Khatri
A Khatri nobleman, in Kitab-i tasrih al-aqvam by Col. James Skinner (1778–1841)
Religions	Hinduism, Sikhism and Islam
Languages	Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu[1] Kutchi, Gujarati, Sindhi[2]
Country	Primarily India and Pakistan
Region	Punjab, Sindh, Delhi, Maharashtra[3] Haryana,[4] Gujarat[5][6]

Khatri is a caste found in India and Pakistan, mostly from the Punjab region. Khatris have provided many significant religious figures such as all the Sikh Gurus.^[7] They have also provided important martial figures such as General Pran Nath Thapar, the fourth Chief of the Indian Army,^[8] Hari Singh Nalwa and Dewan Mokham Chand, Commander-in-chiefs of the Khalsa Army.^[9][10]

Some important medieval historical figures of the caste include Raja Todar Mal (1500-1589) the Finance Minister & Wazir of the Mughal Empire^[11][12] as well as Sultan Muzaffar Shah I, the founder of the Gujarat Sultanate, a Muslim Khatri Kingdom.^[13][14]

Before the Independence of India, Khatris were mostly settled in Western Punjab and their main castes were Bedi, Bhalla, Bohar, Dhavan, Gulati, Kapoor, Kakkar, Kalra, Khanna, Kochar, Kohli, Mahenderu, Malhotra , Mehra , Sahai, Sahni, Sethi, Tandon, Ghai, Ghandhari, Maini, Puri, Kiran , Mehta, Handa, Sehgal/Saigal , Cham, Chotra, Lakhi, Rihan, Bedi, Sodhi, Trihan and Aroras.^[15]

History

Historically, Khatris were teachers, civil administrators, scribes, bankers, accountants, merchants, traders, shopkeepers and silk weavers.^[16][17][18] According to Bichitra Natak, said to be the autobiography of the last Sikh Guru, Gobind Singh,^[19][20][21] the Bedi sub-caste of the Khatris derives its lineage from Kush, the son of Rama (according to Hindu epic Ramayana). The descendants of Kush, according to the Bachitar Natak legend, learned the Vedas at Benares, and were thus called Bedis (Vedis).^[22] Similarly, according to the same legend, the Sodhi sub-caste claims descent from Lav, the other son of Rama.^[23]

According to Ancient Greek sources, "The people that held the territory comprised between the Hydrastes (Ravi) and the Hyphasis (Beas) were the Khatriaioi, whose capital was Sangala". Sangala find mention in Mahabharata and Pali Buddhist texts as the capital of Madra Kingdom. J. W. McCrindle, the translator and writer adds that the name is found in the modern era, spread across a vast region in the northwest of India, from Hindukush to Bengal and from Nepal to Gujarat, in slightly variant forms, including the term Khatris and others.^[24]

The Gujarat Sultanate (1407-1523) was a medieval Muslim Khatri kingdom. The dynasty was founded by Zafar Khan Muzaffar, a Khatri convert of a low subdivision called Tank, originally from Southern Punjab, but born in Delhi.^[25] He rose to nobel status in the Delhi Sultan's household. He was Governor of Gujarat and became independent from Delhi after Tīmūr devastated the city.  The Gujarati historian Sikandar does narrate the story of their ancestors having once been Hindu ‘Tanks’, a branch of Khatris who traced their descent from Rāmachandra, whom the Hindus worship as God’. The Tanks were expelled from their community, according to Sikandar, because they had taken to drinking wine^[26] The Persian historical source Mīrat-i-Ahmadī in Chapter 7 {origins of the Sultanate] says the first person first ennobled with honor of Islam was Sidharan, of the Tank, subcaste of the Khatri community and their lineage is in Rāmachandra who the Hindus consider God.^[27]

Having gained the patronage of the Mughal nobles, the Khatris then adopted administrative and military roles outside the Punjab region. The most prominent Mughal Khatri noble was Raja Todar Mal, who was the Finance Minister of the Empire. He introduced an entirely new system of revenue known as zabt and a system of taxation called dahshala.^[12] According to the legend, in the 17th century, they continued their military service until the time of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, when the death of many of their number during the emperor's Deccan Campaign caused him to order their widows to be remarried. The order was made out of sympathy for the widows but when the Khatri community leaders refused to obey it, Aurangzeb terminated their military service and said that they should be shopkeepers and brokers.^[28]

This legend is probably fanciful: John McLane notes that a more likely explanation for their revised position was that a Sikh rebellion against the Mughals in the early 1700s severely compromised the Khatri's ability to trade and forced them to take sides. Those who were primarily dependent on the Mughals went to significant lengths to assert that allegiance in the face of accusations that they were in fact favouring "Jat Sikh followers of the rebel leader, Banda". The outcome of their assertions - which included providing financial support to the Mughals and shaving their beards - was that the Khatris became still more important to the Mughal rulers as administrators at various levels, in particular because of their skills in financial management and their connections with bankers.^[28]

Purnima Dhawan described that together with Jat community, the Khatris gained considerably from the expansion of the Mughal empire, although both groups supported Guru Hargobind in his campaign for Sikh self-government in the Punjab plains.^[29]

The Khatris played an important role in India's trans-regional trade during the period,^[30] being described by Scott Cameron Levi as among the "most important merchant communities of early modern India."^[31] Dale locates Khatris in Astrakhan, Russia during the late seventeenth century and, in the 1830s, the British imperial proconsul and past governor of Bombay, Mountstuart Elphinstone, was informed that Khatris were still highly involved in northwest India's transregional commerce and that they maintained communities throughout Afghanistan and as far away as Astrakhan.^[32] Often, they married Tatar local women and the children from these marriages were known as Agrijan.^{[33][page needed]} According to George Campbell's mid-nineteenth-century Ethnology of India, Khatris were the only Hindus known in Central Asia.^[32] In the 1830s, Khatris were working as governors in the districts like Bardhaman, Lahore, Multan, Peshawar and Hazara, but independent from the Mughal Rule.^{[34][35][36][37]}

In 1998, Suresh Kumar described Khatris working as silk weavers. Khatris were also found to be engaged in agriculture and service. Banking, trading and business were considered "traditional occupations of the Khatri in Rajasthan".^[38]

Origin and ritual status

As per historian Baij Nath Puri, the Khatris are an integral part of the old Kshatriya caste.^[39][40] Syan, H.S, says Khatris considered themselves to be of pure Vedic descent and thus superior to the Rajputs, who like them claim the Kshatriya status of the Hindu varna system.^[41] According to Scott C. Levi, Khatris were considered to be Kshatriyas, the second-highest varna in the Indian social hierarchy, below only the Brahmans despite their participation in occupations similar to those of the Bania communities.^[32] Kshatriyas in Punjab are represented by both landowning Rajputs and urban Khatris, even though for centuries there is no social bond between the two.^[42]

However, these claims are disputed by most scholars who consider castes in north India, like Khatri and Kayastha to be merchant castes who claim higher status to befit the educational and economic progress they made in the past.^[17] According to Anand Yang, the Khatris in the Saran district of Bihar, were included in the list of "Bania" along with Agarwals and Rastogis of the Vaishya Varna .^[43]

Khatri's standards of literacy and caste status were such during the early years of Sikhism that, according to W. H. McLeod, they dominated it.^[41] Author McLeod mentions the employment of Khatris as soldiers by Mughal emperors but notes by the time of British arrival in India they were mostly merchants and scribes^[44] Kenneth W. Jones says "the Khatris claimed with some justice and increasing insistence, the status of Rajputs, or Kshatriyas, a claim not granted by British but illustrative of their ambiguous position on the great varna scale of class divisions".^[45]

The word Khatri in the Hindi Language comes from the Sanskrit Kshatriya according to the Śabdasāgara Lexicon by Shyamasundara Dasa^[46] According to Dr. H.H Wilson, Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford, the word Khatri is the Hindi word for the Sanskrit Kshatriya, the name of the 2nd pure tribe of the caste system.^[47] Purnima Dhavan sees the claim as originating from a conflation of the words khatri and kshatriya, which are phonetically similar.^[48] In the 19th-century British administrators failed to agree whether the Khatri claim of Kshatriya status should be accepted, since the overwhelming majority of them were engaged in Vaishya (mercantile) occupation rather than in Kshatriya (military) pursuits.^[49] Dasharatha Sharma described Khatris of Rajasthan as a mixed pratiloma caste of low ritual status but suggested that they could be a mixed caste born of Kshatriya fathers and Brahmin mothers^[50]

Veena Talwar Oldenburg states that the "Khatri" is a miniature form of "Kshatriya", but notes that they were "arbitrarily lumped together with the 'trading castes' by the British". According to Oldenburg, the Khatris were acknowledged as Kshatriyas, but "had always been much more occupationally diverse than their origins as a warrior caste suggested."^[51] The Khatris served in Ranjit Singh's forces but they were severely restricted by the British Raj possibly "to prevent the sort of mutiny" the British experienced during the 1857 Rebellion.^[52]

In New Zealand, Khatris of Gujarat and Rajasthan were said to have tailoring skills like "Darji" (tailor) caste.^[53] In the case of Sikh Khatris, their Kshatriya claim reflects a contradictory attitude towards the traditional Hindu caste system. It is evident in Sikh texts such as the Guru Granth Sahib. which on the one hand rise above the Hindu caste paradigm and on the other hand seeks to portray the Khatri gurus as a group of warrior-defenders of their faith, just as with the Kshatriya varna.^[48]

In Mahrashtra, Khatris are subdivided into "Brahmo Khatri", "Kapur Khatri", etc.^[6]

Historian Vijaya Gupchup from the University of Mumbai states that in Maharashtra, Brahmins showed resentment in the attempt by the Marathi Khatris or Koshti to elevate themselves from ritually low status to Kshatriya by taking advantage of the British neutrality towards castes. She quotes a translation from a Marathi publication that gave a Brahminic opinion of this attempt:

"Everyone does what he wants, Sonars have become Brahmins, Treemungalacharya was insulted by throwing cowdung at him in Pune, but he has no shame and still calls himself a Brahmin. Similarly a Khatri or Koshti who are included in Panchal at places other than Bombay, call themselves Kshatriya in Bombay and say their needles are the arrows and their thimbles are the sheaths. How surprising that those Sonars and Khatris at the hands of whom even Shudras will not take water have become Brahmins and Kshatriyas. In short day by day higher castes are disappearing and lower castes are prospering."^[54]

Punjabi Khatris post-Independence

D.L. Sheth, the former director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), listed the Indian upper castes that constituted the middle class and were traditionally "urban and professional" immediately after Independence in 1947. This list included the Khatris from Punjab, Kashmiri Pandits, Nagar Brahmins and the South Indian Brahmins; Chitpawans and CKPs (Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhus) from Maharashtra; Kayasthas from northern India; the Probasi and the Bhadralok Bengalis; the Parsis; and the upper crusts of the Muslim and Christian communities. According to P.K.Verma, "Education was a common thread that bound together with this pan Indian elite" and almost all the members of these communities could read and write English and were educated beyond school.^[55][56][57]

Religious groups

Hindu Khatris

The vast majority of Khatris are Hindu.^[58] Most Hindu Khatris migrated to India after partition and settled in urban areas across India. They were estimated to constitute 9% of the total population of Delhi in 2003.^[59]

The Bardhaman Raj was founded in 1657 by Sangam Rai Kapoor, a Khatri from Kotli, Punjab^[60]

Sikh Khatris

All the ten Sikh Gurus were Khatris:^[61] Guru Nanak was a Bedi, Guru Angad was a Trehan, Guru Amar Das was a Bhalla, and the remainder were Sodhis.^[62]

During the lifetime of the Gurus, most of their major supporters were Khatris. A list of these is provided by a contemporary of the Sikh Gurus, Bhai Gurdas, in his Varan Bhai Gurdas.^{[63][need quotation to verify]} Khatris and Brahmins opposed "the demand that the Sikhs set aside the distinctive customs of their castes and families, including the older rituals."^[64]

Gulaba Singh Khatri (1720-1759) was the ruler and founder of the Dallewalia Misl, an 18th century state in Jalandhar district^[65]

Muslim Khatris

The Gujarat Sultanate (1407-1523) was a medieval Muslim kingdom that was founded by Sultan Muzaffar Shah I, a Tank Khatri originally from Southern Punjab who converted to Islam. He founded the ruling Muzaffarid dynasty that ruled Gujarat.^{[25][66][27][67]}

See also

• List of Khatris

References