Until the early 1800s, Bhaddu was a small kingdom only about 16 kilometres long and it was ruled by the Bhadwals.
Our ancestral home breathed its last in the 2014 floods—the incessant rains played havoc on our mud-wood home that needed to be prepared for every monsoon but had remained unattended for many years. Just like our household, the larger history of the region and the stories of its Dogra people too wait to be identified and given its due in India’s unfolding milieu.
Decades ago when we had lost our great grandmother’s home—my cousins had gone around scavenging for goods in the long locked home—picking up ornate supari cutters and decorated earthen lamps. We grew up listening to stories about our forefathers’ riches, my grandfather’s white mare, his feats at many horse races and great grandma’s palanquin.
Great grandma, Jiyaan was given a home in Bhaddu in the very early 1900s by her parents because great grandfather, Sant Ram Dogra, the Assistant Settlement Commissioner of Kashmir in Maharaja Pratap Singh’s court, was always away. His original home was in Rampur Rasool in the most forested hillock, about 10 miles from Bhaddu.
Jiyaan couldn’t think of living in a forest by herself and so she moved to Bhaddu. Her home stood right on the edge of the hill overlooking the most beautiful valley crowned by the panoramic Shivalik. It stretched drawing a massive curtain to worlds beyond.
And these worlds were all connected to us through mountain passes traversed on horses—the passes on the extreme left in the panorama led to Kashmir and to the extreme right led to Himachal. Those in the middle were all identified by temples and gods enshrined in them. This meant there were local pilgrimage routes leading to them.
Our village Bhaddu had an ancient Shiva shrine and the hill overlooking our village had a Devi shrine of Goddess Balasundri. People believed that Balasundri visits the Shiva temple hours before dawn; while everyone sleeps she offers her obeisance. There were those who vouched for her presence, some told tall tales about her while sitting by the fireside at dusk.
Just like Kashmiris wear Phiran, Pahadi Dogras were identified by their checkered loyies (rough blankets knitted by Gujjar weavers). Every night in winters whenever we visited our village, we would find men sitting in the market, wrapped in their loyies by the fireside, chit chatting, sipping tea, smoking. Their guffaws were often interrupted by their Pahadi lexicon and many swear words.
Those were people’s ways of entertainment—the world wasn’t as connected as now—television was yet to make inroads; power cuts were more frequent and people lived talking loud both in happiness and sorrow.
In the adjacent lane to our home, lived grandmother’s friend, a lonely widow who would sit in the veranda of her house, working on a charkha while looking through the hedge and chit chatting with those walking on the street. Decades ago, the adjacent village had a community of weavers as well as some kind of batik dyers called “Shapaya” and families sought them after a good crop of cotton.
The weavers and Shapayas—mostly Muslims—migrated to Pakistan during Partition. A Shapaya woman worked in our household and while migrating the family accidentally left behind their youngest son who kept on working in our farms until his heydays. Karma has strange ways of manifesting—decades later my cousin was being ferried by a Pakistani-origin taxi driver in New York who turned out to be a descendant of the same Shapayas in our village.
Bhaddu also had its own ingrown exponents of art and culture. Just opposite to the widow’s home was the house of a tabla player, an exponent of Hindustani music—the village also had a legacy of great poets—Kavi Dattu (Devdat), the most famous Dogri poet was born in Bhaddu in the 18th century during the time of Raja Privthvi Pal, who was the son-in-law of the ruler of Jammu, Raja Ranjit Dev. Dattu became the court poet of the Dogra court in Jammu after 1770.
Ironically, he not only wrote in Dogri but in Hindi and Braj too. There were other noted poets after him and during my grandfather’s time the village regularly held Kavi Goshthis (poetry seminars).
VILLAGE THEATRE
The main lane from our home led to a big pond whose northern edge housed a theatre that came alive every Ram Leela season before Deepavali.
Grandfather was once the coordinator of the theatre—I fondly remember his Lahore travelogues—his description of Lahore bazaars from where he bought the Ram Leela costumes. During his time, the Ram Leela committee had gone door to door collecting money for building the theatre and when faced with a crunch had pestered a sadhu living in the village’s Shiva temple for help.
The sadhu, fondly called “Baba Poodhu”, had been saving money inside the hollow bamboo of his hut and had emptied his bamboo four times to help build the theatre. His samadhi still stands in the temple. The Ram Leela committee continues with the legacy of the Baba Poodhu and is a well-equipped and self-sustained enterprise today with a regular audience that’s also its patron.
I remember the village’s Shiva temple always had sadhus—some coming from other parts of India—they lived around a dhuni (fire) in a hut in the temple’s premises—and the village always hosted them until recently when unknown people started increasingly being perceived as a security threat.
The fact that this temple was well connected to other Shaivite shrines around the larger Indus river basin is proved by the life of Baba Puran Giri, a sadhu originally from the Shaivite town of Sudh Mahadev in Reasi—the town that was recently in news for the terror attack on the pilgrims bus.
Baba Puran Giri was the priest in Bhaddu’s temple for many years and reconstructed the temple after an earthquake—he built many Shiva and Devi shrines in the region including temples in Mechedi, Bani, Thada Kalal and Kaogh—all villages or towns today in Jammu’s Kathua district.
I remember visiting Baba Puran Giri in his ashram at Lakhanpur in my early childhood with my father. Lakhanpur is a border town today in Kathua city near Pathankot. The ashram was built where a fort once existed and the ashram still exists, though Baba Puran Giri has long left the world.
The first road came into our region in early 1950—before that all connectivity was through khads (dry river beds), forests and mountain passes. I continue to visit nonagenarian people in the village to listen to their pre-partition sojourns through the forests and river trails. Ironically, the same river khads, mountain passes and pilgrimage treks transform into security threats every time after a terrorist attack happens in the region.
BIRTHPLACE OF MAHARAJA GULAB SINGH’S MOTHER
Until the early 1800s, Bhaddu was a small kingdom only about 16 kilometres long and it was ruled by the Bhadwals. Maharaja Gulab Singh’s mother was born to the Bhadwals. In school days I had read a copy of Gulabnama in Dogri and it had a special mention of her story. As per the Rajput tradition she was buried alive when born but was soon retrieved when the Pandit found her horoscope to be unique and predicted her to be the mother of great warriors.
Her mention appears nowhere in the available translations of Gulabnama and I forgot about this history until I came across the descendants of Badwals in a village at the base of the Bhaddu hill.
Gulab Singh’s mama (maternal uncle), Raja Avtar Singh was ruling Bhaddu kingdom when Raja Suchet Singh, the younger brother of Gulab Singh annexed many hilly states in the 1830s.
Suchet Singh defeated Raja Avtar in 1983 and in a panic, the family then escaped penniless with just their Thakur (family deity), an idol of Krishna, into the forests by the hillside. They continue to live there while the clan has grown into multiple households and their “Thakur” continues to be enshrined in a family temple.
The Bhadwal rulers left behind the idols of Radha and Balrama to their family priest which continue to be where they were in Bhaddu—that place is called Thakur Dwariyey (the door of god). Thakur Dwariyey elsewhere in Dogra history are known as the sites of royal coronations.
People walking by the street in Bhaddu bow at the Thakur Dwariyey, without realising their long lost heritage. I visited both the sites two years ago and saw for myself a history lost to lack of research and continued geo-politics. Interestingly, the 98-year-old custodian of Bhaddu’s Thakur Dwariyey, Uttam Chand Rattan Pal describes the idols to be thousand-year-old and has many stories to tell about his grandfather who wore an Urdhva Pundra (Sanskrit: Å/oZiq.Mª, romanized: Urdhvapundra, lit. “elevated mark”) or a tilak of Vishnu. The family was given the title of “Rattan Pal” by the kings and it means the “Jewels of the Pals”.
Gulabnama’s English translation by Sukhdev Singh Charak and Anita Charak Billawaria mentions Bhaddu to be a fief of Vallapura (today’s Billawar) which became independent in the eleventh century. Vallapura, the town of Harihara is also mentioned in Rajtarangini. The town today is littered with unidentified ruins at a site called Gurnal. Downtown Billawar stands around the ASI protected temple of Harihara, whose site was excavated a few decades ago and among many deities also has rare, ancient idols of Brahma and Goraknath.
The historian father-daughter duo of Charak and Billawaria mention in the footnotes of Chapter Four that Bhaddu’s ruling family had blood relations with the rulers of Kulu (in today’s Himachal) and with the rulers of Bhaderwah and Basoli.
“Its Rajas were of one caste with those of Kulu, Bhadarwah and Balawar or Basoli; the four being so allied, were often at war with each other,” wrote Charak and Billawaria who mention these Raja to be originally from “Mayapuri or Hardwar.” These Rajas considered themselves the descendants of Pandavas and were Vaishnavites.
However, Dogra historian, Padma Shri Shiv Nirmohi is of the viewpoint that the rulers of these four hilly states were the descendants of Hindu Shahis who after their decades-long battles with Ghaznavi escaped into the Shivaliks.
India history is silent about the Hindu Shahis or Pal Vanshis, the rulers of Ghandhara-Takshila who according to the 4th and 5th volumes of R.C. Majumdar’s “The History and Culture of the Indian People” fought many battles with Ghaznavi for almost half a century and this includes 25 years of putting up a tough resistance. While description about their feats and fate is found in the historical Islamic accounts, Indian history goes mute about what happened to them in the aftermath.
According to Majumdar, after a defeat in a battle at Peshawar, Anandpala, a Hindu Shahi ruler fled to Kashmir hills.
Shiv Nirmohi says that the descendants of Hindu Shahis were being incessantly hunted by Ghaznavi and they moved to the Shivalik ranges of Jammu and Himachal, setting up four smaller kingdoms in Bhaddu, Basoli, Bhaderwah and Kulu. They remained incognito—ruling over their small kingdoms. They largely remained unidentified because they chose that status in history to protect themselves after brutal persecution.
If Shiv Nirmohi’s historical interpretation is validated by further research, Maharaja Gulab Singh’s maternal lineage could likely come from the Hindu Shahis and Bhaddu could further get another legit story to become a Dogra heritage village.