Kangra, Sirmaur, and Gorkha Rule in the West

2 Alterity and Myth in Himalayan Historiography : Kangra, Sirmaur, and Gorkha Rule in the West The decades between the Battle of Chinjhiar (1795) and the beginning of British rule (1815) mark the definitive transition of the West Himalayan kingdoms to modernity. As the warring parties at Chinjhiar resumed their individual courses, the geopolitical landscape that surrounded them underwent momentous shifts that would dramatically impact their trajectories: the EIC’s conquest of Delhi (in 1803) introduced the British as the major powerbroker south of the Sutlej River; Sikh unification under Maharaja Ranjit Singh Sandhawalia (r. 1799-1839) gradually absorbed the kingdoms north of the river into the Empire of Lahore; and the expansionist drive of Nepal under the Gorkha Shah dynasty (est. ~1559, r. c. 1768/9-2008) cast shadows over the entire region from as early as the 1790s, when the fledgling empire first crossed the Mahakali River into Kumaon. By 1803, the Gorkhas had invaded Sirmaur, traversed Bilaspur, and laid siege to Kangra. Six years later (1809), the Gorkhas quit Kangra and entrenched their hold on the hills south of the Sutlej for another five years, at which point (1814) they ceded their possessions west of the Mahakali to the EIC following defeat in the Anglo-Gorkha War (1814-16).1 While the politically fragmented elite of the West Himalayan kingdoms tackled these transitions in starkly divergent ways – Kangra as a vassal of Lahore, Sirmaur and its neighbours as EIC allies, and Bilaspur somewhere in between – its experiences of this era assumed a largely uniform narrative that became foundational to the reinterpretation of Pahari Rajput kingship and polity in the modern era. This chapter explores the discrepancies between the narratives en- gendered by these turbulent transitions and the realities that they hid. Specifically, it questions the master narrative that emerged soon after this period, which awarded raja Sansar Chand Katoch II (b. 1765, r. 1775-1823) of Kangra the legendary status of Pahāṛī Pādshāh (‘Mountain Emperor’). 1 On the Anglo-Gorkha (alias Anglo-Nepal) War in particular, see Pemble (1971) and Stiller (1973). Correspondences from the EIC and Gorkha sides are available in East India Company (1824) and in the Regmi Research Series (http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/collections/journals/ regmi/). 62 KINGSHIP AND POLITY ON THE HIMALAYAn BORDERLAND As the grandest of rulers, Sansar Chand came to represent the collective of mountain kings, embodying qualities that, through his biography, were propagated as inherent to all Rajput rulers. At the same time, the details of his life story – particularly the hubris that led to his downfall – wove a coherent narrative explaining the radical reconfiguration of powers between the Battle of Chinjhiar and the Anglo-Gorkha War. In adopting this metanarrative as the defining story of the West Himalayan transition to modernity, the chroniclers of the Hill States advanced an implicit justification for the Rajput elite’s plummet from independent warrior-kings to imperial subjects, cementing the Bilaspur-Kangra rivalry’s status as the axis around which history unfolded. Among the central outcomes of this narrative choice was the engendering of an enduring perception of the enemies from Nepal as ‘barbaric’, dia- metrical opposites of the ‘pure-blooded’ West Himalayan elite.2 With the Gorkhas positioned as culprits, the western rulers were exonerated from their failure to stand up to their demonized oppressors, while their subjects’ surrender could be attributed to ‘the tyrannies done to them by the Gurkha army’, whose ‘so-called religion’ was ‘so cruel that to kill a man was a very trifling matter for them’ (Singh 1903, 19, 27-28); in this situation, the Rajput elite came to play the part of the saviours of their morally compromised subjects.3 By drawing a clear line between locals and conquerors, modern historians provided a credible, authoritative explanation that promoted a stark sense of difference between these sub-groups of the Khas in Himachal Pradesh and West Nepal;4 at the same time, the writings from monarchic Nepal portrayed Gorkha expansionism as a natural extension of its Shah rulers’ pan-Himalayan empire (Pande 2014). Originating in the myopic perspective of dynastic histories, neither narrative is consistent with the realities of the time. Taking the raja of Kangra’s political biography as a starting point, the first section of this chapter scrutinizes the coeval depictions of the monarch to highlight the multiple registers that were employed as part of the conceptualization of kingship during the early colonial encounter. This is 2 Later histories thus habitually juxtaposed the Nepali conquerors with the ‘ancient aristocracy’ that had reigned independent for ‘more than a thousand years’, till the raja of Bilaspur’s alliance with Kathmandu ‘brought the plague of Gurkhas upon this once peaceful land’ (Chopra 1940, vol. 2, p. 516). 3 An early example of Gorkha oppression may be had in Raper (1814). On the measures adopted for administering the western regions, see Regmi (1999) and Stiller (1973, 256-265). 4 In this respect, modern historians echo early anthropologists, who often mistook ‘recent interventions’ in their objects of study for ‘deep rooted structures’ (Appadurai 1988). ALTERITY AND MYTH IN HIMALAYAN HISTORIOGRAphY 63 followed by an evaluation of Gorkha rule in Sirmaur on the basis of archival and historiographic sources. These reveal that contrary to the customarily accepted link between the raja of Kangra’s high-handedness and the Gorkha invasion, the raja of Sirmaur actually played a key part in facilitating the Nepali conquests that is ignored by the standard narrative. The evidence from Sirmaur not only counters the standard Kangra-centred narrative, but also demonstrates that Gorkha rule in the west (or at least in and around Nahan) was actually conducive to economic growth (1803-15). The Sirmauri royals’ exile to and return from the British-held plains (1809-15) illustrates how Pahari Rajput elites advanced inflated dynastic histories in their com- munications with EIC personnel on the frontier to secure their positions as sovereigns. Repeatedly iterated alongside (continually modified) demands for assistance, these narratives became the political currency that secured the exiled dynasts’ return to power after the Anglo-Gorkha War and were ultimately incorporated into the metanarrative casting the raja of Kangra as an exemplar of kingship. The final section re-examines the reasons for the vilification of the Gorkhas in West Himalayan historiography, its contrast with accounts written in Nepal, and its contribution to the founding of a novel social hierarchy among the Pahari Rajput Houses in British India. As the variegated accounts of the ‘Katoch Legend’ reveal, this hierarchy was itself subject to widely divergent interpretations. 2.1 The Rise of the Katoch Legend The earliest depiction of Sansar Chand Katoch II as a strategic genius, master conqueror, and magnanimous patron was written by the Punjabi munshi Ghulam Muhyi’ ud-Din (alias Bute Shah) within two decades of the monarch’s death; in later histories, this account became the basic narrative explicating the mountain rulers’ subjugation by imperial powers.5 The youthful raja’s reclaiming of his ancestral fort from the Mughals in the 1780s opens the story, which follows his evolution from an upstart maverick into Pahari Padhsah (‘Mountain Emperor’) through ever-expanding conquests and architectural projects. Since these gains were largely made at the expense of his neighbours, the latter gradually turned to his Chandela rivals at Bilaspur 5 Commissioned by the political agent at Ludhiana and completed between 1840 and 1848, ud-Din’s five volume-history of the Punjab relied on the work of Sohan Lal Suri, court historian at Lahore, and is considered factually accurate, especially in its account of Ranjit Singh (r. 1799-1839), which its author had personally witnessed (Singh 1962). 64 KINGSHIP AND POLITY ON THE HIMALAYAn BORDERLAND for relief.6 Acting on behalf of the confederacy of mountain kings, Bilaspur invited the Gorkhas of Nepal to counter Kangra. However, once their armies had crossed the Yamuna, the Gorkhas instated a regime (1803-14) that proved even harsher than Sansar Chand’s. The occupation was particularly harsh in the Katoch heartland, where it left a lasting impression into the 1850s; ‘the memory of those disastrous days’, wrote the EIC’s settlement officer in Kangra, [s]tands out as a landmark in the annals of the hills. Time is computed with reference to that period and every misfortune, justly or unjustly, is ascribed to that prolific source of misery and distress. […] Certain portions of the country were subdued and held by them: other portions, including the fort of Kangra and the principal strongholds, remained in the hands of the Kutoches. Each party plundered the districts held by the other, to weaken his adversary’s resources. The people, harassed and bewildered, fled to the neighbouring kingdoms; some to Chumba [north of Kangra], some to the plains of the Jullundhur Doab [to its south]. Other hill chieftains, incited by Sunsar Chund’s former oppressions, made inroads with impunity, and aggravated the general disorder. For three years this state of anarchy continued. In the fertile valleys of Kangra not a blade of cultivation was to be seen. Grass grew up in the towns, and tigresses whelped in the streets of Nadown. At last, the Kutoch [besieged in Kangra Fort] invoked the succour of [the Maharaja of Lahore] Runjeet Sing, and, in August 1809 the Sikhs fought their first battle with the Goorkhas. The Goorkha army, exposed to the malaria of the valley, had suffered severely from sickness. Fever decimated their ranks and prostrated the strength and courage of the survivors. The field however, was long and furiously contested. At last, fortune declared in favor of the Sikhs, and the Goorkhas were obliged to abandon their conquests.

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