| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Nonica Datta. Forming an Identity: A Social History of the Jats. New York: Oxford University Press. 1999. pp. viii, 228. $26.95.

In late colonial India, diverse clans of agriculturists in southeast Punjab (present-day Haryana) developed their diffuse social and cultural traditions into the strongly self-defined Jat qaum (community). The process by which they, and their political and religious leaders, consolidated their syncretic cultures into a unified caste identity up through the 1930s forms the central narrative of Nonica Datta's well-researched book. While substantial parts of her evidence come from British colonial accounts of Jats, she attributes little of this identity construction to the British. Rather, drawing heavily on vernacular literature, supplemented by her interviews with Jat participants, she concentrates on the agency of Jats themselves. Her thoughtful work should cause scholars to reconsider the process of identity formation during the colonial period and will help us better understand subsequent social and political developments in Punjab. . . .

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