Himachal Pradesh

Himachal Pradesh is the Himalayan state north-east of Punjab. Sikh history reaches into it at three points: the tenth Guru's time among the hill rajas, the Sikh state's hold on the hills, and the transfer of Punjab's hill districts in 1966.

Key moments

• November 1685: Guru Gobind Singh founds Paonta on land offered by Raja Medini Prakash of Nahan and stays about three years, leaving for Anandpur in 1688. His eldest son Ajit Singh is born there on 26 January 1687. The shrine was rebuilt in 1823 and, after a dispute that began with a Nihang entry in 1964, put under an eleven-member committee in 1970 with the SGPC president as ex officio chairman.
• 18 September 1688: the Battle of Bhangani, on the right bank of the Yamuna about 11 km from Paonta. The Guru's Sikhs face the hill rajas, led by Raja Fateh Chand of Srinagar (Garhwal) and reinforced by a few hundred Pathans who had left the Guru's camp. The Encyclopaedia says it ended in favour of the Sikhs.
• 20 March 1691: at Nadaun on the Beas the Guru's cavalry help Raja Bhim Chand of Kahlur against the Mughal commander Alif Khan. Maharaja Ranjit Singh later built the first structure of the gurdwara there, and it joined the SGPC in 1935.
• 1809: Ranjit Singh allies with the Katoch rulers, and their armies push the Gorkhas out of the hills.
• 1 November 1966: the Punjab Reorganisation Act moves Kangra, Shimla and Lahaul and Spiti districts, the towns of Bakloh and Dalhousie from Gurdaspur, Nalagarh tahsil, and Una with 290 villages of Hoshiarpur district into Himachal Pradesh. It becomes a state on 25 January 1971.

What it means today. Pong Dam, on the Beas in Kangra, stands on land that was Punjab's until 1966, and the Bhakra Beas Management Board, not Punjab, runs it. In August and September 2025 its releases flooded land in Kangra, and Down To Earth's Amandeep Sandhu argued, in an opinion piece, that the 1966 settlement lies behind Punjab's long river disputes with Haryana and Rajasthan.