Question

What do you mean by Jati Panchayat?

Answer 1

Hint: Jati Panchayat is the small unit of the village panchayat in which the particular castes are maintained. There is Jati Panchayat in every village and they look after the rights and duties of their respective castes. They also take care of the unity among the castes mostly in Northern India.

Complete answer:
Each jati panchayat has its own rules and regulations. For more than two thousand years, travelers to India have commented on caste. Group comes first in Indian society unlike our own society that gives so much importance to the individual personality. The caste commands an individual’s major loyalty after a person’s family. Caste is still a factor in marriage selection.

It is the group of elders who control the conduct of the members of their jati. Chieftains control the villages. Jati panchayat was forced to follow the village administration. Jati panchayat settles the dispute between the members of different castes in Rajasthan.

Village panchayat is formed from the important people of the village with hereditary rights over their property. The panchayat is usually a heterogeneous body in mixed-caste villages. There are various castes and communities in the panchayat of the village. All marriages were held in the presence of Mandal in eastern India.

The chief of the jati panchayat ensures to prevent any offence against their caste. The headman of the panchayat is known as Muqaddam or Mandal. The consensus of the village elders chose the head man and this choice had to be ratified by the zamindar. Panchayats also had the rights to impose fines and also can give more serious punishment like expulsion from the community. Conquest may have been the source of the origin of some zamindaris and this impression has been given by the contemporary documents.

Powerful military chieftains dispossessed the weaker people and this became a reason to expand a zamindari. Panchayati raj was re-inaugurated by Nehru in 1959 after Independence. Jati panchayat is a council of caste. Jati is also known as caste, jat in Hindu society. This term is derived from a Sanskrit word jāta, which means Born or brought into existence. It means a form of existence which is determined by birth. Jati explains a group which has many common characteristics and this word jati is in Hindus.

Note: In almost all Indian languages, the term jati appears and it is related to the idea of lineage or kinship group. In India there are perhaps more than 3000 jatis. Jati ranking exists in each local area and is very much related to purity and pollution. There is some unique job of each jati but not everyone in the jati performs it. Thus there are carpenters who do not build, barbers who do not shave, and Brahmins who do not act as priests.