Himachal Archives

Ram Chandra Kak and Maharaja Hari Singh - the maligned duo (picture courtesy Frontline) With his speeches at the 1930 Round Table Conference in London, Maharaja Hari Singh had more made than made it clear that the interests of the province of Jammu and Kashmir were very much aligned with those of an independent India. That it is still proclaimed that the state of Jammu and Kashmir was vacillating on the idea of which state to join in 1947 remains a facetious attempt to ignore history.   A few thoughts that have been on my mind, which have been learnt from the various sources that have come to light over the past two decades, put a lot of things in context about the delays, the actual thoughts and the motivations of driving an altogether different agenda. The Myth of the Muslim Massacre in Jammu During 1947 To date, this myth of Muslims being massacred in Jammu in 1947 keeps getting peddled. Fact of the matter remains that the British Resident, who was attached to the Commonweal...

Raja Sansar Chand Katoch and his son Anirudh Chand Worshipping at the Gauri Shankar Temple in Sujanpur Tira (from Eva-Seitz Collection) Kangra was one of the most important and largest hill state in Northern India, and held the distinction of perhaps having one of the oldest continuous dynastic lineage without break. The original claim of the Katoch clan of Kangra has been that they were the original rulers of the ancient Trigarta, which extended into Punjab to include the Jalandhar Doab. Moreover, the clan claims to have participated all the way back into the Mahabharata war on the side of the Kauravas. While the Mahabharata clan may be difficult to verify, the antiquity has certainly been unquestionable. Archaeological field reports by Alexander Cunningham among other sources clearly find reference to an ancient kingdom of that extent, with remains of coins having been found in and around the Jalandhar Doab among other remains and excavations, that have been documented in archae...

Former Royal Priest of Nepal Keshari Raj Pandey performing Katto (credit: Outlook India) When the monarch of Nepal Sri Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev had passed away intragic circumstances back in 2001, a wave of shock went across the world for the goriness and the strangeness of the incident. Subsequently the funeral rites were conducted. What followed thereafter had sent  murmurs across several groups, wondering what was going on. An interesting ritual post funeral that took place over time was taken up by the Brahmin Head Priest of the royal family. To quote the Independent story from the United Kingdom of the time.    "A Brahmin priest put on the robes of Nepal's murdered King Birendra, mounted an elephant and went into symbolic exile to rid the country of the curse of his death as the official period of mourning ended yesterday." Further explaining the 'bizarre' ritual, the Independent wrote: "The Hindu ceremony, known as  katto , ...

Raja Shamsher Sen of Mandi and Raja Ranjit Sen of Suket Suket and Mandi were two states that were relatively recent in their formation like Kullu. Interestingly, the Sen rulers of Suket and subsequently Mandi is traced back to a Chandrabansi lineage, linking them to the Pandava clans that ruled around Indraprastha. While it may be difficult to postulate accurately that bit of ancestry, it is interesting to note how the ancestry moves subsequently into Bengal. It is here that our attention is drawn, captured in the history of the region and the connections with Bengal. Khemraj, who was the last ruler of Delhi, had been replaced by his Wazir. He retires towards Vanga desha, or present day Bengal and set up the Gaudiya Sena dynasty of eastern Bengal. The capital of these Sena rulers was in Lakshmanpuri, along the river Ganga. An important ruler was the last one, Lakshman Sena, which was brought to an end by the invading Muhammad Khilji in 1206 AD, despite having expanded it...

Mughal Painting of Raja Jagat Singh Pathania, now at the Cleveland Museum of Art Raja Jagat Singh Pathania was believed to be the greatest ruler of Noorpur state, which today stands divided between Punjab and Himachal. A mansabdar of the Mughal forces, he had spared no occasion to seek independence from the Mughal yoke. Interestingly, he had great relations with  Nurjehan, Jahangir's wife, who interceded and sued peace despite a rebellion against Shah Jahan. It was in her honor amid a trick played on the Mughals that the original kingdom of Dhameta was renamed as Noorpur. His reign had seen the Noorpur state reach its zenith in military might and culture. However, his history is poorly documented in present times, and remains ignored barring some local scholars of Himachal Pradesh. A ballad that still survives from the historical period was documented by eminent Himachal scholar and Hindi author Dr. Gautam Sharma ‘Vyathit’. The version transcribed and translated by h...

Kashmir 1931 - Finding the Truth (courtesy MediaVigil) Maharaja Hari Singh, as I pointed out in an earlier post, had committed to a formation of an independent India at the 1931 round table. Since then, every occasion was sought by the british to put him down. An occasion was created in 1931 which is often touted as Martyrs Day by Kashmiri Muslim separatists. However, a careful examination of the entire incident tells one that the 20 June incident was nothing but a fabrication. To this day, the incidents of Jammu can not be linked to the reason for the protests in Srinagar. Whatever fabrications the entire cabal may try, fact of the matter remains that Jammu saw its affairs entirely separately in matters of religion and had full faith in the Maharaja's Raj. The cases of Jammu Jail and Udhampur will case are entirely fabrications, references to which can still not be found in official records. If there were such cases, one wonders why there are no such records in the archi...

Chitral Montage (Source: Wikipedia) Recently, some right wing people started raising questions on the status of Chitral, Hunza and Nagar with respect to Jammu and Kashmir. Several people, especially Pakistani propagandists, have made a lot of noise about these places having been governed directly by the British government. However, the answer, as is everything, not so straight - an element of disinformation has been made out that needs to be cleared. I will just point out to the fact that some people have over time gone through the archives of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and have provided some interesting points about the Chitral region in particular, the locus of this post. I will firstly point out an analysis by Colonel Dr Narendar Singh of the archives of the Jammu and Kashmir princely state. I will just reproduce his words verbatim: The earliest records available show that since the year 1864, The Mehtar of Chitral, Aman ul-Mulk used to send his Nazrana through his re...