Chetram Jatav

Chetram Jatav was a freedom fighter who participated in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. He joined the mutiny on 26 May 1857 in the Soro region of Eta district, North-Western Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh). He was tied to a tree and shot.[1]

Chetram Jatav
Citizenship East India Company ruled India.
OccupationSoldier in the service of Maharaja of Patiala.
Known forIndian independence fighter

Life

According to legends, Maharaja Patiala saw a man who was carrying a lion on his back. On being asked, it was found that the man had killed the lion without a weapon. The king asked him to join his army. At the instance of the king, he joined the army. The person's name was Cheta Ram Jatav. Cheta Ram fought the British. Seeing the British harassing the people, he fought them, after which the British arrested him and tied him with a tree.The circumstances of Jatav's death have been highlighted by Badri Narayan Tiwari, a Subaltern historian from the G. B. Pant Institute of Social Sciences in Allahabad, but his life appears to be lost to history.[1] Other sources have repeated Tiwari's research,[2][3][4] which was taken from Swatantrata Sangram Mein Achhuton Ka Yogdan, a 1990 work written by D. C. Dinkar.[5]

The Bahujan Samaj Party has adopted Jatav and some others who died as a result of the 1857 rebellion as icons of Dalit heroism.[6] According to Tiwari, Dalit intellectuals supported by BSP, which is trying to mobilise grassroot Dalits using local heroes, histories, myths and legends found a wealth of resources in the oral history of the regions of Uttar Pradesh centering around the 1857 rebellion. The political strategy of the party is to tell and retell the stories of these heroes, build memorials and organize celebrations around their stories repeatedly to build a collective memory in the psyche of the people. The stories are narrated in such a manner that the Dalits imagine the story of the making of this nation in which they played a significant role.[5]

References
  1. Tiwari, Badri Narayan (2006). Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India: Culture, Identity and Politics. SAGE. p. 99. ISBN 9780761935377.
  2. "Dalits took part in 1857 revolt: Study". Rediff. PTI. 10 November 2005. Retrieved 21 September 2016.
  3. Bates, Crispin, ed. (2013). "Identity and Narratives". Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on the Indian Uprising of 1857. SAGE Publications India. p. 22. ISBN 978-8-13211-864-0.
  4. Hunt, Sarah Beth (2014). Hindi Dalit Literature and the Politics of Representation. Routledge. p. 130. ISBN 978-1-31755-952-8.
  5. Tiwari, Badri Narayan (2007). "Identity and Narratives: Dalits and memories of 1857" (PDF). University of Edinburgh: Mutiny at the Margins Conference: 13, 27, 33. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  6. Tiwari, Badri Narayan (2014). Kanshiram: Leader of the Dalits. Penguin UK. p. 113. ISBN 978-9-35118-670-0.

Further reading
  • Dinkar, D. C. (1990). Swatantrata Sangram mein Achhuton ka Yogdan. Lucknow: Bodhisatva Prakashan.
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