The
government on Sunday decided to include the Jat community in the
central list of Other
Backward Class (OBC’s)
in nine states, a move that is expected to benefit about nine crore people
from the community.
The decision would pave the way for the community
members to avail benefits of reservation in central government jobs and central
education institutions as per the existing norms.
"Union
Cabinet on Sunday approved the inclusion of the Jat community in the Central
list of OBCs for the states of Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh,
Madhya pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarrakhand, Uttar Pradesh and the National
capital territory of Delhi," I&B Minister Manish Tewari told
reporters. An approximate number of nine crore Jats are living in nine states
-- Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar
Pradesh, Delhi, Uttarakhand and Bihar.
The Jat people are a community of traditionally non-elite tillers and herders in Northern
India and Pakistan. Originally pastoralists in
the lower Indus river-valley of Sindh, Jats migrated north into the Punjab region
in late medieval times, and subsequently into the Delhi Territory, northeastern
Rajputana, and the western Gangetic Plain in the 17th and 18th centuries. Of
Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu faiths, they now live mostly in the Indian states of
Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh and the Pakistani provinces of
Sindh and Punjab.
Traditionally
involved in peasantry, the Jats took up arms against the Mughal
Empire during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The community played
an important role in the development of the martial Khalsa panthan of
Sikhism. The Hindu Jat kingdom reached its zenith under Suraj Mal of
Bharatpur (1707–1763). By the 20th century, the landowning Jats became an
influential group in several parts of North India, including Punjab, Western
Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi. Over the years, several Jats
abandoned agriculture in favour of urban jobs, and used their dominant economic
and political status to claim higher social status.