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Life of the People
Nearly eight percent of its
population of about ten million live in about seven thousand villages and
hamlets of varying sizes. The composition and size of the villages differ from
place to place depending on the location. Each area has characteristics of its
own. The caste and community inhabiting a village also impart to it a
certain type of character. A Jat village will be a little different from the one
in which Rajput dominate. A Brahman village can be distinguished from a Gujjar village.
All Jat
villages are not similar. The sub- tribe or gotra of the tribe will impart
certain distinguishing features. All the villages have certain features which
stamp them with general character, irrespective of their location and caste or
gotra of the dominating sections.
The rural people have been very much affected by the wind of
change. The village is not the same as it used to be even a few decades ago.
This change is purely physical. The village now has improved in external
appearance, the essence of village life remains the same. The life of the
villagers remains rooted in their age old customs and traditions. The villagers
have retained their essential frame work of rites and rituals, fairs and
festivals, taboos and superstitions. The people remain deeply attached to the
tribe, caste or sub caste to which they belong. Their social relations,
marriages, eating, drinking and other dealings are still endogamous. The impact
of democracy, secularism or socialism is not obvious. The tolerance,
catholicity, simplicity and spontaneity has made rural life gay and enjoyable. Gone
also is the corporate life which kept the village institutions functioning.
Among the Brahmans and
Rajputs, women of the family have all the
grinding, cooking, cleansing and spinning to do. They are strictly confined to
the walls of the courtyard, where they cook, spin, grind flour, husk rice. Among the Tagas and Gujjars, they go to the well for
water and carry meals to their men in the field and often pick cotton and
safflower. Among the Jats and Rors, they also weed and do other laborious work
in the fields. They all sit about in the alleys, spinning and gossiping. The
boys as soon as they are old enough, are dragged away from their games and sent to
tend the cattle and from that time they are gradually initiated into labour of
their lot. In the evening they play about noisily. Life is terribly dull. The
periodical fair or mela and the occasional wedding form its chief relief's together with the months of sugar
pressing, when everybody goes about with a
yard of cane in his mouth and a great deal of gossiping as well as a good deal
of hard work is done at the press.
Among the Rohtak people, from the day that he is old enough to
control unruly cattle and is considered worthy of some scanty clothes and a
pair of shoes, the life of the Rohtak agriculturist is one monotonous round of
never ceasing work. The fields must be ploughed and prepared at least three or
four time every harvest, the crop has to be sown, weeded and protected from
numerous enemies ( winged and four footed). It is a long and most wearisome task. The
cattle must be tended daily. Money must be earned by taking off the
young stock to sell at the fair, or by carrying grain for the traders to the
distant market. The women work hard as the men. The Zamindar's life is full of laborious toil that the wandering tribes pray that their dead should not be born as
Zamindars.
Some of the modern amenities such as roads, transport and electricity
have helped in lightening the dreadful monotony and hard toil of agricultural
operations. The work has been less laborious due to the coming of tractors,
tube-wells, threshers and other labour-serving devices. The strain of
the cultivators life has increased rather than diminished. The relief
of the physical side has been more than counter balanced by what the village
has lost by the breakdown of the once idyllic peace and quiet of the rural
side and the disappearance of corporate life.
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