order to distinguish from the other Meghwal communities. In addition, they have given up the eating of beef and burial of the dead as the Meghwals of northern Kachchh still do. Today, they cremate their dead and follow traditional Hindu marriage rituals. 23

themselves

Although Emma Tarlo’s analysis indicates that Harijans seek

to break out of restrictive and stigmatised subject positions by adopting more anonymised identities through ‘modern’ styles of clothing, Meghwal mimicry of upper castes suggests the desire to adopt not an anonymous identity as much as a more respectable ‘Hindu’ identity, sharply distinguishing themselves from both Muslims and other lower castes. The success of the Parkari Meghwals as entrepreneurs through

conflict difficult

Kala Raksha has inevitably led to a considerable amount of at the village level. The dominant land-owning castes in the area such as the Bhanushali, Ahir, Darbar and Sodha find it to accept what they term the ‘conceit’ (ghamand) of the so-called ‘untouchables’ in their new-found economic dominance. The Bhanushali and Sodhas of the area are powerfully connected

in the lucrative wood charcoal mafia that has a close nexus with local politicians and traders. Wood charcoal is made by burning trees in the Banni grasslands around the Rann. It is an illegal activity because the grasslands are deemed to be a protected ecological sanctuary. Nonetheless, the mafia is well connected locally and control the production and export of this charcoal into Gujarat and Rajasthan. Used to their social, economic and dominance in the area, these castes are particularly put out by the rise of the Meghwals. It was asserted by the other residents of Sumrasar that ‘they [i.e. the Parkari Meghwals] think too much of themselves. Just look at their arrogance. Who do these people think they are, just because they run an organisa-tion and travel out of Kachchh to big cities on work?’ As I was seen to frequent Parkar Vas more and more often, I was warned by upper caste men who would sit around in the central village square smoking and drinking the ubiquitous cup of tea. Typically, I would encounter them when waiting for a bus at the bus stop, and would be told, ‘they are not really Sodhas, they only like to make people believe that they are Sodhas and Rajputs in order to present a more glorious lineage than they have real claim to. Actually when they came from Pakistan to Sumrasar, they were shunned by the ‘real’ Sodhas and were kept out of the main settlements.’ The Meghwals were shunned not only because they were Harijans pretending to be Rajputs and preferential treatment from the government by way of reservations for jobs and education. They were also resented they were getting all this despite the fact that they were ‘outsiders’ — specifically because they were from Pakistan. Over 25 years of living in this village had still not the stigma of being from ‘the other side’. Small quarrels would inevitably end with the disgusted observation that what could one expect from these people anyway; they are not Kachchhis, they are ‘from Pakistan’. During the cricket World Cup, an occurrence that brought normal life to an absolute standstill as everyone remained glued to their televisions either at home or in public spaces temporarily converted into television theatres, young children were taunted by their peers, ‘will you side with Pakistan or India?’

political

village getting because removed

Acquisition

Religious of

Identiy

Nationality

and

the

Migration into Kachchh presented an opportunity of social and economic advancement for the Meghwals, a chance to break loose from old restrictive ties that governed their life in Sindh under the hegemony of the Sodha Rajputs. Coming into Kachchh, more and more they identified themselves as a part of the Hindu religious majority in India. If they were precariously holding on to a Hindu identity when they first came, over time they began to identify more and more closely with a regionally dominant Hinduism. It was during the elections to the Gujarat state legislative assembly in December 2002 that some the finer nuances of their transformed identity become apparent. These elections were delicate, following so soon after the violence in March of the same year. As it happened, the right wing BJP, believed to have been the chief orchestrating element behind the riots, came back to power with a resounding majority. One day, soon after the results had been declared, I was travelling to a village with a group of people, including Premlalô/?âi, a Meghwalfrom

extremely

Sumrasar. He was a trained teacher who worked as a part of Kala Raksha's outreach program, conducting adult literacy classes in some of their member villages. We were discussing

the election results when he commented that he had voted for the BJP for the first time ever and it was unfortunate that the candidate he had backed lost. In the electoral constituency of Kachchh as a whole, the BJP was defeated, in a stark contrast to the results at the state level; this had to do primarily with voter dissatisfaction with the way in which the post-earthquake reconstruction and town planning were proceeding. Unlike in other parts of Gujarat, inter-religious violence was a secondary issue in Kachchh. Premlalô/?âi explained that the Parkari Meghwals had always voted for the Congress, in Gujarat the

opposition to the BJP, ever since they were given Indian citizenship after their arrival from Sindh. This was the political party under whose auspices they were given protection as and then subsequently citizenship of the nation that they consider their very own. And thus, they always voted for sole

refugees

the Congress without fail; it was a question of loyalty and their duty toward the state that adopted them. So what

happened

this time that,

changed their relationship

the Congress? A couple of days before the elections there had been a storm in a teacup, relating to the statement, attributed to

,

to a maulānā in Ahmedabad. This man was

reported

to have

publicly exhorted all Muslims to vote for a 'non-partisan' political party. In subsequent renditions and in media reports, it was not always clear whether or not he had actually mentioned the Congress by

not, but it was clear that by this Muslims to vote in such a manner that the

statement., urging he

name or

was

BJP, associated with the riots and anti-Muslim policies, was defeated. 24 One of the peculiarities of Gujarati politics, in the context of regional politics in India, is a strong bipartisan

political

system, marked by the complete absence of a regional political party. A statement against the BJP would automatically be taken as favouring the Congress. The maulānās statement was given wide publicity in the media, and the BJP termed it 25 a fatwā. Following this development, a meeting was called of all the Meghwals in Sumrasar village. They collectively decided to

break with tradition and vote for the BJP. On this occasion,

Premlaló/?.0¿ said to

me,

to India from Pakistan, from TharParkar in in the 1971 war. We had left that behind to come to Sindh, India as we were Hindus and we thought we were coming to those of our kind when we decided to shift here We have been

We

migrated

.

Congress every single year after we came here, but, this time, a few days before the elections, a Muslim mullāh in Ahmedabad issued a fatwā telling the Muslims to vote for the Congress. When we heard that, we felt, that the Congress was being projected as a Muslim party and so we decided

voting for the

had happened, this time to vote for the BJP. It is unfortunate that this as until this time we never considered that

vote

was

given

out on the basis of

our

religion.

The identification with Hindus is crucial in the above anecdote. For a community historically denied the protection of Hinduism, not allowed to partake of rituals defined as Hindu, or to worship

temples used by upper castes, who had their worship, ate beef and worked with leather, this in

own forms of identification

'Hindu' in the present moment becomes crucial. This forms of their of and social such as as themselves 'improvement' identifying Rajput rather than Meghwal or Harijan, shifting slowly from worshipping Rämdev Pīr to Shiva (their hamlet in the village is consecrated by a temple in honour of the Hindu deity Shiva). This example suggests that at, least some of the Meghwals who came into Kachchh from TharParkar wish to associate with the dominant Hindu majority in provincial politics. This plays itself out in the manner in which they openly identify themselves as 'Hindus' or 'Rajputs', going as far as to support the political party that is known for its support, of the 'Hindu cause'. Rather than read these choices within the framework of an expression of loyalty to the idea of a 'Hindu nation' more generally, the Meghwal move into Kachchh, and their subsequent overt association with Hindu practices ought to be located within local discourses of caste politics and practices of inclusion and exclusion. In this case, their desire to be identified as Hindus is a result of their attempt to break with their low caste pasts and re-invent more optimistic futures. It is ironic that even though they seek to align themselves with regionally salient symbols of Hindu identity, they are not necessarily accepted as such by those who are recognised as the custodians of this identity. Following the devastating earthquake that hit Kachchh in 2001, relief money poured in from a number of national and international donor organisations and agencies. As Kala Raksha received some money from the development wing of one of the more popular Hindu sects in Gujarat (the

identification part larger strategy religious as

Bochanwāsī Akśar Puroshottam Sansthā or BAPS), one of the sants visited the Kala Raksha office site in Sumrasar to follow up on the disbursement of funds. At this time, he refused the offer of either tea or lunch, sitting aside at while everyone else ate. It is unthinkable in Kachchh not tobe

village lunchtime

offered tea or snacks when visiting someone, whether at home or and considered impolite to refuse work. It is equally rare this offer. During my early days in Kachchh, I had a hard time dealing with the number of times a day I was offered a liberally —

—

sugared cup of tea. When I began to decline saying I did not drink tea, I was given a highly sweetened and garishly coloured cool drink instead. As I preferred the tea, I meekly reverted to it, giving up on any form of protest. The only occasion on which one is not pressed with tea, or not offered it at all, is when the hosts are Harijans. As it is unusual for Hindus or Muslims to drink or eat with them, they will usually assume that their visitors will not drink with them. When I had first made the acquaintance of some Marwara Meghwals in the northern area of Banni, they asked me if I would like any tea (instead of bringing it normally the case) and when I declined, relieved at the option, the woman merely said, 'ānjī marjīi (it's up to you) and left the matter at that, while I regretted the conclusions she must have drawn. Within the organisational ethics of Kala Raksha, the artisans and staff always eat and drink together, all social and religious groups mingling with ease, so that this has almost become a non-issue within the organisation even though their co-villagers will still not drink tea with them. Thus, when the visiting priest studiously avoided eating with the Meghwals of Sumrasar, he was making a larger symbolic point; his organisation might have donated money to them but he was not; about to break with upper caste norms and eat with Harijans.

anyway,

The

'Nationlsation'

of a Frontier

Even though I have argued that the Meghwal move to identify as Hindus should be situated within locally derived ambitions (breaking away from their low caste pasts) rather than animated by some patriotism to the nation writ large, their actions may still, as an unintended consequence, reinforce the nationalist project of securing borders in this region. In a richly textured on the spread of Islam to rural Bengal, Richard M. Eaton (1993) suggests that religious institutions and figures became the agents for the eastward expansion of the Mughal state’s In Eaton’s analysis, Islamisation proceeds along with a highly complex system of economic change that led to the gradual emergence of a peasant base in the region. Charismatic saints began to initiate what were in effect new settlement policies in Bengal. Under the stewardship of saints and mosques, forest

argument frontiers.

lands were cleared and an early agrarian economy instituted. There are other instances where the agents of settlement policies were the precolonial Mughal state in South Asia (Singh 1988) or the colonial state (Bhattacharya 1995; Sivaramakrishnan 1999). In these instances, one of the concerns of the settlement policy is to make the population legible in certain ways to the state (cf. Scott 1998). The legibility of the population in every case is based on criteria intelligible to the state at the time — whether it is religion or economic based. And as James C. Scott reminds us, this state impulse is not new but can be traced back to the earliest manifestations of rule, ‘[t]he techniques devised to the legibility of a society to its rulers have become vastly more sophisticated, but the political motives driving them have changed little. Appropriation, control, and manipulation [...] remain the most prominent’ (Scott 1998: 77).

enhance

In more contemporary processes of state formation, when

frontiers of rule cannot be extended indefinitely, curtailed as states are by modern territorial boundaries and international norms of sovereignty, it is the more subtle markers of identity that become instrumental toward defining the social or cultural limits of national borders. The northern boundary between Kachchh and southern Sindh has witnessed some distinctive settlement policies implemented by the provincial and central with a view to securing the social boundary, after the political boundary had already been decided upon. The area is home to the political minorities of the district (Muslim pastoralists, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) who continue to maintain social relationships with family and friends across the border in Sindh. As such, they belie the ideological fixity and impermeability of a physical boundary.

governments territorial,

Muslim pastoralists of this region were the early targets of the settlement policies. In the early post-Independence years, Muslims from northern Kachchh sent memoranda of loyalty to the Indian state. One such statement was collected in 1951 from Muslim māldhārīs of the villages Bhirandiyara and Khawda by the then Chief Commissioner 26 for Kachchh. The resolution translated by him to the Ministry in New Delhi reads: new

We, the Muslims of Banni and Khawda, the northern part of Kachchh resolve as under:

[..] We declare that we are loyal to the Government of India, and if Pakistan Government attacks the Indian Government we will sacrifice our lives for the security of India, as did our forefathers in the past.27

reaction

In the same letter, the Chief Commissioner records his own to this statement: ‘as soon as I saw it at Bhirandiara, I could see that this was the work of some ingenious brain following the usual façade of shouting one’s loyalty as they have been used to. It has no meaning as I look at it.’ Further, he adds, ‘and it has any value, I would not believe a word of it. What I will be looking to will be their conduct.’28

supposing

This correspondence between the administrator in charge of

Kachchh to his superiors in New Delhi reveals the mistrust of Muslims along the Kachchh–Sindh border and their supposedly dubious loyalty to India. Soon after Independence, it was realised that Kachchh, which was hitherto a small backwater in a semi-autonomous princely state, was now a potentially crucial strategic border area for the nation. Every attempt was made to revitalise the defence and police organisation in the area, which among other things, a reduction of the high percentage of existing Muslim recruits in the border police forces. Rajnarayan Chandavarkar (1998) discusses attempts to reorganise the police forces in the Bombay Presidency from the nineteenth century onwards. At that time, the concern was only to increase its efficiency, not to alter its social base. Then, Muslims from the and north India, and Marathas from Ratnagiri were among the highest recruits into the police force (Chandavarkar 1998: 187).

included,

Presidency

By the mid-twentieth century, the political situation dictated

otherwise. In February 1949, a note by the Under-Secretary in the Ministry of States at New Delhi stated, It has been admitted that Kutch is in a strategically important position and the communal composition of the Police force is deserving of attention especially in view of the fact that there is a preponderating element of Muslims in the force. It may be considered desirable to rectify this position when there is a convenient opportunity like the present when the expansion of the force could be effected by recruiting persons of the other community to make up for the lack of balance now existing.

It could be argued that police does not attract persons of the other community, namely, Hindus in the Province and it may not be possible to rectify the defect if we restrict recruitment now only to local people. On the other hand there may be good material available from the refugees especially Sindhis. 29 A year earlier, in 1948, a secret memo from Ministry of Home Affairs to the Ministry of States declared, There is a widespread practice in the Gujarat Districts of the Province of Bombay for the cultivators to engage Sindhi Muslims as watchmen to watch their crops. These Sindhi watchmen sometimes commit acts of tyranny and high and are a standing source of danger to the of public order and tranquillity. The cultivators have recently in most cases relieved these Sindhi watchmen from their employment as a result of which there is a danger of the latter provoking communal trouble and lawlessness. The of Bombay, therefore, have decided to extern all the Sindhi watchmen from that Province under the Bombay Public Security Measures Act. In order to prevent the possibility of these externees taking shelter in the neighbouring Indian states in Gujarat and continuing their menacing activities from there, the Bombay Government feel that this body of persons ought to be removed from the whole of Gujarat and also Kathiawar. 30

handedness maintenance Government

A reading of the above memos suggests that while Sindhi refugees, who were Hindus, were encouraged into the police forces, Sindhi Muslims were to be avoided. These official memos demonstrate a desire to reorganise the administrative structure of the border with a view to securing it against the neighbouring state of Pakistan. As Pakistan professed to be a homeland for Muslims, Muslims on the Indian side of the border could not, these official memos suggest, be trusted to always remain loyal to the abstract notion of the Indian nation. With Muslims caught up, it was believed, in two potentially competing nationalist ideologies, the local border had to be secured with the help of those whose loyalty was assured at all cost, and thus Hindus were sought to be brought in, including Hindu refugees from Sindh.

After the wars between India and Pakistan in 1965 and 1971, further steps were taken to 'seal the border. In key border villages such as Nara in Lakhpat tālukā, special incentives were given to Sikh farming communities from the Punjab to come and settle on the border. Importing the Sikhs into this area is symbolic from more than one perspective. The introduction of a non-Muslim population into a predominantly Muslim area serves not only to 'define' the border more clearly, but also builds on the antagonism between the Sikhs and the Muslims that had played itself out during Partition in areas like Punjab, and exploits the general stereotype of the Sikhs as a 'martial race' of Indians. 31 In a poignant rendition of these events, an elderly Jatt māldharī recited qāfīs in verse that described what he saw as the 'desecration' of Nara town. He was a frequent visitor to Nara as a young man, as his poetic mentor, who taught him an entire repertoire of qāfīs and folk music of Sindh, was a prominent resident of Nara. He described the merchant and pastoralist families of Nara who happened to be in Sindh in 1947 when the Partition took them unawares. Unable to return home, for that journey now involved crossing a new border manned by officials, these former residents of Nara found eventually that their homes were taken over by the border police. Their stores of grain and utensils, clothes and valuables were auctioned off. In 1965, farmers from Punjab were given this same land to farm.

corrupt

movement of the Meghwals from TharParkar and the larger project To conclude briefly, what is the relationship between the

of securing the border between Kachchh and Sindh outlined above? Even as the Meghwals would like to break out of old of caste restrictions and associate themselves with Hindus, through this move they are also presenting themselves to the state in terms of a clearly identified, more legible category. Earlier they were associated with a region that was ambiguously located between Kachchh and Sindh, outside of the Hindu caste hierarchy and closer to Muslims in terms of their culinary habits and burial practices. With their move into Kachchh, they were able to cultivate their ambiguous identity into a category that was readily able to be inserted into the enterprise of A key premise of this chapter is that borders are where these categories are most subject to faltering and thus initiate a particular kind of anxiety.

patterns somewhere nation-building.

The Harijan man who crossed the border illegally acted not so much out of an abstract sense of loyalty to the nation, but more because he wanted to visit his sister and live in her village. His

desire, animated by kinship networks and economic motivations, is readby the state aspart of their perhapsby settlement policies in the border which are driven by a need to more

instrumental

dilute the Muslim presence there. By framing his move as a result of the 'harassment' he faces in his home village in Sindh, his

political adopted move

finds

resonance

with the

stance that India has

larger regional and national

vis-à-vis the border and Pakistan. Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have long been seen as a significant resource for Hindutva politics. The Hindu

Right has initiated a number of development and educational programs among them to garner their support (Hansen 1999; Sundar 2004). By 'adopting' this Harijan man and providing him with citizenship as a matter of course, the regional

political responding structure is individual as much

not so much to the needs of this

ensuring a larger number of the 'right' side of the border. And far from being unwitting accomplices to the game, many Harijans, such as those who came from Sindh, for instance, are deeply invested in kind of people

on

as

its

it is

own

dichotomising Kachchh and Sindh as two qualitatively different entities. Unlike the Jatts for whom Kachchh could not be

imagined without respect to Sindh,

the Meghwals would rather leave behind their low caste pasts and re-invent themselves as Rajput aspirants in Kachchh. Although their investment in the notion of asmitā is not borne out; of a in Gujarat quite the contrary, in fact

deep history of roots their political bolstering Gujarat's regional patriotism in terms

end positions —

up

—

of its fixed notions of who constitutes an insider and who is an outsider. For the champions of asmitā as well as for the Sindh is located albeit for different reasons Meghwals —

—

outside the frame.

Notes 1. Some portions of this chapter were published as ‘Defining a Border: Harijan Migrants and the State in Kachchh in Economic and Political Weekly, 2005, vol. 40 (16): 1623–30.

is Gandhi's term for the former Untouchables Kachchh, 'Harijan' ironically used in preference to 'dalit', its successor term in most parts of posteolonial India. 'Dalit' replaced what was seen as an overly paternalistic and patronising attitude captured in Harijan

2.

In

3. 4.

For more on this, see Ibrahim (2007). Some prominent examples are Bhattacharya (1995) ; Eaton (1984); Eaton (1993); S. Guha (1996); Sauli (2003) ; Singh (1988) ; Singh (1995); and Sivaramakrishnan (1999). For example, Anderson and Grove (1987) ; Collett (1987) ; Grove (1987) ; and

—

—

.

5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

Hogg (1987).

See, for instance, Lambrick (1964); Raikes (1977). Regarding the Ownership of the Runn of Gutch, MSA Political Department: vol. 167, Comp. No. 1176 of 1885. Regarding the Boundaries on the Runn, MSA Political Department: vol 10, Comp. Nos 261, 277 of 1876. Regarding the Ownership of the Runn of Cutch, MSA Political Department: vol 167, Comp. No. 1176 of 1885. Commissioner's Office, Sind to Government of Bombay, Revenue Dept; 23 March 1885. MSA Revenue Department: vol. 66, Comp. No. 23 of 1885. A useful collection of primary sources relating to the boundary disputes is Gupta 1969. Selections from the Records of the Bom bay Government (hereafter Selections). 1856. Vol XL (NS.), Bombay Education Society's Press, p. 83. Selections: 48.

14. 15. 16.

Selections: 87, 91. Selections: 83-91.

17.

Unofficially,

Selections: 92. these continue. 18. His reign lasted only a few weeks due to the subsequent accession of Kachchh to independent India. 19. Mark anointed on king's forehead, symbolising sovereignty and the right to rule. 20. Ben or sister is used as a respectful suffix to a woman's name. 21. Census of India 1981, Series 5; Paper 3 of 1981. Primary Census Abstract for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. A & B. 22. Census of India 1991, Series 7 Part XII 23. Previously denied the use of the sacred fire by upper castes, in marriage rituals today they continue to use a burning coconut as a substitute, although increasingly the younger generation has taken to lighting a fire. 24. 'Fat.wa gave Gujarat to BJP, The Times of India, 16 December 2002. 25. A fativä (plu. fatäwä) is typically a pronouncement by a scholar of Islamic jurisprudence, considered to be binding to various degrees on his followers; see Messick 1993 for a detailed dicussion. See Metcalf 1982 for a discussion of the changing social and political contexts of the fatwā through the nineteenth century. —

26. For a brief period, Kachchh was under direct administration from the Central Government. 27. S. A. Ghatge, Chief Commissioner Kutch to Secretary, GOI, New Delhi, 25 September 1951, NAI: Ministry of States, Political ‘A’ Branch, 1951: 19(12)-PA/51. 28. Ibid. 29. Note by N. N. Iyengar, Under Secretary, Ministry of States, 9 February 1949. NAI: Ministry of States (Secret Branch), file no. 31 (15) E, 1948. 30. Deputy Secretary GOI to Ministry of States, New Delhi, NAI: Ministry of States (Secret Branch), file no. 7(4) P, 1948. 31. See Fox (1985) for a discussion of this colonial construct.

Buffalo feeding time at Fakirani Jatt settlement

Ashapura temple, Bhuj

Banni

Daneta Jatt man with signature ajrakh wrap

Daneta Jatt

women

Fakirani Jatts receiving fodder, Asira Wandh

Garasia Jatt

women

at Māi's melā

Gathering of the Jam'āt

at Māi nā padh

Māi's Dargāh

Ruins of Aina Mahal after the

earthquake

Typical wandh

in Banni

k

4 Pastoralists, Islam and the State: Religion and Settlement of the Border

produces discipline

Continuing with the theme of how the state manages and its borders so that they become conducive to the task of and rule, in this chapter I discuss the strategic alliance between religion and the state with regards to border settlement policies. Although the postcolonial state has adopted a series of policies that have generated a certain amount of mistrust among the Muslim pastoralists of the border, this was not always the case. These pastoralists were once rather central to the process of state formation under the princely state of Kachchh. Not only did they constitute a remarkable resource to the state in terms of sheer manpower, they were also important to the state for the revenue they generated for it through their pastoral networks. These pastoral populations were by no means isolated from the base of the state; they figured in a valuable network of that linked them to the state, their clients and to other merchant networks as far afield as Baluchistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. The ecologically well-endowed Banni grasslands were crucial to their success in these merchant networks.

productive transactions The

Banni

Gras lands

The Banni grasslands are state-owned and managed today as they were in the past. Under the princely state, they were accorded the status of crown lands whose revenues were paid directly into the state. In a map of Kachchh dated 1844, several of the grazing lands in the Rann are depicted as belonging to the Kachchh bhayyad 1 (Gupta 1969: 69). On the Sindh side of the Rann these lands were described as i.e. owned by the British Indian and reserved for grazing purposes (ibid.: 114). State control of this land was important not just from the point of view of control over natural resources, but also because of the strategic nature of this border area. The state played a crucial role in

government sarkārā,

Settlers, Saints and Sovereigns

defining this border by way of its control over pasture-lands as well as a strict surveillance on the mobility of the populations on this land.

supported The various grassy islands in the Rann — of which Banni

is the largest — have been valuable as pasture-lands; conflicts over controlling revenues from them in the form of grazing taxes and fees had punctuated the relationship between Kachchh and Sindh prior to 1947. Most historical accounts of the region Banni to be a wonderfully fertile land. It is striking that the condition of the pastoralists of Kachchh in the past had been as good if not sometimes better than that of its cultivators. L. F. Rushbrook-Williams (1958: 222) wrote that when the rains came on time and the economy was good,

remember

[o]n the grazing lands to the north of Kutch, and on the Rann islands, large herds of cows, buffaloes, camels and flocks of sheep and goats were maintained. A strong and hardy neither growing nor eating grain, but living mostly on milk, exported enough butter and ghi to keep themselves in clothes, tobacco, opium and other necessities [...] between 120 and 160 pounds of butter were sent away every day from the Banni alone [in 1824–28]; while from Gadhada on Khadir island the annual exports amounted to 32,000 pounds.

population,

Even in its prime, however, Banni, like Kachchh in general, had always been subject to the vagaries of the monsoon. Throughout the nineteenth century, annual administrative reports compiled by the colonial state commented on the conditions of the rains during the year and its subsequent effect on the economy. Thus we just had a comment on the plentiful conditions during 1824–28, but then in 1842, a letter from the then Political Agent to the Bombay Government requested a remission in the annual due from Kachchh on behalf of the ruler due to a poor rainy season and the effects this had on the populations of Banni which ‘[...] usually feeding about one Lakh [a hundred thousand] of cattle, and supplying a large trade in ghee is entirely deserted by every thing but the camels and their attendants.’ 2

revenues

At present, it is estimated that while the total potential for

grass in Banni is about 1,619 sq. km. (625 sq. miles), the actual grass area today amounts to only about 350 sq. km. (135 sq. miles)

Pastoralists, Islam and the State (Geevan, et al. 2003). Much of this erosion has been brought about by the presence of the invasive species Prosopis juliflora and its subsequent destruction of grasses native to the region.

Prosopis juliflora is locally called gāndā bāwal. Gāndā bāwal, or acacia, is set up as a meaning the wild or 'mad' with the local and now scarce desī (native) bāwal (Acacia nilotica) and is an exogenous m esquite introduced by the regional Forest Department to artificially increase green cover in Banni. Although Prosopis juliflora grows rapidly, thus giving the of greening the area, it has had disastrous effects on the indigenous ecosystem. 3 While gāndā bāwal provides good wood fuel, and is currently the source of a lucrative but illegal trade in wood charcoal, it is inedible by cows. This has led, over time, to changes in the herd compositions of Banni s pastoralists as they moved from herding cows to buffaloes, less affected by the mesquite. Today, it is estimated that 80 per cent of the herded in Banni are buffalo (ibid.). Livestock based income

contrast b\la_\wal

appearance

livestock

accounts for 70.3 per cent of the revenue of Banni, of which milk sales alone constitute 63.6 per cent of incomes (ibid.). The Jatts are

now

exclusively buffalo herders.

were

In 2002—2003, their herd sizes

much diminished due to two consecutive

monsoon

failures.

The contemporary livestock census recorded its highest figure in 1982, when it was estimated that Banni had about 49,400

animals, while the lowest figure was 25,000 in 1977. The figures were 30,000 (ibid.). Seasonal variations in rainfall have affected the revenues of the pastoralists of Banni fairly regularly. However, the present scarcities of pasturage and water seem to be experienced now than they possibly were in the past. The past of the king's rule (rājāshāhī) is recalled by the Jatts as a period of ecological plenty and the state's guarantee of fodder. These memories for 1997

differently

political

neglect of them as minorities and their suffering through years of drought. Today, the Jatts are doubly stigmatised and suspect in the contrast

sharply with the

state's current

eyes of the state; first as Muslims, and second as residents of 4 an area in close proximity with the Pakistani border. In both

senses, they are

regarded as potential threats to the Indian nation 5 imagined in Gujarat during this time as 'Hindu Rāshtra'.

Nostalgia for the Past the Jatts recall that they were given open to the pasture lands in Banni with no restrictions. As one

During princely rule, access

māldhārī reminisced,

Back in the days of the rājāshāhī, the rājā had granted us this land, not just, to us, but, to all the māldhārī communities. We were allowed to graze our animals free of cost and this land was to be ours. There was even something written to this effect. But the elders who were supposed to have kept this document safely eventually lost it and then when it came to 1947 and when rājāshāhī ended and the new sarkār took over we had nothing to prove that this was our own land. They came up with a scheme for the reclamation of the Banni grasslands and this entire area of the Banni came to be as a Protected Forest Area. So this land is all sarkārī land, and we only live on it without owning it. We are totally at the mercy of the government today. ,

declared

Although they axe clear that they were not, taxed for grazing access, they do acknowledge that they were taxed for the right to sell their milk products such as ghī when they came into towns like Bhuj, the state capital, or as they crossed the border into Sindh prior to 1947. The existence of a cattle census indicates that they were taxed on their animals or the products thereof. This tax was known as dān and it is cited by them as the reason they came

to be called the Jatts. However, official documents 6 that the pastoralists may well have been charged a grazing fee in addition to taxes on saleable items. The search for a definitive solution to the problem of ownership of the Rann in the 1960s led the postcolonial states of India and Pakistan back to all the documentation that existed on the subject. At this time, evidence was presented of Sindhi graziers straying into Eachchh-owned grazing lands and sometimes to pay the grazing fee. In the past, the māldhārīs of Banni were reputed for raising large animals—camels, cows and buffaloes and as recognition of Bannis status as the main milk producing

Dānetā suggest

refusing

—

for Kachchh, the princely state had issued orders prohibiting smaller animals like sheep and goats from grazing there. area

This restriction is resources of Banni

by

the

princely

gone, and the Jatts rue that the scant fair game to anyone. The measures taken

long are

state to preserve the

integrity

of the

for larger milk producing animals should not of be grasslands course

taken at face value, for control over natural resources in the guise of the creation of reserves or national parks and the regulation of

grazing and access to forests has been integral to the processes of state formation and social control. 7 Moreover, reserves and protected forests in the Indian princely states were especially popular for royal

8 game and shikär pastimes. Before the decisive sealing of the border after the war between India and Pakistan in 1965, pastoralists in Kachchh would move

into Sindh when faced with a drought in Banni. But the past is associated with a general state of ecological abundance.

generally

much grass here,' an elderly māldhārī her lined face lighting up with the memory, 'so many varieties of grass, some of it shoulder-high, none of this dried up, mottled gāndā b\la_\wal that our animals [she means their per-sonal animals such as goats who have trouble with 'Then there woman

told

was so

me,

thorns] cannot eat. So much grass, that our mulk always remained green. Our animals would give us eight kilos of milk a day and now they give us five kilos on a good day, but usually the

barely two kilos.' elderly man remembers taking camels to graze as a young boy, letting them loose to eat while he sat down for a while to smoke a couple of bīdīs. 'In no time the camels would be out of sight, lost behind the thick grass and vegetation.' 'The grasses of Banni used to be so tall that if you were on a horse, only your it is

An

head would be visible above it', adds another. A respected Jatt elder in Banni said, 'There

were

lots of

grasses, the whole area looked like a rice field, you cannot even imagine it, believe me. There were so many different varieties of grasses. All of them were destroyed due to this gāndā bāwal. It by the government and it ruined all our land for us, and

was sown

for our animals.' Māldhārīs themselves

fodder supply as

see

the lack of water and

political conspiracy against them. Other than the erosion of the natural ecological domain enabled by gāndā bāwal, other recent practices have also deprived Banni of its water resources. The nearby RudraMātā dam has contributed to a

the depletion of Banni’s water. Oversized dams, construed as the ‘secular temples’ of the modern developmental state, prevent any water overflow during the monsoon. This overflow would leach the soil and remove the excess salt. In its absence, the salinity of Banni’s soil increases. As Banni is peopled primarily by Muslims and as it is a border area, it was hinted by the pastoralists that there was a lack of ‘political will’ to develop Banni.

otherwise

The feeling of exclusion has been exacerbat ed in the aftermath of the violent events of 2002, when the state lost all its credibility as a safeguard for its minorities. Speeches made by local on the occasion of village functions or inaugurations in

politicians

neighbouring Khawda area invariably exhorted 9 'vigilant' citizens for they lived on a border. villagers This was also accompanied by the VHP's agenda of trishul dīkshā to non-Muslims living in border villages as well as the selective reconstruction of certain villages in Banni after the earthquake of 2001, that serves to inscribe the growing the Banni

or

to remain

social schism between communities in Kachchh onto the built environment. Taken together, these policy initiatives were read by the Jatts and other māldhārīs of the north as a deep official mistrust directed against the Muslims who are often to be in consortium with their co-religionists across the

suspected border. 10

The Contexts of Memory The Jatts recall the past to be a period of ecological plenty, where there was plenty of grass for their animals which produced an abundance of milk. This ecologically rich past is also associated with a period of political equity and just governance under the The Jatt, narratives reproduced above clearly that it was only in the present that the state feigned to their misery in Banni. Yet, the memory of an ecologically rich past is indicative less of the presumed benevolence of the princely state and more an indirect critique of the present.

indicated rājāshāhī. indifference

State regimes are known to have forged exploitative relationships with the environment as they seek to expand or consolidate their rule (Cronon 1983). Even conservation policies

designed to ‘preserve’ the environment are often politically and socially exploitative to their subjects. As Ann Grodzins Gold and

Bhoju Ram Gujar (2002: 14) put it so powerfully in their study of Rajasthan, ‘[...] the time of nature’s abundance was also the time of abundant sorrows endured under the rule of kings who protected trees.’ The princely state in Kachchh could not have been simply the benevolent provider that it is made out to be in the narratives of the pastoralists today. The state levied grazing taxes called

pancharī

11

graziers (Gupta 1969).

that were often resisted by the

that, was based on the extraction of agrarian and land Kachchh does not appear to have had taxes, surplus a fiscal surfeit for much of its princely period. In a letter to the

Further,

as a state

Secretary

to the Government at Bombay, the British Political for Kachchh wrote in 1856 of the general state of Agent the landlords, among describing 'the dilapidated state of their towns and villages the number of empty or ruined and the general want of life and animation prevailing.' houses Describing Roha, the largest jāgār or estate after the capital Bhuj, already encountered in Chapter 2 he wrote of the 'chief of 43 villages, besides being the Tilat (head of the family) of 16 others [...] he receives scarce sufficient, to defray the most pressing necessities. I found him at the top of his rock at, Roha, a stronghold bearing the marks of former power, in a pitiable

indebtedness —

—

,

state of poverty.'

12

Some of the 'want, of life and animation' described by the an attack of may well have been occasioned that hit Kachchh in 1812, which is believed to have wiped out a large number of people (Rushbrook-Williams 1958: 188, 252), but even so, the condition of the second most important chief in the bhayyad after the Rao of Kachchh is a telling comment on the sorry state of Kachchh's finances. Cynical contemporary resident s of Bhuj have often bemoaned their lack of'progress' on the 'selfishness' of the rulers who did not pursue many projects for the improvement of their subjects, preferring instead to squander their money on receiving British guests and expensive royal pastimes like hunting and other entertainments. The opulence of the royal entertaining palace in Bhuj, the Āinā Mahal, stands testimony to this. Given this scenario of heavy expenditure and limited income, it is rather unlikely that, the pastoralists were not also at the receiving end of the state's

Political by plague Agent

compulsions

to extract revenue.

Earlier, I discussed the extensive trading networks that cut across the Rann during princely rule. Due to lower customs tariffs in Kachchh than in British India, this was a preferred trading route. This provides an additional reason for why the princely state would have had an interest in maintaining the areas within the Rann. These areas were evidently good sources of revenue, both from the pastoral economy as well as from the point of view of trade and transit fees. Given these scenarios, it is unlikely that the princely state followed a hands-off policy vis-à-vis the pastoralists. It is not in order to pronounce upon the truth claims of what the Jatts said to me that I provide this context. Instead, given what we know about the possible nature of the relationship between the princely state and its subjects, it becomes important to ask why the Jatts would be so adamant today about the benevolence of the rājāshāhī and why in their minds ecological plenty would be fused with good governance. Therefore, it is necessary to situate their narratives within the social, political and ecological contexts that produced them.

Pasture-Lands

and

State

Control

The year I lived in Kachchh (2002—2003) happened to coincide with the third consecutive monsoon failure. As a result, most of the wāndhs in Banni wore a deserted look. Due to the prolonged

temporary māldh\la_\r\l=i_\s drought and lack of water or pasture,

had moved to in more of where they other fertile Kachchh, camps parts to remained attached farms owned typically by wealthy Patidars, milk in for their buffaloes and for providing pasture exchange food for themselves. Most Jatts agree that the destruction of their traditional ecosystem was brought about through the deleterious effects of Prosopis juliflora, deliberately introduced by the state's Forest Department in its efforts at afforestation. One of the reasons it is locally named the g\la_\nd\l=a_\ (crazy) bāwal is that it is a lawless,

pugnacious weed that sprouts up manically every which way, almost impossible to terminate altogether. Returning to Banni in the summer of 2004, I visited the village of Hodko. I sat in the mehm\la_\n khāno of my māldhārī host, looking out of the window at a group of buffaloes sitting in a surprisingly green

of land. The heavy rains that had just begun as I was about to leave Kachchh a year before had transformed the dead-looking gāndā bāwal into life so that there was much more apparent greenery in Banni. 'All this is deceptive, said my host, taking me outside to point out that this village was probably unique in Banni to the extent that it still had some These indigenous plants good specimens of an old well dug at a spot where there has been some nonsaline water for years, and are a stark contrast to the rest of Banni. Here, there is even an old lemon tree barricaded by thorny branches to protect it against animals. This is a small oasis in

patch

surround desībāwal.

the desert, but the rest of the greenery is constituted by the gāndā b\la_\wal, which is a deceptive green cover. We are standing on ground that is dotted by small green shoots. 'All this is gāndā bāwal,' he says, gesturing around us, 'it never dies; it is always there under the ground and after last year's rains, it has all come back to life. Unless we clear it manually, it will spring up again and again. It looks small, but look at how deep its roots run,' he says, digging up a small shoot. 'These roots run deep, deep and suck all the water up. It cannot be digested by cows; only buffaloes,

horses, and

donkeys

survive

it. At least buffaloes

provide with milk but what do with horses and donkeys,' us

can

on

can we

The altered ecosystem of Banni precipitated by the state's introduction of gāndā bāwal has therefore meant that over time the herd composition of its pastoralists has altered, leading in turn to a reduced overall output in terms of milk and milk This fact, combined with the limited rainfall received by the region and the lack of access to Sindh-based pasture-lands, causes most of the populations of Banni to be in cattle rearing and maintenance for only part of the year. While this is generally the case for pastoral populations, the in Banni today is that, the yields of a season are not really sufficient to last an entire year as they may have been in years

products. māldhārī engaged

difference

gone by. As Banni never enjoyed any form of private land ownership, these grasslands have been owned and controlled by the princely state and are today under the control of the government of Gujarat. Pastoralists have enjoyed access to the products of the land as fodder for their animals, but these rights have not usually over the land itself. Despite changes in residential over the years, as some māldhārīs actually built cement

extended

patterns

structures to gradually replace their old tents, the issue of land ownership is likely to remain unresolved, as the Department of Forests and the Department of Revenue in Gujarat are both locked in a seemingly perpetual struggle over control of the area. The land area of Banni is officially classified as ‘reserved forest’. This appellation would have once had some relevance in terms of the reservation of grassland/wildlife sanctuaries, for this region also was once home to large numbers of wild asses, and other species (Ali 1945). However, in the present context of deforestation, Banni is no longer sanctuary to the wildlife variety it once hosted. Classifying Banni as a ‘reserved forest’ is now an excuse for exclusive state control over Banni. In it a ‘reserved forest’, the state espouses a certain vision of and afforestation that is totally disconnected from those who live within that ecosystem.

flamingos declaring conservation

In his essay on the Maasai pasture lands in Kenya, David Collett

development management

(1987) argues that postcolonial policies on nature and constitute a continuation of colonial ideas on how pastoral areas and people ought to be managed. These ideas were in turn deeply inflected by dominant Eurocentric ideas about land and property rights. The colonisers stereotyped the Maasai herdsmen as undertaking ecologically unsustainable practices of overstocking and consequent overgrazing of land. The anxiety over overgrazing, Collett points out, was more than real, mainly ‘influenced by political pressure from European settlers for stricter colonial control of the African economy’ (Collett 1987: 142). The colonists introduced strict grazing controls and

imaginary livestock

[t]he administrative goal for the Maasai was to be sedentarisation and the conversion of the pastoralists into agriculturalists [...] at its most basic, this view equated nomadic and seminomadic pastoralism with a primitive and uneveloped form of social order, contrasted with the fostering of modern ivilisation and progress represented by settled agriculture (ibid.:138). In Banni, on the contrary, there is no perceived evidence that the state wishes to sedentarise or foster an agrarian ethos among the pastoral populations. By declaring it a ‘reserved’ or ‘protected’ zone, the state is, in fact, forestalling any local in the ecosystem — whether it is agricultural production

intervention

or felling of Prosopis plants for wood fuel requirements.13 In an incisive article, Rita Brara (1992) points out that the state’s understanding and classification of natural resources functions at an entirely different register from local populations who inhabit the areas in question. The state understands ‘conservation’ or ‘afforestation’ in scientific terms, implying a hands-off approach to vegetation. This runs counter to those who relate to vegetation in terms of an entire ecosystem of needs. Brara concludes, ‘[w]hile the solutions put forward by the scientists may have been valid within formal, scientific parameters, they were not necessarily relevant to the subsistence interests of the user in her commons’ (Brara 1992: 418). there is in Banni, Banni, even even if Thus, there Thus, is no no agricultural agricultural production production in if some some

small sections of the land were to support it. This fact, along with the predominantly pastoral nature of land use in Banni, means that, none of the settlements in Banni officially classify as 'revenue villages', the basic unit in which the state government assesses the villages of the district for revenue. The villages of Banni are not assessed for revenue as they remain nonagricultural. But this also means that they forfeit benefiting from any of the development plans that operate in other parts of the district, where income below a basic, predetermined subsistence level qualifies people for state subsidies. Various poverty and income generation schemes have been implemented both the central as well as state governments in the region, by such as the Indira Aimas Yojana and the Sardar Aumas Yojana. Under these schemes, dwellings are built for people who qualify as being 'Below Poverty Line' (BPL). But these plans are applicable only to so-called 'revenue villages'; therefore the pastoralists of Banni do not stand to gain from them. After the earthquake of 2001, the selective invisibility of Muslim pastoralists was heightened, as non-Muslim, non-pastoral groups like the Kolis and Harijans of Banni began to receive especially large amounts of aid and new villages with concrete houses and temples were constructed for them by Hindu politico-cultural organisations such as the VHP.

alleviation

Undoubtedly, a feeling that the post-independence state

structure is anti-Muslim helps to structure the Jatts’ memories of the past as a time of greater justice, but it does not explain it all. The relationship between these pastoralists’ recollection

of the past being politically equitable and ecologically robust is better understood with respect to an earlier system of tribute and redistribution that brought the Jatts into spheres of influence and exchange with the princely state in ways that are very from how their relationship with the state is articulated today.

different

This discussion leads into an examination of the triangular relationship between the state, the Muslim pīr and pastoralists and of how their relationship unfolded through a circulation of goods, prestige and power. These flowed between the state, the pīr and the Jatts in complex yet inter-related ways that served the interests of not just the pastoralists but also the state, as it worked to outsource the task of border management to its more outlying populations.

Pastoralist ,

the

Imagined

Islam

Region

some

of

and

The Jatts are able to nostalgically construct an abundantly endowed past because they see the past as functioning within parameters of sovereignty that are quite different from those that operate today. During princely rule, the relationship between rulers and subjects was mediated and contradictions resolved through complex symbolic systems. An elaborate system of ritual exchange and redistribution underpinned the pastoralists’ interactions with the princely state. Traditional exchange relationships tied the Jatts into a nexus of tribute and that involved the princely state at one end and religious institutions at the other. The political order under the princely state was thus grounded in a religio-moral universe (cf. Dirks 1987); the king’s authority maintained as a ‘function of both normative prescription and ritual reinforcement’ (Comaroff 1985: 127) and the Jatts were assured of a relatively stable supply of material goods and pasture for their animals through their exchange relationships with religious institutions. This mediated and multi-layered connection between the pastoralists and the state via religious institutions has become disarticulated in the present, and the former feel far more alienated from the bureaucratic structure of the state. This rupture is occasioned by at least two factors — (a) discourses of Islamic revival that

redistribution

have altered the landscape of religious practice and (b) following 1965, an enormous increase in the bureaucratic and surveillance powers of the state in the Banni and adjacent border areas that are especially directed against them as ‘Muslims’.

description of two prominent shrines in Kachchh, both of which are These points are elaborated through an ethnographic

connected in different ways with a pastoralist life world as well as the state, both princely and modern. This comparative demonstrates the shifts in the Jatts’ relationship with the royal and modern states, the implications of this shift for their to ecologically sustaining livelihoods and ultimately the role of religion in state formation and border maintenance from a comparative historical perspective.

ethnography access 'Islamisaton'

and Saint Worship

Since the 1990s, discourses of Islamic ‘reform’ have become widely prevalent — and also strongly contested — in Kachchh. it is not a homogenous movement, the focus of the reformists remains on normative issues within Islam, such as the place of saint worship in ‘correct’ Islamic devotional practice, the form and content of prescribed ritual and various other minute decrees on what constitutes a ‘universal’ Islamic behaviour and practice. These discourses, which fall into the category usually described as Islamic ‘reform’ or ‘Islamisation’,14 are believed by social scientists to follow a similar pattern throughout the Islamic world and sociologically are a form of what Max Weber called the ‘rationalisation’ of religion. The term ‘Islamisation’ is, of course, misleading for its assumption that there is only one unidirectional path to becoming ‘properly’ Islamic. It ignores forms of worship and Sufism as being somehow outside the frame of ‘Islam’. I retain the use of the term, however, because, as I discuss below, such ideas are precisely what the advocates of these discourses aim to convey.

Although

popular

The movement for Islamic reform is concerned with the reform of the supposedly 'corrupt' practices that reformists insinuate have accrued into localised practices of Islam. It is concerned with making the situated, contingent, local

primarily and

historically specific practices

of Islam conform to

a more

universal, normative ideal of the religion. The shrine (dargāh.)

becomes in this discourse marked

as a

sign

of'folk tradition

as

'universal'. dargāh opposed the

to the mosque which is marked as a sign of the The institution of the thus becomes one of

more

contested sites for the discussion of what is deemed

'proper' Islamic practice (e.g., Van der Veer 1992). For adherents of this 'rationalised' faith, Islam must insist on its monotheism, something that they believe is compromised by the

to be

saint tradition embodied

by

the

dargāh. 15

Discourses of Islamic reform have gained currency among the

more literate urban Muslims in Kachchh, but also increasingly among the more marginalised populations in the district. From the point of view of the reformists, the Jatts are illiterate, and superstitious, following a morally corrupt form of Islam. Their marginal position on the interstices of the nation-state, in a province under the domination of right wing Hindu militant nationalists, render communities like the Jatts a prime focus of proselytisation for the reformists, as they set out to create ‘ideal’ Muslim subjects. A ‘rationalised’ (in the Weberian sense), purist religious ethic provides a highly valued link with global Islam and modernity to a people constantly struggling to define themselves positively against the stigmatised subject positions that they are otherwise compelled to inhabit.

ignorant

Among the Jatts, however, the acceptance of Islamic reform has been neither universal nor uncritical. In the following chapter, I will also discuss inst ances of resistance to Islamisation among the Garäsiä Jatts. At the moment, however, I present some

of the reasons why many of the Dānetā Jatts of Banni are attracted to movements for Islamic revival and how a specifically Islamic idiom provides a language to express their migratory lifestyle in ways that directly confront the state's sedentist view of the border. More specifically, their relationship to changing religious practices enables us to reconstruct their with the princely state. During that period, before ideas of complicated their relationship with local saints, their relationship with the state was mediated through pīrs located within the institutional context of dargāhs. This relationship accounts not only for their perceived access to abundant ecological resources during the princely state, but also explains the state's strategic alliance with religious leadership in order to establish control over its outlying frontiers and potentially

relationship

reform

recalcitrant

populations.

The past is recalled by both Jatts and pīrs as a time when before the reformists exhorted their followers otherwise pīrs commanded a huge respect and following among the māldhārīs.

—

—

Mostpīrs in Kachchh

are

believed

Saiyyids.

are

descendants of spiritual families and

belong to the upper caste' Muslims known as These are high-born Muslims who trace their descent to

from the Prophet Mohammed through his daughter Fatima. While most pīrs are from Saiyyid families, all Saiyyids are not automatically/) 1rs. Helene Basu (1998) has also drawn attention to an important distinction between Saiyyid and non-Saiyyid holy men in Islam. The Sidîs of Gujarat, among whom she worked, reserve the term pīr only for those saints who are Saiyyids by

birth, while the others

are

called murshīd

or

faīdr

.

Mediating the Local and Global: Saints and the Power of Intercession In Kachchh, whenever I was given the rationale for visiting a the explanation always followed the analogy of and governance. God, i.e., Allah, is distant from man, just, as the Prime Minister or other head of state is remarkably distant from the common people. To be heard in the court of Allah, one's case would be significantly improved if one chose to go through an intermediary; someone who by virtue of birth or good deeds was already close to God and thereby commanded a privileged audience with him. Just as everyone needed a petty bureaucrat with greater powers in government offices than the ordinary mortal, a saint was better equipped to bring one in

dargāh, administration

with Allah. It is precisely this diffusion of the universal contact

message of Islam through intermediaries embedded in particular socio-historical contexts that has attracted the ire of the Islamic reform movements. The reformists challenge the system of that has grown up around shrines, alleging corrupt on the part of families attached to particular shrines as descendants of saints. As these families receive so much devotion from their often illiterate followers they are accused of distorting the monotheistic message of Islam, which they argue is opposed to the deification of any person or thing other than Allah. A good example of the kind of devoted following commanded by pīr families is the common form of greeting between followers

worship practices ,

and their pīrs. The characteristic greeting that is an ultimate mark of respect and devotion consists of the lay follower taking the pīrs right hand in their own right hand, raising it up first

right eye, then the left eye, and finally kissing it. This is not merely reserved for the pīr s person, but anyone connected to him or her in the bloodline. As part of a sacred lineage, every

to their

member is believed to possess a special magical charm called barakat. An anecdote describing my experience of visiting a pīr s followers with one of the members of his family will bring

this out more clearly. The Dānetā Jatts have almost entirely given up following pīr families, and now profess adherence to the 'purist,' form of Islam popularised by discourses of Islamic reform. Within Banni there are a few isolated pockets —notably the villages of Servo, where the older pīr tradition continues Ghasla and Bagadia a few families. As is the custom among the followers ofpīr among families of followers (who are called murld) become tied lineages, to particular pīr families. Over generations, sons and daughters of murīds respect and follow the sons and daughters of their pīr leaders. Mushtaq is the young son of the pīr whose family claims to have once commanded respect among 'savā lakh murīd (1, 25,000 followers) in Banni. His sister Zuleikha Ma is the current gaddī nishīn at the shrine complex known as 'Dhāyrā Pīr nī dargāh' (the dargāh of Dhayra Pīr) in the coastal town of Mandvi in southern Kachchh. This dargāh is a small breakaway branch of the family that occupies the Sankarwārā dargāh, described in a subsequent section of this chapter. Mushtaq offered to take me to visit his family's Jatt followers as a personal favour. I had been having great difficulties in Dänetä Jatt villages; people would not talk to me freely and constantly overwhelmed me with questions who was I? Where had I —

—

from? And most often, who had sent me to collect and record information on the Jatts? Given the constant climate of suspicion and state-sponsored surveillance among Muslims in the border areas of Kachchh, this was by no means an easy group of people for an outsider to gain accept ance and trust amongst. According to Mushtaq, whom I had befriended over the course of frequent visits to his family's dargāh, my cause would be furthered among the Jatts if he came along to introduce me and vouch for my credentials. come

a

We made the first trip not to Banni, but to the town of Mankuva few miles west of Bhuj, where Dānetā Jatts from Banni were

to farms which provided forage for their animals in return for milk, manure and labour on the land. While here, they waited for the rains, when they hoped they would be able to return home to Banni. If the rains failed, as they had done for the past three years, they would have to stay on until rain came and their animals would have some foliage to return to in Banni. The following is an excerpt from my field notes describing the encounter between this group of Jatts and Mushtaq, scion of a pīr family they followed:

temporarily located adjacent

As we approach the Jatt, settlement some people come out of their tents to observe us. Mushtaq is nervous; he has some names written on a piece of paper given to him by his brother and sister, and he frequently refers to it. Ί don't know all their names,' he confesses to me. Ί would recognise them by face if they have been to Mandvi, but otherwise I don't, know. And I don't, know if they will recognise me.' His brother and sister are the ones who dispense their spiritual duties towards their followers. Mushtaq is merely the youngest brother of the family and has not yet taken up such spiritual duties. But he need not have worried. One of the Jatt men, a special friend of his elder brother, recognises 'Mushtaq Bāwā and comes rushing out of his makeshift home, clasps Mushtaq's hand and kisses it reverently after touching it, to his eyes. He is delighted to see him and ushers us into the tent-like house where a handmade quilt —the trademark of Banni s pastoralists has been especially laid out, and a special corner designated for the Bāwā. Mushtaq indicates that I should sit there, for I am his guest. When I protest, that they have laid it, out for him, he whispers quietly that, he is made very uncomfortable by all this exaggerated respect that they show him and that I should just go ahead and sit down. So I do, but feel awkward. By now, a bunch of Jatt men have gathered around us and as they walk in, they come and bend to grab onto Mushtaq's feet. 'Oh, please don't,' he protests. Then they take his hand and kiss it. So do the women. The men touch my head in blessing, the women clasp my hand. One of the women, mistaking me for a Saiyyid too, kisses my hand and I quickly take it away saying I am not, special, just, an ordinary mortal. ,

—

I continue to feel awkward. Sitting here, side by side with Mushtaq as his guest, it is understood that I too partake of some of the barakat that he personifies. But that someone should mistake me for what I am not, that is not correct. [...] But there is a problem now. It appears that these men think I am from the Central Bureau of Investigation, or that I am connected with the government in some capacity or the other, that I will collect information from them and hand it over to the police. Mushtaq reassures them over and over that I have nothing to do with any of that. ‘If she was involved with them, I would hardly bring her to you as my guest, would I’ asks Mushtaq, and they solemnly agree. When I take out my to write down the names of the villages that they come from, once again a murmur runs through the group. ‘Ah yes, there you go,’ teases Mushtaq. ‘She is writing all your names down so she can create trouble for you!’ ‘Okay,’ laughs one of the men, ‘but don’t take our photographs.’ [...]

notebook

At the end of the day, after we have been fed lunch, and had a few cups of tea, we get up to leave so we can return [to Bhuj] by dark. People have come up to us, giving Mushtaq money, kissing his hands. An older woman, Bani, presses 10 rupees into my hand. I am very upset and say they must not do this. It

is clear they can ill-afford this offering. 'You are like Zuleikha Ma's sister, so you are my sister' says Bani emphatically and puts her arms around me. Mushtaq says he does feel bad but he cannot refuse, as it is obligatory for pīrs and Saiyyids to accept the offerings of their followers. 'It is called Sunna [a tradition of obligatory actions in Islam] and I cannot refuse.' He urges me to accept the offerings of money as well, saying 'it is a form of love.' I have recounted this encounter as I experienced it to indicate the relationship of devotion that is forged between pīr families and their followers and to pinpoint those of its aspects that have been picked up by reformists as being corrupting to the ethic of Islam. Discourses of Islamic reform feel that an relationship to God ought to be an unmediated one.

monotheist

individual's

Saints and their families are revered by their followers for their perceived abilities to mediate this relationship between a lay follower and a distant god, and they are vilified by their for precisely this kind of mediation.

opponents The

analogy

of mediation between various echelons of

an

particularly

administrative hierarchy that I began this section with is apt to describe the work of pīrs in local contexts, for not only does it signify the manner in which scattered local are occasionally brought into the larger universe of Islam through the agency of a shrine, 17 but it is also a telling on the alliances forged between the state and shrines

communities

commentary which

are

often

powerful bases not only of religious and spiritual political clout as well. 18 In fact, the

power, but of economic and

dargīh as an institution may be understood as a mediator not. merely between an individual devotee and god, but also between the state and its citizen-subjects. The dargāh, in South Asia, is often seen as a source of heterodox, anti-structural religious practice, combining aspects of Hindu and Muslim popular devotion in a syncretic or hybrid form (e.g., Ansari 1992; Roy 1983). While this is not entirely incorrect, it is also necessary to

acknowledge

the fact that

occasionally participate agendas it may also

in

conservative of state making. Complex forms of patronage between the state and religious institutions like the dargāh work to ensure that the latter may function as a 'building block of the state, especially in outlying areas, away from the direct gaze of the state (Eaton 1993). To consider the shrine only as the bearer of an esoteric, heterodox religious message without systematically examining the political nexus and implied religious conservatism it may also subscribe to is to focus only on one aspect of the situation. more

Dargāh a of State's Princely The Patronage

Both the complexes I describe here have strong with the pastoralists of Banni and have also had significant interactions with the state. A comparison between these shrines and two different historical contexts (i.e., under the princely state and the present) will serve to highlight the shift in the balance of power between the state and shrine across this period, and

associations dargāh

the consequent impact of this shift as perceived by the Jatts in Banni. Both shrines work in different ways as examples of how spiritual lineages and their religious institutions can become important loci of political power and as mediators not merely between supplicants and God, but also between the state and its occasionally distant subjects. Sānkarwārā The Dargāh

pastoralists following Sānkarwārā Pīr larger family connected The

family of

is renowned for an extensive of Banni. This is the among the with whom Mushtaq's family in Mandvi are through kinship ties. The Sānkarwārā dargāh no longer commands the kind of widespread loyalty that it once did, but a small branch of the family still lives at, the dargah in the heart of Bhuj. It, was badly damaged after the earthquake in 2001 and subsequently rebuilt,, but in its prime was easily one of the more remarkable dargāh complexes of Kachchh. Sānkar means chain in Kachchhi,

and the dargāh space is still demarcated by an old rusty iron chain, barely visible now for the busy market that has sprung up around the shrine. According to legend, this chain marked out,

the jurisdiction of the saint and anyone within its precincts could not be tried or caught by agents of the royal state of Kachchh. This space of refuge from the law is all the more noteworthy given that the palace complex in Bhuj, the darbārgadh, is but,

a stone's throw away from the shrine. The pīr was clearly more than a spiritual head and could wield considerable power that, could constitute an alternative axis of authority in the region. The dargāh complex itself consists of a mosque and a small compound where members of the family are buried. The of the present pīr continues to live in this shrine complex and they trace their origins to Baghdad and the Gilani family, one of the foundational families for South Asian saintly orders. The 19 tells the story of how they came to settle in pīir or Bāwā

family pīr

elderly this

particular spot:

Initially, a father and son came from Iraq, and settled down here in Bhuj, on the banks of a river. There was a river nearby, and wandering along, they wanted a place which had some thandak, so they settled there. Gradually their fame began

to

spread,

as

they performed

small

miracles,

and

he

to be known

they came

of the Maharao who then began them. A lot of good happened for the state of Kachchh at that time, and then the king granted them this piece of land

patronising to the attention

by demarcating

it with

a

sānkar

so

came

as

Sānkarwārā Pīr [the pīr of the chain].

This narrative makes clear the relationship of patronage that was set up bet ween the princely state of Kachchh and the shrine. Land for a shrine was granted to the pīr as a tax-free endowment by the state and he was given his own jurisdiction over those who may choose to take shelter within. In his own narration, the Bāwā makes it a point to say that the shrine did not encourage people to break the law. 'We began to hand over these people to the rulers if they began to seek refuge here, because after a point we felt it was not, right, all these people were just, misusing the immunity they were granted inside our premises.' In fact, the shrine is an example of how the state co-opted the religious institution in its task of governance. In the first it was granted tax-free land. This in itself was not a special case, since Hindu, Muslim and Jain religious institutions were often granted their own jāgīrs as a source of perpetual income. But in addition to land and tax exemption, the Sānkarwārā shrine also functioned as a de facto revenue collector on behalf of the state in Kachchh. The chief following of the lay with the Muslim pastoralists in Banni. Even today, many years after the decline of both the royal state as well as the heyday of the Sānkarwārā family, many pastoral groups in Banni refer to themselves either as Pīrīnā or Rāodā, i.e. 'of the pīr or 'of I he Rā 20 This classification of the Banni population indicated their tax-paying formula. The Pīrānā groups sent, tribute and taxes to the while the sent, the same to the king. Thus, it is clear that the pīr in this case wielded more than just religious authority in an abstract sense; religious authority was articulated alongside j uridical, political and revenue collecting authority as well. The state shared its revenue collecting powers with the pīr in the form of a permanent endowment. Classic anthropological studies of South Asia that discuss the strong articulation between religious, social and political comment on the role of endowments and gifts as being to state making. For instance, Nicholas Dirks (1987: 128)

instance,

family Sānkarwārā

contributions pīr Rāodā

authority central

basic to statecraft' and moral economy of implications. I shall return shortly to

political the gift, firmly grounded

points

out that the order was

'royal gift

was

in

with religio-moral associated a

the implications of this dimension of exchange, gift and tribute that tied the Jatt subjects, the pīr and the king in a mutually constitutive

Coalit on:

Kings

relationship.

and

the

Saints

Royal

in

Proces ion

a Ruling

royal state and Sānkarwārā Pīr maintained the appropriate respectful attitude towards each other as befits partners in the project of state making. The most vivid icon of this relationship lay in the elaborate annual royal procession that symbolically stopped at the gates of the shrine so that the king could bow the saint. Every year, on the Hindu festival ofNāg' Panchamī, the royal procession (sawārī) wound its way through the fortified town of Bhuj, as it made its way outside the city gates to the hill-fort on Bhujiya dūngar. En route, it would always stop first to pay its respects to the Pīr and only then continue past the is city gates to the hilltop temple. The all those old to remember today by enough witnessing it The

before

Nāg Panchamīsaw\la_\r\l=i_\ recalled

lined up on the streets to wave as it snaked past, as an elaborate institution of the past. It is also invoked as an example of good relations and mutual respect between Hindus and Muslims in Kachchh, unlike the mutual hostility that is taken to be of inter-religious life in the rest of Gujarat. 21 In Bhuj's Āinā Mahal, the palace of mirrors built as an entertainment palace for the rulers, there is a 47 foot long, hand-paintecl scroll that carefully depicts every last, detail of this procession. The Maharao, statuesque on an elaborately decorated elephant, is preceded by his standard bearers and surrounded by Arab bodyguards and African slaves. Bringing up the rear are various artisanal classes like musicians and craftsmen. Painted in 1876, this scroll depicts the procession of Pragmalji II (r. 1860-75) as he wound his way through the streets, past the Sānkarwārā shrine to the hill fort,.

indicative

Marianna Postans provides an eyewitness account of an earlier procession during her travels through Kachchh in the 1830s:

In advance of the procession came the Rao’s Sanees, or riding camels, richly caparisoned, bearing his standards and the Nekarah, or royal drum; the drum being decorated with trappings, whose bright hues flashed like jewels in the morning sun. Next in order, with slow and stately pace, advanced the royal elephants, their faces and ears tattooed, circlets of pearl around their tusks, silver bells on their ankles, and bearing richly ornamented howdahs. In the center of the cavalcade appeared his Highness, by an immense concourse of horsemen mounted on gallant chargers [...] and a sonorous strain of cymbals, tomtoms, and other native music, awakened the echoes, and died away in the silent depths of the neighbouring hills (Postans 1839: 101–02).

embroidered

surrounded murmuringly

The last royal procession took place in 1947, the year before Kachchh joined the independent Indian state. A black and white photograph captures the last Rao, Madansinhji, as he retraced the routes of his ancestors, past the darg\la_\h and toward the temple. The museum in the Āin\la_\ Mahal had a collection of old photographs, many of which could not be recovered after the in 2001.

earthquake and Sānkarwārā's Decline

'Islamisaton'

pīrs associated with the Sānkarwārā dargāh operated as perfect mediators between the princely state and pastoralists in Banni. The pastoralists among whom Jatts are the largest number were loyal devotees of the pīr and subj ects of the king. Loyalty to theplr helped ensure loyalty to the king since they as a ruling coalition vis-à-vis the pastoralists. As long was able to clothe his revenue collecting as the in a predominantly religious idiom, the state was also of the loyalty of its subj ects in outlying frontier areas of the kingdom such as Banni. The princely state of Kachchh was The

—

—

functioned

authority pīr assured frequently

involved in skirmishes over border demarcation with the British Indian province of Sindh during the nineteenth century.

Pastoralists on the border were a valuable resource for the royal court stationed miles away in Bhuj. In the words of Himmatsinhji Jadeja, brother of the last ruler of Kachchh and a keen writer

and historian in his own right, 'the Jatts towards the north and northwest of Bhuj, were used as informers; they used to guard

the borders and inform the state about an impending invasion or attack. They were given concessions by the state in return for such favors.' The loyalty of the Jatts was important to the state and the latter's co-opting of the S\la_\nkarw\la_\r\la_\ P\'li_\r's family spiritual leaders for the Jatts—was key to securing this loyalty and the frontiers of the princely state. The decline of the royal state of Kachchh as it gave way to the administrative structure of the postcolonial Indian nation-state was eventually followed by a decline in the sanctity ascribed to the S\la_\nkarw\l=a_\r\l=a_\ dargāh. In some measure, this is due to the relative decline of saint worship among the pastoralists of Banni in gen-eral. Discourses of Islamic reform urging the giving up of historically situated interpretations of Islam in favour of a universalised ethic have elicited a strong response among the Jatts of Banni. Most of them have, over the years, given up following pīr families as they used to. In fact, with the exception of a handful of Jatt families in Banni, almost all the pastoralists today profess membership in one or another transnational Islamic movement such as the Ahl-e-Hadīs or the Tablīghī Jam 'āt. These movements have tapped into the desire of marginalised Muslim populations to define themselves positively, using a global discourse of Islamic'rationality'. In writing about these movements in Kachchh, I follow the argument that these are explicitly political in nature and scope, as they provide 'models for' a certain kind of identity politics. The ethical reform of the self that, lies at the core of these discourses serves a far more political end than might be suggested by purely cultural models of analysis for such movements of religious reform and —

maintaining

revival. Jatts who

spoke of the need to adopt a more 'correct' form of Islam reiterated that this was not the time or place to superstition amongst their community. Referring to the practice of saint worship in Kachchh, one Jatt elder

encourage

widespread scoffed

'ignorant practices of the Muslim masses Look practice of laying chādars on graves [of saints, in dargāhs]. I tell them [pīrs and their supporters] their Allah is in graves. This is a very bad practice, encouraging jāhilāt among our people.' In Bhuj, Imtiazbhāi, a young, well-educated at the

at this

Jatt man who owned a bookshop selling Islamic literature and cassettes of Quranic recitations, commented, ‘In an age when Muslim society needs to focus its time and money on questions of education and social uplift, this [referring to vast sums of money spent on celebrating saints’ death anniversaries] is a huge waste of money.’

Apart from the general political rhetoric of the time, based on the

hardnosed Hindutva philosophy that appeared to systematically work against the interests of minority populations in the service of some larger notion of a Hindu nation, there were a number of ways in which pastoralists were stigmatised as unclean, unreliable wanderers and increasingly as potential traitors to the ‘national’ cause. Projects to develop areas in the Rann are often written about and debated in the newspaper Kachchh Mitra. If the primary motive behind such projects such as building better roads and more service stops along the way was ‘development’, broadly conceived, the subtext often tends to be a larger desire to curb illegal activities of ‘anti-national elements’ that frequented the border area.22 21 May 2003 was observed throughout Kachchh as ‘Anti-

Terrorism Day’. On the occasion, citizens of Bhuj were presented with a mini open-air drama performed in the evening by the lake in the centre of the city. The dramatisation involved a step-by-step of what terrorists look like, and once identified, how they are nabbed and captured by the police. Firecrackers served to simulate the effect of bombs going off. The men who played the in this ‘game’ wore the same kind of clothing that is identifiable by most townsfolk as the garb of the men from Banni, complete with the colourful shoulder and headcloth they use.

explanation terrorists generically

Faced with such stereotypical representations within Kachchh, the discourses of Islamic revival have allowed the Jatts of Banni to redefine their subject position in a way that arguably gives them a qualitatively different way to present themselves as agents in a larger systemic process. With the success of such movements of reform that eschewed saint worship, traditional pīr families like the Sānkarwārā family gradually declined among their traditional subjects. At the height of the popularity of the Sānkarw\la_\r\la_\ family during the princely period, the pīr family travelled ext ensively among their followers in Banni. Khadija Ma, the wife of the

current B\a_\w\la_\ at the

child, before the

shrine, remembers travelling to Banni as a of reformism had begun to sweep

new currents

through the area and when her family still commanded a large and respect. Her narrative is strongly reminiscent of my own record in an earlier section, of encountering pīr's followers in the company of Mushtaq. This is especially so with regard to the intensity of affection and loyalty that is ascribed to the

following saints

on

the part of their followers.

child I used to go to Banni often. In the old days all the and pīrs Saiyyids used to get a lot of respect there. Every year our silsilā, would go, in the month of Śrāvan. 23 [....] we would have to drive up to a point and travel into Banni by bullock cart. I still remember how lush Banni used to be, the grasses were green and there were so many animals. I recall the glitter of the shiny black buffaloes (bhaison kīchamak). And the m\la_\ldh\la_\r\li_\s all respected us so much, they would come out and greet us, a special hut would have been decorated, and they used to make us quilts. They would inaugurate a new quilt by first having the pīr sit on it. and then they would give us these quilts as gifts. They had all these animals, they had in huge quantities of milk, and they would set vats, and then make ch\la_\s in big pots. They gave us ghī As

a

,

earthenware dahī

and even animals as offerings. On the night of the eleventh of every month they would not set the milk; they made no buttermilk or yogurt on that day; all the milk would be consumed as milk and what was left over they would feed back to the animals. Now have lost everything.

they

have lost their

īm\la_\n. They

practice of setting work aside on the eleventh of each month according to the Islamic calendar is generally known as gyarvīn in South Asia, and K\la_\rain in Kachchh. This date is reserved in many South Asian Islamic cultures as a day to commemorate the death of Shaikh Abdul Qadir Gilani, considered to be the patron saint of Sufi orders in the region (cf, Metealf 1982; Sanyal 1995). In Kachchh, this was often observed by setting aside for the day that which was the source of one's livelihood in the expectation The

that it would increase and become

more

bountiful. Māldhārīs

would thus refrain from transforming milk into butter, yogurt or buttermilk. With debates on Islamic reform, this practice, along with the entire rubric of saint worship, has become controversial in recent years. In the above narrative, the present state of Jatts' poverty and lack of livelihood opportunities (lack of water and fodder for their animals) is traced back to their loss of faith in the traditional pīr structure and their moving toward a new Islamic consciousness that decrees saint worship as sacrilegious. As a viewpoint from within the shrine system, for this narrative comes from the pīr's wife, the abandonment of a morally superior, religiously

the of not merely emotional sanctioned way of life is identified as

cause

turmoil, but also its physical manifestation in losing the

source

prior wealth and happiness. Opponents of Islamic reform (usually pīr families and their supporters) would assert that the Jatts were suffering the consequences of years of drought not of ecological factors, but because of their loss of faith in the earlier system. A member of a Saiyyid family with a large wādī east of Bhuj who was known simply as B\la_\w\la_\ sahib in acknowledgement of his high birth and lineage remarked sadly of the downfall of the Jatts, 'if they mix water in the milk they sell [signifying dishonesty], how can there be barakat?' Barrakat signifies not just the charisma that inheres in people who belong to certain lineages. Barakat is also the ability to reproduce such charisma or force through the good and morally correct practices of its guardian or owner. Thus, a Saiyyid or pīr family is the custodian of barakat, due to its blood ties with the Prophet's family, but barakat, can also inhere in land, for instance. In a parched, drought prone area of a

because

intentions

like Kachchh, water is revered, for it is life-giving. When a piece of land is described as possessing barakat, it refers both to its own good qualities such as fecundity and beauty as

particular

as the moral qualities of those who work the land, so that whatever is cultivated on it does well. This statement is once

much

again directed at those Jatts who are seen to have abandoned the morally correct path in search of more selfish desires, perhaps of self-aggrandisement. Such dishonesty could only bring suffering, according to the Bāwā sahib.

Transactional Kings,

Saints

and

Nexus

Pastoralists

Between

During the time of the ascendancy of both the royal state and the darg\la_\h, the pīr collected revenue on behalf of the princely state among outlying populations whose possible recalcitrance to the state may have been anticipated. However, the pīr was more than a revenue collector. As Ivhadija Ma's narrative above pastoralists gave their p\li_\r family gifts and milk as offerings and tribute This was part of the obligatory reciprocal exchange relationship between pīrs and their followers. Followers were obliged to give gifts to their pīr to show their love and devotion, and pīrs were obliged to accept this offering as a form of correct Islamic practice (sunnat) and, as Mushtaq instructed me when we were at the receiving end of money offerings, 'a form of love'. But the gift from the lay follower is not supposed to end with its passage to the pīr. Illese gifts and tributes are then considered to be redistributed back among the pīr's constituency of lay followers as barakat or blessing. This blessing has an abstract sensé of

indicates, .

grace, but also a more material sense of economic redistribution, ensuring the reproduction of the ecological foundations that provided the pastoralists with their own wealth healthy animals and plenty of milk. It is well-known that the shrine is a centre for the collection and redistribution of wealth, as it or wealth, as offerings and redistributes it as food among its believers. But it. can also redistribute grace in the more abstract sense, as noted above, which keeps the faith alive among its constituency, and in turn ensures that, it is able to collect more wealth as offerings in the first place, —

collects

consecrated niāz keeping

its prestige alive. In this network of exchange and redistribution or 'transactional nexus' (Appadurai and Breckenridge 1976) presided over by the saint and the state in coalition, the Jatts' perceived loss of abundance is related to two factors. On the one hand, the

ecological

decline of the darg\la_\h as an economic hub due to a diminished client network giving material offerings has meant that there is a decline in its redistributive network. This is also linked to discourses of Islamic reform that spurn the concept of barakat as grace received from the saint. In the perceived absence

of grace, the Jatts feel the lack of pasturage more intensely. On the other hand, this loss is also closely related to an increase in the now more unmediated power of the modern bureaucratic state in this border region. Once the power of the

enormous

pīr declined, due to the combined effects of a decline of its royal patron as well as the currents of Islamic reform, he was no longer

maintaining the loyalty of border populations. period of the pīr's ascendancy, the royal state was During less intrusive directly in the lives of the pastoralists. It did not need to be, as it had delegated some of its responsibilities to the shrine. The pastoralists who considered themselves to be the pīr s followers paid taxes and tribute to the shrine instead of the state receiving them back in the form of mat erial abundance and abstract grace that kept the cycle going. Because the state and the shrine were partners in the project of state making at least insofar as some of Banni's populations were concerned, the pastoralist s obedience to the shrine curbed any potential as

effective in the

,

recalcitrance to the state. As such, the state did not have to worry

about the loyalty of its mobile pastoral population on the border. this dargāh no longer commands the same kind of state sanctioned respect as it once did as an ally in administrative and judicial matters. Further, with the deepening of discourses of

Today,

Islamic reform which eschew the patronage of pīrs among some of the pastoralists, they no longer offer up the same kinds of gifts and prayers as they once did. As the pīr and the state were linked in a complementary circuit of authority and revenue collection, the direct power of each is inversely related to the other. With the decline of the shrine's influence among these border the direct surveillance of the modern state must increase. For the shrine, in its revenue collecting mode, was able to act as

populations, a

guarantor of the state's frontiers, keeping an eye on the border With its decline, the modern state increases its

populations.

direct presence on the border. This has already been indicated thus far with numerous examples of the policies of the modern state vis-à-vis its minority populations along the border. The case study of the second dargāh will illustrate how the

modern bureaucratic state annexes the symbolic system of a shrine in order to indirectly further its presence in an outlying

border

area.

Modern

A Dargāh

State:

and the

Hājī Pīr

The Sānkarwārā dargāh was an example of the complementarity of the state and the shrine during the royal past, and today both

the shrine and the royal state have declined. The shrine of Hājī Pīr, on the other hand, is an apt illustration of how the modern bureaucratic state attempts to harness some institutions

—

—

of the shrine s symbolic power even as the latt er is stripped of its traditional hereditary spiritual functions. With the deepening

popularity of Islamic revivalist ideas in Banni, Hājī Pīr has also lost many of its original pastoralist clients. It is its location that, continues to mark it as an important resource for the modern state despite its decline in strictly spiritual terms. Unlike the Sānkarwārā dargāh that is located in the heart of the political centre at Bhuj, barely a couple of hundred metres from the royal palace complex, the darg\la_\h of H\la_\j\l=i_\ P\li_\r is situated in the Rann, close to the frontier village of Nara and about 85 miles away from the district centre. It is close to the international border and

a

Border Security Force (BSF) post is situated just adjacent lineage of the Sänkarwärä shrine,

to it. Unlike the sacralised

gaddī nishīn is a Saiyyid linked by blood to the original saint, Hājī Pīr has no sacred lineage that followed him, for he is believed to have been martyred as a young boy. In this case, the keepers of the shrine are not, related by blood to the original pīr. While the Sānkarwārā dargāh was associated with the royal state from its founding charter myth, we have no either documentary or oral that the royal state evidence was connected in any way with the dargāh of H\la_\j\l=i_\ Pīr. This shrine appears to have always had a far more local significance and its founding myth embeds it within a local pastoral context,. So then why when this shrine has already lost most of its local pastoralist followers to the new discourses of Islamisation, would the modern state suddenly become interested in it? This interest quite unlike the princely state's interest in the S\la_\nkarw\l=a_\r\l=a_\ role as a religious shrine, is not premised on but on the modern state's more pragmatic political agendas where each

—

—

,

,

institution, HājīPīr's on

the border.

Pir Hāji of Martydom and Biography The

This condensed description of the founding legend of the shrine of H\la_\j\l=i_\ Pīr is reconstructed in translation from one of his hagiographies (Nakshbandi 1998). In this text., Hājī Pīr s lineage is traced to a Hazrat Bahauddin Zakariyya of Multan. H\la_\j\li_\ Pīr

was born Shah Zakariyya and called Hājī Pīr (the honorific Hājī is bestowed consequent to performing the Hajj pilgrimage) when he returned from the Hajj at the tender age of 12. According to this biography, HījīPīr's family bred buffaloes, and even as a young boy he would wander deep into the jungles with his buffaloes, lost

in prayer and contemplation of the divine. Following a revelation that he was required to spread the message of Islam to Kachchh, he came with his buffaloes into that country through Sindh and set himself up near Nara. This version of his hagiography credits him with slowly converting some of the pastoral tribes of the region as well as the Rajput Solankis who were related to the Solanki dynasty ruling over Gujarat and parts of Wagad (eastern Kachchh) at the time. These descendants of the Solankis to Islam by him are believed to serve as the muj\a_\wars of his shrine today. Having demonstrated various miracles the creation of a lake in the middle of the Rann, which the pastoralists to his side as they accepted Islam, he to live beside it with his buffaloes. The story continues began when a Hindu zamīnd\la_\r from Nara came to him one day to ask for a boon in order to test the saint. Requesting that his cow

converted

including attracted

be endowed with milk, he promised that he would convert to Islam if it were granted. The boon was granted but the landlord reneged on his promise, This deception on the part of the landowner of Nara meant that the village had to suffer on his behalf. It soon attracted the wrath of a local bandit Jesal, who attacked the village viciously, carrying away people's animal wealth. An elderly widow came weeping to Hâjî Pïr, asking for his help. With her only cow stolen, she had no more means of survival and was desperate for his help. Deeply affected by this old widow's plea, Hāj\li_\ Pīr, still only a young boy of 13, singlehandedly took on Jesal and his forces. It was in the process of rescuing this woman's cow that he was martyred and eventually his body was buried near the lake he created. This burial site was to become the dargāh of H\la_\j\l=i_\ Pīr. His hagiography does ,

not give us many dates other than to place the Solanki Rajput conversions to some time soon after the ‘first quarter of the 11th century AD’ (ibid.: 5). The Hāji Pir Melāas a'Cult ral System' Clifford Geertz argues that an anthropological study of religion involves the analysis of symbolic syst ems of meaning by locating these symbolic processes within the larger social—structural within which they are meaningful. Thus, '[r]eligious concepts spread beyond their specifically metaphysical contexts to provide a framework of general ideas in terms of which a wide range of experience can be given intellectual, emotional, moral meaningful form' (Geertz 1973b: 123). HājīPīr's dargāh may be viewed as a symbolic system based on the key themes in his hagiographies. These themes are widely shared by the general population of Kachchh—both Hindu and Muslim whether or not they consider themselves to be devotees of the pīr. This system of meaning, specifically articulated during the 'urs festival 24 or melā at the shrine, have been appropriated by the modern bureaucratic state. The festival is transformed from a local context of worship and patronage by Muslim pas-

system —

—

articulated

—

annual

generalised public sphere, where it becomes the state as a secular symbol of shared piety. Because of the location of the shrine and its melā which takes place close to the border, this appropriation has a larger significance. First, however, I will detail those elements of Hâjï Pír's story that are relevant for its development as a symbolic system of meaning. As his biography recounted above reveals, the story of Hājī Pír revolves around all the key symbols of pastoral life. Also, we have no accounts of previous state patronage of this shrine. It appears to have been embedded in a purely local pastoral In the dry desert environment of the Rann, water is precious for pastoralists. It is when the nomadic pastoralists of the area witnessed H\la_\j\l=i_\ Pīr's miraculous creation of a lake in the middle of the parched Rann that they accepted his leadership and religious vision. The saint is depicted as whiling away his time with his buffaloes, an image that finds immediate resonance with populations. Yet, when the story talks about the Hindu toralists to

a more

appropriated by

sociopolitical

complex. pastoral

residents of Nara, it switches codes to talk of cows instead. The deceitful landlord asked for his cow to be provided with milk, and the elderly widow is distraught because her cow is stolen by the bandit Jesal and then she has no other means of livelihood. Since the

cow is a sacred symbol for Hindus, it could be that the argued story of H\a_\j\l=i_\ Pīr plays with the dual themes of Muslim piety—the bringing in of pastoral and pre-Islamic

populations into Islamic universe, well addressing itself an

as

as

martyred while for a cow is of the an facet important fighting story, and in fact, when Hindus spoke of the importance of H\a_\j\l-i_\ Pīr, it. was always to underscore his role not as a Muslim Hājī, but, as a to a Hindu audience.That he is claimed to be

25

protector. However, it, is also important to note the manner in which this trope of M usl ims protecting cows becomes appropriated as a cow

day narrative of syncretism. The hagiographie literature Hāj\li_\ Pīr is forthright about his role as a proselytiser. He (gently) converts Hindu Solankis and non-Islamic pastoralists,

modern on

and it is the Hindu landlord who deceives the saint and invites the curse of the marauding bandit Jesal, also a Hindu. The is clear that Hījī Pīr's mission was to bring Islam into this area. Yet, in appropriating the cultural system surrounding

biography

Hājī Pīr, the modern state glosses over these facts and ends up reinforcing the motif of cow protection as a symbol of shared piety between Hindus and Muslims. Contemporary references to Hājī Pīr in Kachchh, whether to the melā or to the shrine itself, are always couched in terms of Hindu—Muslim amity. Newspaper or other reports on the darg\la_\h inevitably carry Hindu Mussalman ektā nāpratīk (a symbol of Hindu—Muslim unity) as an almost naturalised suffix to H\la_\j\l=i_\ Pīr. In a photo display of famous pilgrimage sites, the centrepiece in Kachchh Tārī Asinitā, a publication extolling the cultural history of Kachchh, all sites are Hindu temples with the sole of Hājā Pīr presented not as a Muslim site at all, but a of symbol (unity). During a period when Muslims were in political discourse as 'outside' the civilisational frame of Gujarati asinitā, why would the state seek to appropriate a shrine whose origins are clearly linked with Islam, even as it its specifically Islamic identity into the more palatable

exception constructed ektā —

submerges idiom of ektā?

At the annual melā in the summer month of Chaitra, Hindus and Muslims throng the shrine in large numbers. Once a local shrine, embedded in the lifeworlds of its surrounding pastoral populations, the darg\la_\h of Hājī Pīr has now been adopted for Kachchh as a symbol of its tolerance and presumed inter-religious 26 amity. Almost all the participation in the three-day annual melā comes not from Banni, where the shrine is located, but from in Kachchh and other parts of the state. Some days before the three day melä is due to start, there are signs of related activity in Kachchh. Groups of pilgrims pass through in droves on their way to the shrine, coming from all over Kachchh and in some instances from as far away as Bombay. Dark green flags flying aloft rickshaws, trucks and cars the movement of pilgrims. Those who are so inclined walk the entire distance to the shrine some of them starting off from their homes even a week before the melā begins. All along the

elsewhere

announce ,

walking trail,

there

camps set up where people come to

provide for the walkers, providing food, and tea, sometimes sev\simply la_\ to witness, partaking of small amount of the are

water

or

a

grace. This is in itself sharing in a small measure of barakat, 27 especially for those who cannot or will not go to the dargāh in person, much like those textual accounts of the Hajj pilgrimage that came to recreate the experience vicariously for its readers so that 'the text itself serves as the hajj (Metcalf 1990: 95). At some of the larger wayside camps like the one at Loriya, there is almost a mini melā of sorts such is the atmosphere generated by the collective spirit of the pilgrims and their well-wishers. In the summer of 2003, the melā was attended by many hundreds of people. The last two years had been disruptive, first the earthquake and then the riots in Gujarat that kept people indoors for the most part, avoiding large-seale collective public activity. The three-day melā culminates on the first Monday of the summer month of Chaitra, typically in April. Sunday evening is the most important day and the scene of most of the festivities. These involved all night (Sufi songs) by well-known invited from groups Bombay and a takrīr by a maul\la_\n\l=a_\ invited for the purpose. specially ,

qawwālī professional

People descend on the shrine in large numbers and set up their

own makeshift tents for the three nights they will spend here. As night falls and the dust of the Rann settles along with the heat

day, small groups of people huddle around portable oil they cook their evening meal. On one side of the dargāh is the lake supposedly created by Hājī Pīr. Today It is watered through the facilities of the dam at Nara village nearby. On the other side of the lake are the houses of the mujāwars, about of the

stoves as

30-35 houses of Muslim Solankis who are believed to have been among the first converts through the pīr. During the melā many of them rent out their houses to pilgrims, feeding and looking after them for modest sums of money. A description from an Egyptian 'urs festival written in the 1970s could be as true for Hājī Pīr in 2003:

struggled

Hundreds of thousands of people elbowed, charged, and their way up the narrow road from mosque to fire-works. Children were trampled and barely rescued, students snakedanced their way through the infinitely good-tempered chaos effectively blocked only by formidable black-swathed peasant women carrying huge bundles and screaming out for their lost offspring [...]. The while haloes of spirit lamps illuminated patches of dusty earth where families who had travelled many miles for this great night stretched out exhausted on the ground (Gilsenan 1973: 49–50). Over the years however, the cultural complex of Hājī Pīr has moved from its more local pastoral connotations to a wider signification as a symbol of Hindu—Muslim shared piety and it is marketed as such by the state. Such fairs, as long as they pastoralists in significant numbers, were always

political attracted

of cattle. Today important few occasions for the sale

there

are

very

pastoralists who attend it in its capacity as a shrine where they participate in the redistribution; of goods, wealth and grace, as in the example of the Sānkarwārā shrine. If they do attend, it is only as a form of entertainment (manoranjan). for it is

not often that this distant corner of the Rann attracts so many visitors from far and wide. The ensuing festivities and picnic-like atmosphere is compelling for local pastoralists, who bring their children along to watch. But they are quite emphatic that they do not attend as devotees, especially since they have taken to discourses of Islamic reform. The melā is organised and coordinated by a committee that consists of the local mujāwar families attached to the shrine.

This committee has key links with local politicians for the event is too large not to attract a variety of interests. Additionally, as I have argued, the state is very interested in managing this event. Among the more educated Muslims in Bhuj, there are whispered insinuations about the corrupt ways of the mujāwars, links with local politicians, and of the vast accumulation of personal wealth by them through the medium of the melā. In strictly religious terms, like the Sänkarwärä dargäh, the Hâjî Pïr shrine too has declined in recent years. But unlike the former, the significance of the

Hājī Pīr

relocated within

melā seems to have increased even a more secular political discourse.

as

it is

State-sponsored Piety? Why

would it be relevant for an avowedly Hindu nationalist state market the Hājī pīr melā as a symbol of shared piety? I have to already discussed the role of the modern state vis-à-vis its outlying populations in Banni. The project of sealing the border and lack of state-sponsored projects for the ecological welfare of the pastoralists have contributed to a general sense of alienation on the part of Banni's Muslim residents. After the earthquake of 2001, the selective resettlement of Harijan and adirasipopulations in newly constructed cement houses in Banni has further

contributed pastoralists the region, to an 'erasure' of the Muslim

of

as

far as the state is concerned. Why then would the modern state be interested in a Muslim shrine located in the heart of Banni, a mere throw from the border with Sindh? The state's of the melā of Hājī Pīr serves a similar function as in other words, it becomes a its other policies in the region for the state to way directly presence itself in an 'out-of-the-way'

stone's appropriation —

margin

of its

territory,

Hindu—Muslim shared piety becomes a rhetorically significant trope to create this presence. Earlier, I suggested that the royal state's association with the Sānkarwārā shrine was a useful coalition for the state because the shrine helped maintain order among the state's border populations. This meant that the state could maintain itself relatively aloof from a direct intervention in the lives of the pastoralists. Thus, when the Jatts today recall a past that was marked by a state, they are able to perceive it as such because the of order was tied into a system of exchange where state power was diffused through the agency of the shrine. The state

benevolent maintenance

was less manifest in their life experience, as its power was mediated through the saint.

HājāPīr, project partner appropriated making

on the other hand, cannot be in the same in the of state as it does command much local not, respect among the pasway, toralists of Banni. Even as the shrine declines in spiritual among its original clients, it retains a growing symbolic power in Kachchh for reasons that are more political than The fact that, the melā takes place at the border with Sindh was not lost, on many people at the festival. 'You can hear the from Pakistan; in fact many Pakistanis surreptitiously cross over for the melā,' I was told by numerous participants.

The shrine of as a

importance

religious.

festivities

Undoubtedly, Sindhi pastoral groups must have been significant participants in the annual melā when the border was an easier one to cross, certainly before 1965. In 2000, a popular Hindi film called Refugee was produced and directed by renowned Bolly-

wood director J. P. Dutta, Set and filmed in the Rann of Kachchh and its environs, the story revolves around a young man who earns his living by ferrying people and goods illegally across the Rann between Kachchh and Sindh. Although not explicitly stated in the movie, he belongs to a village on the Kachchh side of the border. Rather predictably he falls in love with a woman from the other side. The film climaxes at, the melā of Hājī Pīr. With a qawwālī song reaching its crescendo in the background, the young lovers are united under the benevolent and avuncular gazes of the border security officers from both sides, both of whom are participating in the event along with other participants from both sides of the border. This film enhanced the popular of Pakistanis crossing over surreptitiously from Sindh to take part in the melā. A large part of the transformation of the Hājī Pīr melā from a local fair for pastoral populations to its appropriation by the modern state as a secular event is signalled by its symbolic firmly within current political discourses in Gujarat. In the late 1990s, the elected representative in the State Legislature from Bhuj a member of the BJP decided to build a mtrs\la_\fir khāno (rest house) for the pilgrims who travel to Hājī Pīr. This was part of his larger project to build rest houses in popular pilgrimage spots in Kachchh. It was also widely believed that ,

perception location —

this

project

—

populist measure to placate

the Muslim

in Banni, population bank for the BJP, and potentially large was a

a

vote

one that needed some winning over. As a leading journalist who had covered the story at the time recalled, there was a storm

of protest by right wing Hindu organisations such as the RSS and VHP. They objected that Hâjï Pïr did not merit such as it harboured 'anti-national elements' from Pakistan. Building a rest house at the site would merely encourage illegal border crossers to seek refuge there and evade law enforcement agencies. The construction of the rest house was abandoned soon after it was begun. 28 But the melā remains an important political event. It is the norm for the District Collector, the highest ranking bureaucrat in the district, to visit the shrine during the festivities of the last evening in his official capacity. The officers posted in the neighbouring border outpost join in as well and this event becomes, as I have argued, a means of symbolically appropriating a distant corner of Banni into the reach of the state through the latter's and surveillance powers.

attention

presence

The nature of the state has changed; the modern bureaucratic

state functions within a very different framework of sovereignty. Jatt narratives evoke nostalgia for the princely past when the state worked within a different paradigm of rule. In the following chapter, I argue that Jatt narratives of nostalgia are, in fact, a on yet another way in which the region of Kachchh can be By focusing on the sovereign royal past of Kachchh, it is distinguished sharply from the rest of Gujarat. Here, the focus is not so much on establishing continuity with Sindh as much as it is on stressing the unique sovereignty and status of Kachchh.

comment imagined. Notes

1. Literally brotherhood, this refers to the administration of land through the arms of the ruling lineage. 2. Letter from A. Malet, Political Agent in Kutch, to J. P. Willoughby, Esq., Chief Secretary to Government of Bombay, dated Bhooj Agency, 1 January 1842. Political Consultation of 14 September 1842, no. 11, NAI Foreign Department 1842. 3. See Gold and Gujar (2002) and Robbins (1988) on the compulsions and of introducing this species on indigenous ecosystems. See Vaishnav (1987) for an official view from the Forest Department of Gujarat. 4. Political rhetoric within India more generally, but specifically in the case of Gujarat, as witnessed in the regional election campaigns of 2002, increasingly associates Pakistan and Muslims as isomorphic.

consequences

the time of this fieldwork it was not uncommon to see brightly 5. During coloured painted highway signs saying Hindu R\la_\shtra's 'x' or 'y town welcomes you. A 6. good compendium of these documents is found in Gupta (1969). For 7. example, Anderson and Grove (1987) ; Collett. 1987 ; Grove (1987) ; Grove (1995); Peluso (1992). 8. example, Dharmakumarsinhji (1978) ; Gold and Gujar (2002) ; Mayaram For (1997) ; Rangarajan (2001). John M. MacKenzie (1988) addresses the role of hunting in colonial state formation more generally» All 9. the newspaper reports are paradigmatic variations on the same theme, for example, 'Seemavarti vistaron ma raheta lokone jagrut. ane satark ralleva anurodh' in Kachchh Mitra, 12 April 2003; or 'Sarhadpar raheta loko ne jagrut rahi desh seva na karyo karva hakal' in Kachchh Mitra, 4 April 2003. A 10. good example of such rhetoric is found in 'Togadia said it, .and he's proud of it' in The Indian Express (Ahmedabad edition), 22 October 2003. 11. Poncharī or pancharaī (pan = leaves; choraī = fodder) was the tax levied on animals who ate leaves (Bliadani 1999: 108, 17n). Lt12. Col. G. L. Jacob, Political Agent in Kutch, to H. L. Anderson, Secretary to Government, Bombay, dated Bhooj 28 April 1856, MSA Political Department vol. 69 of 1856, Compl. No. 774. it is technically 'illegal' to cut. Prosopis for subsistence needs, 13. Although ironically it is the source of an extremely lucrative trade in wood charcoal, the prime beneficiaries of which are locally designated 'mafia' lords, in connivance with the state police and border officials. On14. Islamisation see, for example, Eaton (1993); Geertz (1968) ; Gilsenan (1973) ; Mayaram (1997); Meeker (1979) ; Metcalf (1982) ; Roy (1983) ; Searle-

Chatterjee (1994);:and Simpson (2003). questions in more detail in Chapter 5. For 16. a similar discussion, see Eaton (2000) and Roy (1983). The 17. work of Richard M. Eaton (1984, 1993, 2000) is significant in this regard. 18. similar cases of shrines commanding political constituencies, see, for For example, Ansari (1992) ; Eaton (1978 1984); Ewing 1983 ; Gilmart.in (1984); and Gilmartin (1988). It19. is quite telling, in this context that the honorific Bāwā is also used for living members of the erstwhile royal family in Kachchh, The 20. rulers of Kachchh adopted the titles Rāo and Māhārāo (great Räo). It is far from my intention to claim that: Guj arat is axiomatic of strife and Kachchh is its opposite. Rather, I point to the fact that in the period following the 2002 riots in Gujarat, people in Kachchh often liked to highlight aspects of what they perceived to be 'unique' to them and set off from the rest of Gujarat, 'Khadir 22. ne Jodta Margo' in Kachchh Mitra, 12 April 2003. 23. Śrāvan is a monsoon month (August-September). It is a busy month in the Hindu ritual calendar as it. signifies a period of renewal following the hot and dry summer months. In this case, it. would also signify the renewal of the ecosystem in Banni during and following the rains. I 15. return to these

,

21. interreligious

24.

25.

An 'urs is the annual commemoration of the death anniversary of a saint. In Kachchh, all 'urs commemorations are known as melā, and as that term connotes, they are generally festive Social occasions. The theme of Muslim saints protecting cows recurs in many contexts. See, for example, Amin (2002) and Roy (1983) Once again, there is an implicit and sometimes quite explicit contrast made with the supposedly more hostile inter-religious climate in mainland ,

26.

27. 28.

Gujarat. the context of the censure from the opponents of shrine worship, often leading to intra-family and especially gendered conflict. Personal Communication, D. V. Maheshwari, Bhuj, 31 March 2003. In

5 Settlement, Sovereignty and History Like the Dānetā Jatts, the Garāsiā Jatts also endow the royal past with a mythic quality of goodness and justice. Yet the specific idiom through which this comparison is expressed is unique in each case. For the pastoralist Jatts, the key trope for the nature of the past vis-à-vis the present was ecology and access to pasture lands. For the sedentary Jatts, this is articulat ed through not ions of t erritory sovereignty and narratives of settlement through Kachchh. As such, their narratives may be read as a comment on the history of the state in Kachchh.

assessing Dānet\la_\ Gar\la_\si\la_\ comparison ,

By invoking

the moral order of the

princely

state, their

narratives implicit critique of the modern state, may also be read as an

its

policy

of border settlement and management of minorities.

In their accounts of the princely past, the Jatts invoke a period

in Kachchh’s history before it became a territorial component of the state of Gujarat. Under the princely state, Kachchh retained an exclusive political, territorial identity. After its dismantling in 1948, Kachchh was first brought under direct administration by the central government at New Delhi. Although it had lost its independence, it retained its territorial boundaries as a separate administrative unit. In 1956, Kachchh was merged into the then bilingual Bombay Province, a modified successor to the Bombay Presidency. And finally, in 1960, it formed a part of Gujarat, carved out of the Bombay Province.

political former

Garāsiā Jatt accounts of their settlement and sedentarisation

across Kachchh become at least one

manifest example through

may be able to account for the ambivalence produced 's merger into Gujarat, as it is experienced by at least Kachchh by 1 some of its subjects. It will be recalled, from my discussion in Chapter 1 that the position of Kachchh within a larger Gujarati which

one

,

regional imagination had been ambivalent from the very start of their association. One of the justifications for creating a separate province of Gujarat out of the Bombay Presidency was that the former constituted a somewhat distinct historical, territorial, cultural and linguistic formation. Within this space, however,

Settlers, Saints and Sovereigns Kachchh was not really an integrated part. As I discussed earlier it was suggested that while linguistically Kachchh could be ,

considered to be a part of Gujarat, historically it stood outside it. Since the creation of the state of Gujarat with Kachchh as one of its constituent districts, however, the historic, cultural and political discontinuities between Kachchh and the rest of Gujarat have tended to be glossed over in favour of projecting a uniform regional imagination for Gujarat in its entirety. Here, I

propose that the Garāsiā Jatts' narratives concerning questions of territory and sovereignty in Kachchh may be read as an implicit critique of prevalent political expressions of territory, culture and belonging in Gujarat.

Oral

History

I should stress that these narratives must be situated against and read within the larger sociological and political contexts that produce them. As a predominantly non-literate community, the Jatts are the quintessential anthropological subjects of an oral history. However, as we know, the spoken word cannot simply be assumed to put right the distortion and power imbalance that is seen as integral to the written text. Orality may, of course, participate in the same circuits of power, authority and hegemony that have been traditionally regarded as constitutive of writing (see, for example, Messick 1993). Further, it would be far from my intention to suggest that Jatt oral history may be used to reconstruct any singular or authenticated narrative on their part that neatly counters official history. TheGarasia

Jatts

Although they may well have once been a single group, Jatts in Kachchh today present themselves as three mutually

exclusive social groups. Unlike the Dānetā Jatts who continue pastoralists along the Kachchh-Sindh border within the ecological and political constraints described earlier, the Garāsiā Jatts are a sedentary community of agriculturalists in Kachchh and Sindh. The term Garāsiā is derived from girās or grās and typically means the recipient of a land grant. A. M. Shah and R. G. Shroff (1959) write that it means vassal grās literally to be

—

Settlement, Sovereignty and History and signifies an estate for subsistence meaning a 'mouthful' also has also been used to refer to Skaria Garāsiā (see 1999). chiefs and Shroff 1959; Tambs-Lyche 1997). (Shah petty Rajput David F. Pocock (1972: 29) writes that 'Garasia connotes descent from someone who has held garas land, land given by a ruler —

either as a reward for past services rendered or as payment for continued military assistance.' Etymologically, then, the Garāsiā Jatts would seem to have received grants of land in return for some sort of military or other assistance to landed authorities in the past. Although firmly located within a sedentary present Garāsiā Jatt oral histories refer to a possibly pastoral and peripatetic past when they claim that all Jatts were a single mobile pastoral group. Although the Garāsiā Jatts look down upon the pastoral Dānetā Jatts for continuing a peripatetic life, their animal rearing pasts continue to be significant in many Symbols of a pastoral life chiefly animals and milk recur in many of their oral histories. ,

respects. —

—

Narrative accounts of Garāsiā Jatt history are a comment on the process by which they came to settle in Kachchh. As such, they are origin stories, but it is important to note that these stories closely associate the Jatts' early fortunes in Kachchh with those of the princely state. Through these narratives of settlement, the Jatts' body social is congruent with the body politic of Kachchh. They project the social body of their as métonymie with the body of the ruler and, by the sovereign political body of Kachchh as it existed before the princely state collapsed. In a later section, I explore the implications of this association for questions of sovereignty and territoriality in the Jatt imagination and how their in turn compromises that of the present state of Kachchh forms a part of. The Jatts' nostalgia for which Gujarat, the princely past is simultaneously nostalgia for a period when Kachchh was an independent, sovereign state, not, incorporated into a mainstream Gujarati identity as it is today, at least at the level of politics and dominant cultural discourse of asmitá.

community

extension,

imagination

Narratives of Settlement

Lakhond is a village approximately eight miles east of Bhuj. It has a large Jatt population and occupies a significant place

mythico-historical past, for it is believed to be the first settled by the Jatts, following a royal land grant in their village name. I was a frequent visitor and guest in this village. Lakhond in their

Danji, the Patel of the entire Garāsiā Jatt anxious to maintain contact with me and, as I was to realise later, attempted to regulate the flow of information that came my way. I begin with his story, for it provides the early context for the Jatts' arrival into Kachchh. All the stories reproduced below were recounted to me on a number of by different groups of people. They form the corpus of collective memory shared by the group as a whole. The day I recorded this story, my research assistant and I had attended a wedding in the village. Drummers from the Langa 2 caste had come from Konatia, a village in western Kachchh. Wedding festivities had taken up the entire morning. After the bride was sent off in the late afternoon, everyone retired to their front porches for tea and gossip. Danji and his visiting brotherin-law (also an office-bearer of the Jam'āt), were relaxing on string cots and enjoying the last of the crisp wintry sunshine. It was the perfect setting for a story. And so he began: was

also home to

Jam 'āt. He

was

occasions

A long time ago, when we were still in Halab [modern Syria] we lived in a kingdom where there was a hajām, who served the king. It was a small place and he also served us Jatts. When women needed their hair cut, the same hajām came to them. One day he told the king, 'your queen would not look good on even the feet of the Jatt women, so beautiful are they.' He had some nail cuttings from them, and he burnt them in ,

king. As soon as they burnt, they gave off the fragrance of lobān. The king was intrigued and demanded to front of the

these beautiful Jatt, women. He went to the Jatt camp and demanded one of the women in marriage. Some of the Jatts refused and wanted to flee from the kingdom immediately, to preserve the honour and integrity of the group as a whole. Many of them firmly stood their ground and said, 'we are fighters after all, let the Jān come.' They stipulated that the procession should have no less than a thousand men and an equal number of horses. In preparation for this encounter with the kings' forces, the elderly and infirm, women and see

children were sent, on ahead to safety. All able-bodied men stayed behind to deal with the king's Jan. Fearing for their lives, most Langas of the kingdom also left with the Jatts who had been sent away. But one family of Langas stayed behind and said that they would support us and fight with us against the king. The Jatts said, 'look, your job is not, fighting, you are not fighters like we are. Your job shall be to play the dhol so hard when the king's Jān arrives,, they get utterly distracted.' The king sent his procession to claim his bride, but as soon as it entered the Jatt camp, the men were felled one by one until not even one remained standing. Now the Jatts were ready to leave. But the Jatts who had already left earlier had a head start and so they were much further ahead. The first qāfilā reached Hālār in Saurashtra

[where they settled as the Hālārī Jatts] and the second one reached Jatavira in Kachchh, near Virani village in the Banni area. Gradually the Banni Jatts [Dānetā] separated from us and stayed back in that area where they remain today. They became a separate group from us. Then we moved from Jatavira to a place called Jhikdi, near Lodai village. Today, in fact, there are no more Jatts left in Jatavira. Finally, we came here to live in Lakhond.

This story features certain themes that recur across all their narratives with regularity. It relates the beginning of the Jatts' association with their genealogists, the musician Langas, and underscores their fighting prowess. The Jatts come into Kachchh from the Middle East, having defeated the king who wanted one of their women, thereby preserving the honour and purity of the group as a whole. An association with martial skills and valour recurs in most of their narratives. This story also finds mention in a history of the Hālārī Jatts, privately published by the author in peninsular Gujarat. Drawing on some textual sources but mostly on oral histories, this work states that the Jatts came from Halab to Sindh in the army of the Arab general Mohammed bin Qasim in the eighth century (Malek 1999: 17), the army that is associated with the arrival of Islam to Sindh. Their arrival in Kachchh is recounted by naming selected villages, retracing their route and imbuing the landscape with a specific meaning related to their settlement in the region.

Additionally, the Jatts are presented as being closely associated with the royal state of Kachchh, helping out in the royal army. Danji finished his story by reiterating that the Jatts were good fighters and close confidants of the rulers of Kachchh.

During the time of the rājāshāhī, the Jatts used to be loyal (wafādār) to the sarkār [government]. Until recently, a very old Jatt man in Bhuj used to go regularly to Mandvi to pay his 3 respects to the descendants of the Maharaos in Vijay Vilas. He used to cry over [regret] the fact that as Jatts, their entire lives went in the service of the kings, and they never were

able to educate themselves or better their own prospects in life. The kings never encouraged any education among us as they felt that 'this is such a hośiyār quoin that if we let them get ahead, then they will beat us at our own game.' We were always a martial people, the sarkār relied totally on us; we were known to be so faithful that we would never ever betray anyone. This is why we were so close to the rulers; they knew this.

history of the settling of Lakhond by the Jatts was provided by a middle-aged woman, Hala bāī. who also resides in the village. Another

we were māldharīs, We used to wander about with animals and occasionally we would render services to the rulers by fighting in their laśkar. That is how we earned this village as a reward. The sister of our king [in Kachchh] was married [to a prince] in Halvad [in Saurashtra]. She was unhappy there as she used to be troubled a lot by her sasurāl. The king wanted to bring his sister back to Bhuj, but he needed help as her people would not let her go. So the Jatts helped him lead a campaign against Halvad and brought his sister back. The king was pleased with the Jatts' bravery; he asked them what they would like as a reward. They said that they would like some land to cultivate so that they could live in peace. Then the king decreed that a bullock should be let loose in this area, and the amount of land that it traversed from dawn to dusk would be given over in the name of the Jatts. This is how our ancestors acquired this village, settled down here and began to cultivate the land.

Initially, our

This narrative more conspicuously relates to the process of sedentarisation and the clearing of forests and fields. As such, it speaks of the dual purpose of the state in using wandering pastoralists as armed support as well as in clearing the land for cultivation. It also suggests that Lakhond was not already an agricultural village at the time that it was made over as a land grant to the Jatts. The image of a bullock demarcating an area that was given over to the Jatts indicates a settling of new, possibly forested or uncultivated land. Another version of the story of how Lakhond came to be granted

to the Jatts was told to me

by

an

elderly

woman,

affectionately

known as Dādīmā to all who knew her. She was believed by them to be among the oldest living members of their community and lived in the village of Dhrang. A remarkably amiable woman who was almost blind and hard of hearing, but who travelled about to meet relatives and friends whenever somebody could accompany her, she was a valuable resource for me in my quest

for oral narratives as she loved every opportunity tale from Jatt folklore. This is her story:

to recount a

One time, two Jatt women went to fill water from the well, and the King saw them as he was passing through with his entourage. He was struck by their beauty and wanted to marry both of them. When the people heard this request, they were horrified. They said, 'we can give you our daughter but how can we give you our daughter-in-law [for she is already married]? We can give you chāy. but how can we give you khīr?' 4 So the king agreed to marry the daughter and in return he granted them the village of Lakhond. He gave this in writing to them, this document also stated the royal stipulation that henceforth in any royal marriage, the first mārnerā [mother's brother's gift at a wedding] would come from this village [i.e. Lakhond].

Returning to the theme of a lustful king coveting beautiful Jatt women, this story draws attention to the manner in which ‘service’ to the court is a broad category which includes, in addition to military service and revenue payment, bodies of women who are expected to be available to the court for its pleasure. Nostalgic accounts of the princely state gloss over these more obvious coercive measures in creating a picture of

mutual support and happiness. Second, in alerting us to this other facet of the relationship between the royal state and its Jatt subjects, it introduces a gendered dimension to memory. Even as men recount the past as a time when the Jatts were in great favour with the rulers, women’s’ stories allude to a more complicated relationship with the state, when they had to resist sexual advances from the king. In this story, the tension generated within the community by the king’s demand for Jatt women is ultimately resolved in favour of the larger thematic of proximity between the Jatts and the princely state. is fostered in the narrative through the of the mārnerā, a to the ritual the marriage gift, to a bride and her mother from her mother's brother. This gift reaffirms, in a strongly patrilineal system, ties

institution reference significance of This

proximity

between women and their natal families. As in most patrilineal and virilocal kinship systems, women born within a group are destined to reproduce for another patriline, for they marry outside their immediate kinship network and move out to their husband's group. From the perspective of the reproduction of the social group, therefore, women are more valuable as wives than as daughters. While wives and daughters-in-law the group, daughters leave the home and are responsible for the reproduction of another group. The comparison with milk and buttermilk brings this out symbolically. Being a community that, retains echoes of its māldhārī past, it places strong symbolic value on milk. In the Kachchhi language, milk is called khīr, a term that is used to refer in much of north India to a pudding made with milk, sugar and rice or vermicelli, served at feasts and special occasions. This pudding is called khīraj in Kachchhi. When I first learned that milk was called khīr. I expressed some surprise and was told that perhaps this naming controversy occurred because in Kachchh, milk was so highly valued that it was not an ordinary

reproduce

thing and was equivalent to what was known to be a rich festive food elsewhere in the country. This anecdote aside, it is clear that in a society where so many people have been dependent on livestock and a milk-based income, milk does assume certain valued properties. Chāy (in Gujarati, chās), on the other hand, is made by churning a little yogurt with plenty of water and some salt. This light drink is a refreshing accompaniment to

every meal in this arid and hot climate. Compared to milk which is (ideally) rich and full of cream, and amenable to further use

be sold for profit, converted into ghī, yogurt or chāy), chāy light and watery, a product of milk, and always produced at home, while milk may well be bought from outside. The contrast between the two is thus clear. Milk is the more useful and valued

(it

can

is

productive commodity, chāy the more dispensable. This analogy is used to express the earlier point that daughters are relatively more dispensable in a patrilineal society 5 while a daughter-inlaw, already married into the group, is a useful member of the group as she will reproduce it. By stating that in future in any royal marriage, the māmerā would come from Lakhond, a formal relationship between the royal family and this village is cemented. As mentioned above, the mother's brother's (māmā s) gift to a woman during marriage is symbolic of her mother's natal group, a valourisation of the brother-sister tie, a safeguard of the balance of power for a woman within a patrilineal system. In this story, the Jatts of Lakhond are associated paradigmatically with the bride's family for all royal weddings, reinstating in perpetuity the first formal marital tie between the king and a Jatt woman of Lakhond. The dishonour that might accrue to the community as a result of the king's desire for one of their women is converted in this narrative into a legitimate marriage and one that inaugurates a permanently desirable relationship between Lakhond and the royal court. In all their narratives, the Jatts underscore their to the princely state in Kachchh. They present their interests, as loyal soldiers, to be inextricably tied into the sovereignty of the state. Their narratives of settlement are simultaneously narratives that speak of the expansion of the early state, of the colonisation of unoccupied lands as the frontiers of the royal state expanded and developed. These themes are highlighted at the same time as the subtexts of their narratives speak of sexual coercion and exploitation that the Jatts suffered at the hands of the royal state. As with the nostalgic accounts of the Dānetā Jatts, it becomes necessary to ask why the Garāsiā Jatts too would gloss over these obvious coercive measures and choose to highlight only their perceptions of proximity to the princely state.

indispensability

These stories are also a critical comment on the present state regime that by implication does not recognise the valour and honesty of the Jatts, stigmatising them as untrustworthy and marginal subjects within Kachchh. This has to do with the fact that the Jatts regard the princely state to have functioned within certain parameters of rule and sovereignty that were legitimate and that recognised the Jatts as important partners in the project of state making. Before I comment on the difference between the princely and the modern state in Kachchh as it is perceived by the Jatts, it would thus be appropriate to make a small detour into some of the general political and religious notions that sustained the notion of Kachchh as an independent 6 state during Jadeja rule. The

Rajput

State

in

Kachchh

During its royal past, Kachchh’s rulers modelled their rule on a Rajput style of administration and patronage, articulated perhaps most strongly in its northern neighbour, Rajasthan. The Rajput king sat at the apex of a layered administrative hierarchy. ‘The traditional Rajput State,’ in the words of Harald Tambs-Lyche (2004: 28), ‘was defined in terms of caste and its coercive character was not veiled […] it was not an imagined community […] but an alliance of communities led by the king.’ The Rajput system is often called feudal, perhaps following its description as such in an early ethnographic text (Tod 1829). The use of the term ‘feudalism’, with its strong associations with medieval Europe, is complicated in the South Asian context.7 Here I use the term to evoke ‘not so much an economic structure as the ambiance of rank and tribute’ (Gold and Gujar 2002: 75) that continues to exist in parts of Kachchh, even though the princely structure was officially disbanded after Indian independence.

dominance

The Jadejas entered the ranks of Rajput society slowly from

pastoralist pasts, as was frequently the norm in this region. Steady intermarriage between Jadeja men and Sodha Rajput women in Sindh enabled the former to gradually lay claim to a Rajput identity. They further bolstered this by following a segmentary lineage-based, tribute extractive rule. ‘Rajput’ means son of a ruler. However, it has become an ascriptive

literally

category that has multiple connotations so that in practice and in specific settings, ‘Rajput’ begins to denote a status group, rather than a specific endogamous group of blood-kin (TambsLyche 1997). Besides, years of ‘Rajputisation’, where various other groups have intermarried into the lower rungs of the Rajput order as a means of social advancement, renders ‘Rajput’ a very fluid descriptive category today. 8 At the apex of the system established by the Jadejas in Kachchh was the royal court or darbār in the capital city, Bhuj. This system perpetuated itself in the form of primogeniture, but second and third sons were given landed estates or jāgīrs in the form of villages or groups of villages of their own, often quite some distance away from the central court at Bhuj. Within their estates, these landlords turned rulers were free to exercise their own jurisdiction and were often at loggerheads with the central authority in Bhuj. Some of the larger jāgīrs, such as Roha and Tera, almost rivalled the central darbār in terms of both style and substance. During times of crisis, however all the bhayyad were obliged to render military assistance to Bhuj. The central darbār and the Maharao were only an abstract authority for faraway jāgīrs, where the local lord or jāgīrdar was known as rājā. A sense of personal attachment to the descendants of the local rājā among villagers scattered across Kachchh continues long after the system was officially abolished in 1947. ,

Set lement

and

Teritorialsation

Garāsiā Jatt accounts state that they were once upon a time pastoralists like the Dānetā Jatts. As they were renowned for their valour and martial qualities, they were also called upon to render military service to Kachchh's Rajput rulers. Having proved their valour and loyalty to various rājās in return for

military

service, over time they were given grants of land. On such land, the Jatts eventually settled down and took to more sedentary pursuits like agriculture, even though their pastoral pasts retain symbolic relevance in their lives. The patterns of settlement suggested in the Jatts' accounts enmesh them closely with the political fortunes of Kachchh under its Jadeja rulers. These narratives thus speak not only to a break from pastoralist and mobile pasts, but also to the progressive extension of arable

lands and thus of administrate-able territory in Kachchh. The community of Jatts as 'Garāsiās' or land-owners emerges with a recognisable (from the present standpoint)

metonymically

territorial entity of Kachchh. Stories of how the Jatts came to cultivate land are simultaneously about the establishment of named

villages

that the Jatts continue to live in

today.

Their histories thus present settlement as a process comp licit with state formation and wherein the sedentarisation process

retains the agency of the settling group. Interactions between mobile populations and the state tend to be represented in two

ways. Either the state is the moving force attempting to control and settle mobile and itinerant populations perceived as a threat to the authority and stability of the state (Nigam 1990b; Radhakrishna 1989; Scott 1998). Or the agency of the subject

resistance, where itinerants are believed to mobility as an ideological expression of freedom (Agrawal 1999; Ahmed 1983). Thus for Arun Agrawal (1999), the mobile Raika's mobility constitutes a site of defiance to the state. 9 From the Jatts' narratives, however, we are presented with a third option. Here a formerly mobile population expresses sedentarisation as a process that is not merely a state imposition, but one that they are complicit with. In these accounts, the Jatts are depict ed as closely involved with the political fortunes of the emerging state of Kachchh. This perspective, taken together with their professed proximity to the body of the king, may be read as a comment on their status as sovereign and powerful subjects of the state during its princely past where they occupied a specific place within the moral order of the kingdom. This notion of sovereignty is compromised in the present with the decline of the princely state and more importantly, the articulation of Kachchh within a different political and structural configuration as it is anchored within the regional patriotic imagination of Gujarat. In order to more fully comprehend the paradigmatic shift in sovereignty within Kachchh as it is experienced today (within the politics of asmitā and Gujarati nationalism), I will briefly reconstruct key tropes of sovereignty and territoriality as they played out, in Kachchh's royal past. One of the key symbols of this sovereignty and territorial exclusivity of Kachchh during its princely past is the Hindu goddess Āśāpurā. is

configured

as

valorise their

,

Āśāthpureā,Goofd es Kach h

Sovereignty,

Ter itory

and

The goddess Aśl=a_\pur\l=a_\ (literally, fulfiller of hope) is most famous in Kachchh as the lineage deity (kuldevī) of the erstwhile royal family. In Bhuj, the largest Aśl=a_\pur\l=a_\ temple is situated in close proximity to the darbārgadh. It has a high gateway with old wooden doors, on which is proclaimed, Kachchh ni Des Devī—Mā Mother Āśāpurā Mā (the goddess of the land of Kachchh Des is country or region, and this proclamation Āśāpurā with the sovereign territory of Kachchh. In the summer of 2001, a Gujarati language film called Deś Devī—Mā Aśāpurā played lo packed theatres all across Kachchh, indicating some measure of the continuing popularity of her image as guardian deity of Kachchh. There is a nested hierarchy of temples dedicated to the goddess Āśāpurā in Kachchh. At the apex ofĀśāpurā temples is the grand temple at. Mal a nā Madh (the Mātā or mother goddess's citadel) in western Kachchh. This is a popular pilgrimage destination for the goddess's devotees. Next, is the royal temple adjacent, to the palace complex in Bhuj, where the members of the royal family worshipped regularly when they occupied those palaces. Finally, innumerable smaller temples and shrines to the goddess dot the landscape of Kachchh. The story 10 behind the foundation of the main t emple at Mata nā Madh is associated with a childless Jain man from Marwar in Rajasthan who rested overnight at the spot presently associated with the temple. There he dreamt of the goddess who instructed him to set up a temple for her worship during the navrātras. 11 She advised him to keep the door to the temple shut for six months, only opening it after such time had elapsed. Following this, she assured him that she would fill all his heart's desires (manokāmnā). The Jain followed these instructions and five months passed. During this time he could hear bells ringing —

Āśāpurā). associates

within. He could not restrain himself any longer and before the six months were up, he opened the doors to the temple. As soon as he did so, the bells stopped ringing. 'His heart trembling, he raised his eyes, and beheld MāĀśāpurā but immediately he realised his folly.' His impatience in opening the door before the ,

incompletely

goddess had permitted him meant that she remained formed, arrested midway in her emergence from a block of stone. Āśāpurā

worshipped in an amorphous form. An irregularly the idol, painted a bright red with deep shaped black eyes painted on it in multiples of two, occasionally four eyes and sometimes eight. Comparative ethnography would reveal that this story of impatience during the waiting period leading to a less than perfect divine form occurs elsewhere as well (Babb 1996). In her incarnation as an avatar of the goddess Durga, Āśāpurā is quintessentially a Rajput goddess, for she is

stone

serves as

is associat ed with animal sacrifice and martial values. La wrence A. Babb relates the role of the Jains in the origin stories of these goddesses to his own larger analytical context of 'transmuted martial valor' (ibid.: 5). The Jains, who are a trading and vegetarian caste, are able to account for Rajput origins which presumably endow them with a more martial past through an early association with the goddess. In his analysis, the goddess, once she is appropriated by the Jains, must then undergo a transformation appropriate to her new meatless and non-martial constituency. A comparable transformation or 'taming' of the goddess takes place in Kachchh. With the decline of the princely state, Āśāpurā is no longer symbolic of the sovereign state of Kachchh, guardian of the rulers and their subjects. Following the demise of the royal state, even as Kachchh is incorporated into the larger political unit of Gujarat, Āśāpurā is re-territorialised within the larger religious landscape of Hinduism within Gujarat. This has implications not just for the manner in which religious identities are perceived in contemporary Kachchh but also has some bearing on the nature of the relationship bet ween Kachchh and Gujarat, the politics of asmitā and the overall imagination of the region. As a lineage deity of the ruling family of Kachchh,Āśāpurā became an important goddess for all of Kachchh's subjects. Although she is a Hindu goddess by virtue of becoming associated metonymically with the state of Kachchh, she evoked strong feelings of loyalty even among some of Kachchh's non-Hindu subjects such as the Garāsiā Jatts. As long as Āśāpurā remained a symbol of Kachchh's independent sovereignty, the princely state retained legitimacy in the eyes of its subjects.

incarnation of the Sanskritic goddess Durga, Āśāpurā traditionally associated with blood sacrifice and the eighth night (ātham) during the annual festival of Navarātrīis especially dedicated to her. Lindsey Harlan (1992) writes that Navarātrī is the Rajput festival par excellence because of its associations with valour and Durga's victory over demons. As lineage goddesses are associated with both Rajputs and with Durga, this makes it a special occasion for most Rajputs. In Kachchh, the eighth night is reserved for a special ārtī atĀśāpurā's main temple at Mātā nā Madh. Although animal sacrifice no longer is part, of the repertoire, the event is still presided over by a descendant of the royal family. The ceremony is conducted in the presence of the descendants of the priests to the royal family (who form a corresponding lineage of their own) and certain material artefacts that signify the early establishment of the kingdom of Kachchh with the help of the goddess. The chief artefact is a spear that local lore relates to be contemporaneous with the founding of Kachchh as an independent kingdom in the sixteenth century. The story behind the spear links the goddess more clearly with the founding of the state of Kachchh as a sovereign As

an

is

entity. Adjacent to the old darbārgadh in Bhuj and a short distance away fromĀśāpurā's temple compound are the remains of an ancient monastery. Already crumbling and in need of repair, the earthquake of 2001 reduced it to a few pillars. On one side there is a large and elegant Peepul (Ficus religiosa) tree protecting

in its shade a small shrine to Shiva, and on the other side is a small Jain temple or derāsar. These are the only material remains of the Jain monastery known as Motī Pośād. It traces its establishment back to the founding of Bhuj itself and the role of the goddess and the spear in maintaining the sovereignty

of Kachchh. The monastery is maintained by a family of Jain priests who trace their own inheritance back to the ancestor figure who initiated their contact with the royal family of Bhuj. This story was recounted to me by Prakashbhāi, the current priest who still comes by every morning and evening to perform pūjā (prayer) at the shrines.

Before he founded Bhuj, when he was still a young boy, Khengarji I [1510–86] was fleeing for his life. His uncle was

to kill him so that he could not take over his father's throne. He reached the village of Charawda in the Saurashtra

trying

area. In that village, there lived a Jain sādhū by the name of Manek Gorji. This sādhū gave the future king various bhaviśyavānī, including the prophecy that he would be ruler of his own kingdom one day. To assist him in his conquests, he

spear and a small idol of the goddess Ambājī [also with associated Durga and victory in war]. With this spear, the young prince killed a lion that attacked Sultan Mahmud gave him

a

Begada [the

life impressed boy agreed

ruler of Ahmedabad]. The Sultan was so with the young who saved his that he to 12 support him in winning back his kingdom. When Khengarji

eventually became lung and decided to establish the city of Bhuj. he remembered Manek Gorji, the sādhū to whom he owed his current position, and sent for him. He gave him a jāgīr right next to his palace. The descendants of Manek Gorji, of whom I

am one,

The family of the

have been here

Gorjis

lived

on

ever

since.

the premises of this monastery

which also housed the famous spear and the idol, symbols of Kachchh's sovereignty, until the earthquake severely damaged the structure in 2001. At this time, Prakashbhāi removed the spear to a more secure location. But the

idol, made of

a

clear

crystal-like substance, adorns the pujā corner of his new house. According to him. there remains a direct correspondence between the lineages of the rulers and the Gorjis, as they both established themselves in Bhuj simultaneously. Besides, these priests had an important function to perform as teachers of the young princes. To drive this point home for my benefit, he read out from a photocopied version of Madansinhji's last autobiography. The last crowned ruler of Kachchh wrote in a chapter entitled Pehlo

Ikdo that, translates as 'the first I' that the formal education of young princes commenced with their being taken to the Mota Pośād monastery. He recalls being escorted to the priest with full royal honours and a procession of elephants. The priest, took the child's hand into his own and made him trace out the image of the numeral 'one'. This ceremony marked the initiation of the young prince into formal education, as his ancestors had been initiated at the same spot before him.

When the Jadeja family adopted Āśāpurā as their lineage deity, the spear that signified Kachchh's initial conquest by

ceremonially worshipped annually during the Āśāpurā was adopted as their nor her when temple at Mātā nā Madh became lineage deity associated with her royal patrons, except that there is a with the above story and the goddess's help to the Jadejas in securing Kachchh. According to legend, Āśāpurā was already associated with Kachchh at the time that the Jadejas first came from Sindh. This is also an important symbolic move towards indigenisation by a foreign settler group (cf. Sontheimer 1989). By adopting her as their lineage goddess, the Jadejas, who had come from Sindh, staked claim to Kachchh as their kingdom. Āśāpurā was therefore instrumental in the rooting of the Jadeja the

Jadejas

was

navrātras. It is not clear when

connection

line in Kachchh.

As goddess and mother,Āśāpurā is lineage deity for the rulers ofKachchh and metonymically also for their subjects, Hindu Muslim. Her claim extends over the territory of Kachchh, and goes back in time to the founding of the unified kingdom of Kachchh with its capital at Bhuj. In their oral histories, the Muslim Jatts also invoked the goddess. Thus, as another Jatt informant recounted, or

When the Jatts

were

coming from Halab

and passed

through

Sindh, they came to the shrine of Hinglaj Mātā. They sacrificed a goat there and after the slaughter of the animal, Jatt women anointed the goat's blood as a tilak on Hinglaj

Mātā. In

exactly the same manner Rao Khengaiji used to do tilak on Āśāpurā Mātā after sacrificing a buffalo. It was a Jatt woman who was always appointed to apply the tilak on the forehead of the King. a

The first reference is to a goddess associated more often with the Rabaris, a Hindu herding group in Kachchh. Hinglaj M ta_ 's main shrine is associat ed with Baluchistan and smaller shrines are scattered throughout Rabari territory in Kachchh and Saurashtra. This narrative also highlights the much documented ritual significance of the royal sacrifice. Sacrifice by the king to the goddess legitimises his rule on her behalf However, it also refers to the way a subject community associates itself with the

ruler and his right to rule. This is symbolically demonstrated in the right to anoint the sovereign with the mark of rule.

The narrative also allows us to understand the manner in whichĀśāpurā is felt to encompass the territory of' Kachchh as well as its people—both Hindu and Muslim. The Jatts are today caught up in controversial debates on Islamic reform and are re-evaluating the nature of their religiosity within the discourse of a global, purified Islam. But still they have few qualms invoking the authority of Āśāpurā, in the symbolic gesture of their anointing the king with sacrificial blood, authorising him

just

he is authorised by the mother goddess. Although a goddess, through the links with royalty, as a Kuldevī she becomes an inclusive figure. Although Muslims do not worship at her shrine, neither in the present nor likely in the past, by evoking the symbolic anointing by a Jatt woman of the king's forehead with sacrificial blood, they are, as Muslims, evoking an integrative political symbol where the Hindu goddess is a common symbol for all the subjects of Kachchh. While she serves as a regular religious figure for Hindus, together the Hindus and Muslims of Kachchh regard her as indispensably tied into the process of statecraft. The goddess and the king together protect their subjects in a combined invocation of morality and good governance. Just as the goddess protects the king, so the king protects all of his subjects without discrimination. As with the earlier narratives that spoke of the Jatts' proximity to the body of the king, as his trusted lieutenants in war, the symbolic association between the Jatts and the royal sacrifice to the goddess also underscores the fact that even though they to use a more contemporary turn of phrase were religious minorities in a Hindu kingdom, they see themselves as occupying a specific place within the kingdom's larger moral order, much of which can be explained by the royal need to establish specific sets of relationships with particular client groups. as

Hindu

—

—

The Transformation of the Goddess Kachchh's princely past, Āśāpurā stood for the and of Kachchh as a whole. After the demise of the princely state and integration of Kachchh with Gujarat, the symbolic complex of Āśāpurā undergoes certain

During

separate identity sovereignty

significant transformations. These serve to re-territorialise Āśāpurā within the larger Hindu religious landscape of Gujarat. In the process, she no longer epitomises the sovereign space of Kachchh in the way that she used to. A member of the former royal family remains the chief trustee on the Āśāpurā temple committee. This committee oversees the disbursement of funds and various organisational matters relating to the annual Navarātrī celebrations at Mātā nā Madh. The royal representative continues to preside over the special ārtī for the goddess on the eighth night. The symbolic spear continues to be ceremonially brought out for the special occasion. However, the celebrations no longer consist of animal sacrifice; the practice was discontinued in the 1960s, following the merger of Kachchh into the state of Gujarat.

From

Sacrif ce

to Vegetarianism

explanation for the elimination of sacrifice and the reinscription of the goddess into a vegetarian universe is the gradual but pervasive influence of Jainism and new Hindu ideologies in Gujarat such as the Swaminarayan sect (Pocock 1973; Tambs-Lyche 1997). It has been argued that the spread of such purist and exclusivist Hindu ideologies that shun animal sacrifice have gradually displaced the hitherto widespread goddess tradition in Gujarat. The spread of these religious ideologies, combined with the decline of the princely state in One

Kachchh which had been the main support base for Āśāpurā, have led to a gradual incorporation of Āśāpurā into a wider network of religious practices that characterise Gujarat as a whole. In the political sphere, this is paralleled by the of Kachchh as a sub-unit of Gujarat. Rather than being

incorporation

religious

replaced, goddess worship

now

occupies

a

transformed

universe. Āśāpurā's distinctive role as a sovereign symbol of Kachchh is no longer tenable in the new religious and political system even though she continues to be worshipped by her new,

meatless constituency (cf. Tambs-Lyche 2004).

The Swaminarayan movement, named after its founder

Sahajanand Swami, began as a nineteenth century reform movement within Hinduism. Although Sahajanand was born in north India, he settled down in Gujarat, which was also where

emphasis

he gained most of his converts (Williams 1984). With an on strict non-violence, vegetarianism and asceticism, the movement faced resistance from the Rajput ruling elite in the various principalities of Kachchh, Saurashtra and mainland Gujarat. However, its main support base came from the working classes; in fact, the sect played a major role in the sanskritisation of religious practices and upward mobility, especially for castes like the Patidars of Gujarat. The Swaminarayan movement is also closely linked to

regional self-definition in Gujarat. It has been suggested that the success of the movement provided an impetus to the of a Gujarati regional patriotism, unifying the culturally and linguistically disparate regions of central Gujarat, Saurashtra and Kachchh. In this view, the movement is believed to be an important cultural precursor to what aspires to be a homogenous collective imaginary that was later expressed territorially in the province of Gujarat. Raymond Brady Williams writes,

development geographically,

[Sahajanand] traveled throughout the area of Gujarat, Kathiawar and Kutch, and the new community which he established helped to bind the territory together. The associations which his followers formed across territorial boundaries unified the state, though there were few followers south of Surat during his lifetime. The establishment of holy places and temples as pilgrimage sites started a movement of people and forms of association that have provided a significant element in Gujarati cultural identity. The literature of the movement coming from Sahajanand and the poets, hymn writers, and theologians who were his companions gave momentum to the standardisation of the Gujarati language and slowly helped to form the various dialects into a distinct, unified language for the entire Gujarati population. It is not too much to claim that the existence of a separate Gujarat State in independent India today is in part a legacy of the movement which Sahajanand started (Williams 1984: 23–24). However, even though Sahajanand travelled throughout the territories of Gujarat and won many converts to his new faith, one cannot assume an entire region to be moulded uniformly

by any one ideology. The case of Kachchh alone provides an example of this. The oldest Swaminarayan temple in Bhuj is built immediately adjacent to the royal palace complex the darbārgadh. The high walls that encircle it curve around the narrow street that eventually gives way to the temple walls. This is the first Swaminarayan temple built in Bhuj, supervised by Sahajanand himself. It is an enormous complex built along the curve of the city wall and includes a temple, along with living quarters for the priests. Internally damaged during the 2001 earthquake, this temple remained unused throughout my stay in Bhuj even though the external structure was still more or less intact. Pending repair, the temple activities had moved to another location in the city. The entire area around this old temple, extending south from the palace towards the Hamirsar Lake on the southern edge of the walled city, is prime property still owned by the Swaminarayan Trust and devotees. Clearly, the Swaminarayan movement was able to establish itself close to the royal core of the princely state, occupying prime pieces of real estate. The old walled city of Bhuj was laid out in concentric circles radiating outward from the royal palace at the centre. Artisan castes that served the royal household were granted land closest to the palace and so on to the less prestigious service castes on the periphery. Because patterns of residence continue much as before in the old city, even today residential colonies within the walled city are distributed caste-wise. This traditional pattern of urban development has changed significantly the new town planning procedures put in place following the earthquake of 2001. New relocation sites came up often at quite some distance away from the old city centre, changing traditional patterns of social interaction (e.g., Simpson 2007). As it existed prior to the contemporary rearrangement of the urban cityscape, the more numerous and prestigious groups like the Hindu Sonis (goldsmiths) or the Muslim Ivhatris (dyers and block printers) had large areas (called wād or chaklā), while smaller groups had a street (śerī or faliā) with a few houses along it. 13 The Swaminarayan temple was clearly in favour with the court as it came up in such close proximity to it. Despit e this, there is no evidence of the royal state changing its religious practices Even though the Swaminarayan followers were against sacrifice, and Sahajanand himself is said to have been greatly dismayed

following

.

at observing the sacrifice in Kachchh (Tambs-Lyche 1997: 299–300), the royal sacrifice continued until Independence and a little after, only to be discontinued in the 1960s. It would be hasty and unwise, therefore, to ascribe an emergent and ‘Gujarati’ identity to Sahajanand’s new religious What may be conceded, however, is that Hinduism in Gujarat has been decisively influenced by Swaminarayan Hinduism and Jainism.

homogeneous ideology.

Both Jainism and the followers of Swaminarayan identify strongly with a 'protestant ethic', where worldly success is linked with spirituality and a philosophy of ahimsā that involves a strong condemnation of meat-eating and animal sacrifice (see, for example, Hardiman 1988; Pocock 1973; Tambs-Lyche 1997; Williams 1984). Prior to the'cleansing' of goddess worship of its associations with blood sacrifice and meat under their influence, her chief constituency were the Rajputs who consider themselves to be a martial, ruling caste, and base their selfidentity in large measure on the imbibing of meat and liquor. Rajput lineage deities tend to be incarnations of the martial goddess Durga, a slayer of demons. Rajputs offered up meats and other strong substances such as alcohol, believed to create the shared basis of valour and strength. The goddess protected and strengthened the king as he in turn protected his subjects. Following Indian independence, with the decline of Rajput political and social power, the social base of goddess worshippers underwent a gradual change. While the Rajputs retained their kuldevīs, political and economic power shifted to other classes. In western India, this period saw an enormous rise in the social, economic and political capital of the trading classes of Gujarat (many of whom were already a part of the large international trading diaspora in East Africa and the United Kingdom). As these traders formed the main social base of both Jainism and Swaminarayan Hinduism, it is argued that Gujarati Hinduism became decisively influenced by notions of vegetarianism and ahimsā that created a powerful movement against sacrifice. ,

Harald Tambs-Lyche argues furthermore that these socioeconomic changes lead eventually to a displacement of the goddess and her associations with blood and meat, with more

‘respectable’, usually male, vegetarian deities. His argument posits a primary opposition between rulers and merchants.

While Rajput rulers represent the martial, meat-eating and goddess-worshipping ethos, merchants are pacifist and He locates this binary opposition in terms of each group’s orientation to violence — the Rajputs embrace it, the merchants renounce it. This allows him to assert simply that in post-Independence Gujarat, the Rajput model was replaced by the merchant model. This is manifested, he argues, in the displacement of Rajput violence by the mercantile pacifism and a corresponding replacement of the meat-consuming goddess by vegetarian masculine deities. In this model, Tambs-Lyche assimilates Gujarat as a whole with the merchant ethos which is assumed to have replaced the Rajput ethos. 14

vegetarian.

While the performance of public sacrifice is declining, this would have as much to do with the decline of Rajput kingship as with the fact, that the modern state is no longer associated with animal sacrifice, indeed, has in some cases banned it, in Hindu temples. 15 But, a shift to vegetarianism in itself cannot explain the erosion of goddess worship, as Tambs-Lyche suggests. That explanation fails to take into account the fact, that the goddess herself can undergo a transformation as she is 'tamed' or made 16 vegetarian. Animal sacrifice is no more in Kachchh, at least not as a public event, and the Jadejas no longer inhabit their fancy palaces in the centre of Bhuj. But Āśāpurā remains an important, deity within Kachchh. This emerges from her association with the rulers, and she is therefore seen as particularly efficacious. On Tuesdays, especially considered to be 'Mātājī's day', the large temple near the darbārgadh is even more crowded than usual. As she is associated as a wish-fulfilling goddess, most Kachchh i

familiar with the series of fasts (upvās) to be observed varying number of Tuesdays in order to obtain their wish. However, what has changed is that Āśāpurā now partakes of a different religious and political system. By becoming vegetarian and non-violent, she is no different from all the other gods and goddesses in the regional Gujarati Hindu pantheon. She has lost her status within the earlier context, where she was the guardian goddess of an independent Kachchh. Hindus

are

over a

In a sequel to his ethnography on Saurashtra, Harald Tambs-

Lyche (2004) rethinks his earlier argument on the decline of the goddess in Gujarat. Now he admits that she is still around, but her character has changed. He identifies what he calls

the resurgence of the goddess in Saurashtra as a result of a democratisation of worship, where the goddess of the former ruling class becomes more accessible to all. He writes, ‘[…] the modern Khodiyar [lineage deity of Saurashtra’s Rajputs] is to some extent a decontextualised version of the old one, less attached to particular groups and more a mark of regional identity’ (Tambs-Lyche 2004: 130). This new avatar of the goddess partakes of a regional Gujarati brand of Hinduism, strongly inflected by Jain and Swaminarayan principles. He continues, ‘[…] the recent revival of goddess cults has been precisely at the cost of possession and sacrifice — the revival benefits a vegetarian and bhaktist version even of goddesses that manifested vehemently, through possession, their lust for meat in the past’ (ibid.: 134). Although Āśāpurā is still an important goddess in Kachchh, no longer emblematic of Kachchh's sovereignty. With the decline of her royal patrons, she is re-inscribed within the Hindu culture of Gujarat which has at least publicly been 'reformed' and 'purified' of offending elements such as sacrifice and meat eating. Although she reaches a wider now, no longer confined to Kachchh as she used to be, her constituency is also now more exclusively Hindu than it probably was in the past. Although there is no evidence to show that Muslims worshipped atĀśāpurā's temples in the past, an unlikely occurrence, I would suggest that when Kachchh was a politically sovereign unit, she stood as an inclusive figure for all of Kachchh's subjects. This is a relationship that changes with her re-territorialisation within an exclusively Hindu and not specifically Kachchh-centric universe. Āśāpurā's transformation is a telling metaphor for the political transformation of Kachchh from an independent state to a subsidiary administrative unit within Gujarat. Her new location within a Hindu pantheon that is simultaneously more universal and at the same time specific to Gujarat's particular religious landscape follows the manner in which the region is produced as an inclusive entity, subordinating cultural and religious landscapes of difference within the encompassing universe of Hinduism. Following this extended detour through the goddess Āśāpurā's symbolic relationship to territory and sovereignty in Kachchh's royal past, I return finally to the Garāsiā Jatts and the manner she is

regional —

—

constituency

they relate to goddess worship in Kachchh. In their narratives, stories of settlement were interlinked with the political expansion of the royal state and the related ecological in which

transformation of forests into fields. They also mention their emergence as a community distinct from other Jatts such as the Dānetā or Fakīrānī by virtue of their association with a female religious figure. In his remarkable study of the spread of Islam to the Bengal frontier between the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Richard M. Eaton (1993) discusses the role of charismatic religious figures in land reclamation and the spread of an agrarian economy even as they spread the Islamic faith. The spread of Islam and agrarian expansion proceeded together, enabled on the ground by saints or pīrs who were often in turn directly linked to the Mughal state through a system of land grants. Although there is no available evidence that would link her with agrarian expansion, I have argued that the process by which the Garāsiā Jatts are transformed from pastoralists to cultivators of land is accompanied by their emergence as a distinct community. This community is defined with respect to Mal

JatGart leāmtsisenā,t SeMāī and Garāsiā Jatt, social organisation is articulated around an ancestor figure known variously as Jījā Mā, Māī Abida, Māī Bambi or most commonly, simply as Māī (mother). Maāī is worshipped as a saint, and is also associated with the settlement of the Jatts over a defined spatial area that, through her, becomes infused with notions of territoriality, justice and good governance. Presentday commemorations of Māī have to contend with discourses of Islamic reform that condemn the worship of saints among Muslims. Unlike the Dānetā Jatts discussed in previous sections,

who have for the most part given up saint, worship, the Garāsiā Jatts are resistant to Islamic reform and, in fact, render their adherence to Māī more tenaciously than ever. Their resistance to Islamic revival emerges not from a prior 'tradition' that they would like to hold on to in defiance of modernity, but from within the larger historical and political context of the Jatts in Kachchh. In fact, in their case, the 'traditional' emerges at the very moment and in the face of those very discourses that it seeks

to counter. By holding onto Māī asa marker of difference from other Jatts and even other Muslims in Kachchh—these Jatts do —

not seek recourse to an anterior tradition that is under threat, but this tradition is produced objectively during this historical moment (cf. Comaroff 1985; Comaroff and Comaroff 1992). In contemporary Kachchh, Māī is far more than a spiritual symbol; she acquires deeply political meaning as well. It is pertinent to ask what might be the stakes for a stigmatised, mostly illiterate community, in every sense on the margins of a Hindu nationalist state, to produce themselves as the bearers of a distinct spiritual/political identity. This emphasis on community as a definable, separate entity becomes a pressing concern for the Jatts after the decline of the old moral order, where they had a certain status within the princely state. In other words, the Garāsiā Jatt tradition is, in fact, produced precisely at the

princely state and discussed above. The conceptualisation sovereignty, in a of the Kachchh recreates princely regime disintegration new politico-moral order, where it becomes joined to the larger province of Gujarat Defending their identity as unique, holding on to the distinct symbol of Mai, the Garāsiā Jatts simultaneously resist assimilation into both the universalising norms presented to them by the proponents of Islamic reform as well as the Gujarati state's designation of them as minority Muslims. The latter identification brings to mind a decapitated, weakened community that bore the brunt of the state-sponsored genocide in 2002. In either case, the Jatts seek to mark themselves out as the bearers of a distinct identity. moment of their dis-articulation from the

its

of

as

.

The

Garāsiā

Jatt Jam 'Āt

As Sunni Muslims the Jatts share attributes with other Sunnis in Kachchh, who form the majority of the Muslim population in Kachchh. Shi'a Muslims like the Khojas (Ismā'ilī and ,

Ishnā'asharī)

and Bohras comprise a smaller minority, with their own caste-based social organisation and ritual calendar. A prominent debate on caste and hierarchy among Muslims in South Asia has cantered on how 'unique' South Asian Islam is or is not with regard to a universal, transcendent Islamic 17 ideology. Caste-like social organisation is often taken as proof

that South Asian Islam is closer to its Indic habitat than any universal, normative structure of the religion. 18

I do not enter into the question of the ‘ideology’ of caste and

its hierarchical ‘essence’, since important critiques of Homo hierarchicus (e.g., Appadurai 1988; Dirks 1987; Dirks 1992) have already established the problems with identifying caste only as a form of religiously sanctioned hierarchy. However, it is also difficult to use the term ‘caste’ without invoking at least some of the problematic cultural and intellectual baggage that the term has accumulated over the course of its twentieth century debates. My use of the term invokes it not so much as a hierarchical or ideological construct, thus forestalling the need to characterise its operation among Indian Muslims as an ‘imperfect’ system for its incomplete approximation to the Hindu model (e.g., Misra 1985). I use the term to indicate, as my informants tended to do, a mode of social organisation that reflects difference, the substantive content of which is a product of particular historical circumstance, something both objectively manifested and subjectively felt. It has also been pointed out that although Islam does not have an explicit ideology of caste, this ideal does not always translate into practice and that in India as elsewhere in the Islamic world, Muslim social organisation follows elaborately defined orders of ranking and stratification. The basic building block of caste identity among the Muslims in Kachchh is the Jam 'āt. Meaning 'congregation', more generally, this is articulated at a number of different levels. Thus, at a basic, kinship level, it is an endogamous grouping of individuals, In this sense, it is virtually synonymous with quoin or nāt. The Jam 'āt is at once the social identity of an entire an amorphous body of individuals who simultaneously group subscribe to a kind of corporate group identity who are also, in —

things, agnatically related and share the community name (alak). Because it serves as an endogamous group, marriage is strictly regulated within the Jam 'āt. Among the Jatts, marriage ought to take place within the same nukh the ideal scheme of same

which is the level of classification within the alak, and consists of people with the same family name. Thus, all Jatts share the same atak name Jatt and within that, there are several nukhs or family names. Each Jam al usually has a headman (Patel), who is in charge of organisational and occasionally jurisdictional matters that concern its members. —

—

physical manifestation of the Jam 'āt is the Jam 'āt community hall, for the use of its members on social gatherings like weddings and other engagements. The Jam

The khānā

or

'āt khānā

group as a social and its occasionally political player, cementing physical presence on the landscape. The entire time I was in Kachchh, the Garāsiā announces

the arrival of

a

Jatts would talk of the Jatt Jam 'āt. but lamented the fact that they did not have a Jam 'āt khānā of their own. At this time, they typically had to rent a space from other Jam 'ātā when they needed space for social occasions. Ultimately, they were able to buy a pieee of land and construction began in earnest. The Garāsiā Jatt Jam 'āt, is, therefore, a corporate group, bound together through ties of blood and ancestry. In their collective belief, this group is authorised as a distinct community separate from all other Muslims by the ancestral figure they call Māī.

Māī in Jat Mythol gy Stories abound

on Māī's divinity and her canonisation within Jatt collective memory. Just like the hierarchy of temples for Āśāpurā in Kachchh, there is a nested sequence of dargāhs for Māī. In Kachchh, the main (dargāh is the one located in a space known as Mal nā padh (Māī's space), 15 miles north west of Bhuj. According to Jatt legend, Māī was born in Sindh's Badin

district. This is where her asl (original or authentic) dargāh is situated. The dargāh in Kachchh is considered to be merely a memorial, albeit the most important one for Jatts resident in Kachchh. One hagiographical text mentions that. Māī came into Kachchh to spread Islam. On this mission, she entered Kachchh through the popular crossing point at Lakhpat. She first stopped at Asaladi village (Hamirani n.d: 212). This village subsequently became an important Jatt village in western Kachchh. As with the village of Lakhond mentioned above, that was settled by the Jatts in association with the royal state, this one was settled by Māī. As more and more villages came to be populated by the Garāsiā Jatts, they set up a small shrine to her in their areas. Her family in Sindh is said to have maintained marriage

relations with Jatts in Asaladi. Asiya bāī was born in Asalacli and her family traces a direct

Māī's family (from her siblings, Māī did relationship marry). to

as

not

Her natal house in Asaladi was frequented (related to Māī's sacralised lineage) when

by visiting they came

pīrs

into

Kachchh from Sindh. When she told me this, she also added that there was no longer any coming and going after the border became sealed. All the remaining pīrs of Māī's lineage now live in Sindh. She showed me a faded, sepia coloured group photograph taken in Asaladi, pointing out some of the elder pīrs of Māī's family. 'They used to visit annually, part of the commemoration of Māī's 'urs [death anniversary].' Asiya bāī was the first to tell me the story behind Māī's dargāh at Māī nā padh: was originally from Sindh, but happened to die while on sojourn to Kachchh. She had wanted to be buried in Sindh. So her body was carried on camelback across the Rann into Sindh. When the group was passing by the place which we call Māī nā padh today, the camel carrying her coffin broke its leg. A voice appeared from nowhere and instructed the to take a piece of wood from a nearby tree and tie the camel's leg up. This was an indication of Māī's powers and it. was decided that even though her body was to be buried in Sindh in accordance with her wishes, this spot should always be commemorated, and thus an āsthäānā [memorial] was built

Māī a

attendants

here.

[…] Māī

then

pronounced from

spot there ought

her coffin that every year at this

to be a meld and the entire Jatt

community

should attend. Nyāy [justice] should be dispensed during the course of this melā and if somebody tells a lie, he or she should be produced in front of this tree, If they are lying, they shall be affected by kor [leprosy]. A final narrative provides the rationale for the sacred geography of the dargāh's location, identifying a particular stream still revered for its curative properties. It is also the origin myth that accounts for the separation of the Dānetā and Garāsiā Jatts and underscores Māī's love for animals, a significant theme that recurs in many narratives. Māī

a village where the Garāsiā Jatts had some many of them do even now although now they are

lived in

cattle,

as

transportation products, like the

and to help with farming, not for their Dānetā and the Fakīrānī who are still māldhārīs. She had a bacchhrā [a kid; young goat] that she was very fond of. One day, some of the Jatts from the village killed the bacchhrā and ate it in her absence. When Māī

for

returned, she asked for this animal, but it was nowhere to be found. She looked and looked and then finally they told her that some people from another village came by and ate it up. She refused to believe this, saying 'it, is not possible that anyone could do such a thing, I know that that is not possible.' Māī then accused them of having done the deed themselves and of lying to save face. She uttered a curse saying that whoever had actually killed and eaten the goat would begin to talk not like a human but to make sounds like a young goat. Soon enough all the guilty people were afflicted with this. When her father saw what she had done, he was aghast and he turned to her and said, 'belā [child], what have you done? These are your own people and you should not do this, they cannot speak anymore.' So she decreed that if they wanted their voices back, they should all go to a particular well where they should drink the water and bathe in it and they would recover. They returned completely cured. To this date, people who suffer from hydrophobia come from far and wide to bathe in and drink the water from the well near the dargāh. are variations Some of the miracle stories associated with Māī on similar miraculous occurrences that are attributed to perhaps the only other woman saint we know something of in Islam. This is the saint Rabia, who is believed to have been born in AD 717 in Basra (Iraq). Like Māī. Rabia is said to have been celibate, pious and extremely fond of animals. In a close

resemblance

to the story recounted above, Rabia rode a camel on pilgrimage when the camel died en route. Rabia then wishes for the camel to be brought back to life. It recovers and drives her up to the door of her house (Smith 1928: 35). The geography consecrated by Māī through her travels produces a sacred landscape for her followers. This landscape

traverses the borderlands of Kachchh and Sindh. It is not unusual for shrines and temples to be inherently associated with space, a special sacred spot that is revealed through divine injunction, as

in the story of Māī locating the site of her own memorial. Other associations between gods and space occur in their as protector or guardian deities, typically guarding the boundaries of frontiers of villages. Religious institutions such as temples or shrines are also instrumental in the production of Just as Āśāpurā was metonymically associated with the territory of Kachchh and therefore its rulers and subjects, Māī

incarnation

community.

is also associated with a sacred geography. Nicholas Dirks (1987) presents rich data from south India to argue that the community of worship may, in a number of instances, be construct ed logically prior to the community of kin, enabling the latter to crystallise as a social and political unit. The network of shrines associated with Māī. beginning from the one in Sindh down to the main shrine in Kachchh, and then the innumerable subsidiary village shrines produce the Garāsiā Jatts as both a community of worship and kinship. But the centrality of this woman saint in the production of the Jatts as a corporate, spiritual and political group also bears some relevance on my earlier discussion of the goddess in Kachchh's political history.

The Goddess in Islamic Devotional Practice Although articulated as

an exclusive symbol of the Garāsiā Jatt, sacred female figure, Mal also partakes of a larger mythic universe of goddess worship in Kachchh. From this perspective, she may be seen as sharing a number of attributes with various goddesses within the local Hindu pantheon. As Āśāpurā Mātā presided over a hierarchy of subjects from the king to the commoner, she also presided over a hierarchy of other minor goddesses. These other goddesses are drawn from a range of Sanskritic and non-Sanskritic I radii ions. Apart from other minor and not-so-minor tutelary goddesses or Mātās in Kachchh and and Hinglaj, there Saurashtxa likeKhodiyar, Ambājī, Momāī are numerous smaller goddesses tied into particular localities and associated with various functions. Thus there is Sitalā for the cure of smallpox, Randel for fertility, and interestingly, given Māī's predilection for the same, Hadakvāi Mata who is believed to cure hydrophobia. Māī may also be understood

Jam

.

as a

hybrid symbol of shared devotional practice, especially manifested in the figure of the goddess, In an important

as a as

'āt

contribution to the work on the existence of shared religious traditions in Hinduism and Islam, Susan Bayly (1986; 1989) shifts the emphasis on religious practice rather than ideology. As ideology is invested in pure traditions, it is only when one observes the practice of devotional forms that one is able to witness strong convergences between religious traditions believed to be anachronistic, chiefly Hinduism and Islam. Bayly’s work on the Tamil Labbais identifies strong links between their practice of Islam and local goddess traditions, which provide for a shared lexicon of piety.

usually

In South Asia and the Middle East, Muslim holy people are canonised as pīrs have dargāhs dedicated to them

who

and annual 'urs celebrations institutionalised around them 19 are usually male. The female voice in Islam has usually been located in the figure of the living mystic (e.g. Abbas 2002; Pemberton

2004).

Māī

is

a

significant exception to this rule,

for

entire system of devotion built up In around her. Kachchh, her dargāh is like any other but she is the only woman to command such an edifice. To my knowledge and that of my informants in Kachchh, all the other dargāhs she is

were

a woman

who has

body of literature on women and analysis of the woman as pīr herself. (2004) discusses women who become powerful

20 exclusively male.

Islam still lacks

an

a

The

robust

Kelly Pemberton as 'de facto pīrs' within the institutional context of a shrine, especially if they are related by blood ties to the living male pīr, such as his mother or sister. 21 These women come to play key roles as practitioners, often developing a network of clients who come to them for intercession with the saint. Shemeem Burney

Abbas discusses the role of women within the shrine system, primarily in terms of their role as musicians and singers of devotional songs. Māī, on the other hand, is accorded the same kind of institutional position that is usually reserved for male

pīrs within Islam. Other than the work on Rabia of Basra

1928)

and Bon Bibi22 in

Bengal (Fruzzetti 1980;

Ghosh

(Smith 2005),

there is barely any other evidence of women who function asp pīrs in their own right, and command their own shrine complexes and 'urs celebrations. Women tend to as

devotees rather than

as

recipients

figure

in the literature

of devotion.

Islamic

'Reform'

in

Kachchh

Within the discourses of Islamisation, the dorgāh is regarded as a folk tradition and contrasted with the universal normative of textual Islam. Discourses of Islamic reform seek to bridge this gap, to bring the historically specific, mutable and contextual practices of Islam in line with a presumed universal structure of the religion. Of course the 'universal', like 'tradition', although projected as timeless, is also the product of a historically specific set of constraints (see Mahmood 2005). During the time of this fieldwork, the normative 'Islamic universal' was constructed along a Saudi Arabian model. Connections between Kachchh and the Middle East and the Persian Gulf are sociologically significant due to migrant labour circulation. The 'urs, as a key symbol of the devotional structure of a dargāh, thus becomes the most, contested site of Islamic practice.

The 'Urs

as Contested Site

About six weeks into my fieldwork, my research assistant accompanied me to an 'urs celebration. An 'urs is, as described before, an annual commemoration of the death of a pīr at the relevant dargāh. Symbolically, it marks the marriage of the saint with god, for 'urs means marriage in Arabic. The 'urs took place in Lakhond at the dargāh of Sāī Pīr, a saint revered especially by Garāsiā Jatts of the locality. Lakhond was a particularly interesting site for my research for its large Jatt population. I

eager to meet people here and to identify this village as a for my ethnography. From my point of view, this 'urs was thus an important occasion to cement ties with the Jatt community early on. We had arrived into the village in the late afternoon, somewhat ahead of the festivities that were to commence in the evening. The atmosphere was one of barely restrained excitement. The central village square was being cleaned and the fragrance of incense and freshly picked jasmine flowers was intense. A was

potential key site

group of young women were chattering excitedly as they sat around an enormous pile of garlic, peeling it in preparation for the ritual feast to be ceremonially cooked later on. Niāz, or the

ritual feast, entails the communal sharing of the charisma or barakat of the saint.23 As devotees come together to worship at the shrine, they share in the barakat of the saint both in their individual communion with the saint as well as in the communal celebration of community. This occurs through sharing the food consecrated by the saint’s blessings. The next few hours sped by as we celebrations. We walked through the

engulfed by the singing and dancing

were

crowds, making our way to the dargāh where devotees were prostrating themselves before the saint's tomb, kissing it tearfully and making their offerings of flowers, coconuts, a few

coins. Exhausted after the main ritual celebrations, we waited for the niāz to be served before we could leave. Night was falling steadily and we had all broken up into groups of men and women, scattered throughout the village. Amid shadows lengthening over flickering oil lamps, older women recounted stories of the saint's miracles, and of the power of yakīn (faith; belief) to combat all hurdles. There had been whispered insinuations of proponents of Islamic reform, members of the Tablighī Jam 'āt and the Ahl-e-Hadīs, 24 making the rounds of villages in

earthquake. It was said that they and new houses in return for incentives material offering the profession of the 'reformed' faith. 'We would never give up our belief in our saints,' said an old woman who had gone into a deep trance earlier in the evening. Her wizened face looked piercingly at me as she pronounced that she was in touch with the spirit of the saint. The fortunes of this village were contingent on the blessings of their pīr and not straying from the path of true faith as deemed by him. She added, the aftermath of the 2001 were

years ago, there was a dispute in the village; people absorbed in the dispute that they forgot to organise the 'urs of Sāī Pīr. The grave of Sāī Pīr Walī [literally friend, of God] began to shake and everyone became scared. I went into a trance, and people asked me why this was happening. Sāī Pīr responded to me that we should not neglect to his 'urs. Now we never neglect our duties.

Many

were so

commemorate After all it who had

a

saints such as him, and most importantly Māī, direct audience in Allah's court, she said sagely.

was

could buy away their centuries-old faith. 'We turned all those Ahl-e-Hadīs people who offered us money after away the bhūkamp [earthquake]' and she concluded, 'we will eat mud if we have to, but will not disrespect Māī.' I was mesmerised and fascinated by these words which seemed to contain a powerful portent. We had missed the last bus back into Bhuj and were promised a ride back by the party of musicians who had been invited to play at the shrine. I looked around for my assistant when I was finally advised to go eat, following which we could leave for Bhuj. I found him sitting

Nobody

alone while the other men ate. He refused feast. I was torn between taking his side so as antagonise him, as I thought I might by accepting the

outside on

a

string cot,

to share in the to not

invitation that he was so firmly rejecting, and the knowledge that refusing to eat would also jeopardise my future relations in the village. I decided to abstain from the meal, citing the fact that I did not eat meat. Our presence, which had until now been largely unquestioned, suddenly became the focus of a hostile attention. People came up to us suspiciously demanding to know who we were, what 'caste' we belonged to. Some even whispered amongst

themselves that. We might be of the dreaded Ahl-e-Hadīs or Tablighī Jam 'āt, purists who were bent on destroying the fabric of local Islam by importing their doctrinaire interpretations. To have come all this way to the 'āt, participated in the ritual,

lata into the night, and then refused to eat was to make statement of the most anti-social kind. For the next few visits back to this village, we were always referred to as the 'people who did not eat at the 'urs.'

stayed a

This incident constituted

an

important early turning point

in my fieldwork. It was the moment I realised that some of the categories I had foolishly been taking for granted as were actually 'Islam', for instance unproblematic entities far more contested. Visiting dargāhs becomes the symbolic point of conflict between adherents of the different schools of thought and practice in Islam. The shrine has been the focus of much writing in anthropology and history. 25 Traditionally, it has been contrasted as the tarīqā (path or way) versus the legal tradition of Islam, the sharia; the inner way as opposed to the outer, revealed tradition (Masud 1984). In his rich study of a Sufi Brotherhood in Egypt. Michael Gilsenan also reifies this —

—

dichotomy when he writes 'What the formal abstract system of the ulema has failed to provide, the richly personal ethic of the tarīqā offers in abundance' (Gilsenan 1973: 138). E. Gellner

the (1969) also divided Moroccan Islam across two poles formal Islam of the town that set the tone for a purist tradition, and the illiterate, heterodox tribes who venerated local saints and shrines instead. —

All too often, anthropologists’ interest in the shrine is

premised upon its difference from the mosque, relating to the ecstatic aspects of religion, the mysticism and healing qualities of barakat that are seen as inherent in the shrine. But, of course, there is rarely a simple dichotomy between formal scripture and mystical ecstasy. In most cases, there are shades of opinion debating their place in correct Islamic practice. Instead of the heterodox function it is often ascribed, the Sufi shrine can function as an orthodox and conservative institution as well (Eaton 1978; Ewing 1983), thus breaking apart the dichotomy of formal and mystical Islam. With the various discourses of Islamic reform debating in

earnest what constitutes normative Islamic practice, the shrine has become a contested space. Each of the schools of reform has a different perspective on the extent of participation in shrines that is permissible, thus converting a typical ‘urs into an arena where multiple perspectives come out into the open in an oblique way. As Peter Van der Veer (1992: 548) points out, ‘These multiple interpretations of the saint’s day implicitly refer to each other and cannot be understood independently. Taken together, they form a cultural discourse concerning Islam that is brought to the public arena by the ways Muslims do or do not participate in the saint’s day.’ The ambiguity inherent in a typically polyvocal understanding of an ‘urs celebration surfaced during my first experience of an ‘urs. This was revealed in the way my research assistant’s refusal to eat began to be construed by the others, yet we were never directly confronted about it. Not surprisingly, the structure of devotion that centres on has also come in for critique by the advocates of Islamic reform in Kachchh. As the worship of Āśāpurā has been transformed in recent decades towards a more purified pole of Māī

the goddess loses some of her specific and exclusive associations with the subjects of Kachchh and is now

regional Hinduism,

accessible only within a generic Gujarati Hindu devotional universe. Doctrines of Islamisation would advocate a similar

transformation and purification of Māī, where her specific

characteristics local to Kachchh and within a regional goddess tradition are sought to be erased in favour of some universal Islamic ideal of devotional practice. During the princely state, Māī shared a larger universe of goddess worship that was

presided over at an encompassing level by Āśāpurā. Within this encompassing system, the Jatts were accorded a certain role as subjects of the king. With the demise of this system, Māī becomes the touchstone of a distinctive identity for the Jatts. No longer within the old system of princely sovereignty and territorial independence for Kachchh, as it is now officially part of a different regional imaginary, their distinction is maintained through alternate conceptions of territory and sovereignty. The annual melā held by the Garāsiā Jatts is a defense of Māī as a comprehensive symbol of identity. In this, we can detect not just a critique of the new political affiliations of Kachchh in the aftermath of its princely sovereignty, but also a critique of those discourses of Islamic reform that presume to dictate the

norms

of Islamic subjectivity as singular and transcultural. One of the sources of conflict bet ween reformists and their registers comes down to the question of defending a local identity. The primary

resistance to reform Islam appears to be an unwillingness to give in to the potential erasure of a local Islamic identity in the wake of the more universalising ideology that the reformists subscribe to.

Resistance

to

Islamic

Reform

A young middle-class woman in Bhuj, in her early twenties and a college graduate about to get married when I first met her, had taken to wearing the burkhā over the past, year or so. 'What is the point in wearing a burkhā now at this stage when the whole town has already seen your face?' Her mother remarked, vexed. Veiling is not customary in Kachchh, and purdāh tends to be restricted to Saiyyid women and to some recent reformist influences. This young woman remarked that when people ran into her veiled form on the streets, they would always speak to her in Urdu or Hindi; the general assumption was that she

from the north of the country. 26 Thoroughly amused by this supposition, she emphasised that she would reply asserting that she was from Kachchh. Her rationalisation for the veil was borrowed from the lexicon of Islamic reform and maintained that it constituted a proper 'Islamic custom' (Islami qāydā) even if it was seen as a break with local clothing practices. This anecdote is a good example of how Islamic reform is somehow seen as belonging to the 'outside', alien to Kachchh. Similarly Danji, head of the Jatt Jam 'āl. was looking for a maulānā who could be recruited to teach in his village madrassā. He asked his good friend who was also a Saiyyid and a member of a pīr family to use his contacts to find someone suitable. 'But I want a local man. Not from Rajasthan, not from Arabistan [Arabia]; he must be from here!' This was an only thinly veiled reference to the fact that he wanted a Sunni teacher and not someone trained in one of the well-known reformist madrassās of Rajasthan. People perceived as purists and in favour of reformminded Islam, regardless of whether they were Ahl-e-Hadīs or was

were often referred to derogatorily as 'the ones from the Saudi Jam 'āt', referring to the purist Wahabbi movement of Saudi Arabia. In post-earthquake Kachchh, the reformists had ample opportunity to be castigated. Salima bāī comes from a modest Shaikh family in Bhuj. She earns her living by doing housework for middle-class households, cleaning the floors, washing clothes and dishes everyday. She talked of her encounter with the

Tablïghïs,

27 'Tablīgh people' after

the

earthquake:

They came and offered us money, 5,000 rupees [approx. 100 US Dollars] each. They give money to spread their faith among people and they come from outside, they all were Gujarati speaking people. What do we want money like that for? We can earn our own money. Her employer, a strong believer in pīrs and shrines herself, declares of the Ahl-e-Hadīs and Tablīghī Jam 'āt followers,

They

when

do not believe in the rasūl, they do not, read the kalimā a person dies, over the dead body [...] their faces do

not have nūr;

all faith.

they

are

all blackened because

they

have lost

These narratives reflect some of the antipathy of Muslims in Kachchh to the idea of Islamic reform. The ‘urs becomes one of the more contested symbols of Islamic devotional practice in the context of the confrontation between the reformists and those who would rather continue with their belief in saints and other local iterations of Islamic practice. I will conclude this section with one last narrative. This is a conversation I had with a Muslim woman in her forties who lives in Bhuj. She provides a richly nuanced narrative that makes a crucial link between reform Islam and politics in Gujarat. After the earthquake, many people came from outside, from Ahmedabad, luxury buses 28full of them [...]. They said to

people

that they would build them new houses with one and a kitchen. In exchange, they had to give a photo of themselves and agree to come into their Jam 'āt. I am not sure what their Jam 'āt is, but they are like the Tablīgh people. They used to propagate their views. These Ahl-e-Hadīs people, they totally reject the rasūl-al-pāk [Prophet]. They do not believe in going to pīrs. Now if they cannot even accept the rasūl, then where is the question of their accepting someone like a pīr or a buzurg? Now there is all this burkhā-wearing here. They say it is all for izzat. Now you tell me, does izzat lie in wearing a burkha? Izzat is in your nazar; it is in your eyes and your heart, not in a burkha. room

These shuddh Ahl-e-Hadīs people, they do not believe in this custom we have after death, of giving the body one rotī Allah ke nām [bread in the name of Allah], They say will the dead person come alive to eat it? They do not bother. [...] One of my sisters, the daughter of an uncle, she was a shuddh Ahl-e-Hadīs, and she would say, there is no need to be superstitious like this and give a dead body food. So when she died, they did not do this for her. Then after her death, one night her daughter had a dream in which her mother came to her saying, 'I am feeling very hungry.' So, this is

what

happens

to these

people. They

had

so

much money and

wealth and by the time the old lady died, she was suffering so much, her husband was also suffering. Now in her daughter's the men do not believe house, it is like in so many others Sunni the women do. [in pīrs. customs], —

dies, they do nothing. I have seen it with I had my eyes. gone to the house where an old woman had died. They had bathed the body and it was lying there. No fātihā, no kailimā was read, not even any lobān, nothing. All around, the women were sitting and just chatting about mundane things. Then the men came, took the janāzā [coffin] out; no Allah, no Akbar, nothing. Is this the way to die, tell me? All theāfat that has come in Kachchh, in Gujarat, it is all the fault of these Ahl-e-Hadīs people. Even when

a person

own

Her narrative details the ‘purification’ of ritual that is one of the targets of reformist ideology that along with shrine veneration are considered to be unnecessary accretions into Islamic practice. She draws attention to the gendered response to reform that is perceived as being from ‘outside’. What is most interesting, however, is that she clearly and unambiguously locates the reformists and their ‘purist’ stance as being responsible for the hardening of religious identities and boundaries in Gujarat. She then links this directly to the ‘chaos’ of past years — the suffering entailed first in the earthquake and subsequently in the inter-religious violence. This background of resistance to Islamic reform and its of preserving a locally meaningful possible motivations practice of Islam from being engulfed by a universalising Islamic ideology will provide a deeper context within which to situate the Garāsiā Jatt's persistence in holding on to Māī as a comprehensive symbol of community identity. This identity attempts to hold its own both in the face of the modern state —

—

and the reformists. In the first instance, this could be read as an attempt to resurrect the meanings of Māīwithin the larger

landscape of goddess worship as it, was operational in Kachchh during its status as a sovereign princely state. This is also an allegorical comment on the different, status they occupied as subjects under the princely state and the present regime. In the

second instance they are also responding to the agents of Islamic reform, who would rather see the traditions relating to ,

normative structure of Islamic worshipMāīe.g. replaced by a more

regular

mosque visitations

—

by

men

and veiling for

women.

Māi and Teritory Garāsiā Jatt villages, or their quarters within mixed villages, have a small dargāh dedicated to Māī. Each individual village shrine dedicated to Māī is encompassed by the main dargāh dedicated to Māī in Kachchh. This is where the entire Jatt community is reaffirmed at the annual gathering for the 'urs to celebrate her death anniversary. This dargāh is merely a memorial though, an āsthäānā. The as I. [original] dargāh where Māī is buried is situated in Dubni, a village in Sindh's Badin tāluka (Hamirani n.d.; Malek 1999: 29). The hierarchical at the apex is the dargāh ordering of these shrines is clear in Sindh where only a few Jatts in Kachchh will be fortunate enough to go to pay their respects personally. Those who have managed to make the pilgrimage to the shrine across the border return with stories, photographs, and in one instance, a video recording of the entire proceedings at the annual melā there. These artefacts then enter the sphere of circulation as semisacred objects in and of themselves. Replaying this video tape —

for my benefit on one occasion became a virtual re-enactment of the ritual, along with a detailed and minute commentary

and observation on the way in which the ritual was conducted at the centre, so that it may be more effectively reproduced at the subsidiary shrine in Kachchh. At the Kachchh shrine, all Garāsiā Jatts are expected to congregate annually, but they may also visit if necessitated by a crisis during some other time in the year. On all other occasions, the local village shrine is an adequate venue for the offering of incense and flowers, especially on Monday, which is often called 'Māī's day'.

Māī nā Padh dargāh in Kachchh lies about 15 miles north-west, of Bhuj, rocky incline. To reach this dargāh, pilgrims must cross a stream of theKhari River which can resemble anything from Māī's on a

dry, rocky bed to a river in spate, depending on the season and available rainfall. The dargāh itself sits inside a walled a

compound, the entire complex known as Māī nā Padh or Māī's 'place' or'stronghold, not unlike Mata nā madh, which houses the chiefĀśāpūrā temple in Kachchh. The annual three-clay 'urs celebrations at Māī na padh draw Garāsiā

Jatts from all over Kachchh to pay their respects at Apart from the religious aspect of the 'urs, it is an important social occasion for the Jatts, as it represents possibly the shrine.

single largest gathering of Jatts in the year. Although the everybody else by far, there are also small a Hindu herding people, notably Rabaris from the adjacent village, who have taken to community visiting Māī's dargāh in time of need. The most notable feature of the three-clay commemoration and one that makes this 'urs distinctly different from all others is its jurisdictional function. By ordering the Jatts to hold an annual community court in this spot. Māī represents a conjoined spiritual as well as jurisdictional authority over her subjects. She orders the Jatts, as a community, to order their internal affairs with justice and prudence. At the 'urs for Māī that is held, the Jatts, therefore, hold a community court (adālat) to dispense justice within the community. A large tent is set up, under the

Jatts outnumber numbers of other

—

—

which congregate the three senior male office bearers of the Jatt Jam 'āt. The occasion is used to collect subscription money from every family, and to try the disputes that are brought to the community tribunal. In recent years, with increasing

education within the community, the younger generation has begun to attack the system as perpetuating the foibles of the old guard and have begun encouraging recourse to the official legal system instead. Even though many people no longer bring their disputes to this community court, it continues as a strong symbol of Māī's jurisdiction over the entire Jatt Jam 'āt and

is

a

considerable deterrent, for individuals to act outside of

community sanctioned practices. The image of a pīr with such complex and multi-layered authority is not in itself new. Richard M. Eaton (1984: 341) has written extensively on how a pīr' authority can extend over particular geographical tracts, running parallel to political authority:

[…] a certain tract of the Punjab had become identified with Baba Farid’s wilaya, or spiritual kingdom, which to his devotees was perceived as having specific geographic boundaries that bordered the wilayas of other saints. [...] the notion of spiritual sovereignty could parallel, in spatial terms, that of political sovereignty, and represents one of several ways in which the shrine of Baba Farid fused religious and political categories of authority. And the territorial jurisdiction of these institutions becomes more important in those marginal spaces where the direct authority of the state is somehow compromised or mediated. This was the argument presented in a previous chapter with the example of the Sānkarwārā dargāh in Bhuj. There, I argued that the role of the dargāh must be situated with respect to the state, as partners in the project of state making. In this case, however, Māī and her dargāh become strong symbols of community for the Jatts. Turning out in large all the women and girls wearing their unique red dresses with elaborately embroidered fronts, also symbols of Māī, the Jatts make an exclusive claim to Māī. Within the socio-political context inhabited by the Jatts in Kachchh, the celebration of Māī's melā is more than just an 'urs celebration. It is, as Clifford Geertz (1973a) famously described in another context, a cultural performance; a story they tell them about themselves, embodying layer upon layer of meaning and communication. The proud celebration of the melā also constitutes a direct challenge to reformists who are vocal in their critiques of such events. Māī becomes this conscious and potent symbol of community and belonging precisely at the moment when the Jatts are no longer integrated into the princely state presided over by Āśāpurā, and Kachchh is no longer a relatively sovereign entity within

numbers,

Gujarat.

During an earlier regime of state, they see themselves as

occupying a definite place within the larger moral universe of the kingdom, presided over by the goddess and the king. The royal state is presented as one that rises above sectarian, class and religious differences as it stitches together a diverse subject population in securing their allegiance to the kingdom. The Muslim Jatts receive the same grants, honours, recognition for military service, as others presumably do for their services rendered.29

Apart from the oral testimonies of the Jatts to this effect, there are plenty of other sources that speak to the inclusive and attitude of the royal families in Kachchh. As was by far the norm among princely families across the subcontinent, there was much intermarriage across religious and class lines among the Jadejas. Travelling through Kachchh in the 1830s, Marianna Postans (1839: 133) wrote that it was ‘[…] difficult to decide, whether the Jharrejahs should be classed as Hindus or Moslems; more particularly as the Rao, who is the head of the Bhyaud, [bhayyad] pays reverence to both modes of worship […].’ In a footnote, she adds that ‘The Rao himself says that out of about two thousand Jharrejahs, he does not think three of them know what their religion is.’

nondiscriminatory

this may well be an oversimplification, it does give indication of relatively hybrid religious practices in the past. Confirming this, Himmatsinhji Jadeja recalled his youth in the

Although

an

palace complex. He had an English tutor,

and there were many Muslims in the household. 'We had Mohammedan [Muslim] cooks, so no pork ever came into our kitchens so as not to offend them. Whatever was brought in from śikār was halāled so that they could eat it as well.' The king Raydhan II (1779-1814) is known to have converted to Islam and married

a Muslim woman the mother of his heir. In the present historiography of Kachchh, Raydhan II is popularly referred to as suffering

who

was

from 'mental disorders' (Rushbrook-Williams 1958) and a cruel, 30 spiteful king who 'lost the confidence of his public'. Perhaps

his conversion to Islam was only a coincidence, but widespread stories of his cruelty and mental imbalance are less likely to be indication of his true personality at the time than they are the less religiously tolerant times of the present when these stories are recounted. in Garāsiā Jatt devotional practice if thus The role of Māī an

a comment on

closely linked to their discourse on correct moral practice and procedures of governance. This ought to be read in the light of the contemporary political situation that the Jatts find themselves in. With the demise of the princely state, the principles of governance underwent a qualitative change. As far as the Jatts are concerned, they see this as a moment of alienation where they are no longer bound up with the political fortunes as their

settlement narratives suggest that they once on

Māī

as a

By insisting community, upholding face of opposition from the

comprehensive symbol

were.

of

the tradition of the 'urs in the reformists, they are able to reclaim some agency in their selfdefinition. In holding on to Māī in this manner, the Jatts steer away from being co-opted into a transnational movement for Islamic reform. On the other hand, by presenting their from other Muslim groups in Kachchh as a positive thing, they also attempt to break out of the state's definition of them as 'other.' By relocating the dispensation of education and justice classically the duty of the state vis-à-vis its citizens within the parameters of the community, the Jatts are the terms of their engagement with the state itself.

distinction —

—

reformulating Notes 1.

2.

3. 4.

8.

6.

There are other examples of political disaffection in Kachchh, most of which stem from a belief that Kachchh is the recipient of stepchild like treatment within the larger political unit of Gujarat. A movement for the secession of Kachchh from Gujarat also briefly gained some supporters, but. for the most part, it has remained no more than an intellectual idea. Langas are a musician caste and also perform the task of genealogists for the Garāsiā Jatts. This story accounts for the beginnings of the Jatts' association with a particular family of Langas in Kachchh. On their musical talents, see Jairazbhoy (1980) ; Bharucha (2003) ; and Bharucha and Kothari (2003 5. Summer palace by the sea in Mandvi built in the late 1920s. Some descendants of the royal family continue to live here today. See explanation below. Dispensable, that is, in terms of the patrilineal ideology. In practice, daughters do retain strong ties with their natal homes, and the brothersister tie is almost a systemic safeguard of this within a patrilineal system. See Raheja and Gold (1994) ; Vatuk (1975). I use the term 'independent.' advisedly: As I have already mentioned, after 1819, the state of Kachchh was paying an annual tribute to the colonial state. However, Kachchh was never directly colonised and until it. was attached to the Bilingual Bombay Province in 1956, it remained an

independent political entity. For a review of pertinent. literature on feudalism and the problematic application of this Eurocentric concept, to Indian agrarian history, see Mukhia (1993). 8. Jadeja is not. an uncommon family name in Kachchh today. While some of them can claim descent from the sprawling networks (legitimate and otherwise) of the ruling clan, it. is also a widely known fact that, after the

7.

decline of the princely state, many of the palace employees such as servants and and accountants also adopted the name and now call themselves behave with the 'arrogance' of Rajputs. 9. He does clarify that the cultural ideal of movement is also a practical ideal, as it enables them to acquire control over resources. 10. Reproduced in translation from Śri Āśāpurājī nī Vratkathā, a booklet on the goddess available at her temples (publishing details unknown). 11. Literally'nine nights' this refers to the annualfestivity and prayer dedicated to the Hindu goddess Durga and her incarnations, of which Āśāpurā is one. The 12. Sultan is said to have subsequently excused Kachchh from paying tribute as long as they provided military assistance to his kingdom at Ahmedabad. 13. Tyabji 2005 for an interesting presentation of the urban history of See Bhuj reconstructed through the eyes of its contemporaries. In 14. general, this argument is algo problematic, for it makes stereotypical assumptions about, both rulers and merchants, Simpson (2001) draws attention to this problem but retains a binary opposition between rulers and traders. He describes the former as 'endogenous' to Kachchh, 'literally sons of the soil' who maintain the boundary of the kingdom, while the traders are 'exogenous', for they continually transgress these boundaries. This polarity between rulers/traders or endogeny/exogeny is not productive either, for the Jadejas are conscious of having come from Sindh, and until recently continued to maintain marriage ties with Sodha women in TliarParkar. As I am arguing here, the 'boundary' is not so much an a priori fact as a —

—

subjectively experienced

one.

15. Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960 prohibits the killing of The animals with the caveat that its provisions do not apply to their killing in any manner required by the religious requirements of a community. This allows, for instance, the sacrifice of goats during the Muslim Bakrid festival, but by rendering it within the regulation of the community, the state does not directly participate in sacrifice. Many Indian states have banned the sacrifice of animals in Hindu temples. David F. Pocock (1973; 63) points out thatMātās or goddesses in Gujarat 16. came in 'clean' and 'unclean' versions, the former demanding only vegetarian 'pure offerings, and the latter demanding alcohol and meat offerings. For 17. key arguments in the debate, see Ahmad (1972) ; Ahmad (1981) ; Das (1984) ; Minault (1984) ; Robinson (1983) ; and Robinson (1986). This 18. was argued early on by Imtiaz Ahmad (1972 ; 1973; 1981 ). See, 19. for example, Ansari (1992) ; Basu (1998) ; Eaton (1984); Eaton (1993); Eaton (2000); Ewing (1997); Gardner (1995) ; Gilmartin (1984) ; Gilsenan (1973); Mehta (1997) ; Roy (1983) ; Sanyal (1995) ; and Van dei Veer (1992) for just a few examples. 20. women related to the main pīr may be buried in the dargāh Although complex, devotional practice is focused only on the central tombs, which are always those of men. 21. This was the case in my earlier example of the Dhayra Pīr dargāh in Mandvi, where a woman is the principal figure at the shrine. She occupies this position as the daughter of the previous pīr. The devotional structure

22. 28. 24.

25.

26.

27.

28. 29. 30.

of this dargāh is not, however, oriented around her, but rather her buried ancestors. She functions as an advisor only to women clients on illnesses and other issues, providing magical charms (tāwīz) and incantations. Male clients, on the other hand, see her brother. Amitav Ghosh (2005: 85-88, 127, 204-206) identifies Bon Bibi with a syncretic Hindu-Muslim folk tradition of Bengal. On niāz and distribution of grace see Basu (1998) Eaton (1984); Eaton (2000); and Werbner (1998). See Mayaram (1997) ; Metcalf (1982) ; Metcalf (1993); Searle-Chatterjee (1994) ; Sikand (2002); and Van der Veer (1992) for historical and details on these groups. Ansari (1992) ; Basu (1998) ; Bayly (1989); Eaton (1978) ; Eaton (1984); Eaton (1993); Eaton (2000); Ewing (1997); Fruzzetti (1980) ; Gellner (1969) ; Gilsenan (1973) ; Pemberton (2004) ; Werbner (1998) ; and Werbner and Basu (1998) , to give just a few examples. UP and Bihar are seen as the main exporters of reform-minded Muslims. Most, of the maidānās in Ahl-e-Hadīs madrassās did come from either UP or Bihar. They teach in Urdu, as they are not conversant in Kachchhi. This cannot be taken as a true indicator of their religious persuasion. As indicated above, often Ahl-e-Hadīs and Tablīgh were used interchangeably to indicate purist Muslims who were opposed to shrine worship. This is the term for any bus not owned by the state transport corporation and bears no relation to actual standards of comfort. See Susan Bayly's (1984) discussion of the high status accorded to Syrian Christians by the seventeenth century Hindu rulers of Kerala. Personal communication, P. J. Jethi, Āinā Mahal Museum, Bhuj, 22 January 2003. ,

ethnographic

Epilogue Since the period of fieldwork that this book is based on, Kachchh has witnessed change at many levels. The earthquake of 2001 was in many ways a catalyst for the kind of 'development' that many in Kachchh have welcomed openly. Once derided

isolated backwater, a remote border district, residents of Kachchh were deeply resentful of the fact that they did not get their due from the province that they were a part of. The perception that Gujarat simply did not take Kachchh into consideration as an important constituent unit of the province has had some currency for a while. While the chief focus was on securing the border, Kachchhis felt that they were missing out on the share of 'development' and 'progress' that was coming the way of their fellows further east. This book has set out some of the terms of the relationship between Kachchh and Gujarat; the fact that this relationship has been a vexed one as far as the assertion of a regional identity is concerned. After the earthquake of 2001, Kachchh was thrown open to the task of 'reconstruction' on a massive scale. New houses, industries and highways have all been part of the facelift received by Kachchh. It would not be out of place to suggest that Kachchh has, in fact, as an

been the stage on which some of 'Vibrant, Gujarat's' fantasies of development are being played out. But it is also true that the swanky new highways and glossy villages constructed out of cement and stone conceal other tales. The post-earthquake interventions, sanctioned and supervised by the state, have been described on occasion as the sarkārī bhukamp, i.e., the state's earthquake signifying the extent of the impact of some of these policies on the lives of local people, at times as life-shattering as the original earthquake. Gujarat's asmitā seeks to triumph over one of its final bastions the border area of Kachchh, always recalcitrant for it had its own discourses of identity and region, some of which I have attempted to highlight in this book. ,

—

As an ethnographic analysis of a border zone, this book

highlights the fact that political and territorial borders — despite their obvious physicality — cannot just be encountered as a priori facets of modern nation-states. On the contrary, these

Epilogue

borders (whether they separate nation-states from one another, or carve out one region from another within the jurisdiction of a state as the Gujarat–Kachchh example shows) are continually produced and defended from alternative experiences of territory and community that might be inherently threatening to the state’s vision of the bounded political community. I argued that political borders are also perceived as social and cultural borders; attempts are made to discursively and practically produce and maintain them through time. My research underscores the point that border definition is not just about securing the physical boundary of the nation-state; it is also instrumental in managing people. Border production is as much about the mapping of space as it is about mapping populations, fixing and creating identifiable categories of religion, ethnicity or language in the process. The rule of the state, as manifested in the production of borders, is thus a ‘model for’, rather than just a ‘model of ’, reality. A comparative study of different groups on the border reveals that marginal populations react variously to changing state regimes. Even as the Dānetā Jatts redefine themselves in the more universal and transnationally recognisable language of Islam, the Garāsiā Jatts seek to avoid association either with reform Islam or with a Sanskritised, vegetarian and goddess-free Hinduism. The symbolic and social structure elaborated around Māī brings locally meaningful practices of religion to bear on their social organisation; it is distinctive in part because it is located in a specific place and this is what, makes it valuable. The Meghwals, on the other hand, seek to align themselves with a regionally legitimate form of Hinduism in order to gain social acceptance and citizenship rights in Kachchh, even if it means leaving their homes to cross the border. It is thus not sufficient to assume that the state is always inimical to the interests of its more subaltern subjects; they can come together for a larger common goal, as seen in the Meghwal case. This should prompt a critical rethinking of the notion of subalternity. Does current social or economic disenfranchisement render populations like the Meghwals 'subaltern' when they are implicated with the project of the state in complex even if not fully articulated ways? Similarly, the Garāsiā Jatts might be marginal to the modern state in

occasionally, —

—

Settlers, Saints and Sovereigns

Kachchh, but their oral histories cast them as central players during princely rule. What does this do to our conceptualisations of the ‘subaltern’? I hope this ethnography would allow one to complicate such conceptualisations by introducing, on the one hand, a commitment to bring a historical frame to bear on what constitutes subalternity and how this changes over time; and, on the other hand, to engage more fully with the manner in which ‘marginal’ populations make different kinds of demands on the state. Thus, the Jatts have more or less abandoned the desire to seek recognition from the contemporary Hindu nationalist state, even though they suggest they were closely aligned to the princely state in the past. On the other hand, the Meghwal Harijans see the modern state as a crucial means of social and economic advancement. Their relationship with the modern state is thus articulated on a greater convergence of interest, even if based on pragmatism on either side. Mobility and migration is a recurrent theme in the preceding chapters. Kachchh has a foundational relationship to mobile populations: traders, pastoralists, emigrants and immigrants. Every social group discussed here has a relationship to the Meghwals crossed over from Sindh, the Dānetā a Jatts still move in search of water and pasture even though they cannot move along traditional pasture routes after 1947 and they cast their aspirations in terms of the Islamic idiom of hijrat or migration. The Garāsiā Jatts explain their distinction from the Dānetā Jatts by commenting on how they stopped moving. Their settlement across towns and villages in Kachchh also signals the settlement and establishment of the princely state: according to their stories, they cleared forests into fields as they settled down: this is how the Kachchhi landscape came to be colonised by the Garāsiā Jatts and the kings.

movement:

Beyond these recurrent motifs of movement, I suggest that

mobility taken seriously as a conceptual category constitutes a threat to culturalist fantasies of boundedness and holism. Mobility poses a challenge for any homogenising discourse of boundaries, for it suggests opening up to notions of cultural flows, mixture and hybridity. Mobility threatens with possible disorder and the transgression of carefully constructed boundaries. Faced with movement, change and modernity, there is typically a heightened desire for anchor or rootedness. We witness this

in both nationalist cultural production like asmitā where the 'outside' represents the threat of disorder, Pakistan, Sindh and Muslims, but also in discourses pertaining to religion, for example,

the dismissal of anything considered 'inauthentic' as being 'from outside', whether this is violence (projected onto mainland Gujarat) or face veiling (from 'north India,' or reform Islam). What kind of politics of place, region, or religion can we in for the of this the future? imagine protagonists story Certainly, the politics of asmitā have left an indelible stamp on the social and political landscape of Gujarat. But I hope to have opened up in the preceding pages some of the historical complexities and contingencies that produce this kind of discourse. Even as it seeks to naturalise itself, Hindutva driven formulations of identity can be exposed for their internal inconsistencies and insecurities. Further, as I have proposed, social polarisation and notions of 'us' and 'them', 'insider' and 'outsider' are certainly not the prerogatives of modernity. Even as this dissertation has articulated the voices of those who express a deep nostalgia for the past, I have suggested that the 'good' past is produced in the present moment of recall. 'Tradition' comes into being in —

—

a moment of heightened anxiety about the future. I hope that this ethnography that is attentive to the micro histories of place making will enable us to address wider debates in the study

of states, nationalisms and cultural production, challenging everyday taken-for-granted notions of spatial, social and cultural

organisation.

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Index ādīvāsī 42 146

darbārgadh 130 163 165 171 173 dargāh, see also 'urs 123 26 129 34

,

,

,

Afghanistan 34 58 61 111 Ahl-e-Hadīs 134 184 85 188 90 ,

-

,

-

,

197n Mahal 117 132 33 ajrakh 67 70 75 Allah bund 37 40 71 72 Āśāpurā 9 163 65 , 167 69 173 75 178 181 187 192 193 asmitā 4 , 8 9 13 34 45 46 , 51 , 52 96 199 201

,

,

-

,

,

,

-

,

138 48 178 81 182 85 191 93 -

,

-

,

,

-

,

-

.

Āinā

-

,

-

,

-

-

,

-

-

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

,

-

,

earthquake xiv, 38–39, 41, 102, 166, 171, 184, 188–89, 198 elections 16–20, 100–101 exchange 59–60, 122, 138–39, 157–59 redistribution 122, 138–39 and kinship 157–59

-

history of 19–29 and regional patriotism 9, 13–15, 45–46, 20–23, 25–31, 51 and Kachchh 31–34, 45–48, 199–201

BJP 15–17, 19–20, 33, 40, 100–101, 147 Baluchistan 61, 72–73, 111, 167 Banni 38, 55, 58, 59, 61, 62–63, 65, 71, 75, 95, 99, 103, 104–105, 111–16, 129–30, 131, 133, 135–37, 139, 146, 155 landownership in 118–21 barakat 126, 127–28, 137–39, 184–86 bhayyad 111, 117, 161, 194 Bhuj 4, 34–35, 37, 38, 41, 53, 59, 60, 63, 89, 114, 117, 130–35, 161, 163–66, 171 Bombay 23, 46, 88, 144 Presidency 22, 23, 35, 53, 60, 89, 105–106, 151 boundary disputes 77–78, 83–88 census 56, 86, 88 of animals 113–14 Chachnāmā

56

Chalukyas 22 26 29 49 n ,

-

,

clothing 66–70, 193 as resistance 97–98 customs tariff 61, 118

feudalism,

see

also Jadeja jāgīr 160 ,

57 59 61 112 136 Ghulam Shah 36 40

ghī

,

-

,

,

-

goddess 9, 162–69, 172–75, 181

and Islam 181–82 grazing 55, 62–63, 111–14 tax 117 right 114–15 conflict over 114–15, 118–22 Gujarat, Gujarati xv-xvi, 1–4, 6, 8, 9, 11–32, 34, 39–40, 46–48, 49n, 51, 62–63, 65–66, 71, 76, 78, 88, 92, 93, 96–97, 99, 100, 101–102, 106, 108, 109n, 113, 119–20, 125, 132, 141, 143, 144, 147, 148, 148n, 149n, 150n, 151–52, 153, 155, 158, 162, 163, 164, 168–70, 172–74, 176, 187, 188, 189, 190, 193, 195n, 196n, 198–99, 201 Harijan 68, 77–78, 80, 82, 88, 97–99, 102–103, 108, 108n, 109n, 121, 146, 200 hijrat, see also migration 62–67, 200 Hindutva 15–19, 20, 28–29, 30, 40, 42–44, 48n, 49n, 108, 135, 201 history 1, 7–9, 11, 15, 21–22, 35–36, 37, 40, 42–46, 48, 49n, 54, 55, 56, 57, 89, 143, 151, 152–61, 196n

indigeneity 4, 15, 29–30, 32, 40, 42–43, 45 political construction of 42–43, 45 Indus 35, 37–39, 41, 42–45, 52, 53, 56, 60 Islamic reform 123–26, 128, 134, 137–39, 145, 168, 175–76, 183–84, 186, 187–91, 195 Jadeja 36, 46, 47–48, 50n, 83, 86, 89, 98, 133, 160–61, 167, 173, 194, 195n, 196n

jāgīr 47

117 166

,

,

Jain 28 131 163 165 66 174 177 78 181 188 192 Jats 55 -

.

,

,

jam 'āt 154

,

-

,

,

,

,

Māī

64 175 76 178 82 184 87 190 95 199 nā padh 178 79 192 Māldhārī, see also pastoralist 63 71 107 114 15, 118 19 158 -

,

-

-

.

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

Lakhond 153–57, 159, 178, 183 Lakhpat 36–38, 60, 72, 74, 107, 178 Langas 155, 195n Madansinhji 89 133 -

-

,

,

132

,

,

,

,

,

meat, meat-eating 172–74, 185, 186n Meghwals 9, 78, 82, 88–103, 107–108, 199–200 melā 142 48 150n , 179 187 191 193 merchant networks 59 61 , 111 ,

,

,

,

-

migration, see also hijrat 31, 45, 49n, 51–53, 55, 56–57, 59, 62, 64–67, 77, 80, 89, 92, 95, 100, 200 milk, milk products 59–60, 73, 112–16, 118–19, 127, 136–38, 141, 143, 153, 157–59 Moti Pośad monastery 165 66 -

Mughal 20, 56, 57, 59, 76n, 103,

104, 175 Munshi, K. M. 21, 23–24, 26–29, 49n Nāg Panehamī 34 132 ,

Nara 107 140 41 143 145 Närmad 21 23 30 49n Navaratrī 165 169 niāz 138 183 84 197n -

,

Māldhārī

,

madrassa 188 Mahābhārata 43 44

Mahārāo, see also Rāo 131 149n 161

,

,

,

,

,

-

,

Pakistan xiv–xvi, 4, 6, 11–13, 15, 17, 24–25, 31, 40–41, 51, 54, 61, 69, 71, 76n, 78–80, 85, 92–93, 99, 101, 105–108, 114–15, 147–48, 148n, 201 pastoralists, see also 39, 55, 57, 63, 82, 98, 107, 123, 140, 151, 160–61

,

,

Mahagujarat movement 23 25

,

169 181 192 nā madh 163 165 167 169 192

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

Mātā, see also goddess Aśāpurā, Māī 9 45 163 165 167

,

,

,

Mandvi 4, 46, 87, 126, 127, 130, 156, 195n, 196n map-making 84–85, 111

-

Kaehchh Mitra 33 79 , 135 , 149n Kathiawar 21 , 25 106 170 Khengaqi 89 165 166 167 kinship 58 80 96 108 130 158 177 Kuldevī, see alsoĀśāpur\l=a_\ 163 168

-

,

,

-

,

-

Jatts 51–52, 55–68, 70–71, 75–76, 76n, 98, 108, 113–16, 118, 121, 122–25, 126, 127, 130, 133, 134–35, 137–38, 146, 151–62, 164, 167–68, 174–83, 187, 191–95, 195n, 199–200 Garasia 55, 63–64, 124, 151–54, 159, 161, 164, 174–76, 178–79, 181, 183, 187, 190–92, 194, 195n, 199–200 Daneta 52, 55, 58, 63–64, 114, 124, 126–27, 151–53, 155, 159, 161, 175, 179–80, 199–200 Fakirani 55, 76n, 175, 180

-

,

,

,

Partition 8, 13, 61–62, 71, 77–78, 85, 92–93, 107 Patan 25–26, 27, 28, 31 Patel, Sardar Vallabhai 24 patidars 118, 170

Pīr 65 66 91 92 102 122 125 28 130 48 182 84 188 189 192 196n poetry, see also qāfī 9 62 63 67 70 71 75 -

-

,

-

,

,

-

,

,

-

,

-

-

,

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

police 8, 61, 79, 105–107, 135, 149n port 1, 4, 38, 87

princely state 6, 8, 24–25, 31, 34–35,

62, 77–78, 83–84, 105, 111, 114–19, 122–24, 129, 131, 133–35, 138, 140, 151–71, 176, 187, 190, 193, 196n, 200 Prosopis juliflora 113, 118, 121, 149n

Saurashtra, see also Kathiawar 11, 21, 22, 23, 24–25, 32, 47, 49n, 55, 65, 76n, 89, 155–56, 166–67, 170, 173–74, 181 Savarkar, V. D. 42, 48n sedentarisation 74, 80, 120, 151, 157, 162 settlement policies 5, 8, 77–78, 80, 96, 103–104, 108, 111, 151, 153–62, 175–81, 200 shrine,

see also dargāh 26 27 56 91 123 126 129 32 136 48 150n 165 167 68 178 181 82 184 86 190 93 196n , 197n -

,

qāfī, see also poetry 62 70 qāfilā 61 155 qawwali 144 147

71

-

,

,

,

Rabaris 98, 167, 192 Raikes, Stanley Napier 83–86, 109n Rajasthan 47, 58, 62–63, 65, 82, 86, 87, 91, 94, 99, 117, 160, 163, 188 Rajput 47–48, 50n, 83, 86, 91–92, 98, 102, 108, 141–42, 153, 160–61, 164–65, 170, 172–73 Rāmdev Pīr 91 92 102 -

,

Rann xiv, 1, 36, 38–41, 46–47, 49n, 51–55, 57, 60–61, 65, 68, 70–72, 76n, 82, 84–85, 93–94, 99, 111–12, 114, 118, 135, 140–42, 144–45, 147, 179 68 Rāo, see also Mahārāo 35 36 49n 84 117 131 133 149n 167 194 ,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

.

,

Rao Godji 36 region 9–13, 21, 22, 24, 25 revenue 59, 111, 113, 117, 118, 120, 121, 131, 133, 138–39, 157 Roha 47, 117, 161 sacrifice 169–75 sacrificial blood 47, 165, 167–68, 172 Saiyyid 125–27, 137, 140, 187–88 Samas 46–47 Sānkarwārā

Pir 126 145 46 , 193

,

130 35 -

,

140

,

-

,

-

-

,

,

,

,

-

,

-

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

Sikhs 107 Sindh 4, 6, 9, 11–13, 15, 31–32, 34–36, 38–41, 45, 46–47, 48, 51–53, 55–57, 59, 60, 61, 62–63, 66–76, 76n, 77–80, 82–88, 93, 95, 100–101, 104–108, 111–12, 114–15, 119, 133, 141, 146–48, 152, 155, 160, 167, 178–81, 191, 196n, 200–201 colonisation of 35 Sodhas 48, 83, 86, 88–90, 94, 98, 100, 160, 196n Solanki 141–42 Somnath temple 22, 25, 26–28, 30, 49n sovereignty 5, 6, 12, 19, 27, 52, 104, 109n, 122, 148, 151–53, 159–60, 162–65, 166, 174, 176, 187 competing notions of, 9 state formation 4, 5, 6–8, 78, 88, 104, 111, 115, 123, 149n, 162 and natural resource management 115 anthropological perspective on 5, 6–9 and settlement policies 5, 8, 77–78, 80, 96 states reorganisation 23 sunna, sunnat 128, 138 Survey of India 84 Swaminarayan movement 169–74

-

Saraswati 40–41, 43–45 Sasui–Punu 71–73 sati 47

Tablighi Jam’at 134, 184–88 TharParkar 24, 48, 81, 82–107, 196n town planning 41, 100, 171

trade 47, 54–61, 71, 73, 76n, 87, 112–13, 118, 149n

VHP 49n, 116, 121, 148 vegetarianism 164, 169–74, 196n, 199

'urs, see also dargāh 142 145 150n , 179 182 95

Wagad 49n

,

,

-

,

141 wāndh 52 118 ,

,