Malhotra Surname – History and Origins by Ashok Malhotra, 15th April 2019

Malhotra Surname – History and Origins

By

Ashok Malhotra, Ph. D., U.B. C. Canada; B.Tech.; M. Tech.; IIT Delhi

The present short note explains origin and history of the Malhotra surname as well as
Variants of this name - Mehra, Mehrotra, Mahlotra and Mehlotra - are described as also its
caste and possible geographical origins. An attempt has been made to trace history of this
surname over the centuries. Information as presented about Malhotra families in this brief
note shall add to pool of available information on the topic. It would hopefully assist in
further research some of which can be placed on a firm footing with modern genetic science.

1. Introduction

People bearing Malhotra surname now exist in many parts of India and the world
[1]. Presently they may belong to several different religions. However, this name
originated among Hindu communities of North India. Most Malhotra families still
continue to be Hindus and still continue to live in North India with perhaps the
greatest concentration in present day Punjab. When a person from a Malhotra family
changes religion to another, for example Sikhism, they often continue to use the
surname Malhotra but begin using first and middle names more akin to those of
their new religion.

The present author is a Malhotra. This note contains information about this family
name as known to the author from his own family as well scholarly study. The
author has been a professor of engineering and a scientist. He has worked in leading
universities where he had access to libraries with books on various disciplines
including history that provided source material. Over the past two decades, much
information has also become available through the Internet. What emerged was not
a complete picture. Historical records about this family name, as indeed many
others in modern India, do not appear to be fully documented and compiled. Caste
rivalries. caste pride, popular imagination or other considerations seem to have

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 Malhotra Surname – History and Origins by Ashok Malhotra, 15th April 2019

brought in bias and distortion in some accounts. There is a need for further study on
the topic. While there is widespread agreement on certain aspects and history of
family name Malhotra and its variants (Mehra, Mehrotra etc.), there are also
differences on other aspects. Such different opinions will be pointed out in this brief
note. It is hoped that future study, some based on modern genetic science shall help
clarify these issues.

2. Variations of Malhotra Surname

It appear that over the centuries, the Malhotra Surname has emerged as a
modification of other family surnames – Mehra also spelt Mahara in Kumaon
Himalayas (see [2]) Mehrotra, Mehlotra (also spelt Mahlotra especially in its Hindi
equivalent) and eventually Malhotra, in that chronological order. However, different
forms of this surname continue to be in use up to the present time in different parts
of India and the world, some times even within the same family since they are
regarded as equivalent and interchangeable, at least among the Dhai Ghar Khatri
caste grouping. Thus there have been close relatives of this author where one brother
used the surname Mehra and another the surname Malhotra, both residing in
Lahore, in undivided India prior to 1947. In recent decades where documentation
has become more rigorous, families prefer to stick with a family name as given to
them at birth rather than to change it in order to avoid confusion in official
documents.

Published literature on the topic suggests that original family name was Mehra (or
its variant spelling in English as Mahara). Its more elaborate and extended form in
the plains of Northern India was created as Mehrotra perhaps sometime during the
Mogul era in India. The geographical spread of the name Mehra is widest,
stretching from Bengal in the East to North West Frontier Province in the West when
India was undivided and to the North especially into Central Himalayan hill
provinces. The surname used as Mehrotra is largely confined to Northern province
known as Uttar Pradesh in Independent India. On the other hand, the family name
Malhotra was more common in western provinces of Punjab and the North West
Frontier Province of undivided India.

The transformation and interchange from R to L is not an uncommon phenomenon

in various linguistic groups just as the interchange of J and G sound or J and Y in
other language groups. The phonetic pronunciation of Mahlotra as Malhotra is
aligned with Punjabi accents and pronunciation and it was thus rendered into

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 Malhotra Surname – History and Origins by Ashok Malhotra, 15th April 2019

English spelling during British rule in India. A Family bearing the surname
Malhotra is not necessarily a Punjabi speaking family although many are. On the
other hand, those using the surname as Mehrotra are likely to be Hindi speakers.
Families using this surname as Mehra could be from any of the many provinces in
which they live. It is an error to identify Malhotra or Mehra as belonging to Punjab,
Delhi or Kumaon or by any region merely on the basis of name. For that, further
enquiries have to be made as to what region the family has belonged to. Malhotra
belongs to the Dhai Ghar clan of Khatri community of North India that appears to
have been created in the capital of Mogul Emperor Akbar. It was located not in
Punjab but in present day western Uttar Pradesh (Agra). It is where families from
many parts of India came to serve the most prominent of Emperors of India.
Therefore it is more accurate to identify this Khatri clan foremost as a North Indian
one rather than a Punjabi one as many Khatris of Punjab tend to.

3. Khatri Caste

Hindu society is divided in various castes and sub-castes since ancient times. While
the caste system has helped to strengthen and preserve family traditions through
marital alliances it has also been misused. Other religions born in India such as
Buddhism and Sikhism have discarded it. However, the present note is not about
merits or demerits of the caste system. It neither promotes nor rejects it but mentions
it merely for tracing the origin and history of the family name Malhotra.

A well-known caste in North India is the Khatri caste. Within this caste there are
further divisions, groups and clans. The Sikh Gurus came from the Khatri clans and
therefore much material on Khatri caste can be found in Sikh literature. An online
source that compiles a lot of it is [3]

Many have suggested and understood that Khatri is merely a simplified more easily
written and pronounced version of the more complex Sanskrit Kshatriya from the
four Varna system of ancient India. These were,

Brahmins: priests, scholars and teachers

Kshatriya: rulers, warriors and administrators
Vaishyas: agriculturists and traders
Shudras: service providers

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 Malhotra Surname – History and Origins by Ashok Malhotra, 15th April 2019

Some scholars disagree that Khatri is same as Kshatriya. Whatever be the case, the
fact of the matter is that many modern Indian castes cannot be identified clearly with
ancient Varna. Many have emerged, as mixtures of them; many are communities
that migrated later into India and identified themselves with one of the existing
castes. In fact ancient literature indicates that a mixtures of Varna took place even in
ancient India. Modern India having seen many an invasion, displacements and
upheavals since that time is far distanced from it. Deviation from ancient
classifications can only be expected as a natural outcome of historical changes that
have taken place. Many modern castes are mixed and span more than one Varna.

It is also not possible to identify caste groups by occupations any more since these
have changed over the centuries. Present day Khatris are in occupations ranging
from teaching, military, film industry, administration and business. During reign of
mogul Emperor Aurangzeb, who developed strong differences, even wars, with the
Khatri community, many seemed to have left military and administrative careers
and took to trading, even deep into Asia. What however does appear realistic is that
while some family groups within the Khatri caste are as close to Kshatriya as can be
expected in modern times, some of the groups seem removed from it. The Mehras
claim to be Kshatriya of Suryavanshi clans; therefore this identification also applies
to Malhotra.

4. Dhai Ghar

The Khatri caste itself is divided in many different groups. One such group is known
as the Dhai Ghar Khatris or the Khatri group of two and a half houses. It consists of
three family names – Malhotra, Khanna and Kapoor - perhaps because all three were
considered Kshatriya and therefore it was in accord with religious custom to inter
marry. Three different families are the minimum necessary to get daughters married
in a Khatri sub-caste as shall be explained presently. A question arises as to why the
name two and a half houses and not three houses were used for this grouping? The
explanations for this differ according to different sources. According to Sudhir Kakar
[4]

“The Khatris were divided into sub-castes. The highest was the Dhai Ghar (i.e. Two and a
half houses – the number three being considered unlucky) grouping, comprising families
carrying the surnames of Malhotra, Khanna and Kapur.”

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 Malhotra Surname – History and Origins by Ashok Malhotra, 15th April 2019

However, this explanation does not appear complete. The Dhai Ghar Khatris are
much too meticulous to be satisfied merely by nomenclature. A more realistic
explanation is that while forming a group of three families half of the Mehra clans
i.e. the Pahari Mehras (or Maharas) as they are called i.e. those settled in Central
Himalayas were left out of the Dhai Ghar. It was not practical to arrange marriages
of daughters to remote hill locations in any case, especially in previous centuries
when road networks and modern transportation had not arrived. Another less likely
story is that only half the Khanna were included. Therefore the use of the term, Dhai
Ghar was not just more auspicious, it also appears to be a fact. Further study is
required to clarify the matter. It would need documents from early days of
formation of Dhai Ghar clan, perhaps from sometime around the reign of Mogul
Emperor Akbar, to undertake such a study. However, knowing the Dhai Ghar Khatri
clan customs personally this author feels they would have kept such family matters
private to themselves, especially so as not to offend their far off clan members.

There is a defined hierarchy in Khatri family groupings. This hierarchy was

necessary foremost for fixing marriages, especially until a century ago. In recent
decades, these marriage rules have been relaxed. The traditional norm was that
among Khatris, a daughter could be given for marriage within the same sub-caste
grouping or into a group higher in hierarchy but not a lower one. However, a man
could marry a girl from a lower or parallel Khatri group (the present author’s
mother, Nand Rani Sahni married in 1943 was not a Dhai Ghar Khatri but rather
came from khukhrain Khatris). A century ago, many prosperous Khatri men married
more than once. Many women died during childbirth before advent of modern
medical practices and antibiotics. Both my grandfathers had married twice. The
ability to seek a bride from a group lower in hierarchy, if one was not found within
the same, filled the need.

However, there are two more traditional rules that made fixing marital alliances for
girls in Dhai Ghar group difficult. These are that one does not marry in the same
family name, the second being that one also does not marry in the maiden family
name of mother. All those matches are considered relatives much too close to marry.
While this rule posed no special difficulties for Khatri sub-castes consisting of eight
or twelve or even fifty-two families, it posed difficulties for the Dhai Ghar Khatris.

Many a Dhai Ghar girl (whose mother was also from the Dhai Ghar Clan) was left
with only one of the three family names to marry in. The Dhai Ghar Khatris

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 Malhotra Surname – History and Origins by Ashok Malhotra, 15th April 2019

overcame this issue by including a fourth dominant Khatri family of the regions they
lived in to form a simultaneous group of four houses known as Char Ghar.

The fourth family group was Seth in regions around Lahore from where this
author’s paternal grandmother came and whose maiden name was Kapoor. In other
areas, it seems another family was chosen to create the Char Ghar (four house)
grouping. This author does not have full information on this last aspect. It is left for
further study. However it must be mentioned that another Khatri family would
gladly accept this Char Ghar inclusion, firstly because giving daughters in marriages
to Dhai Ghar was already acceptable and the expansion gave them an opportunity to
marry Dhai Ghar girls as well. Many Dhai Ghar girls, especially from Kapoor (also
spelt Kapur) families or of Kapoor origin are affectionate in nature, cheerful in
demeanor and exceptionally pretty with very fair complexions; many had blue, gray
or green eye colors. It is possible that this Kapoor Dhai Ghar family emerged at least
in part from early immigrants into India and became a Khatri clan. Before their
inclusion in Dhai Ghar, they had a clan of their own known as bahari (foreign?)
baradari.

Several well-known film stars of Indian Bollywood industry come from Kapoor
clans. If one were to make a merely personal subjective assessment, deviating from
the scholarly nature of the rest of this note, of the three Dhai Ghar families, the
Kapoors had the looks, Malhotras the brains and Khannas the physique. With every
century that passes these distinctions must necessarily get blurred through inter
marriages.

5. Conclusion

There are many folk stories about the families belonging to Dhai Ghar, not all
agreeing with each other. It is difficult to ascertain which is fact and which fiction.
An attempt has been made in this note not to include those except for brief informal
comments in the last paragraph, so as to focus on principal facts and not confuse the
narrative.

Thus ends a brief description of the family name Malhotra. There is a need for more
research to verify, revise and add details to the content presented in this brief note.
Modern genetic science can hugely assist in this task. Some studies in this direction
have already begun but presently they are of a broader nature (see for example [5]

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 Malhotra Surname – History and Origins by Ashok Malhotra, 15th April 2019

References

[1] Patrick Hanks (2003). Dictionary of American Family Names. Oxford University
Press. p. 498. ISBN 9780199771691.

[2] Monika Krengel (1989). Sozialstrukturen im Kumaon. Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, 315
pages (can be found in Google books)

[3] http://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/Khatri retrieved on April 14, 2019

[4] Sudhir Kakar (2014). A Book of Memory: Confessions and Reflections. Penguin
UK. ISBN 9789351188858.

[5] Michael Bamshad et al (2001) Genetic Evidence on the Origins of Indian Caste
Populations. Genome Research, 11(6), pp 994-1004, Also online at
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC311057/ April 2019

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 Malhotra Surname – History and Origins by Ashok Malhotra, 15th April 2019

About the Author, (also as at https://www.amazon.com/Ashok-Malhotra/e/B00502LCCI )

Dr. Ashok Malhotra spent his early childhood in

Nainital. After graduating from Indian Institute of
Technology, Delhi in Mechanical Engineering he
acquired a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at
the same Institute graduating at the top of his class and
then moved to Canada where he obtained a doctoral
degree in 1978 from the University of British
Columbia. Dr. Malhotra has practiced his profession in
three different countries as a scientist and a professor of
engineering as well as pursuing mysticism in seclusion
during breaks. Since early 2001 he has also worked in
senior administrative positions. Dr. Malhotra has deep
interests in spirituality human history, evolution and
philosophy