The Bhatia

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This article is an extract from PANJAB CASTES SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. Being a reprint of the chapter on The Races, Castes and Tribes of the People in the Report on the Census of the Panjab published in 1883 by the late Sir Denzil Ibbetson, KCSI Lahore: Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1916. Indpaedia is an archive. It neither agrees nor disagrees with the contents of this article. Secondly, this has been scanned from a book. You can help by sending the corrected version to the Facebook page, Indpaedia.com. All information used will be duly acknowledged.

The Bhatia

Caste No. 69

The Bhatias are a class of Rajputs, originally coming from Bhatner, Jaisalmer, and the Rajputana desert, who have taken to commercial pursuits. The name would seem to show that they were Bhatis (called Bhatti in the Panjab) ; but be that as it may, their Rajput origin appears to be unquestioned. They are numerous in Sindh and Gujarat where they appear to form the leading mercantile element, and to hold the place which the Aroras occupy higher up the Indus. They have spread into the Panjab along the lower valleys of the Indus and Satluj, and up the whole length of the Chenab as high as its debouchure into the plains, being indeed most numerous in Sialkot and Gujrat. In this Province however they occupy an inferior position, both in a social and in a mercantile sense. They stand distinctly below the Khatri and perhaps below the Arora, and are for the most part engaged in petty shop-keeping, though the Bhatias of Derah Ismail Khan are describcd as belonging to a widely spread and enterprising mercantile community.They are often supposed to be Khatris, and in Jahlam they are said to follow the Khatri divisions of Bahri, Bunjahi, Dhai ghar, Charzati, &c. They are very strict Hindus ; far more so than the other trading classes of the Western Panjab ; and eschew meat and liquor. They do not practise widow-marriage.

SeeThe Arora