The Mewatis, Communal Harmony and Uniform Civil Code

Bishaldeep Kakati

(Advocate, Gauhati High Court)

Swapnaneehr Rana

(Student, Dept.of Sociology, TISS, Guwahati)

The Alwar and Bharatpur districts of Rajasthan and Mewat district of Haryana and parts of Uttar Pradesh are home to one of the most unique community of mainland India, i.e., the Meo or the Mewatis. The Mewatis is the Muslim Rajput tribe that converse in 'Mewati', a language of the Indo-Aryan part of the Indo-Iranian part of the Indo-European language family. The traditions and the customs practiced by the Mewatis are by themselves a symbol of greater communal harmony, religious unification that modern India can take examples from.

According to reports, the Mewatis number 400,000. Even after being Muslims, they profess a composite culture, wherein they embrace many customs and practices which are similar to those practiced by the Hindus. In fact, they relate their provenance to Hindu deities and mythological characters like Krishna, Rama or Arjuna and they also celebrate festivals like Dussehra, Diwali and Holi with spiritual fervour and fun and gaiety. In 1947, Mahatma Gandhi visited the Mewatis, and since December 19, 2020 the Meo Muslims of Haryana have been celebrating Mewat Diwas to commemorate Gandhiji's visit to Ghasera village in the Mewat district. Gandhiji tagged the Meos as "Iss desh ke reed ke haddi"or the backbone of India.

The Meos have a rich history of reciting or singing epics and ballads, those that establish links with folklores of Hindu, and as such they have their own version of Mahabharata which is known as "Pandun ka Kada". The Community also celebrates Govardhan Puja, and cows hold a very special position. This is not only because the community is based on agriculture, where cows play a crucial role but also because married Meo Women make 'Batvera'(cow dung cakes), which are considered to be very scared. The Meos have always tried to portray themselves as "Gau Rakshaks", thereby diminishing the common political version of considering Muslims, as ones that do not protect or preserve cows.

The Meo community is neither orthodox Hindus nor orthodox Muslims but rather is the perfect symbolic display of respecting unique traditions and culture of two different religions. In case of marriage, the Meos perform Nikaah, but they still practice the Hindu rituals like maintaining Gotras and tracing their genealogy by Hindu genealogists only, known as Jaggas. The Meos also follows one-gotra rule in their marriage practices. They call it 'Riwaz-i-Am' which says a man cannot marry a woman of his own gotra or pal, a woman of the village his mother belonged to, a woman of the village his father's mother belonged to and a woman whose relation can be traced through consanguineous kin. But with the changing demography, the Meos strictly do not adhere to 'Riwaz- i-Am'. However, they uphold the practice of village exogamy. In a study incorporated in the book 'Kinship Principles and the Pattern of Marriage Alliance: The Meos of Mewat' written by Abha Chauhan, none of the Meo households in the three villages recorded any case of intra-village marriage.

The marriage prohibition among Meos extends even beyond gotra exogamy. Apart from patrilateral parallel-cousins of the same gotra, one also cannot marry one's matrilateral parallel-cousins and both patrilateral and matrilateral cross-cousins. In the mid 1970s, Meos avoided both cross-cousin and parallel-cousin marriages. But nowadays, it is seen that they strictly prohibit patrilateral cross-cousin marriages. Although they generally don't go for matrilateral parallel-cousin marriages, the kinship rules are not so strict regarding such marriages.

Another distinctive feature of the community is the title they put after their names, as most of the Meos still keeps their title as 'Singh''. The belief is that the people of the community were Hindus who converted themselves to Islam between the periods from 12th to 16th century under the influence of Sufi Pirs. Some Meos also considers them to be Kshatriyas, who are descendants of Arjuna. Their practices which evolved from shared culture of two different religions thus remain a fascinating chapter in the Indian Subcontinent.

However, even after having strong connections with Hindu mythology and history, the Meos has often been the soft target of communal violence unleashed by different religiously based orthodox groups. Deen Mohammad, a key organizer of the Mewat Diwas stated, "There are people who call Mewat mini-Pakistan and us Pakistanis, but try as they may, the truth is that this is our land, we have shed blood for it and Gandhiji was with us in this fight. The world should be reminded of that.''

The Meo community of Mewat region is a unique community in itself in the sense that they follow both Hindu and Islamic customs in their marriage practices and kinship rules. But even after following traditions that are indigenous to the land of India, the Meo community often suffers from violence as certain sections of the society still consider them to be Pakistanis. In the era where India is witnessing violence among communities, religious conflicts, the customs and the traditions that the Mewatis follow can display examples of how intermixing of practices of different religions can be carried out without the use of force or coercion. The Meo community also makes people remember the ancient history of Assam, where Mahapurush Sankardeva enlightened people about the Vaishnava Dharma and Ajan Fakir preached the principles of Sufi Islam, and even then the state didn't witness any religion-based conflicts. The lifestyle of the Mewatis, therefore, highlights that practices and customs of different religions can be respected and as such, conflicts evolving out of religious beliefs can be reduced by the concept of acceptance and allowing the mass to profess any religious belief or sentiment which is not derogatory to the establishment of peace and harmony in the society.

The Mewatis can also be called a living example of 'unity in diversity'. In the era of rigidity and imposition, the Mewatis come as a very rare community and, therefore, require preservation of its culture and customs along with the overall development of each individual from the community in terms of education, health, employment and other opportunities. Conspicuously, it is via popularizing communities like the Mewatis that India can achieve religious harmony and someday be successful in proper implementation of a Uniform Civil Code.