he Tablighi Jamaat in Mewat— Part 1 *By Yoginder Sikand, TwoCircles.net,* This 6-part series of articles provides a detailed account of the historical origins and development of the Tablighi Jamaat in Mewat, focusing in particular on the social multiple roles that the movement has played in the region, which accounts, in large measure, for its deep-rooted popularity among the Meos. A sociological study of the development of Tablighi Jamaat in Mewat can provide interesting insights and parallels to understand the success and appeal of the movement in other contexts as well—Editor The Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) is today the single largest Islamic movement in the world, in terms both of number of activists as well as geographical spread. No study of the history of the TJ would be complete without an account of the people among whom it first took root—the Meo peasants of Mewat, a culturally distinct region in northwestern India. Much of that which is unique to the TJ, particularly its method of tabligh or Islamic missionary work and its approach to and understanding of the process of Islamisation, seems to have been moulded largely by the social context of early twentieth-century Mewat. Mewat also provides an interesting case of shifting socio-political contexts within which the TJ has been able to establish strong roots in a local environment. The genesis and early development of the TJ in Mewat is particularly worthy of attention. Mewat, which is seen in Tablighi circles as the movement's most successful 'experimental ground' (Ishaq 1972:4), poses a seemingly insoluble sociological paradox. The Meos had for centuries been only the most nominal Muslims as the 'ulama saw them. After three decades of Tablighi efforts among them they appear, at least in the literature, to have transformed themselves into such committed Muslims that many leading 'ulama went so far as to exclaim that they had undergone a veritable 'revolution' (Falahi 1996:301). This chapter will address this apparent paradox by tracing the origins and development of the TJ in Mewat in terms of the many social roles that it came to play in the lives of the Meos in the context of major social changes that Mewat has had to contend with starting from the last years of the nineteenth century. *Background* Extending southwards from the township of Sohna, some 65 kilometres south-west of Delhi, and covering large parts of the districts of Gurgaon and Faridabad in the present-day Indian state of Haryana and the former princely states of Alwar and Bharatpur in Rajasthan, is the region of Mewat, the land of a peasant caste known as the Meos. The Meos are Muslims who have retained many of their earlier cultural and religious traditions.1 It was estimated in 1983 that they numbered around 800,000, of whom a quarter resided in present-day Pakistan and the rest in India (Shams 1983:17).2 Many Meos claim high-caste Hindu Rajput or warrior descent, and while it may well be the case that some of them are indeed of Rajput stock, it seems likely that the majority are descendants of 'low'-caste converts who, either prior to or alongside their gradual Islamisation, laid claim to Rajput ancestry to enhance their social standing (Harris 1901:23; Channing 1882:28). Evidence for this is provided by the names of many gots or exogamous lineages which the Meos have in common with such lower status Hindu castes as the Minas, the Jats and the Gujjars who live in their vicinity. It thus seems likely that, 'the Meos belonged to many different castes and not just to the Rajputs' (Aggarwal 1978:338). Little can be said with confidence as to how Islam managed to take root in Mewat.3 Living in the vicinity of Delhi, the Meos were, from at least the twelfth century onwards, in constant conflict with the Muslim monarchs of the imperial capital (Sikand 1993:10). Ravaged by regular drought and famine, bands of Meos would often swarm into Delhi for loot and plunder, provoking violent reprisals from the Delhi Sultans. Formal acceptance of Islam often followed military defeat at the hands of the imperial army. With Mewat coming under the control of the Muslim rulers of Delhi, various Sufi orders entered the region, as a result of which, over the centuries, the Meos seem to have undergone a process of gradual, though very partial, Islamisation, in the course of which they adopted several practices associated with Islam, while retaining many of their local religious and cultural traditions. From time to time, 'ulama and Sufis attempted to do away with some of what they saw as their more glaring Hindu practices (Mewati n.d.). In the second half of the nineteenth century these included numerous 'ulama of the Waliullahi tradition (Shakur 1974:381-84).4 They were, however, unable to reach beyond a narrow circle of followers. The time was not yet ripe, it seems, for the Meos to give up their popular religious traditions and to take to scripturalist, shari'at-centred Islam instead. The Islamisation of the Meos through the agency of the Sufis and as a result of political exigencies was, as we have observed, partial and nominal. Thus, writing in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Major Powlett, the settlement officer of Alwar state, remarked: The Meos are now all Musalmans in name, but their village deities are the same as those of the Hindus and they keep several Hindu festivals. Thus, the holi is with the Meos a season of rough play and is considered as important a festival as Muharram,, Id and Shabibarat, and they likewise observe the Janam Ashtami, Dashera and Diwali. They often keep Brahmin priests to write the note (pili-chitthi) fixing the date of marriage. They call themselves by Hindu names, with the exception of Ram; and Sinh is a frequent affix, though not so common as Khan. On the Amawas, or monthly conjunction of the sun and moon, the Meos, in common with the Hindu Ahirs, Gujjars, etc. cease from labour; and when they make a well the first proceeding is to erect a platform to Bairuji or Hanuman. Meos, in their customs, are half Hindu. In their villages there are hardly any mosques [...] The Meo places of worship are similar to those of their Hindu neighbours, as for example, Panchpira, Bhaiya and Chahund. Chahund or Khera Deo is dedicated to Mahadevi to whom sacrifices are made (Polett 1878:38). In their dress, too, the Meos were indistinguishable from the other peasant castes of Mewat. Meonis (Meo women) wore the Rajasthani skirt and blouse and heavy silver jewellery. Men wore the dhoti, and also put on various ornaments. Most Meo men grew the choti or tuft of hair as was the general Hindu custom. As for the Meos' observance of the externals of Islam, it seems to have been restricted largely to male circumcision, nikah (the Islamic form of marriage) and the burial of the dead, though even these were recast in a Hindu mould (Aggarwal op. cit.:339). Most Meos knew but little about Islam. As Powlett observed, 'As regards their own religion [Islam] the Meos are very ignorant. Few know the kalima, and fewer still the regular prayers, the seasons of which they entirely neglect' (quoted in S.A. Haq 1972:105). According to another observer, 'Reading of the Qur'an was less popular than reading the Hindu epics Ramayan and Mahabharat. Hindu shrines far outnumbered mosques in Mewat. Few Meos prayed in the Muslim manner, but most of them performed the puja—worship at the shrines of the Hindu gods and goddesses' (Aggarwal op. cit.:339). The popular religious tradition of the Meos appears to have proved a rewarding strategy. As cultivators of most of the agricultural land in Mewat, the Meos were a local dominant caste, at least in terms of numbers. Retaining their local, non-Islamic customs and institutions, such as their got-pal system5 and the practice of untouchability towards the 'low'-castes, enabled them to maintain their claim to a dominant status in the local social hierarchy even after having undergone a degree of Islamisation. The non-Muslim artisan and service castes as well as the Brahmins thus carried on serving their Meo patrons in return for a share in the agricultural produce. As long as their economic and social life remained undisturbed, these client castes of the Meos were quite willing to overlook their ambiguous religious identity. The Meos therefore felt, says a Meo scholar, 'no pressing need to bend in either direction [Hindu or Muslim] because their position in Mewat was secure. None of the other caste groups in Mewat questioned the Meo dominance' (Shams op. cit.:35). On the other hand, as the Meos were often in conflict with the Muslim rulers of Delhi, their popular religious tradition provided them with a sense of unity, an identity clearly opposed to that of their imperial foes. Interestingly, the local feudal elite in Mewat, the Khanzadas6, close allies of the Muslim rulers of Delhi, were considerably more Islamised than the Meos, keeping their women in strict pardah and observing other ashraf practices. Mewati history is replete with stories of wild bloodletting between the Khanzadas and the Meos, and it is, therefore, not surprising that until the early twentieth century, when Khanzada supremacy in Mewat began to erode rapidly, the Meos do not seem to have displayed much interest in emulating the religious culture associated with a class of people whom they viewed with great hostility. The popular religious tradition of the Meos faced little internal challenge until the closing decades of the nineteenth century. At this time, developments brought about by wider social changes began to make themselves felt in the Mewati countryside. These were to have important consequences for Meo self-perception and religious identity. Rapid social change in Mewat in the early decades of the twentieth century resulted in what may be termed a pervasive social crisis. It was this that provided the context for the emergence of the TJ among the Meos. *Socio-economic profile* Although the Meos cultivated most of the land in Mewat, barring some chaudhris (local community leaders), there were very few large landowners among them, the vast majority being small owner-cultivators, most of whom were greatly impoverished (Gibson 1909:13). The productivity of the land was low and modern irrigation facilities were minimal.7 Consequently, Mewat had to face spells of severe drought at regular intervals, driving the Meos deep into debt at the hands of Jain and Hindu Bania moneylenders.8 Their dismal economic conditions in the early twentieth century, far from improving, actually seem to have fast deteriorated. As the annual administrative report of the government of the Punjab (1916) noted: The condition of the Meos is rapidly becoming hopeless. They live so literally from hand to mouth, carelessly contracting debt for marriages, funerals and petty luxuries even in average years that when a year of drought comes they are thrown on the moneylender who can make with them what terms he likes (Rathee 1971a:43). According to one source, the Banias would charge an exorbitant rate of 5 per cent per month on their loans to the poverty-stricken Meos, the equivalent of an astounding 60 per cent per annum (W. Khan 1988:34). Many Meos simply could not repay their loans, as a result of which much of their land began passing into Bania hands. By 1910, nearly 40 per cent of Meo land was under mortgage to the Banias (Rathee op. cit.:43). This increasing land alienation was a direct consequence of the new conception of land ownership that the British had introduced, in which land was now seen as a commodity and as private property, capable of being bought, sold and mortgaged. Meos could now pledge their lands, and not just their crops as before, to the Banias for credit. This is precisely what their rapidly growing impoverishment was forcing them to do. As the Meos sank deeper into poverty, they increasingly saw the Banias as not only gaining from their plight but also as the very cause of it. Insofar as the Banias were looked upon as the local repositories of 'high'-caste Hinduism, increasing resentment against them gradually translated into a distancing from Hindu religious traditions, making the Meos more receptive to Islam. This was further facilitated by the fact that, despite the Meos' claim to Rajput status, the Banias actually looked down upon them and refused to take food cooked by them, deeming them to be a source of ritual pollution.9 In this changed situation, it was no longer the Mughals or other Muslim rulers who were seen as the threatening 'Other' against whom the Meos would seek to define themselves. Rather, this role was now increasingly taken over by 'high'-caste Hindus. The emphasis that the Meos, as participants in the TJ, were to lay on their Muslim identity was in large measure a strategy to solidify community boundaries by marking off 'insider' Meos from 'outsider' Hindus. Social dislocations by themselves do not automatically generate mass movements. For a charismatic leader from outside a community to be able to mobilise people in such a situation, there must be at least a few socially significant individuals within the community who can understand, and are receptive to, his message and who can help transmit it to their own people in their own idiom. In the case of the TJ in Mewat, this was made possible by an expanding chain of Islamic madaris as well as by the network of primary schools that the British began setting up from the late nineteenth century onwards in the Meo territory under their rule. Urdu, the language in which a large number of Islamic texts were readily available, was the medium of instruction therein. This enabled a new generation of literate Meos to gain access to Islamic literature. By the early 1910s, there were enough Meo boys who had received a primary education to call for the setting up of a high school in the region. Mewat's first secondary school, named after its founder, Frank Lugard Brayne, the then deputy commissioner of Gurgaon, was founded at Nuh in 1923. In the years that followed, a number of students of this school went on to pursue higher studies at Muslim institutions such as the Jami'a Millia Islamia at Delhi and the Aligarh Muslim University. Thus, by the time the TJ was launched in Mewat, there were Meos who were in a position to identify culturally with the message of Muslim brotherhood. Some newly educated Meos were to play a significant role in relaying this message to the wider Meo community. Ilyas was himself to come to rely, among others, on such Meos who had received a modicum of education and held important posts in the village administrative hierarchy—such as nambardars, zaildars, munshis, chaudhris—as well as madrasa students in galvanising the TJ in the Mewati countryside. Most of these, however, had not obtained high secular education, but were largely the products of the new chain of Islamic schools that had begun to appear in the region by this time. Education gradually brought in its wake an increasing redefinition of Meo identity, an awareness of their increasing marginalisation, and a growing familiarity with Islam. Thus, commenting on the ignorance of the Meos of even the kalima, a British administrator observed that, 'this, however, applies only to the Alwar territory; in British India the effect of the schools is to make them more observant of [Islamic] religious duties' (S.A. Haq 1972:105). The Hindu ruler of Alwar had declared Hindi, instead of Urdu, to be the language of instruction in the schools of his state. At that time Islamic literature in Hindi was almost totally non-existent, the' language being seen as specifically 'Hindu'. Thus, Meos in British territory were now exposed to Islamic influences to a considerably greater degree than their brethren in the Hindu-ruled states of Alwar and Bharatpur, and in the years that followed, the Gurgaon Meos were to take the lead in spreading the message of the TJ in the rest of Mewat. *Meo peasant rebellions* Developments in the Meo countryside towards the end of 1910s, then, all pointed to a growing agrarian crisis (for details, see, M.H. Siddiqui 1986:442-67). This, combined with the gradual emergence of a class of educated men who could articulate the grievances of the peasants, provided fertile ground for the outbreak of a series of peasant uprisings in Mewat in the 1932-34, in which successful efforts were made to link up specifically Meo economic demands with a wider pan-Indian Muslim agenda, facilitating, in the process, a greater identification with Islam on the part of the Meos. The rise of the TJ in Mewat cannot be properly understood without taking into account these uprisings which broke out immediately prior to the sudden spurt of Tablighi activities in the region in the early 1930s. Hostility towards the Muslims in the ruling circles of Alwar and Bharatpur appeared intermittently in the nineteenth century interrupted by periods in which Muslims were allowed to play a significant role in administrative affairs. Hostility surfaced again in the early decades of the twentieth century, and this time with greater intensity (Mehta and Mehta 1985:399). The ruler of Alwar, Maharaja Jai Sigh (1892-1937), introduced several policies clearly aimed against his Muslim subjects. This went alongside a deliberate Hinduisation of the Alwar administration itself. The Maharaja began to flaunt his Hindu credentials in public and established personal ties with several top leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Arya Samaj, organisations whose extreme antipathy for the Muslims was well known.10 Soon after it had launched its shuddhi campaign among the Malkanas of the United Provinces, the Arya Samaj extended its missionary activities to Rajputana, attempting to convert back to Hinduism the local Muslim Rajputs, Jats, Gujjars and Meos, and in this is said to have received the official backing of the rulers of Bharatpur (Mayaram 1991:10-12).11 The marked Hinduisation of the Alwar administration and its consequently growing anti-Muslim orientation had less to do with religion than with the increasing challenge by the state's subjects, both Hindus and Muslims, to the Maharaja's heavy taxation of the peasantry and fiercely autocratic rule.12 By the mid-1920s, peasant revolts had broken out in several parts of the state. One of the most serious of these occurred in 1925, in which the Alwar forces gunned down scores of Hindu Rajputs in the village of Nimuchana protesting a sudden rise of 50 per cent in the land revenue. In these uprisings both the Meos as well as the Hindu peasantry were involved. Faced with such determined opposition to him, the Maharaja appears to have felt that a policy of cultivating a fiercely pro-Hindu image for himself would help create a homogeneous Hindu community and postpone the demand for democratisation.13 Targeting the Muslims as the menacing, threatening 'Other' and fanning the flames of Hindu-Muslim rivalry would help divert the attention of his largely Hindu subjects from the oppression they were undergoing under his rule.14 It was in this communally surcharged climate that in 1932-34 the Meos of Alwar rose up in violent revolt. It seems that it was the particularly harsh and oppressive conditions under which they were labouring that ignited the sparks of rebellion. Their plight is portrayed by a Meo historian thus: The Meo tracts in Alwar and Bharatpur were victims of the extreme authoritarianism and ruthlessness of their rulers. Government servants would do nothing without extorting heavy bribes. The peasants were being grossly overburdened with ever increasing taxes. Like birds of prey, the guards of the forest department and the sepoys of the customs department would swoop down on the hapless peasants and rob them of the paltry income that they earned through shedding their sweat and blood. The rights of the people were being mercilessly trampled upon. The Mewatis were being treated like goats and sheep, as nothing better than mere dumb animals (Haye n.d.:10). Having already subjected the peasants to a heavy tax burden, in 1932 the Maharaja of Alwar suddenly decided to raise the revenue levy four-fold. This proved to be the last straw for the peasants, and they decided to stop paying their taxes. Soon after, the All-India Meo Panchayat, a group of Meo leaders headed by Yasin Khan (1896-1970),15 a lawyer-turned-politician, began galvanising support for the uprising, seeking to turn it into a broader struggle for the establishment of democratic rule in the state. As the rebellion gained in radicalism and strength and spread over much of Mewat, spilling across even into British tetritory, where the Meos now refused to repay their loans to the Banias, the Maharaja of Alwar decided to crush it with all the force he could command. Thus, in January 1933, when thousands of Meos had gathered at the village of Govindgarh for a demonstration, the Raja's soldiers indiscriminately opened fire, as a result of which scores lost their lives. Mewat was now in flames. Martial law was clamped in the four Meo-dominated nizamats of Ramgarh, Lacchmangarh, Kishangarh and Tijara, and reports started flooding in of widespread clashes between Hindus and Meos. Meos are reported to have attacked Bania-owned shops at many places and to have forcibly collected subscriptions from them. The violence, rooted in the economic grievances of the Meos against the Banias and the Alwar state, rapidly took on an overtly religious hue. Hindu temples were attacked and the panic-stricken Hindus, egged on by the Hindu Mahasabha, issued an urgent appeal to the Raja, 'the descendant of Raghu' (the Hindu god-king Rama), to rush to their rescue, to defend them from the Meo 'rakshasas' (demons).16 The writ of the Alwar state seems, in fact, to have ceased to run in the Meo-dominated nizamats, where the Meos managed to establish their own effective control.17 Some weeks later the situation in northern Alwar had turned so serious that the government of India was forced to intervene. British soldiers entered Alwar in January 1933 and in May the government of India forced the Maharaja to abdicate and go abroad into exile. The administration of the affairs of state was entrusted to a British officer, many of the demands of the peasants were conceded and normalcy was gradually restored. In the course of the revolt the Meos came to establish strong ties with several Muslim leaders and organisations from outside Mewat for the first time, and it was this newly established bond with the wider Indian Muslim community that latter eased the entry of Islamic ideas among them through the missionary efforts of the TJ. It was from these outside Muslim leaders and organisations, besides some local activists, that the Meos sought leadership for their movement against the Maharaja and a means to bring their plight to the notice of the Indian public and the British authorities. Among the Muslim organisations that came to the rescue of the Meos in their uprising were the All-India Alwar Conference, the Anjuman-i-Ahrar of Bombay and Delhi, the Jami'at-ul 'Ulama-i-Islam of Budaun, and the Rajputana Muslim League, Ajmer. Several Muslim Urdu newspapers of Delhi and Lahore, too, took up and championed the Meo cause (Mayaram 1991:40-41). Significantly, the Meos received almost no Hindu support. It was only the Muslims who came to their rescue at this time of crisis. Although these external Muslim organisations and leaders were not responsible for creating the Meo rebellion themselves, it was through their networks that, 'Meo demands received an immediate publicity' (Mayaram 1991:40). Linkages were established with the larger Muslim community of north India only after the movement had already started, and so it would be misleading to suggest that it owed itself to external Muslim instigation. Significantly, it was also only after the rebellion had taken off that the activities of the TJ really began to spread in the Mewati countryside. Moreover, at this time, the preaching teams of the TJ were by and large active only in British Mewat and had little presence in either Alwar or Bharatpur (Mayaram 1997:35). It would appear, then, that the sudden growth of the TJ in Mewat at around this time was a fallout of the agrarian crisis and the oppression which followed rather than a cause of this crisis.18 The Islamisation of the Meos through the TJ, Mayaram remarks, 'does not precede agrarian unrest as much as it is the consequence of agrarian tension and state policy'. This process cannot, then, be understood 'merely as [the introduction of] an external religious ideology', unrelated to the social conditions prevailing in Mewat at that time (Mayaram 1991:8). Mayaram contends that the labelling of the Meo peasant uprising by the Alwar state and by Hindu organisations as an Islamic revolt was probably intended to rob it of legitimacy, to divide the peasantry on religious lines and, thereby, to divert the wrath of the Hindu peasantry away from the Maharaja's unpopular rule and towards the Meos instead. This policy, however, had the unintended consequence of making the Meos more fiercely conscious of their Muslim identity, which was now being reinforced by the state itself. The same happened in neighbouring Bharatpur, where, in 1933, the Meos rose up in revolt against the repressive measures taken by the Jat ruler, Kishan Singh. It was thus this combination of agrarian crisis, the growth of a newly educated class among the Meos, the peasant rebellions in Alwar and Bharatpur and their brutal suppression, and the fraternal links that were now established with outside Muslim groups that provided the ideal conditions for a movement such as the TJ to emerge in Mewat at this time. For other uses, see Meos (disambiguation). Meo (Hindi: मेव, Urdu: میو) is a prominent Muslim Rajput tribe from Northern India and Pakistan. Meo Meos inhabit a territorial region that falls between the important urban centres of Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. Mewat, consisting of some adjoining parts of Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, where the Meos have lived for a millennium, was a terrain of peasant radicalism in the pre-independence period. It saw intensive work by the communist leaders such as the historian-activist Kunwar Mohammad Ashraf and others then working with the Indian National Congress. There was a close inter community relationship between the Meos and other peasant-pastoral castes such as the Jats, the Ahirs and the Gujars. In Haryana the Mewat region falls in the districts of Gurgaon and Faridabad. Meo men are tall and dark, with ponderous turbans woven around their heads, dressed in long flowing robes. The Meos are about a million-strong tribe, a Muslim Rajput community living in southern Haryana and north eastern Rajasthan known for its admixture of Hindu and Islamic customs, practices and beliefs. Only one in ten Meos is able to properly read and write. The Meos have two identities, both of which they are equally proud of. On the one hand, they claim to be Muslims, tracing their conversion to various Sufi saints who began settling in their territory from the eleventh century onwards, and whose shrines or 'dargahs' today dot the entire Mewati countryside. On the other hand, they also claim to be Rajputs, and believe that they are direct descendants of Krishna and Rama. These Hindu deities are respectfully referred to by the Meos as 'dada' or grandfather'. Almost every Meo village has a mosque, but in many places Meos also worship at Hindu temples. Many Rajasthani Meos still retain mixed Hindu-Muslim names. Names such as Ram Khan or Shankar Khan are not unusual in the Meo tracts in Alwar. The Muslim community of Meos is highly Hinduised. They celebrate Diwali and Holi as they celebrate Ids. They do not marry within ones Gotras like Hindus of the North though Islam permits marriage with cousins. Solemnization of marriage among Meos is not complete without both nikah as in Islam and circling of fire as among Hindus. Meos believe that they are direct descendants of Krishna and Rama even as they claim to be among the unnamed prophets of God referred to in the Holy Quran. The Meo version of the Mahabharat called the Pandun Ka Kara, is performed by Mirasis or Jogis to an audience composed of Meo Muslims, as also non-Meos. The authors, performers and audience are, thus, all Muslim. The Meos regard the Mahabharata clans as the ancestors of their own lineage. The folk epic then is far more than mere "myth" and is central to the cultural identity of the Meo Muslims. It is important to understand what the great epic means to them, how they remake, modify and recreate it and also how in the process they both draw upon, modify and critique the so-called "great tradition" of Vedic and Puranic Hinduism. Muslim musicians, called Mirasis, dressed in flowing white Kurtas and dhotis and bright crimson turbans. They play a musical rendering of the 'Pandun Ke Kara', the Meo Muslim version of the famous Hindu epic, the Mahabharat, after a brief ode in praise of the Prophet Muhammad and the Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti of Ajmer. The entire epic in its Meo form, rendered in the Mewati dialect, consists of some 800 verses or 'dohas', and takes more than three hours to recite. It relates the story of the five Pandava brothers, whom it describes as ancestors of the Meos. Finally, it ends with verses in praise of its composer, an early eighteenth century Meo Muslim called Sadullah Khan. 'Pandun Ke Kada' is the only Muslim form of the Mahabharat that exists. Sadullah Khan is regarded by the Meos as their 'national poet' ('qaumi shair'). Today, barring a few Mirasis, no one else can recite the Pandun Ke Kada. Mewat, the homeland of the Meos The place of origin of the Meos is Mewat. It is a region that comprises southern Haryana and north-eastern Rajasthan and is known for its mixture of Hindu and Islamic customs, practices and beliefs. Mewat's boundaries are not precisely determined, but generally include Alwar, Bharatpur, and Dholpur districts of Rajasthan, and Gurgaon and Faridabad districts of Haryana. The region corresponds to the ancient kingdom of Matsya, founded in the 5th century BCE. Mewati is the chief language or dialect of the region. Mewat district was carved out from erstwhile Gurgaon and Faridabad districts, which came into existence on 4th April 2005 as the 20th district of Haryana. The newly constituted district comprises three sub-divisions namely Nuh, Firozpur Jhirka and Hathin. The district headquarter is located at Nuh. The district comprises six blocks namely Nuh, Tauru, Nagina, Firozpur Zhirka, Punhana and Hathin. There are 532 villages in the district. Geographically, Mewat district is situated between 26-degree and 30-degree North latitude and 76-degree and 78-degree East longitude. Gurgaon district bounds it on its North, while Rewari district lies to its West and Faridabad district to its East. On South, the district shares its boundary with Rajasthan. Mewat district is largely composed of plains. Inconsistency in Mewat topography is evident from its patches of land with hills and hillock of the Aravali Mountain on the one hand and plains on the other. Mewat, land of the Meos, has its genesis in its tribal inhabitants, the Meo tribals, who are agriculturalists. The area is a distinct ethnic and socio-cultural tract. The Meos, who trace their roots to the early Aryans of North India, call themselves Kshatriyas and have preserved their social and cultural traits to a surprisingly large extent, unlike the other tribes of nearby areas. During the regime of the Tughlak dynasty in the 14th century A.D., these people embraced Islam but till today, they have maintained their age-old distinctive ethno-cultural identity. The main occupation of the people of Mewat district is agriculture and allied and agro-based activities. The Meos are the predominant population group and are completely agriculturists. Cultural aspects The Meos are have two strong identities, both of which they are equally proud of: • Their Muslim identity, going back to their conversion to Islam by various Sufi saints who began settling in their territory from the eleventh century onwards, and whose shrines/mausoleums or dargahs/mazars today dot the entire countryside in Mewat. • Their Rajput heritage and lineage, which they are very proud of. Despite their conversion to Islam, they still follow some Hindu practices to this day as inherited customs. • A penetrating sense of superiority of their Rajastani culture with the bravery of their warlords Hasan Khan Meo, a representative of Meo Rajputs in the War of ??? and Deo Khan Meo, are the sources of proud for Meo. • Without reservation, Gias-u-Din Balban and Mughal Kings faced perennial defeats by the Meo warrior tribe around Delhi and in the interiors of Rajastan. Meos today Today, Meos mostly inhabit the Punjab and Sindh provinces of Pakistan and the states of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Delhi in India. Many Meos migrated to Pakistan after its formation in 1947. In India, they are a million-strong. Raymond Jamous' work on Meo Oxford University Press book on Meo culture Kinship and Rituals Among the Meo of Northern India : Locating Sibling Relationship/Raymond Jamous. Translated from the French by Nora Scott. New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2003, xiv, 200 p., ills., tables, $31. ISBN 019566459-0. Contents: Introduction. 1. The Meo: a caste and a faith. 2. Meo kinship vocabulary. 3. Kinship and territory. 4. The marriage alliance. 5. Marriage ceremonies: ritual prestations. 6. The Meo kinship system: a comparative view. Bibliography. Glossary. Index. "In the study of family and kinship, social anthropologists have often focused on unilineal descent groups or on marriage, but rarely on the specific nature of the brother-sister relationship. Until now this relation has been reduced either to one of siblingship, more often, consanguinity, or to a form of incest prohibition that leads to matrimonial exchange. This book presents the kinship system of the Meo, a Muslim community of ‘Rajput’ caste of north India, where the brother-sister relationship transcends the distinctions between consanguines and affines to pervade relations both before and after marriage. "The author develops the notion of ‘metasiblingship’ to convey the specific nature of this relationship. In the vocabulary of kinship studies, metasiblingship is defined as the chain of two brother-sister pairs linked by a marriage. It is enacted in life-cycle rites in the complementarity between the father’s (married) sister, who leads these ceremonies, and the mother’s brother, who is responsible for the principal prestations. "In terms of family and kinship, and associated ceremonies, myths and legends, the Meo have long been regarded as unusual among Indian Muslims. They forbid what is regarded as a diacritical Muslim kinship practice—patrilineal parallel-cousin marriage—as well as cross-cousin marriage, and follow north Indian, Hindu kinship rules. Following the example of Louis Dumont, Raymond Jamous engages with the Meo kinship terminology, the relation of kinship and territory, marriage alliance, and marriage rituals and prestations—all of which are ‘classical’ kinship themes. What emerges is a completely new perspective on the structure of north Indian kinship, transcending and encompassing the opposition of the ‘alliance’ and ‘descent’ approaches. "This book is of interest and importance both as an ethnography of the Meo and as a contribution to kinship theory. It will be useful to scholars of sociology, anthropology, and religion." (jacket) Resisting Regimes: Myth, Memory and the Shaping of a Muslim Identity To the Mughals, the Mewatis were "rebels". To British ethnographers, they were "criminal tribes". To two modernizing princely rulers of eastern Rajasthan in the first half of the twentieth century, embracing Hindu nationalism, they were "Muslim". Finally, to the Islamicizing, pietist movement, Tablighi Jama'at, which has flourished in Mewat since partition, the Mewatis were the jahiliyya of pre-Islamic Arabia, in urgent need of reform. In this important and welcome contribution, Shail Mayaram tells the story of the princely and Tabligh regimes as well as the story of Mewati resistance she finds throughout. She makes a valuable contribution to understanding how a particular group comes to be identified by others, and to identify itself, as "Muslim"—an identity contingently produced and profoundly modern, the product, not the opposite, of nationalism .Alwar and Bharatpur were home to about two-thirds of the Meo, who comprised in 1941 some sixty percent of the population's 330,620 Muslims. At partition, Mayaram discovered, contrary to her expectations, there was an explicit state policy of "cleansing," characterized by forced conversion, capture of women (who "do not have any religion" [p. 191]), and genocide of Muslims with an estimated 82,000 killed. After partition, Meos lost land to Hindu and Sikh refugees. An informant told Mayaram his own story: he fled; returned because of Congress promises that he would retain his property; discovered his houses burnt and animals gone; and received back only sixty of his original 600 bighas of land. "Tabligh came to our village after this," he concluded (pp. 205–06). Ja Dimaago's views ETHNONYMS: Mewāti, Mina, Meena Meo Representing the largest part of the Muslim population in Rajasthan, the Meos number approximately 600,000 (according to 1984 data). They are crowded into the Alwar and Bharatpur districts in the northeastern part of the state, as well as in the Gurgaon District of the adjacent state of Haryana. The areas of the three districts where they live are collectively called Mewat, a reference to their supremacy in the area. Meos speak Rajasthani, a language of the Indo-Iranian part of the Indo-European Family. The Meos pursue many different service occupations and are known as bangle sellers, dyers, butchers, water carr also


Tablighi Jamaat in Mewat

This 6-part series of articles provides a detailed account of the historical
origins and development of the Tablighi Jamaat in Mewat, focusing in
particular on the social multiple roles that the movement has played in the
region, which accounts, in large measure, for its deep-rooted popularity
among the Meos. A sociological study of the development of Tablighi Jamaat
in Mewat can provide interesting insights and parallels to understand the
success and appeal of the movement in other contexts as well—Editor
The Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) is today the single largest Islamic movement in the
world, in terms both of number of activists as well as geographical spread.
No study of the history of the TJ would be complete without an account of
the people among whom it first took root—the Meo peasants of Mewat, a
culturally distinct region in northwestern India. Much of that which is
unique to the TJ, particularly its method of tabligh or Islamic missionary
work and its approach to and understanding of the process of Islamisation,
seems to have been moulded largely by the social context of early
twentieth-century Mewat. Mewat also provides an interesting case of shifting
socio-political contexts within which the TJ has been able to establish
strong roots in a local environment.
The genesis and early development of the TJ in Mewat is particularly worthy
of attention. Mewat, which is seen in Tablighi circles as the movement's
most successful 'experimental ground' (Ishaq 1972:4), poses a seemingly
insoluble sociological paradox. The Meos had for centuries been only the
most nominal Muslims as the 'ulama saw them. After three decades of Tablighi
efforts among them they appear, at least in the literature, to have
transformed themselves into such committed Muslims that many leading 'ulama
went so far as to exclaim that they had undergone a veritable 'revolution'
(Falahi 1996:301). This chapter will address this apparent paradox by
tracing the origins and development of the TJ in Mewat in terms of the many
social roles that it came to play in the lives of the Meos in the context of
major social changes that Mewat has had to contend with starting from the
last years of the nineteenth century.
*Background*
Extending southwards from the township of Sohna, some 65 kilometres
south-west of Delhi, and covering large parts of the districts of Gurgaon
and Faridabad in the present-day Indian state of Haryana and the former
princely states of Alwar and Bharatpur in Rajasthan, is the region of Mewat,
the land of a peasant caste known as the Meos. The Meos are Muslims who have
retained many of their earlier cultural and religious traditions.1 It was
estimated in 1983 that they numbered around 800,000, of whom a quarter
resided in present-day Pakistan and the rest in India (Shams 1983:17).2
Many Meos claim high-caste Hindu Rajput or warrior descent, and while it may
well be the case that some of them are indeed of Rajput stock, it seems
likely that the majority are descendants of 'low'-caste converts who, either
prior to or alongside their gradual Islamisation, laid claim to Rajput
ancestry to enhance their social standing (Harris 1901:23; Channing
1882:28). Evidence for this is provided by the names of many gots or
exogamous lineages which the Meos have in common with such lower status
Hindu castes as the Minas, the Jats and the Gujjars who live in their
vicinity. It thus seems likely that, 'the Meos belonged to many different
castes and not just to the Rajputs' (Aggarwal 1978:338).
Little can be said with confidence as to how Islam managed to take root in
Mewat.3 Living in the vicinity of Delhi, the Meos were, from at least the
twelfth century onwards, in constant conflict with the Muslim monarchs of
the imperial capital (Sikand 1993:10). Ravaged by regular drought and
famine, bands of Meos would often swarm into Delhi for loot and plunder,
provoking violent reprisals from the Delhi Sultans. Formal acceptance of
Islam often followed military defeat at the hands of the imperial army. With
Mewat coming under the control of the Muslim rulers of Delhi, various Sufi
orders entered the region, as a result of which, over the centuries, the
Meos seem to have undergone a process of gradual, though very partial,
Islamisation, in the course of which they adopted several practices
associated with Islam, while retaining many of their local religious and
cultural traditions. From time to time, 'ulama and Sufis attempted to do
away with some of what they saw as their more glaring Hindu practices
(Mewati n.d.). In the second half of the nineteenth century these included
numerous 'ulama of the Waliullahi tradition (Shakur 1974:381-84).4 They
were, however, unable to reach beyond a narrow circle of followers. The time
was not yet ripe, it seems, for the Meos to give up their popular religious
traditions and to take to scripturalist, shari'at-centred Islam instead.
The Islamisation of the Meos through the agency of the Sufis and as a result
of political exigencies was, as we have observed, partial and nominal. Thus,
writing in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Major Powlett, the
settlement officer of Alwar state, remarked:
The Meos are now all Musalmans in name, but their village deities are the
same as those of the Hindus and they keep several Hindu festivals. Thus, the
holi is with the Meos a season of rough play and is considered as important
a festival as Muharram,, Id and Shabibarat, and they likewise observe the
Janam Ashtami, Dashera and Diwali. They often keep Brahmin priests to write
the note (pili-chitthi) fixing the date of marriage. They call themselves by
Hindu names, with the exception of Ram; and Sinh is a frequent affix, though
not so common as Khan. On the Amawas, or monthly conjunction of the sun and
moon, the Meos, in common with the Hindu Ahirs, Gujjars, etc. cease from
labour; and when they make a well the first proceeding is to erect a
platform to Bairuji or Hanuman. Meos, in their customs, are half Hindu. In
their villages there are hardly any mosques [...] The Meo places of worship
are similar to those of their Hindu neighbours, as for example, Panchpira,
Bhaiya and Chahund. Chahund or Khera Deo is dedicated to Mahadevi to whom
sacrifices are made (Polett 1878:38).
In their dress, too, the Meos were indistinguishable from the other peasant
castes of Mewat. Meonis (Meo women) wore the Rajasthani skirt and blouse and
heavy silver jewellery. Men wore the dhoti, and also put on various
ornaments. Most Meo men grew the choti or tuft of hair as was the general
Hindu custom.
As for the Meos' observance of the externals of Islam, it seems to have been
restricted largely to male circumcision, nikah (the Islamic form of
marriage) and the burial of the dead, though even these were recast in a
Hindu mould (Aggarwal op. cit.:339). Most Meos knew but little about Islam.
As Powlett observed, 'As regards their own religion [Islam] the Meos are
very ignorant. Few know the kalima, and fewer still the regular prayers, the
seasons of which they entirely neglect' (quoted in S.A. Haq 1972:105).
According to another observer, 'Reading of the Qur'an was less popular than
reading the Hindu epics Ramayan and Mahabharat. Hindu shrines far
outnumbered mosques in Mewat. Few Meos prayed in the Muslim manner, but most
of them performed the puja—worship at the shrines of the Hindu gods and
goddesses' (Aggarwal op. cit.:339).
The popular religious tradition of the Meos appears to have proved a
rewarding strategy. As cultivators of most of the agricultural land in
Mewat, the Meos were a local dominant caste, at least in terms of numbers.
Retaining their local, non-Islamic customs and institutions, such as their
got-pal system5 and the practice of untouchability towards the 'low'-castes,
enabled them to maintain their claim to a dominant status in the local
social hierarchy even after having undergone a degree of Islamisation. The
non-Muslim artisan and service castes as well as the Brahmins thus carried
on serving their Meo patrons in return for a share in the agricultural
produce. As long as their economic and social life remained undisturbed,
these client castes of the Meos were quite willing to overlook their
ambiguous religious identity. The Meos therefore felt, says a Meo scholar,
'no pressing need to bend in either direction [Hindu or Muslim] because
their position in Mewat was secure. None of the other caste groups in Mewat
questioned the Meo dominance' (Shams op. cit.:35).
On the other hand, as the Meos were often in conflict with the Muslim rulers
of Delhi, their popular religious tradition provided them with a sense of
unity, an identity clearly opposed to that of their imperial foes.
Interestingly, the local feudal elite in Mewat, the Khanzadas6, close allies
of the Muslim rulers of Delhi, were considerably more Islamised than the
Meos, keeping their women in strict pardah and observing other ashraf
practices. Mewati history is replete with stories of wild bloodletting
between the Khanzadas and the Meos, and it is, therefore, not surprising
that until the early twentieth century, when Khanzada supremacy in Mewat
began to erode rapidly, the Meos do not seem to have displayed much interest
in emulating the religious culture associated with a class of people whom
they viewed with great hostility.
The popular religious tradition of the Meos faced little internal challenge
until the closing decades of the nineteenth century. At this time,
developments brought about by wider social changes began to make themselves
felt in the Mewati countryside. These were to have important consequences
for Meo self-perception and religious identity. Rapid social change in Mewat
in the early decades of the twentieth century resulted in what may be termed
a pervasive social crisis. It was this that provided the context for the
emergence of the TJ among the Meos.
*Socio-economic profile*
Although the Meos cultivated most of the land in Mewat, barring some
chaudhris (local community leaders), there were very few large landowners
among them, the vast majority being small owner-cultivators, most of whom
were greatly impoverished (Gibson 1909:13). The productivity of the land was
low and modern irrigation facilities were minimal.7 Consequently, Mewat had
to face spells of severe drought at regular intervals, driving the Meos deep
into debt at the hands of Jain and Hindu Bania moneylenders.8 Their dismal
economic conditions in the early twentieth century, far from improving,
actually seem to have fast deteriorated. As the annual administrative report
of the government of the Punjab (1916) noted:
The condition of the Meos is rapidly becoming hopeless. They live so
literally from hand to mouth, carelessly contracting debt for marriages,
funerals and petty luxuries even in average years that when a year of
drought comes they are thrown on the moneylender who can make with them what
terms he likes (Rathee 1971a:43).
According to one source, the Banias would charge an exorbitant rate of 5 per
cent per month on their loans to the poverty-stricken Meos, the equivalent
of an astounding 60 per cent per annum (W. Khan 1988:34). Many Meos simply
could not repay their loans, as a result of which much of their land began
passing into Bania hands. By 1910, nearly 40 per cent of Meo land was under
mortgage to the Banias (Rathee op. cit.:43). This increasing land alienation
was a direct consequence of the new conception of land ownership that the
British had introduced, in which land was now seen as a commodity and as
private property, capable of being bought, sold and mortgaged. Meos could
now pledge their lands, and not just their crops as before, to the Banias
for credit. This is precisely what their rapidly growing impoverishment was
forcing them to do.
As the Meos sank deeper into poverty, they increasingly saw the Banias as
not only gaining from their plight but also as the very cause of it. Insofar
as the Banias were looked upon as the local repositories of 'high'-caste
Hinduism, increasing resentment against them gradually translated into a
distancing from Hindu religious traditions, making the Meos more receptive
to Islam. This was further facilitated by the fact that, despite the Meos'
claim to Rajput status, the Banias actually looked down upon them and
refused to take food cooked by them, deeming them to be a source of ritual
pollution.9 In this changed situation, it was no longer the Mughals or other
Muslim rulers who were seen as the threatening 'Other' against whom the Meos
would seek to define themselves. Rather, this role was now increasingly
taken over by 'high'-caste Hindus. The emphasis that the Meos, as
participants in the TJ, were to lay on their Muslim identity was in large
measure a strategy to solidify community boundaries by marking off 'insider'
Meos from 'outsider' Hindus.
Social dislocations by themselves do not automatically generate mass
movements. For a charismatic leader from outside a community to be able to
mobilise people in such a situation, there must be at least a few socially
significant individuals within the community who can understand, and are
receptive to, his message and who can help transmit it to their own people
in their own idiom. In the case of the TJ in Mewat, this was made possible
by an expanding chain of Islamic madaris as well as by the network of
primary schools that the British began setting up from the late nineteenth
century onwards in the Meo territory under their rule. Urdu, the language in
which a large number of Islamic texts were readily available, was the medium
of instruction therein. This enabled a new generation of literate Meos to
gain access to Islamic literature. By the early 1910s, there were enough Meo
boys who had received a primary education to call for the setting up of a
high school in the region. Mewat's first secondary school, named after its
founder, Frank Lugard Brayne, the then deputy commissioner of Gurgaon, was
founded at Nuh in 1923. In the years that followed, a number of students of
this school went on to pursue higher studies at Muslim institutions such as
the Jami'a Millia Islamia at Delhi and the Aligarh Muslim University. Thus,
by the time the TJ was launched in Mewat, there were Meos who were in a
position to identify culturally with the message of Muslim brotherhood. Some
newly educated Meos were to play a significant role in relaying this message
to the wider Meo community. Ilyas was himself to come to rely, among others,
on such Meos who had received a modicum of education and held important
posts in the village administrative hierarchy—such as nambardars, zaildars,
munshis, chaudhris—as well as madrasa students in galvanising the TJ in the
Mewati countryside. Most of these, however, had not obtained high secular
education, but were largely the products of the new chain of Islamic schools
that had begun to appear in the region by this time.
Education gradually brought in its wake an increasing redefinition of Meo
identity, an awareness of their increasing marginalisation, and a growing
familiarity with Islam. Thus, commenting on the ignorance of the Meos of
even the kalima, a British administrator observed that, 'this, however,
applies only to the Alwar territory; in British India the effect of the
schools is to make them more observant of [Islamic] religious duties' (S.A.
Haq 1972:105). The Hindu ruler of Alwar had declared Hindi, instead of Urdu,
to be the language of instruction in the schools of his state. At that time
Islamic literature in Hindi was almost totally non-existent, the' language
being seen as specifically 'Hindu'. Thus, Meos in British territory were now
exposed to Islamic influences to a considerably greater degree than their
brethren in the Hindu-ruled states of Alwar and Bharatpur, and in the years
that followed, the Gurgaon Meos were to take the lead in spreading the
message of the TJ in the rest of Mewat.
*Meo peasant rebellions*
Developments in the Meo countryside towards the end of 1910s, then, all
pointed to a growing agrarian crisis (for details, see, M.H. Siddiqui
1986:442-67). This, combined with the gradual emergence of a class of
educated men who could articulate the grievances of the peasants, provided
fertile ground for the outbreak of a series of peasant uprisings in Mewat in
the 1932-34, in which successful efforts were made to link up specifically
Meo economic demands with a wider pan-Indian Muslim agenda, facilitating, in
the process, a greater identification with Islam on the part of the Meos.
The rise of the TJ in Mewat cannot be properly understood without taking
into account these uprisings which broke out immediately prior to the sudden
spurt of Tablighi activities in the region in the early 1930s.
Hostility towards the Muslims in the ruling circles of Alwar and Bharatpur
appeared intermittently in the nineteenth century interrupted by periods in
which Muslims were allowed to play a significant role in administrative
affairs. Hostility surfaced again in the early decades of the twentieth
century, and this time with greater intensity (Mehta and Mehta 1985:399).
The ruler of Alwar, Maharaja Jai Sigh (1892-1937), introduced several
policies clearly aimed against his Muslim subjects. This went alongside a
deliberate Hinduisation of the Alwar administration itself. The Maharaja
began to flaunt his Hindu credentials in public and established personal
ties with several top leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Arya Samaj,
organisations whose extreme antipathy for the Muslims was well known.10 Soon
after it had launched its shuddhi campaign among the Malkanas of the United
Provinces, the Arya Samaj extended its missionary activities to Rajputana,
attempting to convert back to Hinduism the local Muslim Rajputs, Jats,
Gujjars and Meos, and in this is said to have received the official backing
of the rulers of Bharatpur (Mayaram 1991:10-12).11
The marked Hinduisation of the Alwar administration and its consequently
growing anti-Muslim orientation had less to do with religion than with the
increasing challenge by the state's subjects, both Hindus and Muslims, to
the Maharaja's heavy taxation of the peasantry and fiercely autocratic
rule.12 By the mid-1920s, peasant revolts had broken out in several parts of
the state. One of the most serious of these occurred in 1925, in which the
Alwar forces gunned down scores of Hindu Rajputs in the village of Nimuchana
protesting a sudden rise of 50 per cent in the land revenue. In these
uprisings both the Meos as well as the Hindu peasantry were involved. Faced
with such determined opposition to him, the Maharaja appears to have felt
that a policy of cultivating a fiercely pro-Hindu image for himself would
help create a homogeneous Hindu community and postpone the demand for
democratisation.13 Targeting the Muslims as the menacing, threatening
'Other' and fanning the flames of Hindu-Muslim rivalry would help divert the
attention of his largely Hindu subjects from the oppression they were
undergoing under his rule.14
It was in this communally surcharged climate that in 1932-34 the Meos of
Alwar rose up in violent revolt. It seems that it was the particularly harsh
and oppressive conditions under which they were labouring that ignited the
sparks of rebellion. Their plight is portrayed by a Meo historian thus:
The Meo tracts in Alwar and Bharatpur were victims of the extreme
authoritarianism and ruthlessness of their rulers. Government servants would
do nothing without extorting heavy bribes. The peasants were being grossly
overburdened with ever increasing taxes. Like birds of prey, the guards of
the forest department and the sepoys of the customs department would swoop
down on the hapless peasants and rob them of the paltry income that they
earned through shedding their sweat and blood. The rights of the people were
being mercilessly trampled upon. The Mewatis were being treated like goats
and sheep, as nothing better than mere dumb animals (Haye n.d.:10).
Having already subjected the peasants to a heavy tax burden, in 1932 the
Maharaja of Alwar suddenly decided to raise the revenue levy four-fold. This
proved to be the last straw for the peasants, and they decided to stop
paying their taxes. Soon after, the All-India Meo Panchayat, a group of Meo
leaders headed by Yasin Khan (1896-1970),15 a lawyer-turned-politician,
began galvanising support for the uprising, seeking to turn it into a
broader struggle for the establishment of democratic rule in the state. As
the rebellion gained in radicalism and strength and spread over much of
Mewat, spilling across even into British tetritory, where the Meos now
refused to repay their loans to the Banias, the Maharaja of Alwar decided to
crush it with all the force he could command. Thus, in January 1933, when
thousands of Meos had gathered at the village of Govindgarh for a
demonstration, the Raja's soldiers indiscriminately opened fire, as a result
of which scores lost their lives. Mewat was now in flames. Martial law was
clamped in the four Meo-dominated nizamats of Ramgarh, Lacchmangarh,
Kishangarh and Tijara, and reports started flooding in of widespread clashes
between Hindus and Meos. Meos are reported to have attacked Bania-owned
shops at many places and to have forcibly collected subscriptions from them.
The violence, rooted in the economic grievances of the Meos against the
Banias and the Alwar state, rapidly took on an overtly religious hue. Hindu
temples were attacked and the panic-stricken Hindus, egged on by the Hindu
Mahasabha, issued an urgent appeal to the Raja, 'the descendant of Raghu'
(the Hindu god-king Rama), to rush to their rescue, to defend them from the
Meo 'rakshasas' (demons).16 The writ of the Alwar state seems, in fact, to
have ceased to run in the Meo-dominated nizamats, where the Meos managed to
establish their own effective control.17
Some weeks later the situation in northern Alwar had turned so serious that
the government of India was forced to intervene. British soldiers entered
Alwar in January 1933 and in May the government of India forced the Maharaja
to abdicate and go abroad into exile. The administration of the affairs of
state was entrusted to a British officer, many of the demands of the
peasants were conceded and normalcy was gradually restored.
In the course of the revolt the Meos came to establish strong ties with
several Muslim leaders and organisations from outside Mewat for the first
time, and it was this newly established bond with the wider Indian Muslim
community that latter eased the entry of Islamic ideas among them through
the missionary efforts of the TJ. It was from these outside Muslim leaders
and organisations, besides some local activists, that the Meos sought
leadership for their movement against the Maharaja and a means to bring
their plight to the notice of the Indian public and the British authorities.
Among the Muslim organisations that came to the rescue of the Meos in their
uprising were the All-India Alwar Conference, the Anjuman-i-Ahrar of Bombay
and Delhi, the Jami'at-ul 'Ulama-i-Islam of Budaun, and the Rajputana Muslim
League, Ajmer. Several Muslim Urdu newspapers of Delhi and Lahore, too, took
up and championed the Meo cause (Mayaram 1991:40-41). Significantly, the
Meos received almost no Hindu support. It was only the Muslims who came to
their rescue at this time of crisis.
Although these external Muslim organisations and leaders were not
responsible for creating the Meo rebellion themselves, it was through their
networks that, 'Meo demands received an immediate publicity' (Mayaram
1991:40). Linkages were established with the larger Muslim community of
north India only after the movement had already started, and so it would be
misleading to suggest that it owed itself to external Muslim instigation.
Significantly, it was also only after the rebellion had taken off that the
activities of the TJ really began to spread in the Mewati countryside.
Moreover, at this time, the preaching teams of the TJ were by and large
active only in British Mewat and had little presence in either Alwar or
Bharatpur (Mayaram 1997:35). It would appear, then, that the sudden growth
of the TJ in Mewat at around this time was a fallout of the agrarian crisis
and the oppression which followed rather than a cause of this crisis.18 The
Islamisation of the Meos through the TJ, Mayaram remarks, 'does not precede
agrarian unrest as much as it is the consequence of agrarian tension and
state policy'. This process cannot, then, be understood 'merely as [the
introduction of] an external religious ideology', unrelated to the social
conditions prevailing in Mewat at that time (Mayaram 1991:8).
Mayaram contends that the labelling of the Meo peasant uprising by the Alwar
state and by Hindu organisations as an Islamic revolt was probably intended
to rob it of legitimacy, to divide the peasantry on religious lines and,
thereby, to divert the wrath of the Hindu peasantry away from the Maharaja's
unpopular rule and towards the Meos instead. This policy, however, had the
unintended consequence of making the Meos more fiercely conscious of their
Muslim identity, which was now being reinforced by the state itself. The
same happened in neighbouring Bharatpur, where, in 1933, the Meos rose up in
revolt against the repressive measures taken by the Jat ruler, Kishan Singh.
It was thus this combination of agrarian crisis, the growth of a newly
educated class among the Meos, the peasant rebellions in Alwar and Bharatpur
and their brutal suppression, and the fraternal links that were now
established with outside Muslim groups that provided the ideal conditions
for a movement such as the TJ to emerge in Mewat at this time.
For other uses, see Meos (disambiguation).
Meo (Hindi: मेव, Urdu: میو) is a prominent Muslim Rajput tribe from Northern India and Pakistan.

Meo

Meos inhabit a territorial region that falls between the important urban centres of Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. Mewat, consisting of some adjoining parts of Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, where the Meos have lived for a millennium, was a terrain of peasant radicalism in the pre-independence period. It saw intensive work by the communist leaders such as the historian-activist Kunwar Mohammad Ashraf and others then working with the Indian National Congress. There was a close inter community relationship between the Meos and other peasant-pastoral castes such as the Jats, the Ahirs and the Gujars. In Haryana the Mewat region falls in the districts of Gurgaon and Faridabad.

Meo men are tall and dark, with ponderous turbans woven around their heads, dressed in long flowing robes. The Meos are about a million-strong tribe, a Muslim Rajput community living in southern Haryana and north eastern Rajasthan known for its admixture of Hindu and Islamic customs, practices and beliefs. Only one in ten Meos is able to properly read and write. The Meos have two identities, both of which they are equally proud of. On the one hand, they claim to be Muslims, tracing their conversion to various Sufi saints who began settling in their territory from the eleventh century onwards, and whose shrines or 'dargahs' today dot the entire Mewati countryside. On the other hand, they also claim to be Rajputs, and believe that they are direct descendants of Krishna and Rama. These Hindu deities are respectfully referred to by the Meos as 'dada' or grandfather'.

Almost every Meo village has a mosque, but in many places Meos also worship at Hindu temples. Many Rajasthani Meos still retain mixed Hindu-Muslim names. Names such as Ram Khan or Shankar Khan are not unusual in the Meo tracts in Alwar. The Muslim community of Meos is highly Hinduised. They celebrate Diwali and Holi as they celebrate Ids. They do not marry within ones Gotras like Hindus of the North though Islam permits marriage with cousins. Solemnization of marriage among Meos is not complete without both nikah as in Islam and circling of fire as among Hindus. Meos believe that they are direct descendants of Krishna and Rama even as they claim to be among the unnamed prophets of God referred to in the Holy Quran.

The Meo version of the Mahabharat called the Pandun Ka Kara, is performed by Mirasis or Jogis to an audience composed of Meo Muslims, as also non-Meos. The authors, performers and audience are, thus, all Muslim. The Meos regard the Mahabharata clans as the ancestors of their own lineage. The folk epic then is far more than mere "myth" and is central to the cultural identity of the Meo Muslims. It is important to understand what the great epic means to them, how they remake, modify and recreate it and also how in the process they both draw upon, modify and critique the so-called "great tradition" of Vedic and Puranic Hinduism.

Muslim musicians, called Mirasis, dressed in flowing white Kurtas and dhotis and bright crimson turbans. They play a musical rendering of the 'Pandun Ke Kara', the Meo Muslim version of the famous Hindu epic, the Mahabharat, after a brief ode in praise of the Prophet Muhammad and the Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti of Ajmer. The entire epic in its Meo form, rendered in the Mewati dialect, consists of some 800 verses or 'dohas', and takes more than three hours to recite. It relates the story of the five Pandava brothers, whom it describes as ancestors of the Meos. Finally, it ends with verses in praise of its composer, an early eighteenth century Meo Muslim called Sadullah Khan. 'Pandun Ke Kada' is the only Muslim form of the Mahabharat that exists. Sadullah Khan is regarded by the Meos as their 'national poet' ('qaumi shair'). Today, barring a few Mirasis, no one else can recite the Pandun Ke Kada.

Mewat, the homeland of the Meos

The place of origin of the Meos is Mewat. It is a region that comprises southern Haryana and north-eastern Rajasthan and is known for its mixture of Hindu and Islamic customs, practices and beliefs.

Mewat's boundaries are not precisely determined, but generally include Alwar, Bharatpur, and Dholpur districts of Rajasthan, and Gurgaon and Faridabad districts of Haryana. The region corresponds to the ancient kingdom of Matsya, founded in the 5th century BCE. Mewati is the chief language or dialect of the region. Mewat district was carved out from erstwhile Gurgaon and Faridabad districts, which came into existence on 4th April 2005 as the 20th district of Haryana. The newly constituted district comprises three sub-divisions namely Nuh, Firozpur Jhirka and Hathin. The district headquarter is located at Nuh. The district comprises six blocks namely Nuh, Tauru, Nagina, Firozpur Zhirka, Punhana and Hathin. There are 532 villages in the district.

Geographically, Mewat district is situated between 26-degree and 30-degree North latitude and 76-degree and 78-degree East longitude. Gurgaon district bounds it on its North, while Rewari district lies to its West and Faridabad district to its East. On South, the district shares its boundary with Rajasthan. Mewat district is largely composed of plains. Inconsistency in Mewat topography is evident from its patches of land with hills and hillock of the Aravali Mountain on the one hand and plains on the other.

Mewat, land of the Meos, has its genesis in its tribal inhabitants, the Meo tribals, who are agriculturalists. The area is a distinct ethnic and socio-cultural tract. The Meos, who trace their roots to the early Aryans of North India, call themselves Kshatriyas and have preserved their social and cultural traits to a surprisingly large extent, unlike the other tribes of nearby areas. During the regime of the Tughlak dynasty in the 14th century A.D., these people embraced Islam but till today, they have maintained their age-old distinctive ethno-cultural identity.

The main occupation of the people of Mewat district is agriculture and allied and agro-based activities. The Meos are the predominant population group and are completely agriculturists.

Cultural aspects

The Meos are have two strong identities, both of which they are equally proud of:
  • Their Muslim identity, going back to their conversion to Islam by various Sufi saints who began settling in their territory from the eleventh century onwards, and whose shrines/mausoleums or dargahs/mazars today dot the entire countryside in Mewat.
  • Their Rajput heritage and lineage, which they are very proud of. Despite their conversion to Islam, they still follow some Hindu practices to this day as inherited customs.
  • A penetrating sense of superiority of their Rajastani culture with the bravery of their warlords Hasan Khan Meo, a representative of Meo Rajputs in the War of ??? and Deo Khan Meo, are the sources of proud for Meo.
  • Without reservation, Gias-u-Din Balban and Mughal Kings faced perennial defeats by the Meo warrior tribe around Delhi and in the interiors of Rajastan.

Meos today

Today, Meos mostly inhabit the Punjab and Sindh provinces of Pakistan and the states of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Delhi in India. Many Meos migrated to Pakistan after its formation in 1947. In India, they are a million-strong.

Raymond Jamous' work on Meo

Oxford University Press book on Meo culture

Kinship and Rituals Among the Meo of Northern India : Locating Sibling Relationship/Raymond Jamous. Translated from the French by Nora Scott. New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2003, xiv, 200 p., ills., tables, $31. ISBN 019566459-0.

Contents: Introduction. 1. The Meo: a caste and a faith. 2. Meo kinship vocabulary. 3. Kinship and territory. 4. The marriage alliance. 5. Marriage ceremonies: ritual prestations. 6. The Meo kinship system: a comparative view. Bibliography. Glossary. Index.

"In the study of family and kinship, social anthropologists have often focused on unilineal descent groups or on marriage, but rarely on the specific nature of the brother-sister relationship. Until now this relation has been reduced either to one of siblingship, more often, consanguinity, or to a form of incest prohibition that leads to matrimonial exchange. This book presents the kinship system of the Meo, a Muslim community of ‘Rajput’ caste of north India, where the brother-sister relationship transcends the distinctions between consanguines and affines to pervade relations both before and after marriage.

"The author develops the notion of ‘metasiblingship’ to convey the specific nature of this relationship. In the vocabulary of kinship studies, metasiblingship is defined as the chain of two brother-sister pairs linked by a marriage. It is enacted in life-cycle rites in the complementarity between the father’s (married) sister, who leads these ceremonies, and the mother’s brother, who is responsible for the principal prestations.

"In terms of family and kinship, and associated ceremonies, myths and legends, the Meo have long been regarded as unusual among Indian Muslims. They forbid what is regarded as a diacritical Muslim kinship practice—patrilineal parallel-cousin marriage—as well as cross-cousin marriage, and follow north Indian, Hindu kinship rules. Following the example of Louis Dumont, Raymond Jamous engages with the Meo kinship terminology, the relation of kinship and territory, marriage alliance, and marriage rituals and prestations—all of which are ‘classical’ kinship themes. What emerges is a completely new perspective on the structure of north Indian kinship, transcending and encompassing the opposition of the ‘alliance’ and ‘descent’ approaches.

"This book is of interest and importance both as an ethnography of the Meo and as a contribution to kinship theory. It will be useful to scholars of sociology, anthropology, and religion." (jacket)

Resisting Regimes: Myth, Memory and the Shaping of a Muslim Identity

To the Mughals, the Mewatis were "rebels". To British ethnographers, they were "criminal tribes". To two modernizing princely rulers of eastern Rajasthan in the first half of the twentieth century, embracing Hindu nationalism, they were "Muslim". Finally, to the Islamicizing, pietist movement, Tablighi Jama'at, which has flourished in Mewat since partition, the Mewatis were the jahiliyya of pre-Islamic Arabia, in urgent need of reform. In this important and welcome contribution, Shail Mayaram tells the story of the princely and Tabligh regimes as well as the story of Mewati resistance she finds throughout. She makes a valuable contribution to understanding how a particular group comes to be identified by others, and to identify itself, as "Muslim"—an identity contingently produced and profoundly modern, the product, not the opposite, of nationalism .Alwar and Bharatpur were home to about two-thirds of the Meo, who comprised in 1941 some sixty percent of the population's 330,620 Muslims. At partition, Mayaram discovered, contrary to her expectations, there was an explicit state policy of "cleansing," characterized by forced conversion, capture of women (who "do not have any religion" [p. 191]), and genocide of Muslims with an estimated 82,000 killed. After partition, Meos lost land to Hindu and Sikh refugees. An informant told Mayaram his own story: he fled; returned because of Congress promises that he would retain his property; discovered his houses burnt and animals gone; and received back only sixty of his original 600 bighas of land. "Tabligh came to our village after this," he concluded (pp. 205–06).

Ja Dimaago's views

ETHNONYMS: Mewāti, Mina, Meena Meo

Representing the largest part of the Muslim population in Rajasthan, the Meos number approximately 600,000 (according to 1984 data). They are crowded into the Alwar and Bharatpur districts in the northeastern part of the state, as well as in the Gurgaon District of the adjacent state of Haryana. The areas of the three districts where they live are collectively called Mewat, a reference to their supremacy in the area. Meos speak Rajasthani, a language of the Indo-Iranian part of the Indo-European Family. The Meos pursue many different service occupations and are known as bangle sellers, dyers, butchers, water carriers, and musicians, among others.

Like most Indian Muslims, the Meos were originally Hindu; when and how their conversion to Islam came about is unclear. It seems probable they were converted in stages: first by Salar Masud in the eleventh century, by Balban in the thirteenth century, and then during Aurangzeb's rule in the seventeenth century. The Meos insist on Rajput descent for the entire community. For years the Meos blended both Hindu and Muslim customs in their culture. For example, the popular names for both males and females were Hindu, but Muslim names were given as well, and the Muslim title Khan was added to a Hindu name. Two major Islamic rituals observed by the Meos were male circumcision and burial of the dead. Most of the Hindu festivals and ceremonies were maintained. The Muslim festivals, such as the two Ids, Shab-e-barat, and Muharram, were practiced. Reading the Quran was less well liked than the Hindu epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, and Hindu shrines outnumbered the mosques in Mewat. Few Meos prayed in the Muslim manner but most worshiped at the shrines of the Hindu gods and goddesses. Since 1947, however, with the partition of India, a revival of Islamic tradition has forced many Meos to conform to Islamic norms. In addition, many Meos have emigrated to Pakistan.

Although the Meos today follow most Muslim customs, they still follow traditional Hindu marriage rituals and kinship patterns. Cousin marriage is still taboo among this group. Attempts to break this tradition have met strong opposition. In addition, Meos do not observe the Muslim tradition of secluding their women. Meo society is divided into at least 800 exogamous clans. Some of the clan organizations resemble those of the Rajputs, but others seem to have connections with Hindu castes such as Brahmans, Meena, Jats, and Bhatiaras. Apparently the Meos come from many Hindu castes and not just the Rajputs.

See also