Arain

Arain (also known as Raeen) are a large Punjabi agricultural community with a strong political identity and level of organisation. Arain are predominantly Muslims, 99.91% at the time of the 1931 census in Punjab, but a small population of Arain in India also follows Sikhism, Hinduism and Jainism. At the beginning of the last century, they numbered around 1 million and were mainly rural cultivators and landowners concentrated in four districts: Lahore, Jalandhar, Amritsar and Ambala, all in the British Punjab province. Following the 1947 partition of India, they are now mainly present in the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Sindh with a small population in parts of Indian Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. A self-conscious community, several meetings were held to establish an organisation to represent the Arain community in the 1890s. Eventually, in 1915, Anjuman Ra’iyan-i-Hind emerged as such a body in Lahore and a national community newspaper, titled Al-Rai, was established.