Shiptown. Ann Grodzins Gold

not far from Delhi Gate. At first it surprised me that such a well-stocked store would be at what I assumed was the lesser end of the bazaar. But it all depends on your position, perspective, and moment in history. A town’s spatial orientations shift and change not only over time but according to where one stands. Picture the qasba opening up inwardly from Delhi Gate, not Royal Gate. For some who live at that end of town, most probably it still does. In Jahazpur’s not-so-remote past, Delhi Gate was definitely not the tail of the market.

      Suresh Sindhi gave a very general account of the shift in orientations of Jahazpur’s commercial and transportation life. He told us, “The people didn’t used even to come to the Royal Gate, because where the bus stand is now was jungle, and no one came there; besides that, in the evening the gate was closed. The bus stand used to be at Nau Chauk.” Just outside of Delhi Gate is the rectangular fenced clearing known as Nau Chauk. Nau chauk means “nine squares” or “nine markets” or perhaps “nine corners.” Today the space called Nau Chauk is a small park surrounded by shops. It is worth looking further into the history of this space, which is Jahazpur’s only town square. Once it was adjacent to almost all the local government offices. Once it was connected with the royal residences inside the walls. Once Nau Chauk, and not the current bus stand, was the site of the annual Ram Lila.

      Delhi Gate offers passage to a complicated history of town rule, and its passage denotes shifting orientations of both power and place. Try to picture Jahazpur in an earlier era: imagine today’s bus stand nonexistent. Also nonexistent were the fruit market, the Satya Narayan temple, and Santosh Nagar colony. The road south from the bus stand to Santosh Nagar, which today is flanked with government offices and the small businesses that grow up around them, at that time led only to the Muslim graveyard, the adjoining idgah, and the jungle with its common-property grazing ground. All the town’s administrative functions were in and around Nau Chauk. Today only the Patwari (land revenue office), the Cooperative Bank, and a few other minor offices remain in the Nau Chauk vicinity.¹⁵

      In 2010–11, the vegetable sellers who squatted on the periphery of Nau Chauk displayed notably less attractive produce than those who stood proudly behind proper (if movable) stalls at the bus stand. Nau Chauk itself was a far quieter place than the bus stand with far fewer vehicles. However, there are still some quality stores ranged around Nau Chauk, including an excellent “fancy” store favored by Bhoju’s daughters.

      Our passage through Bindi Gate will lead us to some social structural aspects of qasba life; here I set Jahazpur town in broader currents of Rajasthan histories. In the flat lands of Jahazpur are several Hindu temples that town citizens declare to be “very old.” Inside the walls is Juna Char Bhuja (“ancient Four-Arms,” that is, Vishnu); outside are Barah Devra (“Twelve Temples”) beyond Hanuman Gate; and Narsinghdwara (“Door of the Man-Lion,” again an avatar of Vishnu) on the banks of the Nagdi River. I have heard all of these attributed to the eleventh or twelfth centuries, but I have no documentation of their age. There is significant archaeological evidence of an ancient Jain presence in this region, dating to a period well before the Mughuls (Chattopadhyaya 1994:47; Sethia 2003:25; see also Chapter 5).

      From recorded history, we know that in the second half of the fifteenth century, Kshetra Singh of Mewar (ruled 1364–82) conquered Jahazpur along with Mandalgarh and Ajmer, taking it from the Pathans and annexing it to Mewar (Purohit 1938:69). Jahazpur’s hilltop fort was among many that were built during an immense fortification project for the expanding kingdom of Mewar undertaken by Maharana Kumbha (ruled 1433–68) in the mid-fifteenth century (Hooja 2006:341–47; Purohit 1938:66).¹⁶ In the sixteenth century Jahazpur came under Mughal rule but not for long. Documented sources report that the emperor Akbar gave Jahazpur to Maharana Pratap’s rebellious half-brother Jagmal after the death of their father Udai Singh (Hooja 2006:466). This would have been just following the time period when Yagyapur became Jahazpur and when some local groups converted to Islam.

      Jahazpur’s fort was captured by the small neighboring kingdom of Shahpura in the early eighteenth century and recaptured by Mewar about a hundred years later (Dāngī 2002). According to Purohit (1938), during the Maratta rebellion Jahazpur was for some time under the domination of Jhala Zalim Singh of Kota. Except for those relatively brief interludes between the Mughals and Independence, Jahazpur qasba and its surrounding farmlands remained under Mewar. Jahazpur’s last deputized local ruler, Vijay Pratap Singh, died in 1931 (some say he was murdered).

      From chasing such slight references to Jahazpur as may be gleaned from history books, old gazetteers, and district census handbooks, the impression I have is that among the capitals from which Jahazpur was governed, only Shahpura was nearby, and Shahpura was too small to hold on to it. The capital of Rajputana’s preeminent kingdom, Mewar, within which Jahazpur was most often included, was at a considerable distance. Even in 2011, when I traveled by car from Jahazpur to Udaipur for a conference, I was struck by the distance, compounded by a very poor road for a significant stretch of the journey. I thought a lot on that trip about how far this distance might have seemed in the times of the Ranas.

      Although it was certainly a pawn in royal doings for many centuries, my conjecture is that Jahazpur, intermittently but for lengthy periods of history, flew largely under the radar of rulers in any capital. There were for example wild fluctuations in revenue collection (Sehgal 1975:53). Because of the large Mina population in the region, this was never an easy place to rule. Minas were by reputation fiercely independent and powerful fighters. Sometimes they served whoever was ruling but just as often effectively defied impositions (taxes, conscriptions) from any outside power. Tellingly, when Colonel Tod visited in 1818 it was Minas who greeted him (see Chapter 5). It may well have been a matter of little regret for a ruler to hand off Jahazpur to someone else, as Akbar did to Jagmal. It is also advisable in considering Jahazpur history to take into account that dominant communities in Jahazpur qasba proper were never Rajput and were concerned with trade, not war. No matter who was ruling, opportunities to buy and sell would be ongoing.¹⁷

      In 1997 I recorded, in Ghatiyali, Sukhdevji Gujar’s memories. The most critical juncture of his young adult life took place in the early 1940s and involved Jahazpur’s Nau Chauk. It was there that he went to enlist in the army. He walked thirty-three kilometers alone in the night, from Ghatiyali to Jahazpur. He told me:

      I wasn’t afraid of anything, and nothing attacked me! I didn’t meet anyone at all, I went on foot. [To walk alone in the night requires a lot of courage.] In Jahazpur, at the place called Nau Chauk, people were enlisting in the military; in the middle of the city.

      There were hundreds of people there, who had come in order to enlist…. carpenters, gardeners, ironworkers, Minas, Rajputs, lots of people, all the jatis. And a gentleman came, a fair-skinned gentleman, an Englishman. There was just one: “Duke Sahab” [presumably a British military officer]. He arrived, sitting on a horse, and wearing a hat on his head…. People were lined up there in rows, three by three, and the gentleman walked in-between the rows, looking, looking. And then he put a mark on me.

      And the ones who had marks, they took them over to one side, so they put me on one side with them. On that day, in one day, in the same fashion, 150 people were selected; out of many hundreds who wanted to enlist. (Gold and Gujar 2002:168–69, condensed and slightly reworded)

      Sukhdevji’s memory is evidence that in late colonial times, during World War II, Nau Chauk had its official functions and was put to use by the British, in spite of Jahazpur being part of Mewar and governed under paramountcy rather than direct rule. I imagine Duke Sahab would have taken permission from the Rana in Udaipur to use Nau Chauk in Jahazpur as a recruitment site, but that is pure speculation. I do know with certainty that Nau Chauk and much that lies in its vicinity is intimately connected with the checkered history of rule in Jahazpur.

      Adjacent to Nau Chauk is a building that is now Jahazpur’s overflowing upper secondary school. The school building is grafted onto a former royal residence in an architecturally odd fusion. On the grounds of the school or former palace is a large, gated shrine to the Hindu deity Ganesh, which everyone knows as a place where a powerful authority once sat, whether it was