Khatri is a caste originating from the Malwa and Majha areas of Punjab region[13] of South Asia that is predominantly found in India, but also in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

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[25] 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 (siyaq), draftsmanship (insha) and offices of the revenue minister (diwan).

[27][28] 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.

[44] French traveller Thevenot visited India during the 1600s where he commented "At Multan, there is another sort of gentiles whom they call Catry, the town is properly their country and from thence they spread all over the Indies."

[78] 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 that they should be shopkeepers and brokers.

[79] This legend is probably fanciful: 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".

[87] Historian Douglas E. Hanes states that the Khatri weavers in Gujarat trace their ancestry to either Champaner (Panch Mahals District) or Hinglaj (Sindh) and the community genealogists believe that the migration happened during the late sixteenth' century.

[88] 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.

[89][90][91] The Gujarat Sultanate (1407–1523) 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[92] or Rajputs.

[100] Dale states that most of the 10,000 (as estimated by Jean Chardin) Indian merchants and money-lenders in Isfahan (Iran) in 1670, belonged to the Khatri caste of Punjab and north-west India.

According to historians Roger Ballard and Harjot Oberoi, Afghan Hindus and Sikhs descend from the members of the country's indigenous Khatri population who resisted the conversion from Buddhism to Islam between 9th and 13th centuries.

[108][page needed] 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.

In Mandvi, the silk products were highly valued and the Khatri dyers would work in the pits on the bank of the river Rukmavati because the water was supposed to have special properties to give steadfast colours.

A combination of enterprise, articulation, and strategic closeness to the national capital— which, in itself, was becoming a major growth hub - created conditions for Khatri capital to flourish in the post-Partition period.

[123] Damodaran adds that the land Khatris originally belonged to had very little industry and rail infrastructure until the 20th century and hence were not comparable to merchant groups like Banias in terms of scale and spread of operation.

Since then, they have produced leading entities in fields of pharmaceuticals, two-wheelers, tractors, paper, tyre-making and hotels with the groups of Ranbaxy, Hero, Mahindra, Ballarpur Industries, Apollo Tyres and Oberoi respectively.

Only a meager 5% received "grossly undervalued claims against their properties in shape of very poorly cultivable land, while remaining 95% though entitled for compensation could not get any thing to sustain".

[147] Jacob Copeman writes "Agarwal, Khatri, and Bania usually denote people of merchant-trader background of middling clean-caste status, often of Vaishya varna".

Similar caste glorifying ideas were written by the historian Puri who describes Khatris as "one of the most acute, energetic, and remarkable race [sic] in India", "pure descendants of the old Vedic Kshatriyas" and "true representatives of the Aryan nobility".

[168] Hardip Singh Syan 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.

Although Jones also classifies Khatris as one of the Vaishya caste of Punjabi Hindus, he shows that their social status was higher than the Arora, Suds and Baniyas in the 19th century Punjab.

He quotes Ibbetson who states that the Punjabi Khatris who held prominent military and civil posts were traditionally different from the Aroras, Suds or Baniyas who were rural, of low status and mostly commercial.

However, he adds that this Vaishya occupation fact was balanced by their origin myths, the "possible" derivation of the word Khatri from Kshatriya, their large physical stature, the superior status accorded to them by other Punjabis as well as the willingness of the Saraswat Brahmins, their chaplains, to accept cooked food from them.

[171] Ashok Malik, former press secretary to the President of India, says that there were two groups of Khatris in Gujarat, that arrived right after the Mughal invasion and during the reign of Akbar respectively.

[172] 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.

"[181] Bhapa (pronounced as Pahpa) is a term used in a derogatory sense to denote Sikhs who left Potohar Region of modern-day Pakistan during Partition, specifically of Khatri and Arora caste.

Heer's beauty slays rich Khojas and Khatris in the bazaar, like a murderous Kizilbash trooper riding out of the royal camp armed with a sword According to Bichitra Natak, traditionally said to be the autobiography of the last Sikh Guru, Gobind Singh, but possibly not so,[189] the Bedi sub-caste of the Khatris derives its lineage from Kush, the son of Rama (according to Hindu epic Ramayana).

[191] ਖਤ੍ਰੀ ਬ੍ਰਾਹਮਣ ਸੂਦ ਵੈਸ ਉਪਦੇਸੁ ਚਹੁ ਵਰਨਾ ਕਉ ਸਾਝਾ ॥ (SGGS, ang 747) Khatri brahman sud vais updesu cahu varna ku sanjha Kshatriyas, Brahmins, Shudras and Vaishyas all have the same mandateGuru Gobind Singh, said the following in a swayya: Chattri ko poot ho, Baman ko naheen kayee tap aavat ha jo karon; Ar aur janjaar jito greh ko tohe tyaag, kahan chit taan mai dharon, Ab reejh ke deh vahey humko jo-oo, hau binti kar jor karoon ; Jab aao ki audh nidaan bane, att hi ran main tab jujh maroon.