My Kashmir Files: Battle of Gilgit and the Legends of Gen Hoshiyara Singh

By Venus Upadhayaya

Gilgit is of high geo-political stakes today—a disputed territory between India and Pakistan, China is building the $80 billion worth China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) through it. But almost 160 years ago amidst an intriguing chain of events, Maharaja Ranbir Singh, the second Dogra king had sent a punitive force led by the then Gen. Hoshiyara to conquer Gilgit and I wanted to meet his descendants.

So, I recently visited the ancestral home of General Hoshiyara Singh who is credited with the Dogra kingdom’s victory over Gilgit in 1863.

Unlike Gen. Zoravar Singh who’s credited with the Dogra kingdom’s victory over Tibet principality and whose name comes along with Maharaja Gulab Singh, the founder of the Dogra kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, little is on the front pages of history about Gen. Hoshiyara Singh. His name simply vanished from the annals after Dogra Kingdom’s victory over Gilgit in 1863.

Gen. Hoshiyara Singh’s 200-year-old mud and wood home in Rampur, Kathua

The Mystery of the Victorian Sword

Things turned exciting when Gen. Hoshiara’s family brought out some of his weapons: a battle axe and two swords. One sword turned out to be a British Diplomatic Sword, a “straight steel blade decorated with floral scrolls, a cartouche with Phelps Calcutta & Co to one side, the wooden sheath with brass fittings and leather attachment.”

Victorian or court swords were mostly carried for ceremonial events. The one I held in my hand was historic because it was of Gen. Hoshiara. Ironically no historical analysis of it is available today.

The family legends say that Gen. Hoshiyara was poisoned after the war while he was recovering from battle wounds in a hospital in Udhampur and his gallantry records or anything that would have celebrated his history were burnt. He was allegedly poisoned by his in-house adversaries because the battle of 1863 was a decisive one for the Dogra rule and meant a great rise in status in the royal court for whoever led it.

Tales of his valor in his village include an anecdote of him carrying a canon uphill on his shoulder after the horse carrying it collapsed.

The only explanation I could find for a Victorian sword’s presence in this sleepy village is related to the events of 1857. Scholar Amar Singh Chohan in his Ph.D. thesis titled “The Gilgit Agency (1877-1935) mentions that in exchange for the “independent sovereignty over this extensive region, Gulab Singh besides promising to pay seventy-five lakhs of rupees to the British, engaged himself to come to their assistance with the whole of his army whenever they were at war with any people near his frontier.”

This frontier included the significant northern frontier, most of it unidentified and unmapped at that time. It was muddled with despotic chieftains and was a route to frequent invasions that the British rulers dreaded. They also dreaded that the Russian empire would use these borders to reach India, their most prized colony. Most significantly the Dogra warriors and subsequently the Dogra military had the maximum access to this region starting from the days of their presence in the Sikh army.

After the first war of Indian independence in 1857 as the British Crown took over the affairs of India from the East India Company, it started to increasingly focus on this region and it started with aligning with Dogras, the strongest military that had won the most wars in those inhospitable passes.

Gulab Singh died in 1857 and Ranbir Singh succeeded him and it was under him that Gen. Hoshiyara fought his decisive battle for Gilgit in 1863.

Since Gen. Hoshiyara passed away after the 1863 war–the sword is from the period before it and since the British Crown took over only eight years before the war, the sword was likely in use between 1857 and 1863 in court ceremonies that saw the closest ever strategic partnership between the Dogras and the British.

It was seven years after the battle of 1863 that the famous British explorer, George Hayward became the first white man to reach Gilgit, and with him started the period of Great Games.

Madoori Fort in Yasin, Gilgit where the battle of 1863 took place between the Dards and the Dogras.

The Battle of Gilgit, 1863

In the spring of 1863, a force called “Ram Gol Pultan” consisting of 2000-3000 sepoys – chiefly men from Yusufzae, Boonair or Bomba, Swat, and Pathans, was secretly assembled in Gilgit. These were a part of the 5000-6000 men that Gen. Hoshiara then led to conquer Gilgit. Immediately after that, all records of his presence disappear from the celebrated Dogra history of war.

However, the folklore of the 1863 war, or the Battle of Yasin, lived on and reached the Indian mainland after seven years when Hayward visited the region. Hayward had befriended a Dogra adversarial and had visited the Madoori fort, the bastion of the 1863 battle where he counted around 400 skulls.

Meanwhile, 32-year-old Howard got killed in Gilgit during a subsequent trip for which he was warned in person by the then British Viceroy to India, Lord Mayo. To this day, it has been a mystery about who killed Howard. Travel writer Tim Hannigan has written a book on the episode named – “Murder in the Hindu Kush–George Hayward and the Great Game,” in which he has explored various conspiracy theories existing about Howard’s beheading.

Beginning of the Great Game

But I am of the view that the Great Game started not with Hayward, but with the mysterious murder of Gen. Hoshiyara Singh. This region through which China has now built the CPEC has been humanity’s pass to eastern civilizations since the tectonic plates settled to the present frame. Dogras held strategic control over this region from just 1846 to 1947.

In those times of non-technological warfare, military superiority would have been largely dependent on physical strength, tactics, timing, and leadership. In the end, narratives of wars and their legitimacy are decided by the victor’s version.

Need for a True Narrative

What we know today is that the British were paranoid about Russians washing their feet in the warmth of the Indian Ocean. That is exactly why they deliberately created Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan so that no Indian territory is ever in touch with Russia. The desolate regions became a Great Game arena between the British and the Russians.

In 1935, the Gilgit agency was leased for 60 years by the British from the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir because of its strategic location. But as soon as Maharaja Hari Singh acceded to India on October 26, 1947, Maj. W.A. Brown imprisoned Brig. Ghansara Singh, and informed his erstwhile British political agent, Lt. Col. Roger Bacon, who was then at Peshawar, of the accession of Gilgit to Pakistan.

Deceit and connivance have resulted in the situation as we see it today and there is an urgent need for the ‘right’ and truthful narrative of these parts of the paradise on earth, called – Kashmir.

The writer is a Senior Reporter – India and South Asia with The Epoch Times. She is also researching the history, culture, and geopolitical significance of Jammu and Kashmir, her ancestral home. Email: [email protected]

Disclaimer: The views expressed are not necessarily those of The South Asian Times 

Images courtesy of (Image: Provided), (Image: Haidercoka/ Wikimedia Commons) and Povided

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