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Hindu Gakhars (also Gakkhar or Ghakhar or Ghakkar) form the Hindu branch of the Gakhar clan and is settled in India. While the Muslim Gakhars are settled in Pakistan.

The Gakhars are an ancient tribe that is settled in Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Jhelum, Kashmir, Gilgit, Baltistan (Tibet), Chitral, and Khanpur regions in modern day Pakistan and India (in the latter case a substantial population are Hindu. According to the Gakhar legends, they are an Aryan clan (a racial designation first used by Darius the Great) of Persian descent.

Before the independence of Pakistan, the Gakhar Hindus shared their ancestral homes with the rest of the tribe. After the independence the Gakhar Hindus moved to India and they now live in various parts of north India .

Conversion to Islam

After the arrival of Islam into the South Asia a predominant section of Gakhars converted to Islam. The Muslim Gakhars in Pakistan are a prominent community in that country.

Ferishta records the conversion of the Gakhars to Islam by Muhammad of Ghor:

This barbarous people continued to make incursions on the Muslims till in the latter end of this kings reign , their chieftain was converted to the true faith when a captive . After becoming a proselyte he procured his release from the king , who endeavored to persuade him to convert his followers

Ferishta goes on to record about the conversion of the Gakhars and other local people at the hands of Muhammad of Ghor -

most of the infidels who inhabited the mountains between Ghazni and the Indus were also converted, some by force and others by persuation

Hindu Marriage customs are recorded prevelant among Muslim Gakhars as late as the 18th century in the district gazetteer of Rawalpindi " old religious customs , obviously of Hindu origin are still observed by the Gakhars , or were until within a very short period , such as customs at marriage of lawa-pherna and Khari par baithana, and the Kazi and the Brahman are both present on such occasions . Further it is curious that their headmen always call themselves Raja and not by any other distinctively Musalman title . The name Gakhar too , seems to partake more of a Hindu than of Persian or Arabic form " •

According to S A A Rizvi " the motives of Muizzuudin's conquests were no different from those of Mahmud of Ghazni . Both were in need of plunder from India to maintain their slave armies and to attract the wandering bands of Islamicized mercenaries known as "ghazis" to their forces . The Islamicization of India was not their main objective, although some tribal leaders such as the Gakkhars were encouraged to embrace Islam "

While a significantly large majority of Gakkhars did convert to Islam from Hinduism ,during the medieval period many Gakhar Hindus did not convert and continued to live in their traditional homelands of Jhelum, Kashmir, and West Punjab (which now falls in the Pakistan Punjab).

Ferishta s account of Gakkhars

Ferishta 's account of the Gakhars as a tribe of wild barbarians ,without either religion or morality , practicing polyandry and infanticide , is a literal translation from the Arabic of Ibn -i-Ansar , an earlier historian , who was there , however , writing of the wild tribes in the hills to the wast of Peshawar ,and not of the Gakhars :the chapter in Ibn -i-Asir immediately following deals with the murder of Shahab-ud-din by the Gakhars :hence perhaps the mistake :or Ferishta may have borne a grudge against the Gakhars , who are said by him to have maltreated an ancestor of his own Hindu Shah (Ibn-i-Asir ,page 82 , Elliot , XII , fERISHTA, P242)

Geneological records and clan histories of the Gakhars at Pehowa and Kankhal

The pandas or record keeping pandits of the Gakhars are located in Pehowa near Haridwar and Kankhal near Kurukshetra , both places in India , which are visited for spiritual reasons as well as to complete religious ceremonies after death . These are primary sources for the clan histories of the Gakhars . Often these Pandas are able to shed considerable light on Muslim clans as well converted from Hindus .

See also

• Gakhars
• Shri K.L Gakhar Memorial Trust

References

1. History of the rise of the Mohomedan Power in India –translated by John Briggs from the original Persian of Mohomed Kasim Ferishta – Vol1 Page104
2. History of the rise of the Mohomedan Power in India –translated by John Briggs from the original Persian of Mohomed Kasim Ferishta – Vol1 Page104
3. Gazetteer of the Rawalpindi District 1893-94, Punjab Government, 2001 Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore. Page 114
4. The wonder that was India II on page 22. Picador
5. A glossary of the tribes and castes of the Punjab and North -West provinces , compiled by H A Rose , vol II Page 275

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