BARGIS

BARGIS

Subject: History / Culture

Context : The ruling All India Trinamool Congress wary of the large number of non-Bengali-speaking voter base in the state, has found a specific word to attack the Bharatiya Janata Party .The word ‘bargi’ as the TMC likes to call the BJP, is of special significance in Bengal’s history.

Concept :

• Bargi referred to cavalrymen in Maratha and Mughal armies. The word comes from the Persian “bargir”, literally meaning “burden taker”, notes historian SurendraNath Sen in his 1928 work The Military System Of The Marathas.
• But in the Mughal and Maratha armies, the term signified “a soldier who rode a horse furnished by his employer”.
• In the Maratha cavalry, any able-bodied person could enlist as a bargir, unless he had the means to buy a horse and military outfit– in which case he could join as a silhedar, who had “much better prospects of advancement”.
• Both the bargirs and silhedars were under the overall control of the Sarnobat (Persian for “Sar-i-Naubat”, or Commander in Chief).