Arora

For other uses, see Arora (disambiguation).

Arora is a community of Punjab, comprising both Hindus and Sikhs. The name is derived from their native place Aror.^[a] In 712, the Arora people left Aror and started to settle in the cities of Punjab.^[5][6][7][8]

Arora
Religions	Hinduism • Sikhism
Languages	Punjabi (Lahnda − Thali, Riasti, Pahari-Pothwari, Hindko, Khetrani, Jatki),^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4] Sindhi, Saraiki, Hindustani
Region	Contemporarily Punjab, India • Haryana • Delhi • Rajasthan • Uttar Pradesh Historically Derajat (Punjab • Balochistan • Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Sindh and Pothohar Plateau
Related groups	Khatri • Bhatia • Sood

Historically, the Arora section of the Khatri community had been principally found in West Punjab, in the districts to the south and west of Lahore. Scott Cameron Levi, believes that they are a "sub-caste of the Khatris".^[3]

After Partition of India, Punjabis who migrated from erstwhile West Punjab were mostly Khatris and Aroras. Studies reveal that "Arora Khatri, Bedi, Ahluwalia etc. are some of the important castes among the Punjabis".^[9]

The town of Rohri in Sukkur District of Sindh, sketched in 1842.

Mughal decline and Afghan Revival

On 13 April 1752, Lahore and Multan of Punjab were ceded to Ahmad Shah Durrani after the fall of Kaura Mal in the battlefield and retreat of Adina Beg. Afghanistan was the conduit for the trade between Central Asia and India. Grain trade in Afghanistan was in the hands of the Hindu Punjabi Arora/Khatris. Reportedly, they gave loans to the Durrani rulers to carry out military expeditions in India. Moreover, the disappointed princes of India "encouraged Zaman Shah Durrani to invade the subcontinent and overthrow the British" in 1798.^[10]

To restrict the Afghans in Punjab, Hindu Diwan Kaura Mal Arora "died while fighting against the army of Ahmed Shah Durrani on March 6, 1752". He was the Governor of Multan and had also served as the Minister of Lahore twice. Earlier, he led the Lahore Darbar and "made a joint-attack on Multan in 1749", along the Sikhs led by Jassa Singh. Post his victory over Multan, "Diwan Kaura Mall was given the title of Maharaja Bahadur" by the Mughals.^[11][12]

Prior to the British colonial rule, Aroras were one the three main money-lending castes of Punjab. The Aroras were often subjected to oppression and humiliation by peasant communities in muslim-dominated areas of Punjab. Socially discriminatory laws were also passed against them.^[13] According to Sugata Bose, it was only "'when British rule freed him from restraint and armed him with the power of the law ... [that] he became as oppressive as he had been submissive'".^[14]

The Aroras were often good farmers, and also engaged in metalworking, goldsmithery, and weaving.^[15]

British Colonial Era

 

Portrait of an unidentified Arora Storekeeper from Lahore with coins in hand and in front of him, ca.1862–72

Pettigrew notes that in the 19th century, the Aroras were working as shopkeepers and small traders within the Sikh community in Punjab.^[16] During the British Raj, in some parts of Punjab their population was so high that they had to seek employment outside their traditional occupations shopkeeping, accountancy and money-lending^[17][18] For the Hindu merchant castes, Agarwal Banias, Khatris and Aroras, Timber trade was also one of the trades they followed before 1900. However, since 1900 the smallest merchant sect, the Suds, started this trade and later dominated it in eastern Punjab.^[19]

The Amritsar Gazetteer says:

Aroras trace their origin from the Khatris. It is said that Khatris are Khatris of Lahore and Multan, whereas Aroras are Khatris of Aror, modern Rori and Sukkar (Sind) in Pakistan. There is a street in Amritsar named as ‘Arorianwali Gali’. The Aroras seem to have settled in Amritsar during the time of Maharaja Ranjit Singh or even earlier. It is presumed that they migrated to Amritsar from Lahore to which place they might have originally migrated from Sind or Multan.^[20]

The Hoshiarpur Gazetteer says:

Before independence, the Aroras did not constitute a sizeable population in the district. With the migration of the non-Muslim population from Pakistan to India in 1947, they settled here, though in small numbers. The Aroras were generally settled in West Punjab (Pakistan) and in the Firozepur District. Their representation in the eastern districts of the Punjab was not notable. Whatever be their origin, the fact is that they resemble Khatris in certain traits. They are also divided into many groups and castes, Uchanda, Nichanda, etc., but in social life, these groups are of no importance. They intermarry in their groups like others. They also intermarry among Khatris. In the All-India meeting in 1936, held by the Khatris at Lahore (Pakistan), it was decided that the Aroras, Soods and Bhatias were Khatri for all intents and purposes. And, as such, they should be admitted to the Khatri stock. This interpretation did not find much favour then, but with the lapse of time, it has almost been accepted.^[21]

Uttaradhi (north), Dakhanadhi (south) and Dahre (west) are three major sub-groups of the Arora people based on territorial differentiations.^[22] Before the independence of India, Arora used to marry in their own sub-group i.e. Uttradhi, Dakkhna or Dahra but after the independence, spheres of permissible arranged matrimonial alliances were widened to include other sub-groups of Arora.^[23]

British ethnographer Denzil Ibbetson observed that Arora-Khatris were centered in Multan and Derajat (region consisting of Dera Ismail Khan and Dera Ghazi Khan) which are now part of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa regions of modern-day Pakistan. They conducted business throughout Afghanistan and Central Asia.^[24]

Post-Independence

In the census of 1951, Aroras that were settled in Punjab returned their caste names as Khatris, Arora Khatris, Arorae, Rore, Aror, Rora Khatris, Arore, Aror Khatris etc. Some of the Aroras simply returned their caste names with Arora sub-caste names such as Arya, Ahuja, Batheja, Bathla, Chawla, Chhabra, Dang, Juneja,Taneja, Upneja, Wadhwa etc.^[25]

According to the Commission Reports by Justice Gurnam Singh (1990) and Justice K.C. Gupta (2012), Arora is a forward caste socially, educationally and economically. It was reported that "despite of being uprooted from their homeland", Arora community has high literacy rate. An economic survey conducted by Maharishi Dayanand University states that Arora/Khatri people have good representation both in government as well as private sector. They are both in business, services and other fields. They are "economically well-off and not dependent on money-lending or shopkeeping". They are engaged as "doctors, engineers, administrators and are represented in white-collar jobs". The Arora were divided in two main sub groups, namely Hindu Arora and Sikh Arora depending upon the religion pursued.^[26]

Punita Arora became the first lady Lieutenant General of the Indian Army in 2004.^[27][28]

As of 2009, many Aroras were prominent shopkeepers in several cities of Punjab including Amritsar.^[8] McLeod adds that they played prominent role in the Singh Sabha movement. Aroras such as Vir Singh and Mehtab Singh^[b] were influential within the Sikh community.^[8]

In the 2022 Punjab Legislative Assembly election, 11 legislatures in the majority government, come from Arora community.^[29]

Culture

McLeod notes that marriages between Aroras and the Khatris are common.^[8]

According to the University of Utah sociologist, Bam Dev Sharda, in the "status allocation in village India", the Aroras are considered a mercantile caste belonging to the Vaishya varna - like the Khatris, Agarwal, Bania and Ahluwalia, and they claim "twice-born" status.^[30] So does historian Kenneth Jones by citing Denzil Ibbetson's study.^[31]

According to the University of Toronto anthropologist, Nicola Mooney, the Aroras are of Kshatriya varna, along with the Khatris.^[32] Similarly, Grant Evans describes Arora as a "sub-group of the Khatri jati of the Kshatriya Varna".^{[33][clarification needed]}

According to one legend, the Aroras are of Kshatriya stock, but dissociated themselves from the other Kshatriyas and escaped prosecution by Parashurama, calling themselves aur (someone else).^[6][34]

In the opinion of a "Ford-Maxwell Professor of South Asian Studies" at Syracuse University, the merchant-type castes such as the Rajasthani Baniyas, Agarwals, Guptas, Mittals, Goels are twice born castes. However in Punjab, there is a large number of merchant type jatis, "Arora" being their generic name, both Hindu and Sikh, and they are not twice-born. Yet they share about the same status in the wide regional ranking". He calls this "deferred caste denial" which he explains as the rule that "hierarchy persists in the Hindu mind even where caste is denied in any of the senses and by any of the strategies adumbrated".^[35]

In the opinion of a Professor of Sociology at Lucknow University (India), "every Hindu is supposed to have a caste" and Aroras (including its sub-castes) are identified as a sub-division of the Khatris. It is noted that "whether Khattris belong to Kshatriya varna or Vaishya varna is a point of controversy".^[36] According to Ethne K. Marenco, the Jat Sikhs were placed at the top in the Sikh caste hierarchy, above the Khatri and Arora Sikhs. In contrast, per the Hindu traditions, "the Khatris and Aroras were accorded Kshatriya status", while "the status of the Jat Sikhs was equated with that of Shudras".^[37]

Majority of the male members of the Arya Samaj in the late 19th century Punjab came from the Arora and Khatri merchant castes. In Punjab, the Kshatriya castes who were hierarchically higher than the Aroras and Khatris had been disempowered and thus the Brahmins who had lost their patrons had to turn to these merchant castes. Christophe Jaffrelot explains the attraction of these trading castes to the Arya Samaj as a means of social mobility associated with their prosperity during the British rule. He cites N.G.Barrier to show that the philosophy of the Arya Samaj founder, Dayananda Saraswati, was responsible for the aspirations of these Vaishya castes from Punjab to higher status:^[38]

Dayananda's claim that caste should be determined primarily by merit not birth, opened new paths of social mobility to educated Vaishyas who were trying to achieve social status commensurate with their improving economic status^[38]

In a study of cultural geography and pilgrimage in India, it was recorded that "Khatri-Aroras are surely among the most numerous Hindu caste groups" in the areas of Punjab and Delhi. Khatri-Arora along with Brahmans and Mercantile castes "dominated the total mass of pilgrims" at Badrinath Dham. Similarly, the total number of pilgrims at Haridwar and Jwalaji were also predominated by the Khatri-Arora. At Chintapurni pilgrim, the Arora was found to be numerically dominant pilgrim group particularly during the Shravan Ashtmi fair.^[39]

See also

• Arora (surname)

References

Citations

1. Now known as Rohri, a city near Sukkur in present-day Sindh, Pakistan.
2. Mehtab Singh, a Sikh Arora, was an eminent political leader in the early 20th century.^[8]

1. Oonk, Gijsbert (2007). Global Indian Diasporas: Exploring Trajectories of Migration and Theory. Amsterdam University Press. pp. 43–45. ISBN 978-90-5356-035-8.
2. Singer, André (1982). Guardians of the North-West Frontier: The Pathans. Time-Life Books. ISBN 978-0-7054-0702-1.
3. Levi (2002), p. 107.
4. "Blame caste for Pakistan's violent streak, not faith". Times of India Blog. 25 September 2016. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
5. Garg, Gaṅgā Rām (1992). Encyclopaedia of the Hindu World. Concept Publishing Company. ISBN 978-81-7022-373-3. When Muhammad-bin-Qasim plundered the place Arora in 712 and defeated Raja Dahar, who belonged to the Arora Dynasty, the Arora people left Sind and settled in Punjab cities, situated on the banks of the rivers Jhelum, Chenab and Ravi.
6. Hanks, Patrick (8 May 2003). Dictionary of American Family Names. Oxford University Press. p. 58. ISBN 978-0-19-977169-1.
7. Malhotra, Anshu (2002). Gender, Caste, and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in Colonial Punjab. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195656480. Retrieved 8 October 2014. The Aroras were also said to be the Khatris of Arorkot, or Aror, the ancient capital of Sindh.
8. McLeod, W. H. (24 July 2009). The A to Z of Sikhism. Scarecrow Press. pp. 21, 213, 128. ISBN 978-0-8108-6344-6.
9. Government of Haryana, Department of Welfare. . Welfare of Scheduled Caste & Backward Classes Department. pp. 05, 135. Archived from the original on 15 May 2021. Retrieved 15 May 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
10. Roy, Kaushik (2015). "Mughal Decline and Afghan Revival :1707-1810". War and Society in Afghanistan From the Mughals to the Americans, 1500–2013. Oxford University Press India. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-19-908944-4.
11. Dilagīra, Harajindara Siṅgha (1997). The Sikh reference book. Internet Archive. Edmonton, Alb., Canada : Sikh Educational Trust for Sikh University Centre, Denmark ; Amritsar : Available from Singh Bros. p. 480. ISBN 978-0-9695964-2-4.
12. Ahluwalia, M. L. (1989). Life and Times of Jassa Singh Ahluwalia. Publication Bureau, Punjabi University. p. 43.
13. B.B.Chaudhari (2008). D.P.Chattopadhayaya (ed.). Peasant History of Late Pre-colonial and Colonial India-Volume 8. Pearson Longman. pp. 137–138. ISBN 9788131716885.
14. Sugata Bose (1994). "Introduction". Credit, Markets, and the Agrarian Economy of Colonial India. Oxford University Press. p. 7. ISBN 978-0195633085.
15. Malcolm Lyall Darling (1928). The Punjab Peasant In Prosperity And Debt. Oxford University Press. p. 212. Often a good farmer, even when he does not actually drive the plough, he looks after his land with care, and any improvement to be found in his neighbourhood is generally due to his capital, industry and thrift. He will turn his hand to anything that promises gain, and may be found weaving baskets and mats, beating out vessels of copper and of brass, working as a goldsmith, or even plying the tailor's needle and thread.
16. Joyce Pettigrew (1975). Robber Noblemen: A Study of the Political System of the Sikh Jats. Routledge & Kegan Paul. p. 41. The Aroras, who formed 9 per cent of the Sikh population and who generally supplied most of Punjab's petty traders and small shopkeepers...
17. Kesar Singh (1997). B. L. Abbi (ed.). Post-green revolution rural Punjab: A profile of economic and socio-cultural change, 1965-1995. p. 36. Of the clean caste households in the village , Arora , a traditional shopkeeping and petty - business caste , is lacking in the Jat's prestige and power in this village
18. J. Royal Roseberry (1987). Imperial Rule in Punjab: The Conquest and Administration of Multan 1818-1881. p. 4. The Aroras were so numerous that many had to find employ outside the traditional caste occupations of shopkeeper, moneylender and village accountant.
19. Richard P. Tucker (2011). A Forest History of India. SAGE. p. 79. ISBN 9788132119524. Others represented several Hindu merchant castes, who invested in timber as only one of several lines of trade. They included Agarwal Banias, Khatris, and Aroras. From about 1900 the smallest Hindu merchant sect, the Suds, began moving toward their later dominance in the timber trade of eastern Punjab.
20. Gazetteers of India, Barkat Rai Chopra (1976). Amritsar. Chandigarh: Government of Punjab. p. 88.
21. . Archived from the original on 24 October 2010. Retrieved 21 November 2010.
22. Singh, Surely Kumar (1997). People of India: India's communities. Kolkata: Anthropological Survey of India. p. 126.
23. . District Gazetteer - Amritsar. Department of Revenue, Rehabilitation and Disaster Management, Government of Punjab. 1976. Archived from the original on 26 September 2007. Retrieved 23 October 2011.
24. Oonk, Gijsbert (2007). Global Indian Diasporas: Exploring Trajectories of Migration and Theory. Amsterdam University Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-90-5356-035-8.
25. Government of India, Deputy Registrar General (23 August 1956). (PDF). Linguistic Survey of India. Archived from the original on 4 May 2021. Retrieved 4 May 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
26. Government of Haryana, Department of Welfare. . Welfare of Scheduled Caste & Backward Classes Department. pp. 135–136. Archived from the original on 15 May 2021. Retrieved 15 May 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
27. "First Lady Lt Gen of Indian Army". archive.pib.gov.in. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
28. "rediff.com: The General in a Sari - A Slide Show". specials.rediff.com. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
29. Punjab Election (20 March 2022). "Arora community seeks representation in ministry". The Tribune (Chandigarh). Retrieved 20 April 2023.
30. Bam Dev Sharda (2005). David Bills (ed.). The Shape of Social Inequality: Stratification and Ethnicity in Comparative perspective. Elsevier. p. 253. ISBN 9780080459356.
31. Kenneth W. Jones; Kenneth W.Jones (1976). Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in 19th-century Punjab. University of California Press. pp. 4–5. ISBN 978-0-520-02920-0.
32. Mooney, Nicola (17 September 2011). Rural Nostalgias and Transnational Dreams: Identity and Modernity Among Jat Sikhs. University of Toronto Press. p. 152. ISBN 978-1-4426-6268-1. Aroras, however, are significantly higher than Jats in the caste hierarchy: along with Khatris, they are of the warrior varna, Kshatriya, the second of the four varna
33. Evans, Grant (1993). Asia's Cultural Mosaic: An Anthropological Introduction. Prentice Hall. p. 299. ISBN 978-0-13-052812-4. An example of a jati might be to be the member of a Lahore Arora , a regional sub - group within the Khatri jati of the Kshatriya varna.
34. Dogra, R. C.; Mansukhani, Gobind Singh (1995). Encyclopaedia of Sikh Religion and Culture. Vikas Publishing House. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-7069-8368-5.
35. Paul Hockings, ed. (1987). "The Denial of Caste in modern Urban Parlance". Dimensions of Social Life: Essays in Honor of David G. Mandelbaum. Walter de Gruyter. p. 518. ISBN 9783110846850. ..hindi speaking Aggrawals, Guptas Mittals, Goels,i.e. all of them are mostly twice born, most vegetarians. In Punjab, there is a large number of merchant type jatis, "Arora" being their generic name, both Hindu and Sikh, and they are not twice-born and in an all Hindu ranking would classify as clean shudras. Yet they share about the same status in the wide regional ranking.
36. Madan, Gurmukh Ram (2004). India And The West: A Cultural Contrast. Mittal Publications. p. 5. ISBN 978-81-7099-862-4.
37. Marenco, Ethne K. (1974). The Transformation of Sikh Society. HaPi Press. pp. 167–168, 296.
38. Christophe Jaffrelot (2010). Religion, Caste, and Politics in India. Primus Books. pp. 98–. ISBN 9789380607047. In 1891, more than half the 9,105 male members of the movement belonged to the Khatri and Arora merchant castes. This sociological composition reflected the same socio-cultural logic as in Gujarat where Dayananda had set up the Arya samaj with the support of traders seeking a better status more in keeping with their new prosperity (Jordens 1978) linked with the economic advance of British India; in the Punjab, his movement developed along the same lines among the merchant castes which felt that they could aspire all the more legitimately to the leadership of their community as the Brahmins and Kshatriyas, who had been hierarchically superior to them had been marginalized. Barrier hence explains the attraction that the Arya Samaj exercised over the merchant castes by the fact that: Dayananda's claim that caste should be determined primarily by merit not birth, opened new paths of social mobility to educated Vaishyas who were trying to achieve social status commensurate with their improving economic status.
39. Bhardwaj, Surinder M. (8 July 1983). Hindu Places of Pilgrimage in India: A Study in Cultural Geography. University of California Press. pp. 176–179. ISBN 978-0-520-04951-2.

Bibliography

• Levi, Scott Cameron (2002), The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia and Its Trade, 1550–1900, Leiden: BRILL, ISBN 978-90-04-12320-5, retrieved 23 October 2011^{[permanent dead link]}