ABSTRACT
This chapter depicts the social structure of the Sikh rural areas to which the factionalism among the Jats relates. It considers the ties which bind the Jats together and enumerate three kinds of tie as being important: kinship, affinity and the patron-client tie. The main means of differentiating the middle-class farmer, i.e., a farmer owning between fifty and a hundred acres of land, from the small proprietor was in the former’s possession of a car and certain agricultural implements. Jats in the landlord category could be distinguished from middle-class farmers by the number of household servants they employed, as also by the finer clothes, design and quantity of jewellery, and finer looks of their womenfolk. Jats traditionally laboured only on their own land, and laboured for payment on the land of other Jats only in circumstances of extreme social and economic crisis.
