A Voice Of The Indian Desert

By Son Lal

Tan Dan about fights in the feudal age, and the liberation of the feudal serfs in the 1950s. Narrations from his native village. Detha cattlebreeders had clashes with feudal lords, who did not want to accept any rivalry to their supremacy. Untouchable Hindus worked as humiliated serfs. Among them Harji, who was beaten so much that he died. His hair was too long. Eventually the suppressed farmers became landowners instead of their former masters.
The book is a personal testimony of a remote feudal world experienced from inside. Tan Dan explains the background of feudal traditions, which influenced the life of people long after the feudal rule formally had ended. He tells about the reasons for fights and conflicts among powerful villagers. Tan Dan saw how feudal subjects had become so used to social suppression, that they lived in total meekness and silence. Those very few who did not follow compulsory feudal rules suffered severely like Harji. He dared to let his hair grow,although it was forbidden.
Tan Dan experienced robber bands with bonds to the feudal elite. They were a terror in the area, until the new farmer class managed to get the government to stop them. Hence, the scene changed when suppressed farmers became landowners in the 1950s and could form a powerful social class with a say in Rajasthan politics.
This is a book about violence and suppression. Feudal village fights as a way of life. Customs and traditions imposed on large groups to make them submissive. Social inequality as a social order. The book is also about the change towards a better life for subjugated groups, after generations of sufferings.
Tan Dan has since childhood been a close friend of many suppressed villagers. Here is his narration from a small traditional village, that in 1950 was surrounded by long stretches of sandy bushy grassland, later on converted into overexploited farm land. Far away in colourful Rajasthan with a friendly people, a beautiful desert landscape and a challenging history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Son Lal
• Release date: May 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301685172

Son Lal

Son Lal is my pen name. I was born in a Scandinavian country of northern Europe in the early 1940s. I have lived in India off and on for fifty years, since I first arrived to the Gateway of India at Bombay by ship in 1963.

Book preview

A voice from the Indian desert

Tan Dan about fights in the feudal age and the liberation of the feudal serfs

By Son Lal

Copyright 2013 by Son Lal

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. World Rights Reserved.

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This is a work of fiction. The names and characters come from the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Similarly, the locations and incidents in this book, which might resemble real locations and events, are being used fictitiously and are not to be considered as real.

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A voice from the Indian desert

Tan Dan about fights in the feudal age and the liberation of the feudal serfs

Behind stonewalls in Rajasthan

Tan Dan's version of the feudal clan life of his home region in his youth and earlier. About an age which ended in the 1950s but still goes on.

As narrated to his friend Son Lal around 1980.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Tan Dan and his clan

Chapter 2 The fights with the Nilkhedi village lord

Chapter 3 The dispute about an ox cart around 1870

Chapter 4 The dispute about the Detha gate around 1900

Chapter 5 The fight with the police at the Chelana Thikana in 1927

Chapter 6 Dethas were pastoral warriors inexperienced to village life

Chapter 7 The sufferings of feudal subjects

Chapter 8 Dacoit activities around Chelana in feudal time

Chapter 9 Farmer life in feudal Chelana

Chapter 10 When the feudal tenants became landowning farmers

Chapter 11 Ecological aspects of the land reform

Chapter 12 The tradition of revenge among Rajput families in western Rajasthan

Chapter 13 The jagirdar who became a dacoit

Chapter 14 The end of dacoity in western Rajasthan

Chapter 15 Dacoit Pratap Singh at Chelana

Conclusion

Endnotes

Indian words used in this book are explained here.

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Chapter 1 Tan Dan and his clan

This is Tan Dan's version of the feudal clan life of his home region in his youth and earlier. Others may have different ways of looking at these events. It is an attempt to get close to feudal victims, who silently suffered social injustice for generations. Who never got a chance to tell their own versions in public.

Who is Tan Dan?

Tan Dan Detha was born in a farmer family of the Charan caste in 1943. His native village is Chelana in Jodhpur District of Rajasthan in northwestern India. Tan Dan has lived in the midst of his strongly traditional environment all his life. He is a critical observer rather than a follower of that tradition.

Who is Son Lal?

Son Lal is my pen name. I was born in a Scandinavian country of northern Europe in the early 1940s. I have lived in India off and on for fifty years, since I first arrived at the Gateway of India in Bombay by ship in 1963. In the 1970s I met Tan Dan. We soon found we shared many views on the world, and had the same curiosity of village life. I saw a chance to learn how he experienced his rural environment. He did his best to explain, and I am grateful to him for having shared his knowledge and thoughts with me.

How this narration was done

Tan Dan told in English and I typed, while we sat together in long sessions. His many photos became a starting point for our discussions. Our knowledge of English was on the same level and we formulated the sentences together. Sentence after sentence, day after day. Most of it we wrote around 1980, but some additions were made in later decades. Afterwards I have edited the material and supplemented some sections with information from elsewhere. Still, it is Tan Dan's voice that is heard on these pages. It is a personal narration by a village farmer, and has no connection to any university.

The origin of the Detha clan that moved to Chelana

Tan Dan's forefathers were livestock breeders. In the mediaeval age they lived in eastern Sind, now in Pakistan. The men moved around over vast grassland stretches with big cattle herds and had homesteads in desert villages around Umarkot. Women and children lived permanently in mud huts with straw roof, while their men stayed there off and on. They were independent pastorals with no village lords around but themselves. Their economic strength they got from selling batches of male calves for oxen. These oxen were not only for ploughing and pulling carts but also for pack oxen caravans owned by Banjara transporters. To local rulers they also sold batches of horses to be used in armies. Some were delivered to rulers in Rajasthan, who gave the Dethas feudal rights to grazing land as a kind of payment.

The first Detha group moved from Sindh to Rajasthan in the 16th century. At that time Dethas kept supplying horses to the Hindu rulers of Mevar state in their wars against Moghul rulers. Once the Mewar ruler did not have enough cash for paying a batch of five hundred horses. Then it was decided that the Dethas and breeders of another Charan clan would be given good grazing land in the form of big estates in the troublesome border area between the Mevar and Marvar states. Detha kinship groups started to live there.

A few centuries later Tan Dan's ancestors left their native village Kharoda in Sind for Daulatgarh, a Mevar village close to the border Marvar border. From Daulatgarh they moved to Devli village in Marvar state near the Aravalli hills. In the early 19th century Tan Dan's greatgreatgrandfather Kan Dan got feudal land for grazing their cattle from the Marwar maharajah at Jodhpur. The land was at Chelana forty miles to the north and three of Kan Dan's sons started to live there. They had got bushy grassland in the wilderness in between three or four villagers, one of which was Chelana. In the beginning there was no problem to use that land, but later on the Thakur of the neighbouring Nilkhedi village objected to the presence of the Detha strangers, as he wanted to graze his own cattle on that land. He was the jagir landholder of the whole village and did not recognize the feudal land right the Dethas had got from Jodhpur. The dispute got hotter and hotter, especially after Tan Dan's grandfather started to cultivate rainfed crops on a part of the land in the monsoon season.

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Chapter 2 The fights with the Nilkhedi village lord

The struggle for land between the Dethas and the Thakur family of Nilkhedi continued for about a century until it culminated in a bloody feud in 1929.

Mahesh Dan at the Nilkhedi Thikana in 1929

Early in 1929 there had been a dangerous incidence, when Mahesh Dan, Tan Dan's uncle, had gone to the Thikana of the Nilkhedi Thakur for condolence at the death of the Thakur's mother. At the beginning of his visit all was normal and friendly as both parties had decided to settle the issue at court instead of by fight in the usual feudal style. But later the Thakur gave a sign to close the gate of the Thikana, and they handed over a legal document to be signed by Mahesh Dan, who was the most furious of all the Detha brothers. The document gave the land right to the Thakur and was written by his secretary (kamdar). Mahesh Dan took the paper, started reading it, and suddenly put it in the fire, that was burning at the condolence ceremony just in front of where he was sitting. Then he jumped to his feet and rushed in between the two lines of sitting mourners towards the Thakur, climbed the staircase and reached the top of the wall of the small fortress. From there he jumped down on the sand outside the wall. He abused them and ran home. This escape was considered a major heroic deed of the Detha family, and folk songs have been sung in its praise.

The attack on the Detha cultivators in the Nilkhedi field

A few months later, when the monsoon rains had set in, Tej Dan Detha (Tan Dan's father) and his brothers went to their fields in Nilkhedi village to start ploughing. Two times earlier in recent years there had been armed clashes, when the Detha brothers tried to cultivate their land. Both times the Thakur's people had been defeated, as the Dethas were well trained and had equipped themselves for fight. No one had been killed.

This time they had come without notice, and they tried to plough their fields quietly. A court case was going on between them and the Thakur of Nilkhedi about the ownership of the land. They thought they had nothing to fear, as long as the court proceedings were going on.

As soon as the Detha brothers had left Chelana in the early morning, with their oxen and ploughs, Chelana Rajputs hurried to Nilkhedi to inform the Thakur there that the Dethas were coming. They urged the Thakur and his people to fight for their feudal rights. The Dethas had been a threat to the feudal honour of the Chelana Rajputs since a fight about a bullock cart around 1870 and the Rajputs thoroughly disliked their independent manners. They saw a chance to get them finished, if a fight would occur, as many Rajputs would join. The Dethas would not retreat. It was a clan of cattle breeders, who had been fighting for their land rights for generations under insecure conditions. The Rajputs of Chelana had time and again teased the Nilkhedi Thakur about his inactivity and inability to wash away this shame on his feudal honour. They reminded