The valley of Kashmir is gifted by Allah with enormous natural beauty. The “foreign” travelers and explorers who visited the valley in the past have written about it in great detail. But there have been some people living here who did not leave good impressions on the minds of some of the great explorers of the valley.
These people belonged to the then lowest social stratum of the Kashmirian society. One of the worst sub-groups of them was “Watals“, scavengers in common parlance, who had wide notoriety for their abusive and vulgar tongue “Bud-Zaban”; “Galam Galooch”, in common parlance.
The notoriety was earned by them more for their ugly conducts than lower socio-economic group. They were never sober, never calm. They were always found quarreling and abusing each other. A great traveler of the early nineteenth century who, unfortunately, otherwise had met elegant, decent and simple people of the vale, carried a very beautiful impression of the people, but he was dumbstruck one day when he found European Gypsies, as he calls them, in Kashmir, which was generally known to the world then as the Eastern paradise on the earth.
He says that the Watal tribe lived in boats, tents and were not only scavengers in the strict sense. That is why he has called them Gypsies, restless, wonderers, without a permanent place of living, and without spending their daily affairs of life, calmly in peace and order. He has named them Chandaals also. He writes that there were Chandaals, which is and is, I fear, still a Northern Indian term used for low-caste people of Punjab from the olden times.
One of the old chroniclers of Kashmir has written long back that Watals had entered Kashmir from Punjab during the Muslim Rulers’ time and due to persecution of high-caste Brahmans, they embraced Islam as their religion. Chandaal was the term used in Punjab interchangeably for them who were called “untouchables” before the Partition but, as untouchably is outlawed and constitutionally declared crime, it lost its factional or casteist or racist relevance in due course of time. However, the terms “Watul” or “Chandaal” retained their behavioral nuisances in the subcontinent. So whenever, we find people of that kind of nature even now and we attribute this term to such people and tribes irrespective of any caste, creed and colour bias.
We call a person who is excessively abusive or uses foul language a Leke-watul or Lake-Watij, as the gender may be. This term is very much in vogue till date in spoken Kashmiri language in the community whenever we are put up to such kind of people whose tongues are like filthy mops.
We call such people garbage trucks as they are always carrying loads of muck of thoughts, sickening behaviours, personal problems, bad experiences, wrong and shameful thoughts and negativity and pessimism, in their heads and want to offload them on others on lame pretexts.
They are always looking for the targets of people on whom they dump their mental filth. The good people should not give them a chance to offload it on them but it is not always possible to avert such human-headed demons in life. When we find any person crossing redlines of decency and politeness in attitude and language, we often ridicule and nickname them Gunda or Gundi as Chandaal or a Watul or Watij or Leke-Watul or Lake-Watij, simpliciter ! Abusive behaviors are painful beyond measure for the people who face it.
Some terms and proverbs associated with the term “Watal“: (1) “Marrah-Watul“: He was one, Watul, who was a killer. The term was referred to the Executioner or Jalad, the hangman who was taking a convict to gallows. He always hailed from Watal-community. Hence, the term “Marrah-Watul”. (2) “Phah-Watul“.
They were night-soil- carriers in the past who carried ordure early in pre-dawn hours from house to house. Long before their entry in Kashmir, night spoilers had been known to the Europe as well. (3) “Watal-Bapar”: It meant any association or body of traders or anything in disarray, confused, shabby, shape. It could apply to filthy and foul condition of any household too. (4) “Watal-Batwar“:
Watals would also do mending of shoes. Usually, they would give date for return of the shoes which used to be always a Saturday and they would ask for some advance from the customer. But the boots or the shoes were never returned on the due date of a Saturday till two or three more Saturdays would pass and so they broke their promises every time and finally, the Watul would then return the shoes to the customer on some Saturday.
It is how this proverb has come in popular usage in the Kashur literature. (5) “Shuip-Watul” or “Shupri Watal”: They were, and are still, those given to the occupation of making winnowing baskets or Shuip in Kashmiri. (6) “Duwan Watals” were those who did scavenging and clearing of the roads in the past. Manual scavenging has disappeared since from the modern societies.
The readers may capture the scene of a famous Mohammad Rafi song, Allah Hi Allah Tera Pyara Bai, from film, Pavitar Papi, where a scavenger is seen in the background sprinkling water from a sheep or goat-skin bag or water-skin, Mashaq, on the road. (7) There is a famous proverb associated with Watal. It is “Huin Maazas Watal Wazeh“.
Literally, it means that Watul is the cook for the flesh of dog. Actually, as mentioned above, Watals were indiscriminate in taking their food. They ate foul food also like olden days gypsies of Punjab, Europe and were generally bhangi and charsi, drunkards, and, for that very reason, they were despised by all in Kashmir.
Here the proverb obviously means, the tastes of a person are known by his/her food habits. Digging deeper in it. It could mean that if foul and filthy is the condition of some place or person, it will attract similar kind of people.
Watal-Meleh:
Then, in history, we had “Watal-Myla” or ”Watal-Meleh” which was the fair when Watals did perform their inter-marriages within their tribe. It is said that Watal Meleh was held at Hazratbal near present day site of NIT and University campus. “Talwar bazi” was main the attraction of Watal Meleh.
The people would watch the natch of the Watals during “Watal Meleh” around the banks of Dal those days. The explorers have noted that they were struck with beauty of the natch or dancing girls accompanying the decorated boats of some governors in the old Kashmir and that they were charming, prettiest but belonged to Watal tribe.
There are still some Mohallas and villages in Kashmir after the names of old Watals eg, in Zakura, Gotli Bagh, and then famous locality of Watal Kadal in old Srinagar and Watalgam in district Budgam.
Bottom-line:
The write up should not be misunderstood as ridiculing of any particular group of Kashmirian community. But, the term is a part of our socio-cultural tradition and the language which can hardly be ignored.
It is also a fact that the term “Watal” has ancient origin in the subcontinent. “Watal” is a got [Kram, caste] among the Kashmiri Pandits. For example, Pandit Pran Kishin Watal and his brother Avtar Krishan Watal held important positions in the Dogra Administration of the twentieth century. Nand Kishore Watal was a famous poet and Girja Watal was another famous broadcaster of Radio.
However, during the Dogra Rule, the term “Watal” was invariably used for a group of Muslims who were socio-economically weak. It became a sort of taunt or nickname of that group of people who were associated with what were considered menial jobs.
It was because of their hard work that our alleys and homes remained clean in the past. Unfortunately, these were exploited by the regimes before and after 1947 for their “vested interests”.