The Jats: Their Role and Contribution to the Socio-Economic Life and Polity of North and North-West India (Volume 4)

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The present publication, IVth in its series, is the compilation of selected and in some cases revised papers presented in the XIIth National Seminar, The Jats: Their Role and Contribution to the Socio-economic Life and Polity of North and North-West India' organized by Maharaja Surajmal Centre for Research and Publication, New Delhi on 5th and 6th November 2011. The volume includes thirty three research papers, which brought together here. show an attempt to discuss the background to various segments of Jat history, indicating the kinds of evidence available and the doubts and theories that are under discussion among scholars. A universally acceptable narration of incidents would be hard to understand as some of the evidence is tentative and can change with new findings. But through discussion attempts can be made to get more facts known, and to explain the kinds of problem involved. These papers give opportunity for making efforts to examine various facets of socio- economic life and polity of the Jats, to view both sides of the coin and verify facts against factual and circumstantial evidence and focus the historian's torch on the facts and incident wrapped in darkness, thus provide chance to the readers to share new research and ideas on the specified themes.

Dr. Rajendra Kumar, a double Ph.D. in literature and history, is presently Director of Maharaja Suralmal Centre for Research and Publication, Surajmal Memorial Education Society, C-4, Janakpuri, New Delhi. A man of languages, taught Russian and French languages for over two decades, he is well versed in the history of the Jats and the one who knows how to locate, decipher and analyze the sources of history. His previous publications include various articles on Jat history.

This volume, fourth in the series of Jats: Their Role and Contribution to the Socio-economic Life and Polity of North and North-West India' contains the papers presented in the National Seminar organized by the Maharaja Surajmal Centre for Research and Publication, New Delhi on 5th and 6th November 2011. Selected research papers arranged thematically present a wide range of topics under the variety of thought provocative themes, and this gives this collection such unity as it possesses to interpret the main currents of the history of the Jats from a standpoint which belongs to the new perception of historiography. The reader will find here newer subjects, newer interpretations, and newer academic vistas open before them to discuss the subject.

One can realize that the reader is not likely to be interested in the approach used by the scholars. What he may expect to be interested in is whether we can understand our past as a people better by giving more emphasis to the interaction of material conditions, ideas, struggles in actual work of description and analysis. And a serious reading would reveal the essential difference in the contents and treatment. Such kinds of interpretations can and do deviation from scholarly affairs adding to the problems that a historian generally faces while corelating complex facts.

Any serious student of the history of the Jats is faced with a paradox- there is 'much stated but little collated, much attested but little tested, much shown but little known'. The 'facts' have been displayed in an unending order of succession, but they are based on hearsay, or one sided account of matter from particular point of view of individuals and groups. Seminars give opportunities for making efforts to examine both sides of the coin and verify 'facts' against factual and circumstantial evidence, and focus the historian's torch on the facts and incidents wrapped in darkness. The research papers presented thus provide chance to the learned participants to share new facts and ideas on the specified themes discussion. The benefit widens when these papers after critical examination and suggestions get published in the shape of a book and reach a wider readership.