History can play a very important role as it can help us develop multiple comprehensions about an omnipresent geography. This can strengthen our strategic comprehension of the region.
Growing up in Jammu amidst the palaces of Mubarak Mandi meant growing up listening to stories of kings, queens and their retinue. In the summer we slept on wooden beds on the terrace under a starry sky and woke up to the clock towers of Mubarak Mandi on the left and the palace of Gol Ghar in the front.
Behind the Gol Ghar palace the river Tawi meandered through its floodplains, its banks rising to the Shivalik slopes, very thickly forested—nestled in them were many small temples and caves that housed monkeys and monks. My maternal grandmother’s home was in Panjtirthi—the entrance locality to the mandi and a walk from Panjtirthi to Mubarak Mandi meant walking through court households, palaces, temples and thick neighbourhoods of Dogras.
An access to any of those court households was akin to passively breathing in history and it wasn’t an uncommon thing since after partition most of the government offices operated from the Mandi and were the workplaces of my parents, relatives and friends. Some were also priests in the temples of the city.
Little did I then know that this neighbourhood and the Mubarak Mandi from whose southwest gate I daily took my school bus was the hot spot of frontier politics. Until very recently I knew Mubarak Mandi only as my childhood’s playground—it’s only now do I realize that it was once the fulcrum of Central Asian and South Asian geopolitics and it was geography that determined it.
Today, I’ll highlight some aspects of that geography, its geopolitical context in past and present, its intrigues and festivities and finally the heritage conservation today that calls for more than just material preservation.
TRIKUTA HILLS
The three peaks of Trikuta stand majestically at the backdrop of Jammu city. On a clear day they are visible behind the Mubarak Mandi complex—in winters their snowy peaks glisten emphatically. What’s important to note is that Trikuta hills are visible from Sialkot as well.
Recently in a video by a Pakistani vlogger I heard that the Trikuta hills of Vaishnodevi are visible from Sialkot, the Pakistani city which before partition of 1947 was popularly known as Jammu’s twin. This is an important point for analysis for many reasons. First let’s analyse it from a geography and connectivity perspective.
My grandmother, who’s originally from a border region, sings a childhood rhyme. She tells me her sisters use to sing it when electric power first came to the twin towns of Jammu and Sialkot:
“िबजली जू, िसयालकोट आई होई है; असा पंडितं ते बैडे ओते लाई होई है; पंिडतं पाी कडकर लगायी होई है I
(Electric power has reached Jammu and Sialkot; It has lit the Pandit’s compound; the Pandit has opened his book under it.)
Sialkot or the ancient days Sakla, a city in the plains stands at an elevation of 840 feet above sea level, its twin Jammu stands at 980 feet and the Trikuta hills of Vaishnodevi stand at 5,200 feet—this sloping elevation significantly showcases the amazing geography of the Indus basin in this region and more so amply implies that Vaishnodevi is visible from Sialkot.
Today there’s a heavily militarized International Border between Jammu and Sialkot while they are connected through a 40 kilometer road. That’s roughly the distance between Delhi airport and Ghaziabad. Since 1890 these two twin cities were connected by a rail line and many noted people from Jammu travelled by this rail corridor to their destinies in the rest of colonial India.
Before the creation of Dogra infrastructure at Mubarak Mandi, the hills around the river Tawi bank existed at a midpoint milestone between Sialkot and Vaishnodevi. These hills continue to host many ancient shrines even today like the ancient caves of Jamvant, the temple of Mahamaya on the opposite bank over the hill and the 7th-8th century Devi idol inside the Bahu Fort that Dogra historians describe as of Ayodhya origin.
I’m particularly interested in the Jamvant caves which according to my research are of ancient Shivite origin and exist in conjunction with the Mahamaya temple on the opposite bank. In childhood we visited it every Sunday with our parents. It’s interesting to note that the great Tibetan Siddha or Tantric, Milerapa’s guru, Marpa came to India four times to learn from his Gurus and during one such trip he learned the great tantra of Maha Maya from the eccentric yogin, Kukkuripa who was one of the 84 Mahasiddhas.
I’m not saying that the temple in Jammu is the actual place where he received the teachings from Kukkuripa, I’m just saying that Maha Maya was a great tantric vidya. Since Mahayana Buddhism shared its lineage with ancient Shivaism and since this connection is also visible in the Gorakhnath tradition—my ideas aren’t a very difficult preposition.
I believe we need to look into Jammu’s Devi tantric heritage vis-a-vis its ancient Shivite heritage and vice versa. There are many cults of ancient Shivism which today have become extinct and Jammu stands at an important unexplored testimonial geography of this heritage.
The capital of the Jamwal Dogras at Mubarak Mandi could be a few centuries old but the religious heritage of the region is much older, while the geography is omnipresent. It’ll be ironic and deceitful to think that the happenings at Sialkot (Sakala), like it being under Indo-Greeks or it being connected to the Grand Trunk Road would have no impact on whatever was the geography that’s today wider identified as Jammu city.
It’s very likely that the political establishment of the wider region was placed at other regions than Mubarak Mandi—like Akhnoor is a bigger civilizational corridor than what’s Jammu city today—it has Harappan mounds as well as Buddhist Kushan heritage and its many Rajvadas of antiquity boast of a pan India genome, going as far as the Marathas.
Akhnoor, a border town today is roughly 20 kilometers from Jammu city. Bollywood enthusiasts would be excited to know that in the 1984 film, Soni Mahiwal, Soni, the potter girl’s village is in the wider Akhnoor region, today on the other side of the border. What’s historically significant about the film is that Mahiwal, the young trader was travelling from Bukhara in what’s today’s Uzbekistan, to Punjab. This gives a rare example of life and history of the ancient Grand Trunk Road connecting Central Asia with the larger Indus river basin.
Otherwise, Akhnoor is the most empirically studied civilizational corridor in Jammu—you can find its unearthed artefacts in New Delhi’s National Museum—while Jammu’s other civilizational corridors like Paloura, Mansar, Billawar and Udhampur are mostly undiscovered and littered with ruins. The heritage of the wider Jammu province is further clouded by apathy, disdain and geo-political propaganda and conflict.
A study of these regions would disclose new historical linkages and inferences of not only what’s today’s Jammu province but of the wider Indus river basin that extends across Pakistan and through northeastern Afghanistan.
Let border and conflict not delude us from our historical interface!
HOW’S THIS LINKED TO THE MILITARY HISTORY OF THIS GEOGRAPHY?
History can play a very important role as it can help us develop multiple comprehensions about an omnipresent geography. This can strengthen our strategic comprehension of the region.
Take for example the ancient routes to Vaishnodevi in Trikuta hills weren’t the same as it’s today through the Pathankot-Jammu and Jammu-Udhampur highway. Even the trek to Vaishnodevi wasn’t as linear as it’s today.
Vaishnodevi boasts of centuries old bowlis (built aquifers) of Gujarati and Rajasthani style according to Dogra historian Shivnirmohi. Ironically though, Vaishnodevi witnesses an annual footfall of an average 10 million tourists yet it doesn’t have a museum that would help people connect their history with their personal lineage and wider Indian heritage.
Vaishnodevi wasn’t just a religious destination, it had a wider military and historical significance. If you visit Vaishnodevi you visit two main shrines, one of the Devi and other of the Bhairva. The latter also defines one of the warrior traditions of the region.
According to Nidar Singh Nihang, a grandmaster of the ancient Indian tradition of Shastra Vidya, Bhairva is one of the ancient warrior traditions—a few others include Pashupati, Gorakhnath.
Nidar-ji mentions in his website “Sanatan Shahstra Vidya” that in the 5th century “Kapalika Sadhus transmuted into the more socially acceptable ‘Natha Sadhus’ (the masters of Yoga)” who further established various Shahstra Vidya Akharas.
“Other than the Gorakhnathis, a number of other Shivite Akharas, conversant with Shastar Vidiya, also emerged to guard the Sanatan Dharma of India,” he said. Some of the Akharas Nidar-ji mentions with reference are: Anand Akhara (founded 856), Niranjani Akhara (founded 904), Juna Akhara (founded 1106), Agani Akhara (founded 1482), Avahan Akhara (founded 1547), Atal Akhara (founded 1646), and Nirvani Akhara (Founded 1749).
In my journeys across the Jammu hinterland I have come across one Dogra warrior who belonged to one such warrior tradition and I have discussed him in person with Nidar-ji.
The hills of Jammu and Himachal of what’s collectively identified as the Dogra heartland was home to many such warriors—one reason behind this warrior geography was also the prevalence of such warrior traditions—these traditions like those of Gorakhnathis or Kanphatiyas required seclusion of the hills and the jungles for some of their practices. The other reason was also that the streams or nalas of the lower Shivaliks which stand out during most of the year except for monsoons, as dry-pebbled river beds made these regions easily accessible from the Punjab plains.
In these traditions, the Devi never stood alone in a shrine, she always had her Natha in a consecrated or a personified and yet cultivated form. I don’t boast that I understand these in detail—I don’t think I need to—but that can’t negate the fact that the temples lining the many rivers and hilly treks in these regions were milestones for warriors in history.
How sad that today the same rivers are used as routes by militants and narcotic handlers while the actual descendants have no clue of their own lineage.