Abstract:

This study reconstructs Gokula’s role in seventeenth century Mathura to argue that Jat agrarian Mobilization emerged from intersecting trajectories of migration, land tenure struggle and local leadership rather than from a singular religious cause. Drawing on migration histories, Khap institutions and evidence of semi-egalitarian chiefdoms, it situates Gokula and successors such as Churaman within a brokerage model of peasant leadership in which leaders combined military service, land claims and ritual claims to status to negotiate with Mughal and Rajput authorities. Temple interventions under Aurangzeb are treated as politically contingent acts that acquired religious salience in popular memory but were embedded in fiscal and factional logics; religion thus operated as an idiom layered over disputes about revenue, tenure and authority. Rebel strategy depended on fortified centres, heterogeneous recruitment (ascetics, Afghan mercenaries, allied communities) and opportunistic bargaining, generating effective short-term control yet leaving movements vulnerable to coordinated counteroffensives and mercenary fragility. The aftermath shows oscillation between fealty and autonomy, memory of repression informing later extraction and brokerage practices, and eventual translation of peasant repertoires into caste associations and kisan organisations in adjacent regions. Overall, the analysis reframes Jat Mobilization as embedded in imperial political economy, emphasizing brokerage, institutionally grounded caste claims and symbolic legitimations rather than a simple religious or zamindar revolt.

Keywords:

Gokula Jat, Mughal India, Mathura, Agrarian Politics, Peasant Rebellion

Aim/Objectives

Gokula Jat, Mughal India, Mathura, Agrarian Politics, Peasant Rebellion

Methods