Kangra hills (Sikh refuge)

The Kangra valley and the Shivalik and Basohli hills around it lie north-east of the Punjab plains, in what is now Himachal Pradesh and the Kathua country of Jammu. In the eighteenth century these hills were one of the places Sikhs went when the plains turned deadly. Within a generation the same hills were paying tribute to the Dal Khalsa.

Key moments

• 1726 to 1745: under Zakariya Khan, governor of Lahore, moving columns “forced the Sikhs to seek shelter in remote hills and forests”. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism lists fifty rupees for a Sikh scalp and death for anyone who sheltered Sikhs.
• 1735: when the agreement with Zakariya Khan broke down, the Dal Khalsa retreated to the Shivalik hills to regroup (Wikipedia).
• 1 and 2 May 1746: in the Chhota Ghallughara the Sikhs ran for the heights of Basohli in present Kathua district, but the hill chiefs, alerted by Lakhpat Rai, were as hostile as the pursuing Mughal forces. They recrossed the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej to the Lakhi Jungle in Malwa. About 7,000 were killed and 3,000 captured.
• 1758 to 1763: after the death of Adina Beg, Jassa Singh Ahluwalia is said to have collected nominal tribute from the Kangra states, among them Mandi and Kullu, and by March 1763 Bilaspur and Nalagarh were tributary to the Dal Khalsa (Wikipedia, citing Hari Ram Gupta).
• 1783: Jai Singh Kanhaiya takes Kangra Fort from the Mughal governor’s son. In 1786 Raja Sansar Chand gets it back by treaty.
• 24 August 1809: Maharaja Ranjit Singh, called in against the Gurkhas, takes Kangra Fort and its villages.

What it means today. The hills were a refuge only at some times. In 1746 the hill chiefs turned on the fleeing Sikhs, and the sanctuary that held was the Lakhi Jungle. By 1763 the Dal Khalsa was taking tribute from hill states, and by 1809 the Sikh state held Kangra Fort itself.