recorded history, we know that in the second half of the fifteenth century, Kshetra Singh of Mewar (ruled 1364–82) conquered Jahazpur along with Mandalgarh and Ajmer, taking it from the Pathans and annexing it to Mewar (Purohit 1938:69). Jahazpur’s hilltop fort was among many that were built during an immense fortification project for the expanding kingdom of Mewar undertaken by Maharana Kumbha (ruled 1433–68) in the mid-fifteenth century (Hooja 2006:341–47; Purohit 1938:66).16 In the sixteenth century Jahazpur came under Mughal rule but not for long. Documented sources report that the emperor Akbar gave Jahazpur to Maharana Pratap’s rebellious half-brother Jagmal after the death of their father Udai Singh (Hooja 2006:466). This would have been just following the time period when Yagyapur became Jahazpur and when some local groups converted to Islam.
Jahazpur’s fort was captured by the small neighboring kingdom of Shahpura in the early eighteenth century and recaptured by Mewar about a hundred years later (Dāngī 2002). According to Purohit (1938), during the Maratta rebellion Jahazpur was for some time under the domination of Jhala Zalim Singh of Kota. Except for those relatively brief interludes between the Mughals and Independence, Jahazpur qasba and its surrounding farmlands remained under Mewar. Jahazpur’s last deputized local ruler, Vijay Pratap Singh, died in 1931 (some say he was murdered).
From chasing such slight references to Jahazpur as may be gleaned from history books, old gazetteers, and district census handbooks, the impression I have is that among the capitals from which Jahazpur was governed, only Shahpura was nearby, and Shahpura was too small to hold on to it. The capital of Rajputana’s preeminent kingdom, Mewar, within which Jahazpur was most often included, was at a considerable distance. Even in 2011, when I traveled by car from Jahazpur to Udaipur for a conference, I was struck by the distance, compounded by a very poor road for a significant stretch of the journey. I thought a lot on that trip about how far this distance might have seemed in the times of the Ranas.
Although it was certainly a pawn in royal doings for many centuries, my conjecture is that Jahazpur, intermittently but for lengthy periods of history, flew largely under the radar of rulers in any capital. There were for example wild fluctuations in revenue collection (Sehgal 1975:53). Because of the large Mina population in the region, this was never an easy place to rule. Minas were by reputation fiercely independent and powerful fighters. Sometimes they served whoever was ruling but just as often effectively defied impositions (taxes, conscriptions) from any outside power. Tellingly, when Colonel Tod visited in 1818 it was Minas who greeted him (see Chapter 5). It may well have been a matter of little regret for a ruler to hand off Jahazpur to someone else, as Akbar did to Jagmal. It is also advisable in considering Jahazpur history to take into account that dominant communities in Jahazpur qasba proper were never Rajput and were concerned with trade, not war. No matter who was ruling, opportunities to buy and sell would be ongoing.17
In 1997 I recorded, in Ghatiyali, Sukhdevji Gujar’s memories. The most critical juncture of his young adult life took place in the early 1940s and involved Jahazpur’s Nau Chauk. It was there that he went to enlist in the army. He walked thirty-three kilometers alone in the night, from Ghatiyali to Jahazpur. He told me:
I wasn’t afraid of anything, and nothing attacked me! I didn’t meet anyone at all, I went on foot. [To walk alone in the night requires a lot of courage.] In Jahazpur, at the place called Nau Chauk, people were enlisting in the military; in the middle of the city.
There were hundreds of people there, who had come in order to enlist…. carpenters, gardeners, ironworkers, Minas, Rajputs, lots of people, all the jatis. And a gentleman came, a fair-skinned gentleman, an Englishman. There was just one: “Duke Sahab” [presumably a British military officer]. He arrived, sitting on a horse, and wearing a hat on his head…. People were lined up there in rows, three by three, and the gentleman walked in-between the rows, looking, looking. And then he put a mark on me.
And the ones who had marks, they took them over to one side, so they put me on one side with them. On that day, in one day, in the same fashion, 150 people were selected; out of many hundreds who wanted to enlist. (Gold and Gujar 2002:168–69, condensed and slightly reworded)
Sukhdevji’s memory is evidence that in late colonial times, during World War II, Nau Chauk had its official functions and was put to use by the British, in spite of Jahazpur being part of Mewar and governed under paramountcy rather than direct rule. I imagine Duke Sahab would have taken permission from the Rana in Udaipur to use Nau Chauk in Jahazpur as a recruitment site, but that is pure speculation. I do know with certainty that Nau Chauk and much that lies in its vicinity is intimately connected with the checkered history of rule in Jahazpur.
Adjacent to Nau Chauk is a building that is now Jahazpur’s overflowing upper secondary school. The school building is grafted onto a former royal residence in an architecturally odd fusion. On the grounds of the school or former palace is a large, gated shrine to the Hindu deity Ganesh, which everyone knows as a place where a powerful authority once sat, whether it was Jahangir, Shah Jahan, or the delegated royal agent for this area (hakim). Ram Swarup Chipa, for example, told us that Ganesh’s place was once a meeting hall built by Jahangir. Another Hindu man from an artisan community speculated for us that Hindus had installed Ganesh there in order to claim it for themselves, as a preemptive move against Muslim ownership.
However, a Muslim interviewee told us explicitly that Ganeshji was put there deliberately by a Mughal ruler to ensure that no ordinary mortal being could ever sit on the same spot where the emperor had held court. A different Muslim interviewee had told us in 2008, “Shah Jahan was sitting where Ganesh is now. He thought, ‘after me, no one can sit on my chair,’ so he himself installed the Ganesh image.” Shravan Patriya, a Brahmin journalist, told us that Ganesh was installed in this courtyard “to keep the place pure.” In all its variations, the installation of Ganesh would seem to mark an amiable delegation of power from Muslims back to Hindus in Jahazpur’s past.
A number of persons from different communities referred to Nau Chauk in interviews as a site of significance to the history of the town, or of their own families and trades. Some further tidbits about Nau Chauk are compelling.
Kailash, whose caste identity was wine seller (although this was not his current business) told us that the liquor storehouse maintained by his community had been located in Nau Chauk. To measure out the liquor, he said, “they used a little brass pot, and distributed it straight from a small storage tank.” He told us that his great-aunt would “measure out liquor with the brass pot and sell it there.”18 Another man, from the leather-working community, spoke of his grandfather who was a “tantric magician.” Once, one of the great kings of Udaipur came to Jahazpur and summoned our interviewee’s grandfather, demanding that he perform his magical arts. Where did this take place? In Nau Chauk. The man asserted that his grandfather did not disappoint the king; he took a broom and transformed each one of its straws into scorpions.
As they piled up, Nau Chauk stories began to remind me of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61—an ironic venue for every kind of weird, game-changing performance in the history of humankind. Even today, many ritually significant events take place at Nau Chauk. The taziya, symbolic tomb of heroic martyrs whose deaths were a turning point in Islamic history, spends the entire night on the edge of Nau Chauk, before both annual Muharram processions (separated by forty days). Although Jahazpur had many Holi fires in many different neighborhoods, a major Holi effigy is staked and burned at Nau Chauk. This was the only Holi where I saw a Brahmin priest perform a worship ritual before igniting the demoness wreathed in firecrackers. On both Hindu and Muslim festivals, demonstrations of physical prowess, commonly called akara by both religious communities, took place at Nau Chauk.
Figure 8. Children drum at Nau Chauk on Muharram procession morning.
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