The Khukhrains and Sethis

Following a discussion on a LinkedIn Group ‘Sethi’, I have been  inspired and excited to write about the history and origin of my surname Sethi, a subgroup of the major Khukhrain clan . The information  in this write up has been collected from various reliable sources and  has been passed on to me by Sethi elders and seniors . This article is intended for and of interest, mainly, to Khukhrains or Sethis. I welcome  further discussions and comments on the subject and am open to reliable additions or modifications to this  information.

The Sethi surname was derived from Sanskrit word sreshthi which means shreshth,”the best among all”. They have also been called ‘Pulseti’ (based on their gotra from Pulastya Rishi). Sethis belong to a warriors’ clan Khukhrains (etymological derivative of Khokhar their ancestor Raja Khokhar Mal or khukhri, a lethal dagger or sword Khukhrains used to carry during turbulent times). Sethis are a regional sub caste of the ten Khukhrain clans ,viz., Anand, Kohli, Suri, Bhasin, Sahni, Chadha, Sethi, Sabharwal, Ghai, and Chandhok. Khukhrains, traditionally and historically a warrior community, bore the brunt of invasions from various central Asian tribes now converted to Islam who came from the northwest during the 12th-16th centuries.

Most of the Khukhrains who moved to India following Partition in 1947 descended from Doab region of Pakistan that comprised of Khushab, Pindi Gheb, Talagang, Campbellpur, Chakwal, Pind Dadan Khan, Peshawar and Nowshera. Various contemporary and historical places in Pakistan Punjab and Afghanistan corresponding to traditional areas associated with Khukhrain or Khokhar bear the name or variants of Khukhrain or Kokrana. Today, Khukhrain Hindus or Sikhs are, by and large , an urbanised highly educated and economically well off community. Khukhrains in India and Pakistan have excelled in almost all spheres including business, politics, arts, military, and in various fields of sciences as well as in the judiciary and law. Among all Punjabi communities, the Khukhrains are the most respected and counted as the topmost.

Sethi’s are an Indo-Scythian community and have originally followed Hinduism however, a significant number adapted Sikhism during the 18th and 19th centuries. A predominant section of the Hindu Khukhrains, continue to follow dual religious traditions of ,both, Sikhism and Arya Samaj. Sethis’ mother tongue is Punjabi but Sethis in Pakistan speak a different dialect of Punjabi than the Sethis of East Punjab.

Originally, Sethis have their roots in the town of Bhera (Bhadravati) in the Jech Doab (Jhelum – Chenab interfluves) region of Sargodha district of Pakistan Punjab. Bhera was an important trading outpost on the road to Kabul, and a ‘taksal’ (mint) during the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The palace of Sopeithes which the Greek historian Arian mentions as the palace on the Hydaspes was supposed to be at Bhera. The present day Sethi’s are descendents of Raja Khokhar Mal who ruled a part of West Punjab with his seat at Bhera. He was instrumental in forging unity of all other sections and laid the foundation of a single powerful kingdom, which came to be known as Khukhrain clan. The last chief or Raja of Bhera was a Sethi Khukhrain, Diwan Bahadur Jawahar Mal.

Sethis are believed to be one of the bravest of the clans of Khukhrains. The various constituents of this clan were so brave a people that Mahmud Ghazni (the clash of the Khukhrains with Mahmud Ghazni took place in his third invasion after the defeat of Jayapala, at the Battle of Bhera in 1004-5) while invading India was so scared of Sethis that he instructed his generals not to antagonise them and to keep off their territories while conducting their campaigns.

Sethis developed as warriors and defenders of land, initially, have  been on high ranks in the civil, government, and military administration roles, for centuries. Sethis were also referred to as  heads of a tribe or business as they expanded into trade and mercantile businesses. The Sethis have always been a very powerful and wealthy group of Punjabis, especially those living in large cities, either in Pakistan or now in India.

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Set Your Own Stage

Imagine a day after a heavy rainfall. To the commuter it is a nightmare; to the farmer it is a paradise; to the kids it is a magical kingdom; to the sweeper who cleans the clogged drains, another job. It’s the same rain but viewed very differently through the eyes of the beholder. Each view is the individual’s reality.

Humanity agrees on the reality of the need for food and shelter, yet some live in tents, others in palaces. Tastes in foods range from a vegetarian diet of rice and lentils, to the appetite for raw meat.

Can we alter and affect our realities? Why not? The religious fanatics, too, tired of persecution packed their bags and set off to create their own lifestyle. Meanwhile, countless drug addicts and smokers stay where they are while travelling on the wings of their drug induced realities. Political and religious beliefs can become so strong that one nation or creed is forever trying to impose its version of reality to another. The more sophisticated a culture becomes, the more varied and numerous are the realities it can contain.

The question is, must we take drugs or be a millionaire to create our own reality?

There is no need because we are already in a position to do it. We can create our lives once we begin to take back our personal power and to assume responsibility for ourselves. Then, we automatically and spontaneously begin the process. And, we are in a position to do this right now: we have the tools, the know-how; in fact everything is poised at the ready. All it takes is a bit of courage to admit to ourselves that it is possible, and the willingness to experiment with our daily lives.

The preliminary task is to take stock of where we are right now. As every gardener knows, we prepare the soil before we plant the seeds. Through an honest self appraisal, free of criticism and judgement, we get in touch with where we are with ourselves.

Let’s say we are serving five to ten years in prison. Now, there are certain restrictions imposed on us from the beginning. If our reaction is to say that we can do nothing that we want to do until we are released, then that becomes our reality. By accepting and taking responsibility for what has happened in the past to get us into the situation we are in now, we begin to take steps to create a new present situation for ourselves from which we can emerge in a fresh way. Serving time is an expression used by prisoners but it could well be one, many of us use to describe areas of our lives we conduct unwillingly.

We serve time with our colleagues, dealers and workers in order to be free with our husbands, wives and children. Or vice versa, we serve time with our families in order to be free with our lovers, friends, sailboats, or drinking companions. For none of us enjoy total freedom in every sense of word though the extent to which we inhabit personal prisons may be less obvious than it is to those in jail. We are talking here about the same freedom frequently referred to by mystics: one that is of an inner nature, unaffected by the external circumstance.

It is the freedom we can all work and strive towards, no matter what our external situation is. Even inside actual prison, a man who creates his own reality is free. And, even the most free and richest man can be slave to all that happens to him.

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Fix the Systems in Your Lives

What is a system? A system is a set of things— people, cells, molecules or whatever— interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time. We all have systems working in our lives; systems of sleep, career, hobbies, relationships, money management, goals, personal hygiene, health, eating, etc. One of the key components of a successful life is to be able to manage all the systems in our lives as efficiently and as painlessly as possible. When these systems are working well our lives tend to go well and everything is hunky dory, but when one of the systems fail, it causes the others to fail in some way, as well.  It’s like a cog in a machine, if one of the cogs break then it effectively breaks the whole machine.

Sleep is a system which has a set of subsystems, which  if tweaked (to make a minor alteration) correctly, can help us to get a great night sleep, give us more energy and allow us to sleep less.  We just have to look at sleep as a whole, break it down and then start tweaking what’s not working. We have to look at the system of health in our life, dissect it and find out where the problem is lying and look at ways of fixing it. Similarly if we have a problem with managing our money, we dissect the money management system and look for the reasons why we cannot manage our money correctly, and then look at ways of fixing it. We can do this with almost every area of our life. If you think about it we are a system of habits.

Most of our life is made up of things we do every day, day in day out and it doesn’t change much.  This might make us sound dull and uninteresting but it’s a good thing really as it keeps our lives together, it keeps us from feeling stressed. We know pretty much what we are going to be doing this time next week, we know where we will be celebrating Christmas, we know when we are going on holiday, we know when we are going to work, when we sit down for dinner, when we have to study and the list goes on.  Because we are going to live our lives like this wouldn’t it make sense to make it the best system we could and make things run smoothly and even make it work for us, and make it better.

One of the first things to do is look at every system in our life and assess it.  The simple way to assess it is just give it a mark out of 10, a quick, intuitive mark which tells you how well you think that particular part of life is going. Once we recognize that something isn’t quite right with one of the systems in our life we can then drill down on it to find out why it’s not working and aim to look at fixing it. Suppose a person’s diet is not going so great, so it would be time to look at his diet and figure out why he scored  6 out of 10.

Now, drill down on the system and find the sub-systems in order to tweak it as much as possible. In case of diet related subsystems, one can attempt to find answers to questions viz., what do I eat?, what do I drink?, how many calories do I consume?, what type of bread do I eat?, when do I eat?, what foods make me sluggish?, what are the staple foods I eat?, etc. You can ask a lot of questions about the system of your diet and look at each different sub-system and start to tweak it.

There could be two or three sub-systems that work hand in hand to affect the overall harmony of the whole system. It would be a matter of testing and tweaking until you get that particular system of your life just right, and keep on tweaking it until it is near perfect. You might think your diet is not that great and you keep putting on a few pounds no matter how little you eat, but it could be you’re eating late at night and hardly anything during the day.  This means that your body is storing fat during the day as it thinks you’re not eating enough and you’re releasing fat at night, but not as much due to your expending less energy when you are sleeping.

Similarly, when you start to look at all the systems of your life and drill down on them and look at the sub-systems you can really get to handle the things that you need to do to improve your overall life.

This is just a brief overview of looking at the systems in your life. I hope this system of fixing your systems in life would make sense and would be useful.

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The Dark Side of Positive Thinking

Do you substitute action with thoughts of fluff? Or do you supplement positive thinking with consistent hustle? Do you really think just sitting at home all day thinking “positive thoughts” will manifest the life that you desire? Unfortunately, many do.

Even though, I am a fan of positive thinking, the other day when I came across a post on positive thinking, it really made me think. Being an active member in the personal development community, I see countless of individuals claiming their lives are a mess, many modeling the complaint, “I sit at home all day thinking about all the things I want, but nothing good ever comes out of it.”

Because a great majority of our society is so habitually negative to begin with, positive thinking often represents a tremendous upgrade to the quality of one’s life. A positive thought is always better than a negative one. Those who think positively tend to have a much greater quality of life than those who let negative thoughts continually command their lives. But in the end reality always trumps your thoughts regardless of its intention.

The fact of the matter is, positive thinking can only get you so far, by no means is it the answer to all your problems. That’s the problem with movies like The Secret and similar belief models; they falsely market the idea of “think it and it will occur.” Hundreds of thousands of individuals believe that by just thinking positively their life is going to magically transform. They then fall victim to the delusion of their own reality, causing a tremendous amount of pain and suffering.

Does that render visualization and uplifting affirmations useless? Absolutely not. I’d be crazy if I were to say positive thinking is worthless, because it really can make a huge impact on the life you live. Yet, the act of wishful thinking remains deficient, it can’t stand alone without quickly collapsing.

It takes a truly aware individual to acknowledge when his or her reality isn’t congruent with their thoughts. Yet examining your reality from an objective lens is essential. No doubt doing so takes a great deal of courage but it is required to really grow. Flooding your head with positive intentions is a great step up from a mind filled with negative muck, but even then you still have room to evolve.

I tend to be an overly optimistic person, with an occasional flash of pessimistic pride. I like to believe that I am going to create massive change in this world. I like to believe that one day I’m going to touch millions of people’s lives. I like to believe that through my writing and passion for growth I will have an impact on all those who encounter me. Some pretty lofty goals. And, for me to make my goals and aspirations a reality, I’m going to have to think big and take constant action. That is the only way. All the thinking in the world doesn’t change the truth.

Positive thinking without action is like a beautiful car without wheels. It doesn’t matter how good it looks, without wheels your car isn’t going to go very far (if anywhere at all.) This same principle applies to your life journey. You can think all the wonderful thoughts you want, but without ‘effort’ and ‘execution’ the life you long for won’t ever truly appear.

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