# सामान्य मंच > मेरा भारत > कानून >  Criminal Tribes Act,Habitual Offenders Acts,

## dkj

Criminal Tribes Act,Habitual Offenders Acts,

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The term Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) applies to various successive pieces of legislation enforced in India during British rule; the first enacted in 1871 as the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871 applied mostly in North India. The Act was extended to Bengal Presidency and other areas in 1876, and, finally, with the Criminal Tribes Act, 1911, it was extended to Madras Presidency as well. The Act went through several amendments in the next decade and, finally, the Criminal Tribes Act, 1924 incorporated all of them.

The 1871 Act came into force, with the assent of the Governor-General of India on 12 October 1871.[] Under the act, ethnic or social communities in India which were defined as "addicted to the systematic commission of non-bailable offences" such as thefts, were systematically registered by the government. Since they were described as 'habitually criminal', restrictions on their movements were also imposed; adult male members of such groups were forced to report weekly to the local police.

At the time of Indian independence in 1947, there were thirteen million people in 127 communities who faced search and arrest if any member of the group was found outside the prescribed area. The Act was repealed in August 1949 and former "criminal tribes" were denotified in 1952, when the Act was replaced with the Habitual Offenders Act 1952 of Government of India, and in 1961 state governments started releasing lists of such tribes.

Today, there are* 313* *Nomadic Tribes* and *198 Denotified tribes* of India, yet the legacy of the past continues to haunt the majority of 60 million people belonging to these tribes, especially as their historical associations have meant not just alienation and stereotyping by the police and the media, but also economic hardships. A large number of them can still only subscribe to a slightly altered label, "Vimukta jaatis" or the Ex-Criminal Tribes

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Denotified Tribes (DNTs), also known as Vimukta Jati,[1] are the tribes that were originally listed under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871,[2] as Criminal Tribes and "addicted to the systematic commission of non-bailable offences." Once a tribe became "notified" as criminal, all its members were required to register with the local magistrate, failing which they would be charged with a crime under the Indian Penal Code. The Criminal Tribes Act of 1952 repealed the notification, i.e. 'de-notified' the tribal communities. This act, however, was replaced by a series of Habitual Offenders Acts, that asked police to investigate a suspect's criminal tendencies and whether his occupation is "conducive to settled way of life." The denotified tribes were reclassified as habitual offenders in 1959.

The name "Criminal Tribes" is itself a misnomer as no definition of tribe denotes occupation, but they were identified as tribes doing their primary occupation. The first Census was in 1871 and at that time there was no consensus nor any definition of "tribe". The terms "tribe" and "caste" were used interchangeably for these communities.

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The Nomadic Tribes and Denotified Tribes consist of about 60 million people in India, out of which about five million live in the state of Maharashtra. There are 315 Nomadic Tribes and 198 Denotified Tribes.

A large section of these tribes are known as vimukta jatis or 'ex-criminal castes' because they were classed as such under the Criminal Tribes Act 1871, enacted under British rule in India.

After Indian Independence, this act was repealed by the Government of India in 1952. In Maharashtra, these people are not been included in the list of Scheduled Tribes due to historical circumstances, but are listed as Scheduled Castes or "Nomadic Tribes". The tribes designated as "Denotified", "Nomadic" or "Semi-Nomadic" are eligible for reservation in India.]

The Government of India established the National Commission for De-notified, Nomadic and Semi Nomadic tribes in 2005 to study the developmental aspects of such tribes.

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Unjust and unusual results[edit]
Habitual Offender laws, depending on their scope and discretionary room given to judges, can lead to persons being punished quite severely for relatively minor offenses. The discretionary nature of the laws means that they can be applied unevenly.

In Australia, laws relating to dangerous and Habitual offenders have been criticized as ignoring the principle of certainty in sentencing. Another major concern in Australia is the considerable disparity that exists in the requirements for dangerous offender status and in the available sentences for such offenders across jurisdictions. Age and offense requirements, indeterminate or fixed sentencing provisions, and review procedures are quite different from state to state;[3] these inconsistencies have been removed to some extent in the past decade.

Some unusual scenarios have arisen, particularly in California in the United States — the state punishes shoplifting and similar crimes involving over $500 in property as felony petty theft if the person who committed the crime has a prior conviction for any form of theft, including robbery or burglary. As a result, some defendants have been given sentences of 25 years to life in prison for such crimes as shoplifting golf clubs (Gary Ewing, previous strikes for burglary and robbery with a knife), nine videotapes (Leandro Andrade, 50 years to life for two counts of shoplifting), or, along with a violent assault, a slice of pepperoni pizza from a group of children (Jerry Dewayne Williams, four previous non-violent felonies, sentence later reduced to six years on appeal).

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LIST OF VIMUKT JATIS (DENOTIFIEDL TRIBES) AND TAPRIWAS JATIS

VIMUKT JATIS (DENOTIFIED TRIBES)

TAPRIWAS JATIS
1.
Bangali
1.
Bazigar
2.
Barar
2.
Mirasi
3.
Bauria
3.
Sikligar
4.
Nat
4.
Spera
5.
****hila
5.
Perna
6.
Sansi (Including the following sub Castes)
6.
Gwaira

i.              
Kuchband
7.
Banjara

ii.           
Bhedkut
8.
Shergir

iii.         
Manesh
9.
Heri, Naik

iv.          
Godri
10.
Kanjar

v.             
Rechband
11.
Deh

vi.          
Kepat
12.
Mallha

vii.        
Aharia



viii.     
Tettlu



ix.         
Bheria



x.            
Bhantu



xi.         
Arher



xii.       
Bhatut



xiii.    
Chattu



xiv.      
Habura



xv.        
Kikan



xvi.      
Harrar



xvii.   
Rehlnwala



xviii.     
Biddu



xix.     
Lengeh



xx.       
Singhiwala



xxi.     
Kalkhar



xxii.  
Chaddi or chadi



xxiii.    
Birtwan



xxiv. 
Behalia



xxv.    
Pakhiwara



xxvi. 
Baddon



xxvii.   
Harni



7.         Tagus of Karnal District.
8.       Mahatams who have come from Police Station
            Sharakpur, District Shekkhupura
9.         Dhinwara of Gurgaon District.
10.       Minas
11.       Bhora Brahman of District Kangra




List of Nomadic Tribes, which have been identified for providing educational facilities.

Sr.No.
Nomadic Tribes

1.
Bangali
2.
Bauria
3.
Bazigar
4.
Dumna
5.
Gagra
6.
****hila
7.
Nat
8.
Od
9.
Perna
10.
Sansi
11.
Deha
12.
Gauria
13.
Banjara
14.
Shorgir
15.
Hansi
16.
Kanjar
17.
Mallah
18.
Spela
19.
Sikligar
20.
Sirkiband

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## dkj

Criminal Tribes Act was one of the many British colonial government passed laws that applied to Indians based on their religion and caste identification. The Criminal Tribes Act and its provisions used the term "Tribes", which included castes within their scope.[] This terminology was preferred for various reasons, including Muslim sensitivities that considered castes by definition Hindu, and preferred "Tribes" a more generic term that included Muslims.[14]
*
Reasons*

A group of thugs, ca. 1863, a secret network of murderers-robbers. Some contemporary historians think that the hereditary aspect was exaggerated by colonial sources.
Ostensibly the law was created to bring to account groups like the Thugs: a cult devoted to Kali, which according to some estimates murdered a million people between 1740 and 1840. Although the problem had been substantially addressed, the law gave the authorities of the time better means to tackle the 'menace of professional criminals'. However, some scholars believe that this was also done due to their participation in the revolt of 1857, and many tribal chiefs were labelled traitors and caused constant trouble to the authorities through their frequent acts of rebellion.[

Some historians, like David Arnold, have suggested that it so happened because many of these tribes were simply small communities of low-caste and nomadic people living on the fringes of the society upon rudimentary subsistence, often wandering to survive as petty traders, pastoralists, gypsies, hill and forest dwelling tribes, which did not conform to the British colonial idea of civilised living, of settled agriculture and waged labour. The trouble came, however, when criminality or professional criminal behaviour was taken to be hereditary rather than habitual, that is when crime became ethnic, and what was merely social determinism till then became biological determinism.

This shift in notion seems to have arisen out of the prevalent belief in 19th century Europe that peripatetic lifestyles usually meant a menace to the society, hence termed as 'dangerous classes' and best kept under control or at least surveillance. Elsewhere the concept of Reformatory Schools for such people had already been initiated by mid-19th century by social reformers

Moreover, India posed a unique problem to the colonialists as demarcation between wandering criminal tribes (Thugs, vagrants, itinerants, travelling tradesmen, nomads and gypsies) seemed impossible, so they were all, even eunuchs (hijras), grouped together, and their subsequent generations were merely a "law and order problem" for the state.

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## dkj

Panel favours reservation for nomadic tribes


The National Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes (NCDNSNT) has recommended reservations as available to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes to around 11 crore people falling under the denotified, nomadic or semi-nomadic tribe categories.

"As a constitutional safeguard, we have favoured reservations from Gram Panchayat level to the Parliament level, and in education and employment for these tribes like it is available for SCs and STs," NCDNSNT sources told The Indian Express on Wednesday. The Commission has further sought relief for these categories of tribes by extending the Prevention of Atrocities Act to them. The Act currently applies to only SCs and STs.

NCDNSNT Chairman Balkrishna Sidram Renke presented the final copy of the Commission's study on the socio-economic conditions of these tribes to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday. Renke urged the Prime Minister to have the recommendations processed urgently for a final decision and early implementation. The Prime Minister assured the Commission of expeditious action on the recommendations.

Sources said that the Commission has further recommended that the government should get a "tent to tent" survey done within the next six months and also a community-wise census so as to gather specific data about 1,500 nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes and 150 denotified tribes.

Further, the Commission has recommended the initiation of a special housing scheme to ensure that families are provided with "small pucca houses" in the next five years. "Since most of the people falling under these tribes have no addresses, they can never get access to voter cards and ration cards. A housing scheme is a must to give hundreds of these people addresses," a senior NCDNSNT official said.

Another significant point mooted by the Commission relates to providing many of these "on the move" nomadic tribes permanent shelter by helping them settle down as villages. "The Government should be facilitating the settlement of such tribes as villages by acquiring land for the purpose," the official added. The Commission has also mooted the idea of putting an Minimum Land Holding Act in place to guarantee land to these tribes in case they want to settle down and engage in agriculture. Another important recommendation is to help these tribes develop their existing skills by imparting them suitable training.

Tribes like Pardhi, Baori, Sansi, Berad and Kanjar Bhat fall under the Denotified tribes while Nat, Dombari, Sapera, Madari and Kalandar fall under Nomadic Tribes. Van Gujar, Rebari, Maldhari and Dhangar are some of the tribes falling under the semi-nomadic tribes.

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## dkj

The Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, expanded in scope through the 1920s, targeted numerous castes in colonial India. The law states Simon Cole, a professor of Criminology, Law & Society, declared everyone belonging to certain castes to be born with criminal tendencies.[27] Ramnarayan Rawat, a professor of History and specializing in social exclusion in Indian subcontinent, states that the criminal-by-birth castes under this Act included initially Ahirs, Gujars and Jats, but its enforcement expanded by late 19th century to include most Shudras and untouchables such as Chamars,[28] as well as Sanyassis and hill tribes.[27] Other major British census based caste groups that were included as criminal-by-birth under this Act included, Bowreahs, Sonareahs, Binds, Budducks, Bedyas, Domes, Dormas, Bembodyahs, Keechuks, Dasads, Koneriahs, Moosaheers, Rajwars, Gahsees, Banjors, Boayas, Dharees, Sowakhyas.[27]

The colonial government prepared a list of criminal castes in various parts of India, and all members registered in these castes by caste-census were restricted in terms of regions they could visit, move about in or people they could socialize with.[27] In certain regions of colonial India, entire caste groups were presumed guilty by birth, arrested, children separated from their parents, and held in penal colonies or quarantined without conviction or due process.[29][30][31] This practice became controversial, it did not enjoy the support of all colonial British officials, and in a few cases, states Henry Schwarz, a professor at Georgetown University specializing in the history of colonial and postcolonial India, this decades-long practice was reversed at the start of the 20th-century with the proclamation that people "could not be incarcerated indefinitely on the presumption of [inherited] bad character".[29] The criminal-by-birth laws against targeted castes was enforced from early 19th century through the mid 20th-century, with an expansion of criminal castes list in west and south India through the 1900s to 1930s.[30][32] Hundreds of Hindu communities were brought under the Criminal Tribes Act. By 1931, the colonial government listed 237 criminal castes and tribes under the act in the Madras Presidency alone.[32]

While the notion of hereditary criminals conformed to orientalist stereotypes and the prevailing racial theories in Britain during the colonial era, the social impact of its enforcement was profiling, division and isolation of many communities of Indians during the colonial rule.[

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Post-independence reforms[edit]
In January 1947, Government of Bombay set up a committee, which included B.G. Kher, then Chief Minister Morarji Desai, and Gulzarilal Nanda, to look into the matter of 'criminal tribes'. This set into motion the final repeal of the Act in August 1949, which resulted in 2,300,000 tribals being decriminalised.[34]

After independence, the Act was ultimately repealed. It was first repealed in Madras Province in 1949, after a long campaign led by Communist leaders such as P. Ramamurthi and P. Jeevanandham, and Forward Bloc leader U. Muthuramalingam Thevar. Thevar had led many agitations in the villages since 1929, urging the people to defy the CTA. As a result, the number of tribes listed under the CTA was reduced. Other provincial governments soon followed suit.

Subsequently, the committee appointed in the same year by the central government to study the utility of the existence of this law, reported in 1950 that the system violated the spirit of the Indian constitution. The Habitual Offenders Act (HOA) (1952) was enacted in the place of CTA; it states that a habitual offender is one who has been a victim of subjective and objective influences and has manifested a set practice in crime, and also presents a danger to society. The HOA effectively re-stigmatized the already marginalised "criminal tribes". The previously criminalised tribes still suffer a stigma, because of the ineffective nature of the new Act, which in effect meant relisting of the supposed denotified tribes. Today the social category generally known as the denotified and nomadic tribes includes approximately 60 million people in India.[35]

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Name change[edit]
Many of these denotified tribes continued to carry considerable social stigma of the Act and come under the purview of the 'Prevention of Anti-Social Activity Act' (PASA). Many of them have been denied the status of Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) or Other Backward Classes (OBC), which would have allowed them avail Reservation under Indian law, which reserves seats for them in government jobs and educational institutions, thus most of them are still living Below Poverty Line and in sub-human conditions.[2]

Over the course of the century since its passing, the criminal identity attached to certain tribes by the Act, was internalised not just by the society, but also by the police, whose official methodology, even after repeal of the Act, often reflected the characteristics of manifestation of an era initiated by the Act, a century ago, where characteristic of crimes committed by certain tribes were closely watched, studied and documented.[36]

National Human Rights Commission, in February 2000 recommended repeal of the Habitual Offenders Act, 1952.[17] Later in March 2007, the UN's anti-discrimination body Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), noted that "the so-called denotified and nomadic which are listed for their alleged 'criminal tendencies' under the former Criminal Tribes Act (1871), continue to be stigmatised under the Habitual Offenders Act (1952) (art. 2 (1)), and asked India to repeal the Habitual Offenders Act (1952) and effectively rehabilitate the denotified and nomadic tribes. According to the body, since much of 'Habitual Offenders Act (1952)' is derived from the earlier 'Criminal Tribes Act 1871', it doesn't show a marked departure in its intent, only gives the formed notified tribes a new name i.e. Denotified tribes, hence the stigma continues so does the oppression, as the law is being denounced on two counts, first that "all human beings are born free and equal", and second that it negates a valuable principle of the criminal justice system – innocent until proven guilty.[37]

In 2008, the National Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes (NCDNSNT) of Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment recommended that same reservations as available to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes be extended to around 110 million people of denotified, nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes in India; the commission further recommended that the provisions of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 be applicable to these tribes also.[38] Today, many governmental and non-governmental bodies are involved in the betterment of these denotified tribes through various schemes and educational programs.[39]

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[IMG]chrome-extension://mhjfbmdgcfjbbpaeojofohoefgiehjai/index.html[/IMG]

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http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies...gos/resist.pdf

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http://www.gentleapocalypse.com/2010...re-israel.html

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https://books.google.co.in/books?id=...0india&f=false

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4. Culture, Conflict, and Violence in Gangetic India

Kshatriya reform represented an aggressive Gangetic populism in which a newly formed peasant and artisanal elite encouraged a full-scale examination of the historical and mythological underpinnings of their personal and jati identities. Among those engaged in this reform effort, Yadav, Kushvaha, and Kurmi kshatriyas were the most visible and numerically powerful. Strong in numbers and agrarian skill, many were small landholders and powerful tenants, but their numbers included a few large landowners as well as tenant-laborers. Most of them had toiled for generations in the rich Gangetic alluvial soils and as a result of that hard work and an intimate knowledge of local agricultural practice, had amassed significant rural wealth and power. This newfound influence is what enabled them, by the early 1900s, to mount the claim that they were not shudra but kshatriya, descended from the proudest and oldest families imaginable, the families of Ramchandra and Krishna, and to sustain that claim with annual meetings and colorful publications. Yet the language of varna—in which brahmans were expert and upon which British understanding of Indian society relied—continued to describe these communities as shudra, or servile, by virtue of the physical labor implicit in their professions.
But increasingly the voices of the peasants could be heard above the din of imputed identities, voices asserting a new conception of themselves. By demanding a modicum of personal dignity and by claiming and articulating a noble kshatriya past, the ideologues of these communities challenged both the political economy and political culture of Gangetic India in a language that everyone was sure to understand. This challenge was quick to draw immediate attention and equally quick attempts at refutation from the social elite. Perhaps the first printed manifestation of this emergent antipathy was an anti–kshatriya reform booklet in both English and Hindi in 1907 authored by Kunvar Chheda Sinha, published and widely circulated by the Rajput Anglo-Oriental Press. In what must have seemed an infuriating manner to the new peasant kshatriyas, Sinha bemoaned the fact that “even after a century of English rule and the spread of Western education the question of jati is still so heavily debated, especially given the fact that modern education and progress have given some jatis not only the opportunity but also the right to better their lot.”[1] Sinha ignored the cultural and economic transformations that had occurred to bring about social reform; rather, he tied the rising concern with caste pedigree to policies of hierarchical ranking in the census office and to a desire on the part of jati activists to attain high posts in the colonial government. In so doing, he inverted the arguments of the kshatriya reformers themselves, who cited military and government service by leading community figures not only as a professional aspiration but as evidence of the distinct abilities of the jati as a whole.[2]

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Sinha’s logic, which endowed the colonial, census-based discourse of caste with historical agency in social and religious reform, has been employed in more recent analyses of caste movements in colonial India. Most striking in this regard is the assertion that “the censuses themselves instigated mobility aspirations and they do not necessarily reflect the actual processes taking place in society.”[3] This general argument has been widely circulated and characteristically describes the 1901 census as “a powerful stimulus to the formation of modern, provincewide and even countrywide caste associations and the development of broader solidarities.”[4] The perception that the colonial fixation with status inspired jati reform relies for the most part on an aggressive interpretation of census department records, particularly those sections of decennial reports that detailed the very real concerns of jati activists with the official representation of regional caste hierarchy. Of particular importance are the reflections of officials like L. S. S. O’Malley, director of the 1911 census in Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, who noted that
there was a general idea in Bengal—that the object of the census was not to show the number of persons belonging to each caste, but to fix the relative status of different castes and to deal with the question of social superiority.…The feeling on the subject was largely the result of castes having been classified in the last census report in order of social precedence.…Many castes were aggrieved at the position assigned them, and complained that it lowered them in the public estimation.…Others thought it was a good opportunity to advance new claims.[5]
The question that must be raised, of course, is whether census classificatory practices actually inspired the campaigns for respectability and status or, conversely, whether such census practices merely attracted the attention of reformers, thus inspiring them to bury the responsible census officials in supplicatory memoranda. There is nothing in the observations of O’Malley to suggest the former case. The tendency was, rather, for colonial administrators to acknowledge that the hierarchical mindset of the census “greatly agitated” communities undergoing social and religious reform.[6]

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The assessment of social and religious reform as a reaction to census whims does point, however, to the importance of official opinion for kshatriya publicists. Some kind of authoritative sanction was crucial for the assertion and maintenance of social status, and the frequency with which kshatriya-reform memoranda were dispatched to the census office reflects the ease with which elite representatives of peasant jatis could enter into a sensitive dialogue with British officialdom. Indeed, notwithstanding the sharp contrast between those who composed the “memorials” in a showy panegyric that bordered on sycophancy and those who received and read them with a highly skeptical eye, the correspondence over varna status in the census should be seen as part of a larger process of colonial culture in the making.[7] To argue that census opinion alone inspired and directed movements for social reform not only suggests that the reform ideologies implicit to the kshatriya movements were somehow inauthentic but ignores the religious dimensions of the history of social reform and the very real fact that a new elite had emerged among the peasantry that sought to avail itself of connections to the colonial political arena. As I have argued in the preceding chapters, social reform on behalf of shudras and untouchables in the Gangetic north was manifest in a semiorganized form at least since the early nineteenth century under the rubric of Vaishnava (and primarily Ramanandi) monasticism. In addition, sporadic peasant claims to kshatriya status had been articulated as early as the late eighteenth century in Awadh and the early nineteenth century in Bihar. The institutional heirs to such early reform efforts were the caste associations (mahasabhas) of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which combined the demand for high (usually kshatriya) status with a potent Vaishnava rhetorical content. Kshatriyatva (the essence of being kshatriya, or valor) constituted an important component of this new political framework for reform, in part because the martial element contained therein fit a colonial ideology that placed a premium on virility and power.[8]

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In this light, the formulation that “the censuses themselves instigated mobility aspirations and they do not necessarily reflect the actual processes taking place in society” deserves closer scrutiny.[9] The profusion of census-directed jati memorials are depicted as false indicators of social change, and historians are therefore encouraged to ignore the wider cultural history that both occasioned and accompanied that change. The argumentation employed by Sinha in 1907 and refined by historians and sociologists in the 1970s and 1980s presents an image of entire caste mahasabha organizations involving countless thousands of members devoted only to garnering the crumbs of status and position from the British imperial table. There can be no doubt that kshatriya reformers were all too concerned with the political legitimization of their sociocultural identity, but this must be seen primarily as a symptomatic feature of the larger movement for respectability. The image of the scurrying, low-level babu (clerk) overlooks, consciously or unconsciously, the main agenda of these organizations: education, religious reform, economic frugality, physical integrity, and most important of all, personal dignity. These are goals that generally would not have been made explicit in petitions to census officials but which emerge clearly in the vernacular literature espousing both the religious and social reform movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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From Cowherd to Kshatriya

Despite the challenge to the social status quo implicit in kshatriya reform movements among groups heretofore accorded low status, kshatriya reformers saw themselves as an integral part of a larger Hindu universe. The rupturing of ties to superordinate groups was secondary to the object of community respect expressed in terms of kshatriya identity. Nevertheless, the increasing urgency of claims to kshatriya status served to offend many established high-status communities, primarily because of the social and cultural proximity such claims implied. Social reform would thus inevitably produce social strife. Strife, however, implies past cohesion. Such cohesion can be seen to have existed in the 1890s at certain levels, and was expressed in a particularly ardent manner by Goala peasant-pastoralists as a cultural solidarity with the landed, social elite during cow-protection agitation. Three decades later, that agrarian cohesion would be rendered obsolete by the strident call for Yadav-kshatriya identity.[10]
Organized primarily in opposition to the slaughter of cows and the consumption of beef during Muslim festivals and holidays, the cow-protection—or gauraksha—movement represented an important phase of a growing political and cultural activism in late nineteenth-century north India. This activism, the historian John McLane has suggested, was evident as well in the mobilizational systemics of the early Indian National Congress and in the increased competition between Hindu and Muslim elites for secular power.[11] National elite competition became intertwined with popular religious practice at the regional level, a combination that ultimately erupted in the Gangetic heartland over the issue of cow slaughter. This controversy peaked in 1893 as angry Hindus attacked entire Muslim village centers, assaulting butchers as well as low-status Hindus viewed as complicit in marketing beef. The cow-protection cause found enthusiastic support in cities and towns as well as villages, as agitators employed both local trade networks and powerful religious symbols to divide Hindus from Muslims as well as the British.[12] As gau-mata (mother cow) evolved into a unifying “Hindu” political symbol, the urban elites that peopled the Indian National Congress increasingly looked to it to develop a rural base, “despite the refusal of Congress leaders to allow the Congress to support cow protection.”[13] McLane even suggests that it became “inevitable that the Congress, standing as it did for majority rule and parliamentary government, should have attracted advocates of restrictions upon cow slaughter.”
The shifting agrarian tensions that accompanied the late nineteenth-century price rise in the Gangetic north, it has been argued, made cow protection an opportune issue for a kind of makeshift agrarian unity involving increasingly less powerful Hindu zamindars and increasingly more assertive Hindu tenants.[14] Gyanendra Pandey has investigated the nature of that agrarian unity from the perspective of the tenants and has argued that “the prevention of cow-slaughter became a major object of the Ahirs [generally synonymous with Goalas] as they advanced their bid for a higher social status.” Pandey’s data and observations concern the Bhojpuri region of eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar where, he argues, “the agitation appears to have acquired its greatest social depth and an unexpected militancy.” Citing official reports of the physical participation of Goalas in mob violence directed against Muslims and others involved in the sacrifice of cattle, as well as records of subsequent trials in which Goalas received sentencing, Pandey suggests “that we have evidence here of a relatively independent force that added a good deal of power to cow-protection activities in the Bhojpuri region—marginally ‘clean’ castes who aspired to full ‘cleanness’ by emphasizing the purity of their faith and the strictness of ritual adherence to it on the issue of cow-slaughter. In the case of the Ahirs this motive would certainly have been reinforced by their traditional and continued association with the business of tending cattle.”[15] Pandey’s observations reflect the importance of cow-protection violence to Goala/Ahir conceptions of status and identity, expressed here as a function of ritual cleanliness. His use of the term “marginal” highlights the notion that Goalas, like other peasants, straddled the fine line between shudra and elite in the political economy of the Gangetic heartland and were committed to the exploitation of that precarious stance to their fullest advantage.

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Pandey makes brief reference to agitation in Patna and Gaya Districts and argues that these districts—adjacent to the eastern extension of Bhojpur into Gangetic south Bihar—experienced significant cow-protection activity in the early 1890s. The evidence of official reports bears out this assertion and, as in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Goalas played an important grassroots role in advancing the cause of gauraksha.[16] For instance, of the twelve cases of forcible seizure of cattle reported in the first five months of 1893 in Gaya District, six cited Goalas as the offending party (of the remaining six cases, four failed to identify the jati of the accused). Inasmuch as most of the twelve incidents occurred during or after the Bisua village cattle fair held that year on April 12, it is not unlikely that Goalas, as cowherds and dairy farmers, were involved in some of the other incidents as well. The following description of an incident at the mela, extracted from the judicial record, is typical of the activities of Goalas working for cow-protection:
_In this case the complainant, who is a [Muslim] butcher, says he bought two cows at the Bisua Mela [fair] for Rs. 7–1 through one Dodal Chamar, because he was afraid that Hindus would not sell cattle to Muhammedans.
The first purchase was duly recorded by the owner of the Mela, and the usual receipt checque was granted. But when the Chamar was going back along with both cows to have the second purchase recorded, he was suddenly stopped by the accused [Gopi Goala] and several others, and accused of buying cows for butchers. The cattle were snatched and carried off by the accused. Sub-Inspector Zahir Khan, of town Gaya, having received information that the accused and cattle were near the place where cattle sales were being recorded, went to the spot and managed to arrest accused Gopi Goala._

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This description, and others like it, characterize Goalas as the shock troops of cow protection. The above case is of added interest because of the complicity of Dodal Chamar, an untouchable, in purchasing the cattle for the butcher Mangor Kassai, a Muslim. Such alliances were apparently not uncommon in the Gangetic core: in eastern Uttar Pradesh “the Chamar, far from being actively involved in the Cow-Protection movement, was in fact the target of a good deal of Gaurakshinist vilification and attack.”[17] Consequently, a list of sixteen rules drawn up at a meeting of cow-protection activists in Gorakhpur District included the explicit message that “Chamars and others buy cows and sell them to butchers; and Musalmans and others are the very cause of the slaughter of cows. Cows shall not be sold into the hands of any such persons, and if any kind of cow die the owner shall sell its skin to a proper person, and apply the money to cow-protection.”[18] Ironically, inasmuch as Chamars worked with leather, they would also be the “proper persons” to which the manifesto refers. By supporting the “Hindu establishment” in its cause célèbre, the protection of cows, Goalas symbolically allied themselves with the landed and powerful while distancing themselves from those socially and economically beneath them (“Chamars and others”) in the Gangetic core. Goala aspirations in the 1890s drew on the cowherd ethos of Krishna’s childhood milieu, albeit at the expense of Muslim religious custom. So long as Goala participation in cow-protection agitation remained devoid of any specific transformative, status-oriented rhetoric, the tenuous agrarian unity between landlord and tenant remained intact. However, a loosely expressed dedication to the Vaishnava world of Krishna would soon evolve by the early 1910s and 1920s into a commitment to a historical exegesis of that world in the form of Yadav-kshatriya identity, an identity that would serve to drive a wedge between Goalas and other cultivators on the margin of land control, on the one hand, and the landed elite on the other.

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Conflict between the landed elite and marginal cultivators became manifest as physical confrontation in the teens and twenties of the present century. Official police reports of the 1920s describe in substantial detail the tensions and occasional violence between Goalas forwarding a Yadav-kshatriya identity and the landed elite who felt threatened by that new identity. This threat was perceived as economic as well as social, inasmuch as the systemics of varna provided the cultural justification for the agrarian perquisites demanded of cultivating tenants. While the Muslim elite also challenged the Yadav-kshatriya identity, they did so on purely economic and not religious grounds, and Yadav kshatriyas responded in kind. These tensions culminated with the threat of serious bloodletting on May 27, 1925, when a group of three thousand “Goalas” (Yadav kshatriyas) and an equal number of heavily armed “Babhans” (Bhumihar brahmans) faced each other at Lakho Chak village near Lakhisarai town, Monghyr District, in central Bihar.[19] Though official reports tended to employ the appellations Goala and Babhan, I have chosen to refer to the two parties in my description of this extended conflict simply as Yadavs and Bhumihars, terms that reflect both their own conception of themselves as well as the current usage. These and other reports make clear that the Lakho Chak showdown was only the most visible manifestation of a conflict that had been simmering for several years.[20]
The Lakho Chak riot itself was precipitated by the decision of local Bhumihar zamindars of Monghyr District to attack a panchayat (council meeting) of Yadavs that had convened in the village of Lakho Chak to discuss jati reform. The description of the riot in the official report indicates the formidable force brought to bear by the Bhumihars and that, if not for the timely intervention of local and district police to protect the peaceable Yadav meeting, serious violence would have been the likely result.
_On the morning of the 27th, before the arrival of the armed police at Lakho Chak, a large body of rioters advanced upon the village. The local police intervened to expostulate and were at once surrounded, the Sub-Inspector and Chaukidar [village watchman] received grievous injuries and the other constables of the party were hurt. After ill-treating the local police, the rioters retired temporarily but returned to the attack soon after the arrival of the S.P. [Superintendent of Police] with his force. The Superintendent and S.D.O [Subdivisional District Officer] went out to meet the advancing rioters and attempted to parley with them. The attacking party, however, to the number of about 3000 armed with lathis [heavy, metal tipped bamboo truncheons], axes, and spears continued to advance and the police were forced to fire to protect themselves and the Goalas. Although temporarily checked by the fire, the Babhan party continued to advance as they outflanked the police on both sides, the police were forced to retire fighting to the village site three or four hundred yards to their rear. The retirement was effected in good order and after the defending party reached the village the rioters withdrew._[21]

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The dramatic crisis that unfolded in 1925 under the hot May sun on the outskirts of Lakho Chak village was in fact the most recent and explosive act in the construction of a Yadav-kshatriya identity that had begun in the nineteenth century with claims of genealogical ties to Krishna. The movement took on a more urgent and organized form throughout the Gangetic north in the early twentieth century with the emergence of large-scale associations and active propa****a. In a lengthy note to his superior Y. A. Godbole, the district officer of Purnea, S.D.O Phanindra Nath Mukherji noted that he “first came across the Goala movement in the Patna district in the year 1912.”
_The leader was Babu Damodar Prasad  a Goala landlord of Pachchimdarwaza in Patna City. A huge meeting called the “Gope Jatiya Mahasabha” was held in Kankarbagh and domestic service was eschewed except for tending cattle, sacred threads taken—and ceremonial purity was, I believe, put down at 15 days. I have to depend on memory—other meetings were held at Dinapur, Maner, and Mussorhi [Masaurhi]. I do not know if the movement had preceded elsewhere but I read in the papers of meetings in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh and elsewhere.[22]
Mukherji provided the above description by way of historical background. His subsequent portrayal of his own experiences in dealing with the “Goala movement” in Purnea District in 1924 and 1925 demonstrate both the importance of economic advancement to Yadavs as well as the subtle techniques employed by them in mobilizing a kshatriya identity_.

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_The movement in this district has spread within the last year or so. The material condition of the Goalas in the western and southern portions of the district is very prosperous. In fact in wealth measured in terms of cattle, land, etc. they are in no way inferior to the average Bhumihars and Brahmins and Chhatris [local variant of kshatriya, in reference to Rajputs]. The movement in this district was I used to hear being fostered by Babu Swyambara Das, late Deputy Inspector of schools in this district. He had lecturers brought in from other districts and there were meetings held at Ghansurpur, Dhamdaha, Rupauli and several centres. The Goalas began to call themselves Jadavs, took sacred threads and gave out that they will do the ceremonial purification of Sradh after 13 days. The Bhumihars resented this as did the Brahmins and Chhatris. An attempt was made to break up the meeting at Ghansurpur but the police got timely notice and occurrence [sic] took place. The Bhumihars later refused to allow the Goalas to draw water from the village wells and I had to go to Ghansurpur. I warned the leading Bhumihars and with my privilege as a Brahmin I pointed out to them that the Bhumihars themselves had reduced the period of ceremonial purification from 15 to 13 days in several districts within living memory and that . . . their ancestors called themselves Bavans [variant of Babhans]_

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Mukherji noted in addition that in many villages in Purnea District the dominant caste—whether Bhumihar brahman, Maithil brahman, or Rajput—organized a social boycott of Yadavs, with the object of making it extremely difficult for the latter to perform the rituals prescribed for kshatriya status. This obstacle was circumvented without much difficulty, as “the richer sections [of Yadavs] have come to the help of the poorer section and have either got Brahmins from Madhipura in Bhagalpur district where there are many Goala landlords or managed to win over opposition by making it worthwhile for the Brahmins and barbers to officiate.”[24] It is clear from Mukherji’s description, then, that pockets of Yadav economic power in Bihar played a large role not only in inspiring changing attitudes toward their sociocultural identity but in ensuring that the new identity being advanced stayed alive despite rural pressure to obliterate it. Nevertheless, economic contradictions internal to the Yadav community inevitably became manifest as, according to Mukherji, “The better off wanted to insist that the women-folk of the poor section will not sell Goetha (fuel cakes made from cowdung) or milk in the hats (weekly markets) and bazars. And that the women should follow in all respects the practices of the women of the higher castes. This gave rise to a few criminal cases but then the inexorable economic laws acted and the women folk of the poorer section are again selling cowdung cakes and milk.”[25] The conclusion that must be reached, then, is that in the short term the consolidation of Yadav-kshatriya identity succeeded only to the extent that economic considerations allowed. Better-off Yadavs could not entirely subvent the incomes of their less-fortunate jati brothers and, importantly, sisters, but they certainly were able, as Mukherji’s observations on ritual officiates indicate, to at least mobilize the wherewithal either to bring brahmans from a neighboring district or to increase the economic reward for local brahmans and hajjams (barbers) to perform the necessary ceremonial functions.
This glimpse into the household economics of Yadavs struggling to live up to a new Vaishnava and kshatriya ideal of dignity introduces an important element of caste reform, namely, a strictly circumscribed redefinition of acceptable female social, religious, and economic behavior. Such an imposition of male control over female lives is all the more striking given that many of the peasant families involved in the identity campaigns had benefited economically from the lack of any cultural proscription of women working in the field as well as in the home—in stark contrast to the mores of elite society. Hence the mid nineteenth-century adage, “A good caste is the Kunbin [Kurmi woman]; with hoe in hand, they weed the fields together with their husbands.”[26] However, kshatriya reformers generally viewed the centrality of women in the economic success of the peasant family as an entrée to female independence and thus a serious threat to the integrity of not only the immediate household but the entire jati community. Baijnath Prasad Yadav of Banaras claimed, not atypically, that “the root cause of all the needless household expenses is the fickle greed of women” and urged “men to put a halt to the rule of women in the home.” Yadav also argued against allowing women to sing in public, against permitting women to view the barat (the procession of the groom with his friends and male family members), and “against allowing women to attend the big festivals, where they would run the risk of being dishonored by one of the many low jatis that roam the crowds, which would thus bring dishonor upon our jati.” Extending this particular line of reasoning, he vehemently criticized women who purchased glass bangles from “lascivious vendors, who are only too willing to grab our women’s wrists and help them try on their wares.”[27] Swami Abhayananda Saraswati, also of Banaras, cautioned Kurmis against educating their women, maintaining that such education could only have a negative effect on the children, on household work, and on the development of a loving relationship between a husband and wife.

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While women did take part in the reform movements, the greatest challenge they faced was to redress the growing male conceptualization of women as property to be manipulated and polished for the sake of a positive and powerful kshatriya image.[29] The participation of women in the organizational apparatus of kshatriya reform rhetoric was relegated, in the main, to the activities of mahila sammelans (women’s conferences), which usually occurred in conjunction with the regional and national meetings of the jati. These organizations pushed for government legislation against polygamy and for mahasabha resolutions providing for the education of boys and girls.[30] Nevertheless, it is doubtful that women involved in upgrading their gender status made much headway vis-à-vis the kshatriya-focused attitudes of their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons.
That the control over the life and death of women was of paramount importance to the success of kshatriya identity can be seen in the boast by Nauvat Ray, the Kahar ideologue of Agra, that “many of our women even become sati,” which can mean both becoming loyal wives and immolating themselves upon the husband’s funeral pyre (the tone of the passage indicates that the latter meaning is intended).[31] This conceptualization of women as martyrs to the cause of community status extended as well into the nascent Hindi literary movement. An example is Gangaprasad, the Kushvaha-kshatriya historian cited in the previous chapter, who also published historical fiction under the name Gangaprasad Gupta. One of his novels, entitled Vir Jaymal (Valiant Defense), glorified the courage of Rajputs in battle against Muslims during the reign of Akbar. Of particular note, however, was his narrative of the death of Raja Prithviraj of Delhi and the self-immolation of his bereaved queen, Sanyogita, entitled Vir Patni (Brave Wife). Gangaprasad portrayed female martyrdom as an important embodiment of a kshatriya tradition that combined steadfast loyalty to husband with patriotic devotion to country, a evocation of the sacrificing female that he also perceived to be extant in Victorian literature of the previous century. Hence his translation of “The Young Fishermen,” a story by the Victorian romance author George W. M. Reynolds (1814–1879), which Gangaprasa d entitled Kile ki Rani (Queen of the Fort).[32]

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While economic power enabled Yadavs to forge a kshatriya identity campaign, it is equally the case that a major aim of that campaign was an improvement of the economic position of Yadavs vis-à-vis superordinate landlords. This dilemma, in a sense, reflected the essence of the marginal status of Yadavs in society: having tasted some of the fruits of economic strength, they demanded more. The forced, unremunerative labor known as begari was the ground on which the battle for equal economic status was fought. The caste implications of begari were such that elite landlords expected it of nonelite (whether shudra or untouchable) fellow villagers. Labor in this context referred not only to agricultural work but, especially in the Yadav context, to nonremunerative efforts such as providing milk and ghi (clarified butter) at reduced rates or even free of charge. Thus, S. A. Khan, a district officer of Bhagalpur, noted in an official correspondence that “The low caste Hindus generally do some kind of ‘begari’ work for their landlords. A people wearing the sacred thread are taken as respectable and are exempt from gratis service of this type. They would also take it to be very much derogatory to work as daily labourers or even as hired ploughmen.”[33]
The official record tells of an important meeting convened by Babu Shri Ballab Das in 1921 that was attended by approximately sixteen hundred Yadavs. Among the resolutions passed at this meeting was a plea to the government to take note of conflict “between the zamindars (landlords) and the Gope Jotiya having arisen over the begari question over which the latter have been oppressed by the zamindars, so much so that in several places several lives have been lost.” This file also tells of a related incident several months earlier in which a rural council of Yadavs in Islampur Thana, Patna District, refused to allow members of the jati to provide ghi and goats to a Muslim landlord for a wedding feast. However, in contrast to the earlier cow-protection activity, anti-Muslim rhetoric was severely curtailed in the language of the resolution. The meeting specifically stated that “in the coming Bakr-Id this community will not create any disturbance in connection with the cow-killing and if, unfortunately, any engineered by other caste [sic] would happen, this community would have no hand in it.”[34]

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## dkj

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/glob...ste0801-03.htm

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## dkj

https://books.google.co.in/books?id=...0india&f=false

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