Arora

The Arora is a community of Punjab, comprising both Hindus and Sikhs. The name is derived from their native place Aror.

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”.

After Partition of India, Punjabis who migrated from erstwhile Punjab were mostly Khatris and Aroras. Studies reveal that “Arora Khatri, Bedi, Ahluwalia etc. are some of the important castes among the Punjabis”.

Mughal era

In the eighteenth century, Afghanistan was the conduit for the trade between Central Asia and India. Grain trade in Afghanistan was carried out by the Hindu Punjabi Khatri and Arora merchants. Reportedly, they lent money to the Afghan rulers at high rates of interest (50%) to carry out military expeditions into India. On the other side, Diwan Kaura Mall, a Hindu 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. He led the Lahore Darbar and “made a joint-attack on Multan in 1749”, along the Sikhs led by Jassa Singh. After his victory, “Diwan Kaura Mall was given the title of Maharaja Bahadur”.

Prior to the British colonial rule, Aroras were one the three main money-lending castes of Punjab. In Muslim dominated districts of West Punjab, The Aroras were often subjected to discrimination and humiliation by Muslim farmers. Bose narrates that the arrival of the British freed the Arora community from this treatment.

British Colonial Era

Pettigrew notes that in the 19th century, the Aroras were working as shopkeepers and small traders within the Sikh community in Punjab. 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 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.

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.

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.

Uttaradhi (north), Dakhanadhi (south) and Dahre (west) are three major sub-groups of the Arora people based on territorial differentiations. 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.

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.

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, Chabbra, Juneja, Jadeja, Taneja, Upneja, Wadhwa etc. 

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.

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

In Haryana, a majority of Aroras follow Hinduism while some follow Sikhism.

Culture

McLeod notes that marriages between Aroras and the Khatris are common.

According to the University of Utah sociologist, Bam dev Sharda, in the “status allocation in village India”, they are considered a mercantile caste belonging to the Vaishya varna – like the Khatris, Agarwal, Bania and Ahluwalia.So does historian Kenneth Jones by citing Denzil Ibbetson’s study.

According to the University of Toronto anthropologist, Nicola Mooney, the Sikh Aroras are of Kshatriya varna, along with the Sikh Khatris. Similarly, Grant Evans describes Arora as a “sub-group of the Khatri jati of the Kshatriya Varna”.

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).

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, unlike the caste of Sikh and Hindu Aroras of Punjab in a “all-Hindu ranking”. Despite this, they have similar status as prior communities in the “wider regional ranking” of Punjab. 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”.