Chup Sha! Hari Singh raghle!
28 March 2014
Gujranwala was then the domain of a man called Hari Singh Nalwa, a native of the town. A Rajput by caste and follower of the great Guru Nanak by creed, he was the ablest general that the Punjabi Maharaja could boast of. It was this man who had taken Punjabi arms across the Sindhu River and into the Pukhtun heartland. Such had been his terror that for nearly a hundred and fifty years after his death Pukhtun mothers were to restrain recalcitrant children with a whispered, ‘Chup Sha! Hari Singh raghle!’ (Be quite! Hari Singh comes!).
Read more »Labels: People, Sea Monsters and the Sun God, Sikhs
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Unrequited Possession
26 March 2014
My friend Iqbal Qaiser, the well-known Punjabi intellectual, knows Punjab better than most people. On the subject of ancient caravanserais, he said there was one on the road from Gujranwala to Pasrur. It was because of this sarai that the village was called Saranwali; saran with its nasal ending being the Punjabi word for a roadhouse. Iqbal admitted he had not seen it but from what he had heard, it seemed to be in fairly good shape.
Now, having hunted for old sarais myself, I thought this one was worth investigating. And so, having turned left on the road to Pasrur from Sialkot Bypass outside Gujranwala, I stopped at a teashop to ask how far to go. ‘Five kilometres,’ said the man who did not know how long a kilometre was because I ended up driving twenty after asking him. But he did correct me: the name of the village was not Saranwali but Siranwali that is exactly twenty-five kilometres from the Bypass.
Read more »Labels: Heritage, Punjab, Sikhs
posted by Salman Rashid @ 08:00,
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Rites of Passage
29 August 2013
Long before we wrongly attributed the Grand Trunk Road to Sher Shah Suri, the Punjab was criss-crossed by a network of land routes. One such road was perhaps the precursor of the modern day connection between Gujranwala and the riverside town of Rasulnagar. At the site of the latter, there was from ancient times a busy ford on the Chenab that handled the traffic of salt coming down from the Salt Range mines. Traders and travellers going east into the Indian heartland carried on along one arm of the royal road built by Chandragupta Maurya, of which we first hear from Megasthenes who came to the court of Pataliputra in 300 BCE. But those headed north or south had two options. To reach Jammu in the north or Multan in the south, travellers could either sail the Chenab or use the high road that ran parallel to the river. Over the years, the nameless ford on the Chenab was enriched by this passage of trade and travellers.
Consequently, when a man named Noor Mohammad Chattha of the nearby village of Munchar Chattha moved to this site and set up his family home in 1732, he too entertained vision of aggrandisement. And so the small habitation that emerged that year was named Nooray da Kot (Noor’s Castle). Chattha annals do not disclose how the business of the ford and staging post benefited Noor Mohammad, but we do hear that his son Pir Mohammad was prosperous enough to build a battlement around his father’s castle. It is also recorded that Pir Mohammad renamed his father’s stronghold and called it Rasulnagar after his religious mentor Pir Abdur Rasul.
Read more »Labels: Gujranwala: The Glory That Was, History, Punjab, Sikhs
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The Maharaja’s Residence
11 April 2013
History has no religion. This is a simply truth that we in Pakistan seem to be unaware of. For sixty-five years the government strived very, very hard to give it a religion and the sad thing is it succeeded. Consequently, now the history of Pakistan is only what is Islamic. Hard put to ignore Mehrgarh, Harappa, Moen jo Daro and Taxila, we simply try to wish away all relics of our built heritage if they did not originate under a Muslim patron.
Now, we cannot deny that Maharaja Ranjit Singh (Nov 1780-Jun 1839) was a truly great warrior king of Punjab. Astute, highly intelligent and possessed of immense cunning to boot, this man used his mental faculties to turn the divided Sikhs into one great community. Upon attaining the throne after his father’s death in 1799, Ranjit Singh found himself ruler of a small part of Punjab. Within a few years, this remarkable man whose prowess in the battlefield matched his acumen as a statesman and diplomat had increased his sway from Kashmir to Multan and from the Jumna River to the Khyber Pass.
Labels: Gujranwala: The Glory That Was, Heritage, Punjab, Sikhs
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Guru Nanak and the hand print
09 March 2013
Legend has it that the great Guru Nanak having reached Hasan Abdal tired and thirsty on a hot day sought a drink. But there was no water to be had in town; the only source being up on a hill and jealously guarded by Hasan Abdal also known as Wali Kandahari (deputy of God from Kandahar). The guru sent one of his disciples to get some water from the Muslim ascetic who refused to oblige one whom he considered heathen.
Twice did Guru Nanak send up his man and twice was he returned empty handed by Wali Kandahari. In a fit of ire, the guru struck the earth with his staff causing a clear and copious spring to burst forth and, at that moment, drying up the spring on the hill. Not to be outdone, Wali on the hilltop cast a small pebble at the guru. As it rolled down the hill, the pebble grew in size until it was a boulder large enough to smother the spring and the guru.
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2009, Punjab, Sikhs, Tales Less Told
posted by Salman Rashid @ 09:50,
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