Khetran

Khetran (खेत्रान) a tribe settled in the Loralai District of Balochistan at the back of the Laghari, Khosa, and Lund country in Pakistan. It is a small tribes of Punjab (Pakistan).

History

H.A. Rose writes that their original settlement was at Vahoa in the country of the Kasrani of Dera Ismail Khan, where many of them still live and hold land between the Kasrani Baloch (with whom they have long been at feud) and the river. But the emperor Akbar drove out the main body of the tribe, and they took refuge in the Barkhan valley which is still held by the Nahar sept of the Khetrans as inferior proprietors, the Lagharis being its superior owners. They are certainly not pure Baloch, and are held by many to be Pathans, descended from Miana, brother of Tarin, the ancestor of the Abdali, and they do in some cases intermarry with Pathans. But they confessedly resemble the Baloch in features, habits, and general appearance, the names of their septs end in the Baloch patronymic termination -ani and they are now for all practical purposes a Baloch

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[Page-535]: tribe. It is probable that they are in reality a remnant of the original Jat population; they speak a dialect of their own called Khetrani which is an Indian dialect closely allied with Sindhi, and in fact probably a form of the Jatki speech of the lower Indus. They are the least warlike of all the Baloch tribes, capital cultivators, and in consequence very well-to-do. Their lands are generally divided into large blocks held by numerous sharers, each proprietor holding shares in many such blocks scattered about, in different villages. The tribe, as it now stands, is composed of four clans, of which the Ganjura represents the original Khetran nucleus, while to them are affiliated the Dhariwal^* or Chacha who say that they are Dodai Baloch, the Hasani, once an important Baloch tribe which was crushed by Nasir Khan, the great Khan of Kelat, and took refuge with the Khetran of whom they are now almost independent, and the Nahar or Babar, who are by origin Lodi Pathans. The name, as Dames observes, is undoubtedly derived from khetr ' field.'

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* Dhariwal is the name of an important Jat tribe, Mr. Bray says that in Balochistan three clans are recognised, viz., — Ispani, Palliat, Dhirewal or more correctly Dhara. The term Ganjura is occasionally applied to the first two clans, or even to the whole tuman (tribe). The Hasani and Chacha are merely septs affiliated to the Dhara, while the Nahar (? hyenas) are a sept of the Ispani. Folk etymology derives Dhirewal from dhirwal, a shepherd, and dhara is said to mean 'heap.'

References

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