The Amazing Khatris of Punjab

One of my co-workers is Mr Raj Kumar Khatri... a very nice guy from Karachi.

Thank you, a very informative article

A very well written article, the Khatris are much admired in Punjab. Khatris are quite distinct from Aroras. Pakistan`s loss has been India`s gain.

Dost

Very informative article.

In Punjabi villages, as you noticed when you came, the elder folk almost never use the word `Hindu`. They use the generic term `Khatri` . As you said, they were treated as a professional cast - like the other Muslim casts - Darkhan, lohar, Taeli, Machee, Mirasee, Julaha etc.

And a Khatri in a village was an educated person who kept records - and gave loans to the illetrate small farmers - obviously with interest.

He was supposed to be a sharp person - good with calculations. And his interests always kept piling up. Khatri always had the money.

I have not heard the elder village folk, including my father, remember Khatris with any malice. They felt nostalgic about those times.

There is a family in Pakistan which uses Khatri as title.

nhk

There are several Hindu families that use ``Khatri`` as a title in Pakistan.

Very informative.
Thanks for posting this DM,

Avkrishna

Good piece. Strange of me to think that Khatris were memon.

Good piece. Strange of me to think that Khatris were memon.

DM,

Actually this is the first time I learned about the link between `Khatri` and the different sub-castes you mentioned in the article. My first interaction with the different Khatri communities was in my Grad school and there were quite many of them. I was told that all the sub-communities belong to `Bania` caste. Looks like there is not that much awareness about the origin of these communities.

You are also spot on about the achievements of this community and lack of a comprehensive sociological/historical research. As I mentioned earlier, they were disproportionately represented in my grad school ,

Thanks,
Avkrishna

DM ji,

Thanks for an interesting and informative piece!

It was a revelation that Khatris who seem to be ubiquitous in most of the major towns of U.P. actually have their origins in some obscure place in Punjab.

No write-up on Khatris can be complete without references to Rajarshi Purushottam Das Tandon and DevkiNandan Khatri. The former contributed to Hindi language and freedom struggle while the latter regaled us with stories of witchcraft, black magic and sorcery in his epic Chadrakanta Santati (progeny of Chandrakanta). The novel was also televised in 90`s.

Excellant Article indeed for a person cooped up in Canadian winter City.
Do you have any informative columns about Saraswat Brahmins of Punjab and Nawayati Muslims of India?

DM

Very nice and informative. Just a quick question, all the famous ppl that you mention, were they all Punjabi, or Khatris from diff areas?

Its strange you publish this now, just last week i tried to do some research to find out about Gujjar caste, but i only have the internet and limited time, where did you go to get this information?

Thanks
A

I am confused.
The only Khatri I know in the US is a guy from the local masjid. And he is a memon!

Neat, a pleasure to read. I have lots of family connections to the groups mentioned here, so it was cool to learn something about them.

BTW, what about the dogras (another family connection)? Are they related to these groups do you think? They seem to be more ``pahari``-type people though.

Great article. I never heard of khatris growing up in Pakistan - although the large number of ``sub-castes`` of the ``khatris`` like ``khukrain`` (= araiN?) and ``gujral`` (= gujjar?) seem to match tribal affiliations in Pakistan panjab.

With respect to ally`s question in #12: The gujjar tribe considered (per a book on the ``peoples of the subcontinent`` I read a long time ago written by a russian writer, and per some literature I saw on the web) to have originally lived in the caspian sea area, and come down to India as part of the Kushan (a hun tribe) to the subcontinent around 5 century AD where they became the ruling group until they were defeated by the turkish invaders. Place names like Gujrat, Gujranwala, Gujjar Khan (in Pakistan) and the Gujrat province in India) are indicators of the extent of their influence in the latter half of the first century. The gujjars fought (and lost) a pitched battle against the british at Meerut as part of the 1857 ghaddar, after which they were declared a ``mutinous tribe`` by the brits and deprived of land and many of them ended up scraping a living as nomadic herders of cattle. Gujjars played an active role in Pakistan (the name Pakistan itself was coined by a gujjar, Chaudhry Rehmat Ali, and the first Nishan-e-Haider was awarded to a gujjar (Major Tufail Shaheed), Khem Karan was captured in 1965 by a brigade led by a gujjar (Brigadier Sahib Dad Khan), and that equally great Pakistani hero MukhtaraN Mai is also a gujjar (albeit from a poor family - but nevertheless shows with her courage against oppression that gujjars are second to none in this field regardless of whether they are Presidents - like Ch. Fazal Elahi - or military generals or humble village women). Today, gujjars are to be found in both India and Pakistan - in India they form a large segment of the kashmiri hindu population, and in Pakistan they are to be found in the Panjab and in the frontier (where they form the poorer section, and so are oppressed by the dominant pathan majority).

Hope this helps. :-)

on #15, the phrase ``are indicators of the extent of their influence in the latter half of the first century.`` should read ``are indicators of the extent of their influence in the latter half of the first MILLENIUM and the early part of the second``.