In “The Grapes
of Wrath” John Steinback said, what are we without out past.
For Ummat family, stories of the past are enchanted dreams. These
stories are hundreds of years old and researching them represents the
most precious task we have ever undertaken.
Tracing the history of any family is a difficult task even at the best
of times. However having heard stories from Dad (SHRI.
VIDAYA PRAKASH UMMAT) regarding origin of UMMAT's, and
having known that UMMAT's are not a very large family as compared
to others, it appeared to be easy tracing out our roots. Well, what
started in July 1999 though looking easy has not been so. Even after
digging into old records at Archives. read old books, meeting our
Purohits at PEHOWA and HARIDWAR, discussing with many
elders of UMMAT's are, as informed by our elders & Purohits are
Punjabi KHATRIS having KAUSHAL as our Gotra SHRI.
RAM LAL, however said we are Rajput KHATRIS. UMMAT's
is a Persian word, which means followers or a religious sect. An
apparent incongruity is we are Hindus but have a Persian Surname. There
are many
theories
regarding how we got this Surname and where we came from. However it is
near certain that UMMATS and BUTCHERS came from elsewhere and laid the
foundations of present day NAWANSHEHR . More about this is discussed later.
First let us know a little about
KHATRI Caste. May be it will
help us locate our origin.
The fact that Ummats are of recent ORIGIN can be
attributed to the fact that Ummats, no matter where they are in the
world, are not large in number.
Origin
of Ummat's
~***~
