Over time the Jats became primarily Muslim in the western Punjab, Sikh in the eastern Punjab, and Hindu in the areas between Delhi Territory and Agra, with the divisions by faith reflecting the geographical strengths of these religions. Only after they became more integrated into the agrarian world did the Jats adopt the dominant religion of the people in whose midst they dwelt. Before they settled in the Punjab and other northern regions, the pastoralist Jats had little exposure to any of the mainstream religions. The Jats also provide an important insight into how religious identities evolved during the precolonial era. Īccording to historians Catherine Asher and Cynthia Talbot, By early Mughal times, in the Punjab, the term "Jat" had become loosely synonymous with "peasant", and some Jats had come to own land and exert local influence. Many took up tilling in regions such as Western Punjab, where the sakia (water wheel) had been recently introduced. Between the eleventh and the sixteenth centuries, Jat herders at the Sind migrated up along the river valleys, into the Punjab, which may have not been cultivated in the first millennium. The Arab rulers, though professing a theologically egalitarian religion, maintained the position of Jats and the discriminatory practices against them that had been put in place in the long period of Hindu rule in Sind. īy the time of Muhammad bin Qasim's conquest of Sind in the 8th century, Arab writers described agglomerations of Jats in the arid, the wet, and the mountainous regions of the conquered land of Sindh. The Jats had their origins in pastoralism in the Indus valley, and gradually became agriculturalist farmers. "Jat" is an elastic label applied to a wide-ranging community from simple landowning peasants to wealthy and influential Zamindars. The Jats are a paradigmatic example of community- and identity-formation in early modern Indian subcontinent. Over the years, several Jats abandoned agriculture in favour of urban jobs, and used their dominant economic and political status to claim higher social status. By the 20th century, the landowning Jats became an influential group in several parts of North India, including Punjab, Western Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi. The Hindu Jat kingdom reached its zenith under Maharaja Suraj Mal (1707–1763). The community played an important role in the development of the martial Khalsa panth of Sikhism. The Jats took up arms against the Mughal Empire during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Of Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu faiths, they are now found mostly in the Pakistani provinces of Sindh and Punjab and the Indian states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. Originally pastoralists in the lower Indus river-valley of Sindh, Jats migrated north into the Punjab region in late medieval times, and subsequently into the Delhi Territory, northeastern Rajputana, and the western Gangetic Plain in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Jat people (( Punjabi pronunciation: ), ( Hindi pronunciation: )) are a community of traditionally non-elite tillers and herders in Northern India and Pakistan. Not to be confused with the Jats of Afghanistan.