Jauhar

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For the town in Somalia, see Jowhar.

Jauhar (sometimes spelt jowhar) was originally the voluntary death on a funeral pyre of the royal womenfolk and children of defeated Rajput castles in order to avoid capture, dishonour and conversion to Islam. The term is extended to describe the occasional practice of mass suicide carried out in medieval times by Rajput women, or by entire Rajput communities, when the fall of a besieged city was certain.

The practice is often described in terms of the women and children alone, but should correctly be understood as including the death of the men on the battlefield. As generally described, Jauhar involved:

1. A defending Rajput army being besieged inside a fortification by an invading Muslim army;
2. The realization by the defenders that defeat was certain;
3. The immolation, en masse, of women, children and the elderly, to avoid molestation and conversion to Islam by the victorious invading army;
4. The riding out, into open battle and certain death, of the menfolk, there to die on the field of war

There is extensive glorification of the practice in the local ballads and folk-histories of Rajasthan; however, the accuracy of these accounts has probably degraded due to over-romanticization. Accounts of the invaders finding a deserted city with no living residents are not historically accurate; the extent to which members of the Rajput community avoided death, for instance by hiding among the remaining population of the city, is not usually described in the laudatory ballads that are the main source of our information on these events.

Jauhar was limited to the Kshatriya caste named Rajputs, who formed the upper and ruling classes and castes of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The Rajputs were the fighting warrior caste of this area. The remainder of the people, who were generally Brahmins and the lower castes, did not participate in the practice. In some cases, such as with Chittaurgarh in 1568 the victorious Mughal invaders put the entire remaining population of thirty thousand souls to death.

Despite occasional confusion, this practice is not directly related to the widow-burning practice of sati, another feature once common among the Rajputs. It is related to high premium set on the honour of womenfolk in Rajput society. Both practices have been most common historically in the territory of modern Rajasthan.

The best known cases of Jauhar are the three occurrences at the fort of Chittaur (Chittaurgarh, Chittorgarh), in Rajasthan, in 1303, in 1535, and 1568. Jaisalmer has witnessed two occurrences of Jauhar. Another occurrence was in Chanderi.