ABSTRACT
The trauma of being excluded in histories is humiliating enough for a community. It was further magnified in the case of the Julahas by the burden of having to live down the vilification of their community that was the staple of all writing and official accounts of the colonial period. Gyanendra Pandey’s work (1990) details the social processes and the reality behind the colonial stereotype of the ‘bigoted Julaha’. Francis Robinson (1993) also refers to the ‘bigotry’ of the Julahas (ibid.: 27). However, the stereotyped image of the Julahas was not merely the creation of colonial writings. A negative image of the them was also prevalent among the agricultural classes among whom there were many proverbs referring to the alleged stupidity of the Julahas (Crooke 1975: 70-71). This portrayal of the Julahas has been attributed to their lowly position in the social hierarchy and their overall illiteracy and backwardness. But S. K. Rai (2004) also cites another plausible reason for these social attitudes towards the Julahas — the fact that the Nathpanthi Jogis and the Muslim Julahas had rejected the Brahminical social order by embracing Islam, and yet their entry into Islam could not really drastically alter their social position. This provided grist to the already prevalent negative social attitudes, heavily influenced by Brahminical values (ibid.: 142). The response of the Julahas was to strive for a new identity within Islam and to seek
legitimacy within its religio-cultural framework. Thus arose the movement from being Julahas to Momin Ansaris.
