Sidhu Got

What “Got” means for the Sikh Jat

In Jat Sikh families the got is the patrilineal clan name. A got is exogamous: a person does not marry into their own got, and many families also avoid the mother's and the grandmothers' got.

Name and Origin

The clan takes its name from Sidhu, its ancestor in the traditional account. Rose's Glossary (1919) gives the story as the Sidhu tribe's own: Jaisal, a Bhatti Rajput and founder of Jaisalmer, was driven out, and his descendants overran the Hissar and Sirsa country. One of them, Khiwa, married a Jat woman, and their son was Sidhu. Griffin's Rajas of the Punjab (1870) tells it with a fuller family: Sidhu was counted as belonging to his mother's caste, which was Jat, and was the father of four sons. Rose names them Devi, Bur, Sur and Rupach. Both accounts have the Barar (Brar) descend from Bur: Rose says a descendant of Bur named Dhul is the ancestor of the Barar tribe, and Griffin makes Dhul the ancestor of the Faridkot house. Rose records a variant in which the infant Sidhu was nursed by a woman of the Mochi (cobbler) community. Neither author names the mother's got. A later popular account, repeated on Wikipedia and attributed there to Rose and Cunningham, says she was a Gill Jat; That detail is not in Rose or Griffin.

Historical Journey

Rose, compiling from the Punjab census reports of 1883 and 1892, calls the Sidhu the largest and most important Jat tribe of the Punjab and says its original home was the Malwa, where it is still most numerous. He records Sidhu holdings in the Ferozepur ilaqas of Mari, Mudki, Muktsar, Bhuchon, Mehraj, Sultan Khan and Bhudaur, most of Faridkot, and much of Patiala, Nabha, Jhumba and Malaudh. The best-documented Sidhu line is the Phulkian: Chaudhary Phul (1627 to 1689, per the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism as cited on Wikipedia) was the common ancestor of the Phulkian houses. Griffin gives his father as Rup Chand and his mother as a Jat woman of the Jitani clan. Through his sons Tiloka and Rama came the ruling families of Nabha and Jind, and of Patiala, Malaudh and Bhadaur. The Faridkot house descends separately from the Brar line. It became a state under Hamir Singh in 1763 (Wikipedia, citing Fauja Singh and Rabra, The City of Faridkot, 1976). Rose names Sirdars Karm Singh and Dharm Singh as the first Sidhus to become Sikh. The Jaisalmer descent is a clan tradition. Historians of the Punjab (Grewal, as summarised on Wikipedia's Jat Sikh article) describe the Jats generally as moving up the rivers from Rajasthan and Sindh, and the claim of Rajput ancestors, noted by Pettigrew, is common to many Jat clans. The ruling houses themselves claimed the Bhatti line from Rawal Jaisal.

Migration and Diaspora

Rose places the tribe's home in the Malwa and says it spread across the Sutlej into the Lahore, Amritsar and Jullundur districts. Tradition has the ancestors settling first at Hissar and Sirsa, and later moving to Bhatinda. Griffin lists Sidhu-linked families at Attari, Harike, Kythal, Jhumba and Sadhowal, and Brar holdings at Mari, Mudki, Muktsar and Faridkot.

How the Got Is Kept

Rose records that the Sidhu Jats keep a Sidh, Sidh Tilkara, who is also their jathera. His samadh is at Maliraj in the Ferozepur district. Families offered him the first milk of a cow on the 14th of the dark half of each month and fed unmarried girls that day. At weddings, loaves of about a maund and a half were shared among the brotherhood, and cobblers' tools were bowed to; Rose says the custom was dying out. These are the early twentieth century practices he saw, and the page does not claim they are kept today. The Wikipedia article lists eight principal branches (moohis): Maloke, Khokharke, Brar, Saboke, Mohanke, Phoolke, Pirke and Rosike. That list comes from Wikipedia and has not been checked against a printed source.

Presence Across Regions

Notable Personalities

Stories and Legends