Born Male and Khatri: Power and Privilege in Khatri Men’s Auto/biographies

In the first-half of the twentieth century many upper-caste Punjabi Khatri men (or of cognate castes), most born in the second-half of the nineteenth century, wrote their auto/biographies reflecting on their life and achievements. They celebrated making it big from humble beginnings, noted successful professional careers or underscored contributions to public life. They addressed the significant changes they witnessed in their lifetimes, particularly the transmutations under colonial rule, and their often exhilarating experience of inhabiting colonial modernity. They started their life-writing by indexing their Khatri antecedents, some aware of the advantages it bestowed, others through invoking their ancestors’ lives. As an increasingly popular genre, the auto/biography became the medium through which these men inserted themselves in history-making and history-writing, insidiously becoming the inheritors of the nation-in-making. As historians of South Asia write of the subalterns outside the charmed circle of power, it is worth exploring how power and privilege buoyed others into dominance.