Historical Sikh Population Records From 1800S (Tangent Topic: When Did Your Family Become Sikhs)

[proactive]

Legal Singh,

The reason why the debate is going in different directions is because points of view counter to your own are being presented and as yet you have not been able to give an answer to these.

You said 1881 census was flawed but then what about the 1891 or 1901? Your point would have value if in 1881 Hindu and Sikh Jats were equal in number and in 1891 and in every census afterwards Sikh Jats jumped to 80% and Hindus fell to 20% of the non-Muslim Jat popilation. But this is not the case.

You state that no Sikh Jat has discovered that he had Hindu ancestors. If you go back long enough you will get Hindu names. Have you asked every Jat and have they given you the same answer? You might just know Jats from your area and your area as you state was an area settled by Sikh Jats.

You presented your point that the Sikh Jats, if they really received so many Hindu Jat converts then they would have increased as a percentage of the total Sikh population but I showed you with statistics that this was not the case because the non-Jat converts during the same period were so much higher.

Unless you answer the above points then this debate will not be going anywhere.

[Jonny101]

Sorry Johnny but you're just over 100 years too late with the news. The British census makers already admitted at the end of the 1800's that they'd made mistakes with the '81 and '91 census by including lots of non-jatts groups in the heading of 'jatts'. By continuing to quote the findings of a seriously flawed census you're now flogging a dead horse. Give it up bruvs. It's over.

Do some detailed research into what kind of groups made up that figure of '50% of punjab's jatts were Hindu' in the 1881 census. You're in for a nasty shock. There are groups in there that you would never in a lifetime think of as having anything in common with jatts.....groups that are even to this day very hindu in character. Groups that as far removed from jatts as you can possibly get.

But like I said, it's over now. Even the British admitted the mistakes. It'd be silly for you to cling on to the findings even after the authors admitted their own flaws

Legal Singh Jee, you cannot just conveniently dismiss factual proof like census data just because it does not agree with your preconceived notions. Pick up any book on the history of Jatts, written by historians, they always quote these census reports for every Gote they write about. I'm not doubting your own family's historical link to the past. But to say every single Jalandhar Jatt became a Sikh during or before the 1700s is not accurate.

1700s is the most difficult time in Sikh history. Sikhs faced genocide after genocide. It was considered a crime just to be a Sikh and this crime was punishable by death. Sikhs were forced to abandon their homes and live in jungles just to survive, this was no easy decision for those brave Singhs. To say every single Jalandhar Jatt was a Sikh warrior during this time is a very bold statement. Only 5% of people in all of Punjab(of all castes) were brave enough to want to be Sikhs and they were evenly yet thinly distributed all over Majha, Malwa Doaba. Majha probably having the largest share, followed by Malwa then Doaba to be historically fair.

[mrggg123]

so how many muslims converted to Sikhism? I have a feeling my ancestors were definitely muslims lol

[LegalSingh]

The reason why the debate is going in different directions is because points of view counter to your own are being presented and as yet you have not been able to give an answer to these

I've offered a number of possible answers....from the clearly flawed census' to the common practice in Punjab at the time of referring to yourself as a Hindu if not a muslim to the uneduacted and unenlightened relying on the urban educated classes to answer his census questions for him. However, you've ignored everything as you desperately cling to the census findings with tunnel vision.

You said 1881 census was flawed but then what about the 1891

I said no such thing. What I've said again and again is "the census' of the late 1800's". Please correct me if I'm wrong because I make no claims of being great at spelling and grammer but doesn't the fact that I keep putting an apostophe at the end of the word census imply that I'm talking about more than one census ? Doesn't an apostophe at the end of a word ending with the letter 's' signify a pluralisation of the singular ? Like I said, I'm actually quite bad at grammar, but i did try in a couple of messages to write 'censuses' but it looked wrong so I changed it to census'. It still looks wrong (and probably is) but seeing how I kept doing it in message after message I would have thought my meaning was clear enough.

You state that no Sikh Jat has discovered that he had Hindu ancestors. If you go back long enough you will get Hindu names.

I said absolutely no such thing. Are you suggesting that I'm suggesting our ancestors were rastafarians or dropped onto the Punjab plains by an alien spaceship ? Seriously, re-read the thread bruvs, you're getting yourself confused. What I said was that it certainly wasn't the case that most jatt Sikhs only became Sikhs relatively recently during the singh sabha movement....i.e the 1920's.

Unless you answer the above points then this debate will not be going anywhere.

Well I've shown quite clearly how your 'above points' were wrong but I agree with you in that this debate ain't going anywhere fast. If you think about it there really isn't too much of an argument. I've stated that if people like Johnny say his family only became Sikhs recently because of the singh sabha movement than that is an undeniable fact. None of us can impose our own family's history onto another. It doesn't make him any less of a Sikh than me just as I'm not a lesser Sikh than the khatri or bhatra who's family have been Sikhs since Guru Nanak dev ji. Whats important and what we should be thankfull for is the fact that our ancestors, somehwre along the line, stepped out of the darkness and entered the light. However from a purely historical point of view I think you should place slightly more weight on my valid points and slightly less on data that is proven flawed.

[proactive]

I've offered a number of possible answers....from the clearly flawed census' to the common practice in Punjab at the time of referring to yourself as a Hindu if not a muslim to the uneduacted and unenlightened relying on the urban educated classes to answer his census questions for him. However, you've ignored everything as you desperately cling to the census findings with tunnel vision.

It's actually the other way round. In the censuses before the 1911 census, if a person with Kesh and a Sikh appearance presented themselves to the enumerator as a Hindu, his religion would be recorded as Hindu but he would be included in the Sikh figure, hence the large number of Hindu Sikhs in 1881. Only in 1911 were the enumerators instructed to record the religion as whatever the person said it was. So if a person of Sikh appearance called himself a Hindu, he would be placed in the Hindu total.

I said no such thing. What I've said again and again is "the census' of the late 1800's". Please correct me if I'm wrong because I make no claims of being great at spelling and grammer but doesn't the fact that I keep putting an apostophe at the end of the word census imply that I'm talking about more than one census ? Doesn't an apostophe at the end of a word ending with the letter 's' signify a pluralisation of the singular ? Like I said, I'm actually quite bad at grammar, but i did try in a couple of messages to write 'censuses' but it looked wrong so I changed it to census'. It still looks wrong (and probably is) but seeing how I kept doing it in message after message I would have thought my meaning was clear enough.

The only censuses of the late 1800s were the 1881 and 1891 census. Your contention still fails because the 1901 census still showed a significant number of Hindu Jats.

So, to answer the original posters question. As a dhaiwal jatt from doaba, the manjki tract to be exact, my own family history is crystal clear. That tract encompasses alot of viillages and it is those villages that a very large number of Sikhs in England, Canada, Italy, Australia and California are originally from. That tract was given as a jagir specifically to jatt sikh clans by the mughal emporer in the late 1700's to keep the piece with them as they were constantly at war with his forces. They were attacking the mughals in the name of Sikhism. The historical context then for alot of doaba villages in Jalandhar district to even exist lies totally in Sikhism as all of the jatt clans settled there oroginally came from both majha and malwa and actually came with the adavancement of Sikh misls.

Well in 1901 after the flawed censuses of 1881 and 1891, in Jalandhar the Dhariwal Got had 1,164 Hindus and 1,518 Sikhs.

[LegalSingh]

Well in 1901 after the flawed censuses of 1881 and 1891, in Jalandhar the Dhariwal Got had 1,164 Hindus and 1,518 Sikhs.

Well now. We really are determined to base all our arguments on the findings of flawed and dodgy censuses arn't we ?

Now. The Dhariwal clan do not exist in Jalandhar district. Never have done and even today you'll be lucky to find even one stray one. So much for the census of 1901 then eh ? :biggrin2:

The Dhaliwals exist in Jalndhar district and as I mentioned earlier they came down to Jalandhar district as a Sikh misl under Bhagel Singh and as a misl they even raided Delhi and hoisted the Khanda on top of the Red Fort there. With this power....prestige...honour...all under the banner of the Khalsa in the 1700's ...you seriously trying to tell me that half of them stayed Hindus up until 1920. ? :stupidme:

Give it a rest now Procative. I salute your loyalty to the flawed cenuses but its getting rather silly now.

[isingh1699]

Legal Veerji you still haven't been able to refute how the 5% of Punjabi's that were Sikh in 1800 can outnumber the 8% of Punjabi's that became Sikh after 1800.

Given that, according to you, the overwhelming majority of Jatt tribesmen became Sikh prior to 1800 then by 1947 the Jatt tribe should have comprised around a 20% minority of Sikhs due to the influx of non-Jatt converts in the Singh Sabha movement's heyday.

In reality nowadays Sikhs of Jatt tribal ancestry account for around 46% of Sikhs in Punjab.

This figure is according to Jatt Mahasabha's demand for Backward Caste status on the OBC list (in whose interest it would be to inflate that figure) and the only explanation for that current figure is conversion of Hindu Jatts to Sikhi thanks to the impact of the Singh Sabha movement as it began to gain momentum around 125 years ago.

125 years ago was 5 generations back in the case of most families and not the 1920's you mistakenly referred to.

But yes the Singh Sabha Lehar and the Akali movement to liberate our Gurdwara's in the 1920's were effectively one and the same which is what may have confused your perception of the subject.

I can't believe how, on the basis of your own family's history, you are denying the indisputable facts presented by Proactive Veerji + Jonny101 Veerji.

But I do think u will make a good lawyer.

Even if your client is guilty of murder I'm sure you as an attorney can convince yourself that he was elsewhere at the time of the murder.

But I think the jury of Sikh history knows that Sikhi was never popular in Punjab - our current "dominance" is only as a result of the 1947 Genocide of 25% of Sikhs in Pakistan by Punjabi Muslims and the ethnic cleansing of Sikhs from Pakistan, as well as the 1966 East Punjab boundary changes.

Even after the Singh Sabha movement's extensive efforts we still only amounted to 13% of Punjabi's in 1947 and we were a minority in all districts of Punjab.

Your individual family history is different but remember your Dhaliwal clan are just one clan from the Jatt tribe, just like clan McDonald is a single Scottish clan.

If my memory serves me correct many of the Dhaliwal Jatts from the Manjki tract opposed the Khalsa Raj and sided with the British in 1849.

Of course the true Sikh Amritdhari's who as Khalsa rejected their Jatt tribal affiliations + looked only to the Khalsa Panth for brotherhood fought against the British.

It's great that Sikhs are finally a majority nowadays in Malwa and Majha (compared to the Hindu's that comprise the majority in the Doaba districts) but inward migration into Punjab, conversion of Sikhs into Derawadi slaves and into Abrahamic cults may leave us as a minority in East Punjab in the next decade.

But maybe that will serve as a wake up call for us to put aside our differences and work more unitedly to try continue the Singh Sabha tradition.

Differences of opinion on this subject aside I do salute your ancestors for liberating themselves from the falsehoods of Hinduism + Islam at the time in history they did and embracing the Sikh ideals of equality, justice, brotherhood, charity and service to humanity.

Perhaps we should turn this discussion into the direction of how do we increase Sikh numbers amongst the Punjabi Qaum nowadays?

The Punjabi Muslims now speaking Urdu, Hindu Punjabi's choosing to converse in Hindi and with our community still majority rural ...

I think we need your everyone's ideas on how we can grow our numbers in this setting given the problems of drugs, abortions and tribal mindsets that affect us.

Achieving freedom seems to be a fantasy at this point when we haven't built the foundations of a 100% united and de-tribalised Qaum and drugs continue to flood in with ISI + RAW supervision as well as the new agents of KP Gill aborting our Qaum's future before they are born.

[proactive]

Well now. We really are determined to base all our arguments on the findings of flawed and dodgy censuses arn't we ?

Now. The Dhariwal clan do not exist in Jalandhar district. Never have done and even today you'll be lucky to find even one stray one. So much for the census of 1901 then eh ? :biggrin2:

The Dhaliwals exist in Jalndhar district and as I mentioned earlier they came down to Jalandhar district as a Sikh misl under Bhagel Singh and as a misl they even raided Delhi and hoisted the Khanda on top of the Red Fort there. With this power....prestige...honour...all under the banner of the Khalsa in the 1700's ...you seriously trying to tell me that half of them stayed Hindus up until 1920. ? :stupidme:

Give it a rest now Procative. I salute your loyalty to the flawed cenuses but its getting rather silly now.

Dhariwal are called Dhaliwal in Jalandhar. They are the same tribe and referred to as Dhariwal almost every place in Punjab other than in Jalandhar, The census considered them to be the same tribe and hence to stop confusion referred to them as Dhariwal. The census tables were collated to give an overall picture of the strength of each got and not to go into the nuances of each got which was left for the gazetteer publications and for the census report The migration of many Jat tribes from Majha to Malwa, Doaba and Gujranwala occurred much earlier than the Misl period. Although the Misldars from Majha would still have contacts with their tribe that had migrated to outside of Majha previously and use the contacts to get men and supplies to supplement their forces in any attack in areas outside of Majha. In many cases the Misldars especially in places like Gujranwala would invade from Majha in order to specifically assist their own gots in their struggle with the Muslim tribes of the region.

I still see that you do not address the points raised before. Prior to 1911 was no way that a Jat of Sikh appearance even if he gave his religion as Hindu would be listed as a Hindu. he would be listed as a Sikh. There was a suggestion that the Hindu Jats may have been monas. There was prior to 1947 really no such thing as a mona Sikh Jat. In the Sikh Jat villages the kids might have had cut hair but as they got older they would become Keshdhari,The few adult mona Jat Sikhs were people such as returnees from Canada or people in government service like Mahinder S Randhawa who was a District Commissioner of Delhi in 1947 and later did sterling work rehabilitating the Sikh refugees in Punjab after 1947. In Malwa the only mona Jats were the udasis sadhs in their deras.

[proactive]

so how many muslims converted to Sikhism? I have a feeling my ancestors were definitely muslims lol

There has never been a serious study done to determine how many Muslims had converted to Sikhism. After the victory of Banda Singh Bahadur many Muslims cast their lot in with the Sikhs seeing this as their only means of survival or wanting to become one with the new power that was replacing the Mughals. It is tempting to wonder what the Punjab would have been like today had Banda Singh Bahadur succeeded in replacing the Mughal rule permanently. The Muslim Jat tribes beyond Lahore had only been forcibly converted during the time of Aurangzeb a few decades before, so they might have made common cause with the Sikhs in Western Punjab. The Sikh rule might have taken the form of a Reconquista like the Christians did in Spain.

The only work I have come across that tried to enumerate how many Sikhs were from a Muslim background was a survey carried out by a British official in Lahore in 1846-47. From memory he listed Hindu Sikhs and Muslim Sikhs ie Sikhs from a Hindu background and Sikhs from a Muslim background. I think the figures were 10 % for Muslim Sikhs and 90% for Hindu Sikhs. I will try and see if I can get hold of the exact figures and post them here.

[californiasardar1]

Prior to 1911 was no way that a Jat of Sikh appearance even if he gave his religion as Hindu would be listed as a Hindu. he would be listed as a Sikh. There was a suggestion that the Hindu Jats may have been monas. There was prior to 1947 really no such thing as a mona Sikh Jat. In the Sikh Jat villages the kids might have had cut hair but as they got older they would become Keshdhari,The few adult mona Jat Sikhs were people such as returnees from Canada or people in government service like Mahinder S Randhawa who was a District Commissioner of Delhi in 1947 and later did sterling work rehabilitating the Sikh refugees in Punjab after 1947. In Malwa the only mona Jats were the udasis sadhs in their deras.

Based on discussions I've had with my parents and grandparents, it does seem that mona jatt sikhs were almost non-existent in the 20-30 years prior to the partition. Beard-trimming was common even back then, but it was virtually unheard of to see an adult jatt sikh male without a turban and facial hair.

My parents and grandparents also tell me they never were aware of ANY jatts who lived in what is now the Indian state of Punjab who were Hindu rather than Sikh.

But the period in question is the late 1800s, and I am wondering if prior to the Singh Sabha movement there were mona jatts who tread the line between being Sikh and Hindu (and would have been counted in the census as Hindu by the British who may have only recognized keshdharis as Sikhs). It is possible that with the parchar that took place during the Singh Sabha movement, these mona jatts who tread the line between being Sikh and Hindu became keshdharis and in future censuses were counted as jatt Sikhs.

So by the 1930s, mona punjabi-speaking Hindu or Sikh jatts were virtually non-existant. But I am wondering if they were around in large numbers in the late 1800s, and, if so, what religion(s) they practiced and what religion they were identified as practicing (and if there was any discrepancy between these).