Meos outside Mewat

[edit]

In Uttar Pradesh, the Meos are found mainly in the western regions of Rohilkhand and Doab. Unlike those of Mewat, the Uttar Pradesh Meos are dispersed. Their main gotras in the state are the Chhirklot, Dalut, Demrot, Pandelot, Balot, Dawar, Kalesa, Landawat, Rattawat, Dingal and Singhal. The Uttar Pradesh Meos maintain a system of community endogamy, and gotra exogamy. The Meos of UP are a community of small farmers, and urban wage labourers.^[10]

The Meo also extend to Meerut District. The Doab Meos now speak Urdu, and have abandoned Mewati.^[10]

Separate from the Doab Meo are the Meo of Rohilkhand. Culturally they are now indistinguishable from the neighbouring Muslim communities. They are found mainly in Moradabad,Bareilly, Rampur and Pilibhit districts. These Meo are said to have Mewat in the 18th Century, fleeing the great famine of 1783, and these Meo are generally referred to by the term Mewati. They now speak Khari Boli and Urdu, and no longer maintain a system of gotra exogamy, with now many practicising parallel-cousin marriages.^[10]

Delhi[edit]

The Meo in Delhi are found mainly in the neighbourhood of Walled City (Kucha Pandit Lal Kuan, Gali Shahtara Ajmri Gate and Bara Hindu Rao), Azadpur, Hauz Khas, Mehrauli and various outlying villages with names ending in Sarai which have become urbanised. All their villages have been swallowed up by ever-expanding Delhi city. The growth of urban Delhi has led to the abandonment of the Mewati dialect in favour of Hindi, which is now their main language. Similarly, there has been a decline in the power of the caste council (panchayat). The Meos of Delhi have maintained gotra exogamy, very rarely marrying into their own gotra

Meo gotra

Meo profess the beliefs of Islam but the roots of their ethnic structure are in Hindu caste society. Meos claim high-caste Hindu Rajput descent. This may be true for some of them. However, some of them may be descendants of other castes who might have laid claim to Rajput ancestry after converting to Islam to enhance their social standing (Harris 1901:23; Channing 1882:28). The names of many gots (gotra) or exogamous lineages of Meos are common with other Hindu castes as Meena, Ahir and Gujjar who live in their vicinity. It thus seems likely that the Meos belonged to many different castes and not just to the Rajputs (Aggarwal

Geography and demography

The boundary of Mewat region is not precisely defined. The region largely consists of plains but has hills of Aravali range. The inconsistency in Mewat topography is evident from its patches of land with hills and hillock of the Aravali on the one hand and plains on the other. The region is semi-arid with scanty rainfall and this has defined the vocations the Meos follow. They are peasants, agriculturists and cattle breeders.^[9]

Marriage and kinship customs

Meos generally do not follow the Muslim law of inheritance and so among them, as in the sister communities such as Jats and Minas and Ahirs, custom makes a younger brother or a cousin marry the widow of the deceased by a simple Nikah ceremony.^[7]

The Meo have been subject to a number of recent ethnographic studies. These books have dealt with issues such as marriage and self-perception of the community. Raymond Jamous studied kinship and rituals among the Meo and wrote a book.

Connection with other Hindus communities in Mewat region

Many Rajasthani Meos retain mixed Hindu-Muslim names. Names such as Ram Khan or Shankar Khan are not unusual in the Meo tracts in Alwar. The Muslim community of Meos was highly Hinduised before independence. Meos celebrated Diwali and Holi as they celebrated two Eids (Eid ul-Fitr and Eid al-Adha). They do not marry within one's Gotras like Hindus of the north though Islam permits marriage with cousins. Solemnization of marriage among Meos was not complete without both Nikah as in Islam and circling of fire as among Hindus. Meos believe that they are direct descendants of Krishna and Rama even as they claim to be among the unnamed prophets of God referred to in the

Hindu origins

According to Robert Vane Russell, Meos called themselves by Hindu names with the exception of Ram, and Singh is a frequent affix, though not so common as Khan.^[2]

The Meo represent a blending of Hinduism and Islam. Meo profess the beliefs of Islam but the roots of their ethnic structure are in Hindu caste society. In fact, the neighbouring Hindu Jats,^[3] Minas, Ahirs and Rajputs share the same bans.^[4] According to some sources, the Meo community may have a common origin with the Meenacommunity.^{[5][page needed]}

Hindu inhabitants of Mewat, although belonging to the same Kshatriya castes to which the Meos belonged before conversion to Islam, are not called Meo. Thus the word "Meo" is both region-specific and religion-specific. Apparently, Meos come from many Hindu castes who converted to Islam and amalgamated as Meo community

History and origin

Meos are inhabitants of Mewat, a region that consists of Mewat district of Haryana and some parts of adjoining Alwar and Bharatpur districts of Rajasthan and western Uttar Pradesh, where the Meos have lived for a millennium. They were Hindu Rajputs who converted to Islam by Moinuddin Chisti's starting from 1192 CE until as late as Aurangzeb's rule but they have maintained their age-old distinctive ethno-cultural identity until today. They have shared this region with a number of other Muslim Rajput communities, such asKhanzada, Qaimkhani and Malkana.^[1]

mewati

Mewati
میواتی
Native to	India (Mewat District of Haryana,Rajasthan) .
Native speakers	5 million  (2002)[1] Census results conflate some speakers with Hindi.[2]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Western Rajasthani–Marwari Marwari Mewati
Language codes
ISO 639-3	wtm
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

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Mewati language

Mewati (Urdu: میواتی‎), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about five million speakers in the Alwar, Bharatpur and Dholpur districts of Rajasthan, Mewat districts of Haryana.It contributed profoundly to Rajasthani literature in medieval periods.

Ahirwati is classified as a Rajasthani language,^[3] and is spoken in the Mahendragarh and Rewari districts of Haryana. According to historian Robert Vane Russell, who wrote during the period of the British Raj, Ahirwati was a language of Ahirs spoken in the Rohtakand Gurgaon Districts of Punjab (now Haryana) and Delhi.^[4]

There are 9 vowels, 31 consonants, and two diphthongs. Suprasegmentals are not so prominent as they are in the other dialects of Rajasthani. There are two numbers—singular and plural, two genders—masculine and feminine; and three cases—direct, oblique, and vocative. The nouns decline according to their final segments. Case marking is postpositional. Pronouns are traditional in nature and are inflected for number and case. Gender is not distinguished in pronouns. There are two types of adjectives. There are three tenses: past, present, and future. Participles function as adjectives.

Mewati gharana

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Mewati Gharana is an apprenticeship clan and musical family (Gharana) of Hindustani classical music founded in the late 19th century by Utd. Ghagge Nazir Khan of Jodhpur. With its own distinct aesthetic and stylistic views and practices, the gharana is an offshoot of the Gwalior Gharana and acquired its name after the region from which its founding exponent hailed: the Mewat region of Rajasthan.
The gharana gained visibility and following the latter-half of the 20th Century after acclaimed contemporary vocalist Pt. Jasraj became popular in the realm of Hindustani Classical music at the same time and is viewed as a figure who revived and popularized the gayaki.
Contents  [hide]
1 History
2 Overview
2.1 Mewati Gharana styles and trends
2.2 Specialty ragas and compositions
3 Gharana lineage
3.1 Prominent exponents
4 External links
History[edit]

The musical ancestors of Ghagge Nazir Khan, the fountainhead of the Mewati Gharana, were exponents and descendants of the Gwalior Gharana. In seeking musical patronage, these descendants of the Gwalior style separated from their original clan and settled in what is now western and southern Rajasthan. Being isolated from the mainstream Gwalior musicians, the Rajasthan-based branch of the Gharana developed new stylistic forms and aesthetic principles as a result of separation. Eventually, these changes resulted in the Mewati gayaki and became distinct although reminiscent of the Gwalior style. It is for this reason that the Mewati Gharana is considered both musically and genealogically different from the Gwalior style.
Ghagge Nazir Khan passed on his musical tradition to his foremost disciples, Pandit Natthulal and Chimanlal Pandit (the latter of whom died young). Natthulal passed the tradition onto his nephew, Pandit Motiram who shared this tradition with his brother, Jyotiram Pandit around the start of the 20th century. During this period, Mewati musicians were under monarchical patronage for their music (court musicians).
Jyotiram later became a disciple of Rajab Ali Khan, bringing elements of the Jaipur and Kirana gayakis into the Mewati style. Motiram passed this tradition to his sons, Pandit Maniram and Pratap Narayan Pandit. After Motiram's unprecedented and untimely demise, Maniram and Pratap Narayan were instrumental in grooming their younger brother, Jasraj, in the Mewati tradition after Jasraj renounced playing Tabla, his primary training at the time. Influenced by the music of Amir Khan and Begum Akhtar, Jasraj introduced new stylistic elements into the traditional Mewati style, producing a more emotive, devotional, rhythmic-conscious, and lyric-conscious style.
Overview[edit]

Mewati Gharana styles and trends[edit]
Although it has ancestry in the style and trends of the Gwalior gharana, the Mewati Gharana gayaki has some distinct qualities. Through Sufi and Kirtankar influence, the Mewati Gharana gayaki includes theistic and spiritual elements, where religious verses from Hinduism and Shia Islam especially Ismailism are incorporated not only in the grammatical content of the music, but as an intrinsic elements in musical development, some contemporary compositions invoke the name and attributes of Mawlana Shah Karim al-Hussaini Aga Khan as the manifest Imam and the tenth incarnation of Lord Vishnu according to the Dashavatara. The verse "Om Shri Anant Hari Naaraayañ" is typically invoked as the initiation of a performance, and as the grammatical medium for an Alap. Elements of Hinduism and Shia Islam are simultaneously and polytheistically incorporated throughout musical works.
Mewati gayaki includes substantial use of sargam and tihais. In a crude sense, the approach to Taankari is similar to the Patiala Gayaki and Tappa Gayaki in execution but is closer to the Gwalior gayaki in application.
Specialty ragas and compositions[edit]
Several ragas unique to the Mewati Gharana include Jaiwanti Todi (created by Maharaja Jaiwant Singhji Waghela of Sanand), Din Ki Puriya, Odhav Bageshree, Khamaj Bahar and Bhavani Bahaar.
Pt. Jasraj has added many devotional (religious) compositions to the Gharana repertoire, the most popular being, "Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya" in Bhimpalasi.
Gharana lineage[edit]

Asha Lohia, learned from Pt. Jasaraj-ji.
Swar Sharma, son and disciple of Pt. Rattan Mohan Sharma-ji.
Abhishek Parikh, son of Pt. Neeraj Parikh-ji and disciple of Pt. Rattan Mohan Sharma-ji.
Marina Ahmad Alam, disciple of Utd. Phul Mohammed Khan, Shri Barin Majumdar, and Pt. Jasraj-ji.
Akhil Jobanputra, disciple of Smt. Asha Lohia and Pt. Sanjeev Abhyankar-ji.
Yogesh Hunswadkar, disciple of Pt. Jasraj.