The Dogar are a Punjabi people of Muslim heritage ( bradari ). [1] 'Dogar' is commonly used as a last name. [1]
The Dogar people settled in Punjab during the Medieval period. [2] They have been classified as a branch of the Rajput [3] (a large cluster of interrelated peoples from the Indian subcontinent). Initially a pastoral people, the Dogar took up agriculture in the Punjab, where they became owners of land in the relatively arid central area where cultivation required particularly strenuous work. [4] In addition to cultivating crops such as jowar (millet) and wheat, they seem partly to have continued pastoral practices, sometimes as nomads. [2] The arid conditions proved challenging, especially in the light of competition from peoples with more established agricultural ways (notably the Jats), and over the centuries the Dogars developed a long-lasting reputation for marauding behaviour, [4] such as animal raiding and other types of theft, including highway robbery. [2]
In the late 17th century, the Dogars residing within the faujdari of Lakhi Jangal (in present-day Multan) were among the tribes that challenged the authority of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. [5]
In the Sufi poet Waris Shah's tragic romance of 1766, Heer Ranjha , Dogars are scorned as commoners (along with Jats and other agricultural groups). [6]
...and we come across scathing remarks about 'plebeians' such as Jats, Dogars and other agricultural castes.