New Ethnic and Military Identities Emerge in Northern India

1450–1500

The migration of individuals from different tribes of what is now Afghanistan to the plains of northern India provides for a significant Afghan presence in the armies of the Lodi and Sur dynasties.

The movement of traders and soldiers will continue until the eighteenth century. In late medieval India, terms like Afghan and Rajput are used not just to signify ethnic identity, but also the military affiliation of a new class of peasant-warriors in the northern and central parts of the country. Members of these hitherto agrarian groups are recruited by contractors for warlords who provide military services to different regional states that emerge in the aftermath of a weakened Delhi Sultanate and Timur’s raid on Delhi. The development of a distinct military affiliation also sets the stage for the crystallisation of ethnic identities, where genealogies are linked to mythical dynasties and new territories are founded in present-day Gujarat, central India and Rajasthan.

Bibliography

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Kolff, Dirk H. A. Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market of Hindustan, 1450–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Wink, André. “Afghan Caravan Trade and Imperialism in India.” Chungara Revista de Antropología Chilena 51, no. 1 (2018): 111–20. https://doi.org/10.4067/S0717-73562018005001603.