Khatri
Khatri is a caste originating from the Malwa and Majha areas of Punjab region of Indian Subcontinent that is predominantly found in India, and in small numbers in Pakistan. The Khatris claim they are warriors who took to trade. In the Indian subcontinent, they were mostly engaged in mercantile professions such as banking and trade. They were the dominant commercial and financial administration class of late-medieval India. Some in Punjab often belonged to hereditary agriculturalist land-holding lineages, while others were engaged in artisanal occupations such as silk production and weaving.
The Khatris of Punjab, specifically, were scribes and traders during the medieval period, with the Gurumukhi script used in writing the Punjabi language deriving from a standardised form of the Lāṇḍa script used by Khatri traders; the invention of the script is traditionally ascribed to Guru Angad. During the medieval period, with the rise of Persian as an elite vernacular due to Islamic rule, some of the traditional high status upper-caste literate elite such as the Khatris, Kashmiri Brahmins and Kayasthas took readily to learning Persian from the times of Sikandar Lodi onwards and found ready employment in the Imperial Services, specifically in the departments of accountancy, draftsmanship and offices of the revenue minister.
In the 15th century, the Sikh religion was founded by Guru Nanak, a Bedi Khatri. The second guru, Guru Angad was a Trehan Khatri. The third guru, Guru Amar Das was a Bhalla Khatri. The fourth through tenth gurus were all Sodhi Khatris. During the Sikh Empire, many Khatris formed the military vanguard of the Khalsa Army and its administrative class as Dewans of all the provinces. Hari Singh Nalwa, the commander-in-chief of the Sikh Khalsa Army, was an Uppal Khatri and responsible for most of the Sikh conquests up until the Khyber Pass. Others such as Mokham Chand commanded the Sikh Army against the Durrani Empire at Attock while those such as Sawan Mal Chopra ruled Multan after wrestling it from the Afghans.
During the British colonial era, they also served as lawyers and engaged in administrative jobs in the colonial bureaucracy. Some of them served in the British Indian army after being raised as Sikhs.
During the Partition of British India in 1947, Khatris migrated en masse to India from the regions that comprise modern-day Pakistan. Hindu Afghans and Sikh Afghans are predominantly of Khatri and Arora origin.
Khatris have played an active role in the Indian Armed Forces since 1947, with many heading it as the Chief of Army or Admiral of the Navy. Some such as Vikram Batra and Arun Khetarpal have won India's highest wartime gallantry award, the Param Vir Chakra.
Etymology
As per historians W. H. McLeod and Louis Fenech, Khattrī is a Punjabi form of the word Kṣatriya. Peter Hardy and A. R. Desai also agree that Khattrī is derived from Kṣatriya. In the Shabdasāgara, the word Khattrī used for the caste of Hindus from Punjab derives from the Sanskrit Kṣatriya, with the female member being a Khatrānī.Dr. Dharamvir Bharati comments that in Punjabi language, Kṣatriya is pronounced as Khattrī. As per Dr. GS Mansukhani and RC Dogra, "Khatri appears to be unquestionably a Prakritised form of Sanskrit word Kshatriya." According to philologist Ralph Lilley Turner, in his etymological Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Lexicon, it is the Punjabi word "khattrī", meaning "warrior", derived from Sanskrit "kṣatriya", whereas another Gujarati word "khātrī", meaning "a caste of Hindu weavers", derives from Sanskrit "kṣattr̥", meaning "carver, distributor, attendant, doorkeeper, charioteer, son of a female slave".
John Stratton Hawley and Mann clarify the word "Khatri" derives from the Sanskrit "Kshatriya", in Punjab's context Khatri refers to a "cluster of merchant castes including Bedis, Bhallas and Sodhis". Purnima Dhavan sees the claim as originating from a conflation of the phonetically similar words khatri and kshatriya, but refers to Khatris as a "trading caste" of the Sikh Gurus.
Early history
According to S. Srikanta Sastri, Greek historians have mentioned Alexander faced stiffed resistance from an Indian army of "Kathiyo" warriors. Sastri further says "even in present day modern-India, a group of martial caste members called Khati exist in North-India". Michael Witzel, writing in his paper "Sanskritization of the Kuru State" states the Kathaiois were Kaṭha Brahmins.Medieval history
Emperor Jahangir in his autobiography Jahangirnama while talking about the castes observed "The second highest caste is the Chhatri which is also known as Khattri. The Chhatri caste's purpose is to protect the oppressed from the aggression of the oppressors".Punjab
Historian Muzaffar Alam describes the Khatris of Punjab as a "scribe and trading caste". They occupied positions in revenue collection and record keeping and learnt Persian during Mughal era. However, this profession often created conflicts with the Brahmin scribes who discontinued the use of Persian and started using Marathi in the Deccan. According to McLane, them being a trading group, had spread into many parts of India, possibly long before the 1700s and to Bengal, possibly even before the Mughals arrived.According to a 17th-century legend, Khatris continued their military service until the time of Aurangzeb, when their mass death 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 they should be shopkeepers and brokers. This legend is probably fanciful: McLane notes 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 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.
Khatri standards of literacy and caste status were such during the early years of Sikhism that, according to W. H. McLeod, they dominated it.
Kashmir
, a Dewan of Ahmad Shah Durrani, was a Khatri officer from Bhera. He liberated Kashmir from Afghan dominancy in 1754 and ratified his control over the valley by assuming his duties as a Raja. Mal was subsequently defeated in 1762 by Nur-ud-Din Bamzai, a general deputed by Durrani himself.Benares
According to scholars, Khatri Hindus dominated the weaving industry in Benaras. When the first caravan of Muslim weavers arrived in Benaras, the Khatri, who were considered low-caste Hindus at the time, helped them. The Muslims had to depend on the Khatri weavers because the Muslims found it difficult to interact with the high-caste Hindus directly at the time. Since these new immigrant Muslims were cheap labour, the Khatris took over marketing and thus transited from weavers to traders over time. The Muslims, who learned the technique of weaving from them, soon came to be known as Chira-i-Baaf or 'fine cloth weavers'.Bengal
In Bengal, Burdwan Raj was a Khatri dynasty, which gained a high social position for Khatris in the region resulting in the increased migration of Khatris from Punjab to Bengal. When Guru Tegh Bahadur visited Bengal in 1666, he was welcomed by the local Khatris, thereby supporting earlier waves of migration of Khatris to Bengal as well.Gujarat
Historian Douglas E. Hanes states he Khatri weavers in Gujarat trace their ancestry to either Champaner or Hinglaj and the community genealogists believe the migration happened during the late sixteenth' century.Suraiya Faroqhi, writes that in 1742 Gujarat, the Khatris had protested the immigration of Muslim weavers by refusing to deliver cloth to the East India Company. In another case Khatris taught weaving to Kunbis due to receiving excessive orders who soon became strong competitors to the Khatris,.much to their chagrin. In the mid-1770s, the Mughal governor granted the Kunbi rivals the rights to manufacture saris. This licence was later revoked in 1800 due to pressure from the British, after a deal was struck between the Khatris and the East India Company, in which the Khatris would weave only for the EIC until certain quotas were met.
The Gujarat Sultanate was a medieval Muslim dynasty founded by Zafar Khan Muzaffar, a member of the Tank caste of Punjabi Khatris according to the contemporary historian Shiekh Sikander or Rajputs. He started as a menial but rose to the level of a noble in the Delhi Sultan's family and became the Governor of Gujrat. After Timur attacked Delhi, people fled to Gujarat and it became independent.
Trans-regional trading history
The Khatris, as a part of the diaspora community known as Multani or Shikarpuri, played an important role in India's trans-regional trade during the period, being described by Levi as among the "most important merchant communities of early modern India." Levi writes: "Stephen Dale locates Khatris in Astrakhan, Russia during the late 17th century and, in the 1830s, Elphinstone, was informed that Khatris were still highly involved in northwest India's trade and that they maintained communities throughout Afghanistan and as far away as Astrakhan". According to Kiran Datar, they often married Tatar local women in Astrakhan and the children from these marriages were known as Agrijan. As per Stephen Dale, the children born out of Indo-Turkic alliance were in sufficient number to form an Agrizhan suburb in the city.Dale states most of the 10,000 Indian merchants and money-lenders in Isfahan in 1670, belonged to the Khatri caste of Punjab and north-west India. In Iran's Bazaars, Khatris sold cloth and various items and also practised money-lending. Dale believes Khatris had possibly been travelling from Punjab via caravans since the era of Ziauddin Barani. Chardin specifically stereotyped and expressed disapproval of the money-lending techniques of the Khatri community. According to Dale, this racist criticism was ironic given Chardin's non-English background but adds it was Chardin's way of giving an "ethnic explanation" to the economic disparity between Iran and India at that time.