Punjab's community structure is not two or three groups. It runs to dozens, each with its own occupational history, geography and relationship to land.
Labanas were carriers and traders who moved goods by pack bullock across long distances before roads. Makhan Shah Labana, who found the ninth Guru at Bakala, was one.
Sainis are a cultivating community concentrated in the Doaba and the Kandi, historically market gardeners. Kambojs are cultivators of the Malwa and the Majha, with their own historical claims and their own institutions.
Rai Sikhs are concentrated in the border districts of Ferozepur, Fazilka and Gurdaspur and were listed as a criminal tribe under the colonial legislation, which is a category that has shaped the community's position ever since.
The Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 designated a number of communities in Punjab as criminal by birth, requiring registration and restricting movement. It was repealed in 1952 and the communities affected are called Denotified Tribes. The stigma has outlasted the statute by seventy years.
Each of these communities has a history that is written down almost nowhere, and each has its own account of itself that differs from the colonial ethnographies which are the only written source.
The Labanas were a carrying and trading community, moving goods with pack animals across the whole region, and a large part of them became Sikh.
The Sainis and the Kambojs were cultivating communities with their own histories and their own institutions, and the Rai Sikhs are a smaller community of the border districts.
Each has its own gurdwaras, its own sabhas and its own account of itself. None of them appears in any general description of Punjab, which stops at Jat, Khatri and Dalit.