About most places that I visited since 1986, chiefly in Haryana -my home state, and other places in India, I didn't publish a word. At the age of 70 when I look back at my field and working notes accumulated and piled up, I found that it could be enriched by details that emerged during re-visits and more explorations and recurring discussions with the elders. At the time of the successive visits as it fell apart in time, several elders with whom I had a conversation had left for heavenly above. It could be noted with regret that our village communities now have fewer oral historians.
On the 14th of this month, I had a piggy-ride to village Bahu (Jholri -बहू झोलरी) on the motorbike of a young enthusiast. This second visit occurred after a gap of 24 years and 1 month.
The village estate can be located in the north-western tip of the map of dist. Rewari in Haryana. During colonial times Bahu had remained part of the principality of Dujana, ruled by a Muslim Afghan Chief of Yusufzai clan who had received as reward a large territory southwest of the ancient town of Rohtak (now a district) comprised of two villages (Dujana and Mehrana) south of Rohtak and 22 villages including Nahad and Bahu (नाहड़ और बहू) in the southwest. These village estates formed part of the 'country of Hariana' held by George Thomas, an Irish-origin, soldier of fortune, who had carved a notional state for self around and west of Hansi and remained its master from AD 1789 to 1799. Part of this territory was awarded to Abdus Samad Khan on whom the title of Nawab was conferred by the British. He felt it safer to choose Dujana as the capital village. However, Tehsil Nahad of the State was a detached territory from the Capital village but with a right to passage through the territories under the control of Nawab of Jhajjar besides the territories ceded in part by Marhattas and conquered from Thomas by the British.
On the way to Bahu it could be noticed that significant changes had occurred: more trees and bush could be seen along the roads and small distributaries of the Jawahar Lal Nehru canal system; the roads were wider and better; natural water ponds had more water than it could be noticed during the summer season or in 1998; the village had better road connectivity to neighboring villages, small towns and district headquarters; a Primary Health Center had been set up; the village itself had expanded in terms of population, the bazar and the number of dwellings; a couple of new schools including several private schools and a few number of professional colleges had been established in the vicinity; the railway track passing through the territory of Rewari had been doubled and converted to broad-gauge apart from a huge power generation plant that came up at Jharli a decade and a half ago with an installed capacity of1500 MW, daily.
The increase in the green cover could be due to good seasonal rains and encouraging plantation by the power plant authorities under the CSR. However, my interest was to verify the status of the heritage value buildings and the changes in the surrounding environment of the village. It was discovered that the surroundings have become filthier, structures built on the banks of the natural ponds by prominent residents of the village -mostly the merchant class from the Agrawal community, were in neglect or crumbling. Almost all the masonry wells with fine superstructures built 80 to 130 years ago were in a state of abandonment or abused. Some of these fine structures were found to be used as abode or storage space for firewood and dried cow-dung cakes. Two of the three fine looking water bodies except the pond named 'Dehki', located on the northern fringe were being used to dispose of the filthy water by the inhabitants. Adjacent to the ponds were raised two memorial cenotaphs with canopies, below which chambers on the ground were also provided. On the southern bank of one of the ponds could be seen six masonry wells once used to fetch drinking water. Most of the garbage that the residents of the northern Mohallas of the village produced was regularly dumped near to the two beautifully shelters constructed more than 70 years ago adjacent to the pond. The littered garbage was nauseating as I found a way to tread through the track to reach the 'Dehki' pond to have a look at the sturdy masonry Well, built 130 years ago when a memorial structure was raised by the decedents of Seth Sadhu Ram.
On the western fringe of the village, the memorial Chhatri constructed 120 years ago in the name of Seth Govardhan Das was found in utter state of neglect and the open space of about two bighas of land (about 2,500 yards sq.) on which it stands was taken into possession by an agreement with the owners for constructing a building for primary school. In consequence a fine structure of a huge masonry Well adjacent to the Chhatri had to be demolished to acquire more space for the school. On inquiring, it revealed that the structure was demolished 20 years ago and the cylinder of the Well, filled with the rubble of its super-structure. The dilapidated structures of revenue collector's office and record room located inside the 'Garh' or inside a fortified elevated piece of land once built by the Nawab of Dujana were also demolished to find space for setting up a higher secondary school. However, it was most regrettable to find that many fine-looking mansions once built with traditional building material by applying traditional skills of the local masons had been demolished since my last visit. I could find only three that survived the vagaries of time and human greed or need for expansion and modernization besides a130 years old haveli that almost crumbled but for its exposed ribs.
It came to be known that an ancestor of one of the Agrawal families had migrated to this village from Lahli village (near Kalanaur in dist. Rohtak) whereas the other from Dadri, in the early decades of the19th century. These merchants mostly traded in cotton and hand-woven cotton cloth besides jaggery and raw sugar that they imported from canal villages in the north or Jamuna Khadar. The served as local bankers to the farming community.
There once used to live about 200 merchant families of 7 Agrawal clans -Garg, Bindal, Mittal, Jindal, Goyal, Singhal and Eran or Airan, in Bahu but by the year AD1950 most had left for greener pastures in metropolises and port cities of India or tribal heartlands being developed in Assam, Chhatisgarh and Orissa: of the latter two, due to mining and industrialization. The secrets behind the great number of families settling in Bahu and setting up trading activities besides building splendid looking havelis could be the location of the village on the internal Caravan Trade route that originated from port cities in Gujarat and passed through Alwar-Nangal Chaudhary-Narnaul-Kanaud and then branching off towards Kanina-Nahad-Kosli-Rewari and the other towards Jhajjar or Beri and to Rohtak; and the second, the size of the village estate that owned 52,000 Shahjehani Bighas of agricultural land. One Shahjehani Bigha of land equals about 1000 yards sq. Geography and size determined a prominent status to village Bahu (Jholri), which the Nawab of Dujana recognized, which is why the revenue collector's (Nizam) office, and a tall mosque was built in the village. The mosque looked robust and the Maulvi takes care of the religious activity.
Besides Baniyas or the Agrawal merchants, peasant families from the Gahlawat and Siwach clans of the Jats, Ahirs and Rajputs, several other communities that provided various services to the residents were also settled here when the village was founded in the later decades of the fifteenth century by Gahlawats, which were uprooted due to insecurity in the south-western Delhi region and thought of migrating further westward where they could peacefully settle and pursue farming. They settled at the present place at which several large natural water bodies pre-existed to sustain life. To me it appeared as if the Panchayat had no collective vision of looking after the heritage of the village as well as health of the natural environment, particularly the water bodies, surrounding the village.
In the above context, I would like to add the following as an afterthought:
A cultural historian has various perceptions to notice and evaluate objects, people, art, architecture, land and life, natural forces and geography and how it could have shaped evolve the human destiny than a perfect historian whose chief interest revolve around political history. Archaeologists have a different mindset and often tended to hastily link studies that evaluated 'other' influences on the fate of things mostly found as ruins and objects obtained by excavating the earth.
With above in the backdrop, I found it of great merit to revisit villages and places of interest and withheld strong urge for a long time before making interpretations as more and new facts emerged helping me see things in a different perspective with maturity to develop convincing explanations rather cooked-up interpretations. Explicit accounts of little-known places, or say, our villages are scarce to find unless visited by scholars and recorded. Interactive sessions and discussions organized with the elders in a village whose ancestors had been in occupation of villages estates and heard various accounts of history tumbling down from several generations to their memories served as store house of local knowledge, mostly ignored by Class-I historians that are supposed to be experts in political histories, social histories and historical monuments and sites. A little and insignificant looking thing of the past has been of no interest to these mainstream historians, which is why most historical accounts or general history of India often seemed to be like 'retelling' the stories in monotonous text, eliciting fewer interests among the audience.
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