The Jats or sometimes pronounced Jots are members of an ethnic group of itinerant travelers found in Afghanistan. They are a marginalized and stigmatised group, and considered "as blots on the ethnic landscape." The term "Jat" is an exonym, never used by what are disparate and distinct ethnic groups.
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Origin
In Afghanistan, the term Jat does not refer to a single ethnic community, but rather to a number of disparate groups who practice a peripatetic lifestyle. Groups who are generally referred to as Jat have their own self-designation, and often resent being called Jat, and being called a Jat is an insult in Afghanistan. In Dari dialect of Kabul, shrewish women were often admonished not to be quarrelsome like a Jat. A comparison would the use of the word Gypsy to refer to the Romany and the word Zott to refer to similar groups in the Middle East. What is unclear is how these distinct groups acquired the name Jat. In neighbouring South Asia, the term Jat refers to a large cluster of agriculture castes, some especially in the Balochistan are connected with camel breeding and herding, and it is possible that the Afghan Jat are descended from peripatetic communities that entered Afghanistan in the company of these nomadic Jats, and acquired the name by association.
Social characteristics
Generally, what defines groups that are generally known as Jat is a nomadic lifestyle, with their main occupation being the provision of services such as the manufacture and sale of agricultural implements, bangles, drums and winnowing trays as well as providing entertainment such as performing bears and monkeys, fortune-telling, singing and occasionally prostitution. Most Jats have a network of clients and customers scattered over a broad region, and they migrate between these known clients clusters, occasionally adding new ones. Secondly, each Jat group specializes in a particular activity, for example the Ghorbat of western Afghanistan are sieve makers, shoe repairers and animal traders, while the Shadibaz peddle cloth, bangles and haberdashery.
Other Jat characteristics include speaking their dialect or language, and practising strict endogamy. Most Jat are however multilingual, speaking both Pashto and Dari, and often a Turkic dialect as well.
Ethnic groups
Below is a brief description of the main groups which fall within the Jat category:
Notes: