- Where
- Across the plains: Sikh in the Majha, Malwa and Doaba, Muslim in the west and the bar, Hindu in Haryana
- Traditionally
- Farmers and herders; the backbone of the old armies
The largest farming community of the Punjab, the Jats are divided into hundreds of clans or gots: Sandhu, Sidhu, Gill, Dhillon, Virk, Cheema, Bajwa and many more, several of them found in all three faiths. In the west the Sials, Kharals, Chadhars and Ranjhas were Muslim Jat tribes, and the heroes of the great qisse were Jats: Heer was a Sial of Jhang, Ranjha came from Takht Hazara, and Mirza was a Kharal.
Many Jats of the central Punjab became Sikhs from the time of Guru Arjan and Guru Hargobind, and most of the misl chiefs, the Phulkian rajas and Ranjit Singh himself came from Jat families. In 1857 Rai Ahmad Khan Kharal led the Muslim Jat tribes of the Ravi bar against the British; in the 1930s Sir Chhotu Ram, a Hindu Jat of Rohtak, led the Unionist Party's campaign for the indebted farmer.
