Contents Preface .........................................................................7 1. Geography, Culture and Traditions of Mewat....... 19 2. Origin of the Meo Community ............................. 35 3. Khanzadas of Mewat .............................................57 4. Meo’s Conversion to Islam and Tabligh Movement ................................................... 65 5. Sufi Saints of Mewat................................................ 89 6. Meo’s Retribution under Balban .........................101 7. Raja Bahadur Nahar Khan ....................................109 8. Raja Jalal Khan ........................................................127 9. Raja Hasan Khan.....................................................141 10. Rulers of Firozpur Jhirka.....................................153 11. Narukas of Alwar ...................................................161 12. Jats of Deeg and Bharatpur..................................173 13. Badgujars of Ghasera............................................189 14. Stories as told by Mirasis......................................195 15. Meos and the Uprising of 1857 ..........................201 16. Uncrowned Kings of Mewat ...............................215 Bibliography.........................................................................243

A reassessment of conventional South Asian historiography from a subaltern perspective and a unique look at how conceptions of history and community clash. This incisive study explores the Meo community through their oral literature, revealing sophisticated modes of collective memory and self-government while telling a story that radically diverges from most accepted Indian histories.

This book "Mewat: A Retrospective" is a brief account of the Mewat area, its people and history. It also includes the origin, custom, and traditions of the Meo community which are to many extent different from the other communities of India. It is rather mysterious for the readers to know that these people of the unique culture and civilization reside in the National Capital Region or the suburb of Delhi, the national capital of India. The author gives the full detail of the origin of this aboriginal Meo tribe also throws light on their acceptance of Islam. In this book the author has covered the period from the Muslim invasion in India until the British period when the Mewati people proved their bravery during the First War of Independence. Some periods of the freedom movement also have been covered. The vast period which has been written in this book witness the details of the Mewatis as rulers and as subject. Their relations with the Delhi rulers like Ilbaris, Tughtaqs, Sayyeds, Lodis and Mughals including the British in modern times has also been discussed in detail. The whole chapters are written in such a way that the reader will be informed of all important aspects of the Mewati history. This book resembles the complete history of Mewat composed of both the original sources and heterogeneous materials with the proper application of the hypothesis.

Contestations and Accommodations charts the social, economic, and political history of the Mewat region of north India from the 13th to the early 18th centuries. Denting the conventional image of communities in medieval India as self-sufficient, changeless, and autonomous entities, it takes up the case of the Meos of Mewat to argue that these communities have regularly undergone profound socio-economic changes, which are an integral part of their histories. The volume offers a historically nuanced perspective of the evolution of the identity of Meos. Delineating Mewats ecology and its impact on the economy, it lays bare the process of community formation among the Meos in the wake of their peasantization and Islamicization. Exploring the contours of this transformation in the larger backdrop of the establishment of a centralized state under the Sultanate and the Mughal rule, this work also throws light on the emergence of a new class of zamindars, namely the Rajputs and the Jats, at the cost of the old landed elites, namely the Khanzadas and the Meosa phenomenon that generated significant agrarian turmoil in the rural society at large.

This study examines the contests over, and reshaping of, the identity of the Meos, a group located between Hinduism and Islam. The theoretical issues discussed relate to kingship, religion, nationalism, violence, ethnicity and identity, and proselytization and resistance.