Coming back to the Jats, one has to consider the derivation from “jatta” meaning hair. In Urdu and Punjabi “jatta” is a common word for hair. It is more often than not associated with long hair, especially the long hair of the ascetic
It is said that Jats and Rajputs are the same stock but are called differently on the basis of their mode of assimilation in our part of the world as foreigners. One can say that like everyone else in the territory known as Punjab Jats arrived from Central Asia in antiquity.
The majority of the Punjabis are Jats and that applies to Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus. The strange cross-communal government that dominated undivided Punjab till 1947 was made up predominantly of Jats and Rajputs.
The most impressive authority on baraderi politics in Punjab is Philip E Jones known for his monumental study The Pakistan People’s Party: Rise to Power (OUP). He says most of the Sikhs in the Unionist coalition were Jats while most of the Hindus in it were Rajputs.
Most Jats like to be called chaudhry, but don’t be misled by this because all sorts of other people also call themselves chaudhry. Like malik, chaudhry too is an honorific and denotes rank claimed on the basis of property. But if you have inherited it and retain it as a prefix, then you can also be a poor Chaudhry!
Chaudhara in my dictionary means crest (of some kind of head-gear?) but the most common meaning is village elder (panch). The prefix chau indicates four directions and anyone who gets control of these four dimensions has to have authority.
But there is possibly a negative side connected with chau. It can also mean someone who has menial obligation in all the four directions. For instance a sweeper is called chuhara and the profession has now developed into a caste in India.
But about panch my dictionary is quite clear. The village authority at times is comprised of five persons, not four. It could be because an even number cannot always resolve a deadlock through voting. A panchayat today may be of many chaudhrys, not just five.
English punch, which is the name of a party drink, was coined in India. The drink itself was invented to fend off the hot weather, but it was named punch because it had originally just five ingredients, five is panch in Hindi. The other punch in the sense of a blow is derived from the same root as pounce.
Coming back to the Jats, one has to consider the derivation from jatta meaning hair. In Urdu and Punjabi jatta is a common word for hair. It is more often than not associated with long hair, especially the long hair of the ascetic.
It is quite possible that long hair was kept by the Jats. They must have been farmers who kept close to nature and did not cut their hair. By not cutting their hair the Sikhs may have actually gone back to the Jat tradition!
Sharif Kunjahi is our only living expert of words, but he tends to be a little eccentric. He has connected the Jats racially with the inhabitants of Jutland in Europe. Just because Jutland contains the sound jut it doesn’t establish a racial connection. The inhabitants of Jutland are called Jutes.
The word jute takes us to the fibre of East Bengal also called patsan. My dictionary tells me that jute was coined in English from Bengali joto meaning hair. It is close to Punjabi jhaata (hair) and clearly points to the way jute tends to wave in water.
Patsan (jute) means silk rope. And that too is close to how jute feels like to the touch. Pat is an old word for silk but it has been used generally for the cloth too. Patti and pattola are its diminutive forms. Word patta is also used for hair, but it denotes more the act of weaving than hair.
Jones notes that names like Cheema, Chattha, Gondal, Mokal, Malhi, Sandhu, Sumra, Tarar, Waraich, etc, all indicate Jat extraction. He also notes that some Jats can be Malik Jats just as some Chaudhrys can be non-Jats.
It is quite possible that the Jats, although Aryan in origin, got a non-Aryan title (Jat) attached to them because they were assimilated differently from the Rajputs. *
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