A real Rajput princess in a time of war

The old name of ‘Mewar state’ has become familiar with the recently released popular Indian film Padmaavat, associated with the siege of Chittorgarh Fort by Alauddin Khilji in August 1303.That story, as has been repeated by commentators time and again, is based not on authentic history but on a poem written in 1540 AD by Awadhi language Sufi poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi. It also gives me an opportunity to write the tragic story of a 16-year-old Mewari princess that occurred in July 1810 during an age of chaos and breakdown of central authority in Central India.

I must forewarn that any reading of the history of the region in the late 18th and early 19th centuries is perplexing because of an abundance of fluid states, a host of shifting alliances and a swarm of scheming local rulers. I will therefore stick to the very essentials of the story, lest the narrative becomes unreadable. The story that I narrate here revolves around the neighbouring princely states of Mewar, Marwar and Amber with their capitals at Udaipur, Jodhpur and Jaipur respectively, and I will refer to them by the latter, comparatively familiar and modern names.

Udaipur, encompassing Chittorgarh Fort and Udaipur city, held a unique position amongst the states of Rajputana. It was the only Rajput state that had accepted the suzerainty of the Mughals without having to marry a princess of theirs to a Mughal royal.

On the other hand, the princesses of jaipur and Jodhpur were frequently given in marriage to the Mughals. Mariam-uz-Zamani Begum (often associated with the figure of Jodha Bai), the powerful wife of Emperor Akbar and mother of Emperor Jahangir, is believed have been from Jaipur. The first wife of Jahangir, Manbhawati Bai, the mother of his eldest son Khusrau, too, was a princess of Jaipur. Similarly another wife of Jahangir, the mother of Emperor Shah Jahan, was Jagat Gosain, renamed as Bilqis Makani at the Mughal imperial court, from the royal family of Jodhpur. The last Rajput princess linked matrimonially to a Mughal Emperor was also from Jaipur – when Princess Indira Kanwar was forced to wed Emperor Farrukhsiyar as part of a peace treaty. This means that Jahangir had 50 percent Rajput blood while Shah Jahan had 75 percent – disregarding any blending on the side of their mothers.

The intent for tracing out this ancestral trail is to show that the players involved in this tragic tale were all related, in one way or the other to the Mughal imperial household, except of course, the unfortunate princess, the antagonist of this story – whose ancestors had refused the hands of their girls in marriage to the Mughals and for this reason regarded themselves as more honourable than their fellow Rajput chieftains. By the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, however, all these states in Central India, as everywhere else in the Subcontinent, had become independent but their rulers, lacking maturity and farsightedness, were constantly feuding with each other.

Krishna Kumari was born in Udaipur on the 10th of March 1794 to Bhim Singh, the 25th Maharana of Mewar, whose dynastic rule over the state extended back to 1324 when the last of the Khilji rulers were being replaced by the first of Tughlaq sultans.

In 1799, at the age of five, Krishna Kumari was engaged to his father’s namesake, Bhim Singh of Jodhpur. The exact age of her suitor is not known but considering that he had been involved in acquiring and preserving his seat of power since 1793, he must have been a mature man, much older than the Princess – but this was in keeping with the times. The readers are also reminded that the year of betrothal is the same as of Tipu Sultan’s heroic last stand at Seringapatam against the overwhelming forces of Brigadier Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington.

Unfortunately – and fate always seems to intervene at the most calamitous time – Bhim Singh, the bridegroom-to-be, suddenly died in October 1803, taking his wives with him to the funeral pyre. Remarkably a month after the battle of Assye where the British under Arthur Wellesley – Major General by now – decisively defeated the Marathas. These were troubled times for India when the local rulers were engaged in infighting over trifling matters and the British were liquidating them piecemeal.

The dispute over Princess Krishna Kumari was being closely monitored by the East India Company

Our princess became a victim of these troublesome times. This was also the year when the first British resident at Delhi was appointed, effectively putting the Mughal Emperor under a Company protectorate. Two years earlier in 1801, Maharaja Ranjit Singh had been crowned at Lahore. The great land of the Subcontinent was changing hands.

Following the death of the bridegroom-to-be, a 20-year-old cousin of his, Man Singh, assumed power. One of the first acts of the new ruler was to cancel an estate granted to a close relative of Krishna Kumari’s father, creating bad blood between the two – though the cancellation was the result of a prior rivalry between the new ruler and the relative and was in no way meant to offend the father of the princess. This, however, triggered a chain of events that resulted in bloody mayhem in the region.

Man Singh, the new ruler of Jodhpur, expected that as the princess was betrothed to his predecessor, her hand would now be offered to her. Her affronted father countered by announcing her engagement to Jagat Singh, the 17-year-old ruler of Jaipur. Now, Man Singh had a feud with Jagat Singh too, because the latter had supported a rival of the former for the throne of Jodhpur.

I had warned at the outset that this tale is a bit confusing but stay on because it is reflective of the time and will demonstrate the remarkable petty-mindedness of the various state rulers of that time. One can thus actually gauge how they all played in to the hands of British, losing the entire Subcontinent to them. This was a time of a great transition.

Man Singh wasn’t the one to take this humiliation lightly and moved to take some impetuous actions. This is not surprising – since the gentleman turned recluse and lost his wits by the end of his life. On hearing of – or perhaps being invited to – the upcoming marriage, the jilted suitor threw the gauntlet and began preparations for war. The marriage was cancelled, or at least postponed.

Jaipur state, of the new prospective bridegroom, signed a treaty of friendship with the Company in 1803. He now sought their help in the matter but the latter decided to stay neutral and dissolved the treaty. According to Giles Tillotson in his Jaipur Nama, Jaipur’s Ambassador to the British C-in-C in India observed, “This was the first time, since the English government was established in India, that it had been known to make its faith subservient to its convenience.” But Jaipur should have known that the British were not about to go to war over the marriage of a girl.

The proud royal household of Mewar also preferred that the princess depart for the next world rather than bear the humiliation of being wedded to the prince from Jodhpur

Now is the time to introduce a fresh player in this intriguing story.

The Marathas had lost considerable power in their wars against Ahmed Shah Abdali and the British, but were still formidable in the field and had powerful states in the vicinity where our tragic princess lived. Daulat Rao Scindia of Gwalior and Holkar of Indore, now part of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, also interfered in the matter of this marriage.

As the armies of rival suitors marched to Udaipur to claim the hand of the princess, Man Singh invited Scindia to assist – by offering a tribute and agreeing to follow his council. Scinida defeated Jagat Singh and effectively took control of princess’s home state of Udaipur. He now tried to impose his crude solutions to the entrenched problem.

He first proposed that one of the several sisters of Krishna Kumari be given in marriage to Jodhpur as well, but Krishna’s father refused. Scindia then offered to marry the princess himself but the Rajputs considered the Marathas inferior and this proposal was rejected too. According to historian R.S. Chaurasia, Scindia was a promiscuous man and suffered from a painful venereal disease. Scindia finally vacated Udaipur without resolving anything. The princess was spared the affliction of an untreatable malady but she was being pushed to an early demise.

At this juncture, Holkar of Indore decided to increase his influence in Rajputana and offered to meditate the issue. He proposed that Krishna be married to some other person and Jagat Singh should marry a sister of Man Singh to conciliate the two. Jagat, however, refused this proposal as he considered his marriage to the princess as being sacred. He got Holkar’s promise of support against Scindia, and of Scindia by promising to pay him a million rupees. He then invaded Jodhpur in late1806 along with forces from Krishna Kumari’s home state of Udaipur and of Bikaner – a sparsely populated allied state in the neighbourhood. Man Singh left Jodhpur and took shelter in the Mehrangarh fort. The siege continued for six months but the fort held till May 1806 – when, due to scarcity of water and provisions, the besiegers left. Jagat Singh was additionally humbled as he is believed to have paid Rs. 200,000 to secure safe passage back home. Man Singh built a massive gate named Jai Pol in Jodhpur to commemorate the victory. The gate survives to this day.

The dispute over Krishna was being closely monitored by the East India Company. Edward Thompson writes in his 1943 book titled The Making of the Indian Princes that the Company’s Accountant General, in a March 1806 letter to the chairman of East India Company, had mentioned that the Rajput kings were about to “take up arms for the purpose of deciding their claims to the fair hand of the Princess” and expressed the possibility of a conflict involving the Rajput states, as well as Scindia and Holkar, which would “make a very desirable diversion” in the favour of the Company.

At this stage of the events, more players get further involved.

The name of Amir Khan of Tonk often appears with the suffix of ‘Pindari’. Pindari refers to irregular horsemen that plundered and foraged with the Maratha armies in central India during the 18th century. I intend writing a separate column on this fearsome and fearless soldier of fortune, therefore, I will resist from delving into his story any further. However, his entry into our current story also heralds the end for our princess.

Amir Khan usually did some dirty work – plundering, threatening, assassination – for Maratha chieftain Holkar, but he wasn’t averse to do some side business for quick cash. As Holkar was on the side of Jagat Sigh, who was still betrothed to our princess, Amir Khan too was on the side of her father. Amir Khan had participated in the siege of Mehrangarh and stayed on during the plunder of Jodhpur but deserted when victory eluded the besiegers.

In that environment of fickle alliances, Amir Khan had become independent of Holkar and in 1810, raided Udaipur, the hometown of the princess, on the behest of Man Sigh, her jilted suitor – for better money, of course.

It is reported that Amir Khan occupied the state and plundered the towns. He then decided that as long as Krishna Kumari lived, there could be no peace in the region. He swaggered into the courtroom of Udaipur and announced that either the princess be married to his client Man Singh or be killed. It was made clear to her father that in case either of these conditions was not met, it was Mewar that would become the battleground and suffer consequences.

Wistfully, with his back to the wall, Krishna Kumari’s father reached the same conclusion. The proud royal household of Mewar also preferred that the princess depart for next world rather than bear the humiliation of being wedded to the prince from Jodhpur.

There have been eulogies about how the princess died. It is said that she herself was convinced that her death was the only solution for the miseries of her family and people. Reportedly, her aunt administered the lethal opium-based drink to her – which, it is said, she accepted and drank with a smile on his face. The truth is that she had no choice in life or in death.

She represents the hundreds of thousands of girls and women who have no choice in their lives and who become silent victims of politics, wars and strife.

The struggle for central Rajasthan continued unabated after this tragic death. The British overcame the Napoleonic threat by June 1815 and turned their attention to consolidate their rule in India. Within the next five years, Udaipur, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Scindia, Holkar and Amir Khan, as indeed all other states in the Subcontinent, came under the protection of the British and, as all stories end, lived peacefully thereafter as autonomous states for next century-and-a-half without causing any mischief, until their absorption in independent nations of Pakistan and India respectively.

Shall we not shed a tear for the innocent princess?

Parvez Mahmood retired as a Group Captain from PAF and is now a software engineer. He lives in Islamabad and writes on social and historical issues. He can be reached at parvezmahmood53@gmail.com