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At the Juncture of time at Pathankot and near about
places
by Prabal Pramanik
History shows that human civilization, though a continuity, goes through different phases.
Each phase brings about a new chapter in the annals of man and introduces immense changes
in values and lifestyle.
The thought processing method of the society goes through a system of changes that reshape
the social dimensions of the new phase and exerts a lot of influence on the later ages.
The age old indigenous feudal structure with its social power distributing system was
affected and pressurized to its very roots with the introduction of the British
administrative policy after the first Sikh war ended in 1846.
The hill chiefs and the local Rajas who were used to the old system and felt at home with
the indegenous system of feudal administration felt humiliated and unhappy. Their
expectations of returning to the old system of the rule of clan centered social hierarchy
crashed.
This caused resentment in many of the hill chieftains who wanted to return to the old days
of full feudal power.
One aspect is absolutely clear, no feudal chief had the least intention to liberate the
serfs or to give poor labouring people classified as low castes and slaves any future in
freedom.
The feudal chiefs were very much conscious about their own self respect and the respect of
their clans.
These clan chiefs and the warriors who rallied around them were valiant people, often
braving great hardships to hold their heads high, but they had no intention to show any
basic respect to the downtrodden poor people of so called low castes.
In spite of the courage these Rajput warriors showed on the battle fields, none of these
warriors had the consideration to accept the poor mass grouped as low castes as fellow
country men with human dignity.
The modern concept of nation had not evolved at that time and it was not possible for such
a concept to develop under such gross social injustice fostered by mass illiteracy.
I doubt whether the poor people who were classified as low castes, untouchables and bonded
serfs shared the same fervour for freedom from foreign rule as their masters who
controlled and enjoyed wealth and power at the cost of the labour of the poor downtrodden
mass. When evaluating any fight for freedom, I always take the dimension of the base of
that struggle in to consideration.
So I may not agree in to the opinions of many contemporary historians who may not take the
cause of the general mass into account when compiling and evaluating history.
When hill chiefs now and then called for freedom of their for kingdoms or fiefdoms, many
people from their own clans and related clans rallied around them.
The cause of such unity was clan feeling and the pride of the clan. These people often
fought with great courage for freedom.
Yet the common poor serfs and labourors whom the high cast Rajputs and Brambhins saw as
inferior creatures, looking down on them with great contempt, rarely joined any battle of
the feudal master out of their own free will.
For these poor people without basic human rights or respectable social acceptance, feudal
masters were more or less oppressors and one oppressor was just as bad as the other.
The wheel of fate was turning over the political scenario in Indian subcontinent in the
first half of nineteenth century.
Administrative consolidation and social reforms were much more necessary that the sporadic
struggles of the fiefdoms.
When glorifying ourselves by looking back at a freedom struggles long back we must think
in an unbiased way, to ascertain whether the freedom that was sought, was for all the
sections of the society to enjoy the benefits of that freedom irrespective of caste and
economic clan, or that freedom if gained would just have benefitted the higher casts and
the upper levels of the society satisfying their community egos.
Yet that does not stop us from admiring the valiant and courageous stands made by the last
warriors against the British rule in this area. They followed their own concepts of
freedom and fought with full faith in those concepts and often they laid down their lives
for their cause.
The attempt of Ram Singh Pathania was the most famous of such struggles for freedom from
British rule in the area near Pathankot after the first Anglo Sikh war. In 1848 the second
Sikh war began.
In August 1848 Ram Singh Pathania organized resistance against the British force
proclaiming himself as the wazir of Jaswant Singh, whom he proclaimed as the raja of
Nurpur, and declared prince Dalip as the paramount. Many local Rajput warriors rallied
around him. Temporarily Ram Singh Pathania occupied the fort of Shapur. That was remaining
unoccupied. When British army from Hosiarpur cannant attacked the fort, Ram Singh Pathania
escaped. Next year in January 1849 Ram Singh Pathania obtained two regiments of Sikh
soldiers from Raja Sher Singh. At Dalla a hilly place not far from Pathankot Ram Singh
Pathania and his men aided by two Sikh regiments made a desperate stand but were defeated.
Ram Singh Pathania was captured and later deported to Singapore by the British. S. Basawa
Singh in November 1848 attacked the fort at Pathankot to capture it, but was unsuccessful.
The other chieftains, Raja Parmudh Chand Katoch, Raja of Jaswan, Raja of Datarpur and Bedi
Bikrama Singh who opposed the British in that war were defeated.
There were the last brave attempts by the old order in the area of Pathankot and nearby to
recapture the seats of power.
The consciousness that prompted the freedom struggle on a pan Indian basis accepting an
unified India as a nation, came many years later, in a changed society, on a much wider
social spectrum
© Prabal Pramanik
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