An historical sketch of the native states of India/Dholpur
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By Col. G. B. Malleson, Publisher: Longmans, Green & Co. London (1875)
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Area: 1,626 sq. miles. Pppulation: 500,000. Revenue:6,00,000 rupees.
Dholpur is a small principality bounded on the north and north-east by the district of Agra ; on the south-east by the river Chambal separating it from Gwalior ; and on the west by Karauli. Although it has only existed as a separate principality for about seventy years, the family
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which rules it figured prominently in the history of India for the preceding eighty years. It will be necessary, then, to go back to the beginning of that period.
The ancestors of the present Rana of Dholpur were, about a hundred and fifty years ago, zamindars or land-holders of Gohad, then a small village, twenty-eight miles north-east of the fortress of Gwalior. They belonged to the Jat caste, 1 were industrious, and of a very warlike disposition .
By the exercise of these qualities, the family brought themselves between the years 1725 and 1740 to the prominent notice of the Peshwa, Baji Bao, and amid the lawlessness and disruptions of the times, managed to assume a quasi-independence as lords of Gohad under suzerainty of the Marhatas. The chief (Bhim Singh Rana) who accomplished this feat died about the middle of the eighteenth century, and was succeeded by his nephew. He (Chhatra Singh Rana), being likewise a clear-headed man, contrived to enlarge his borders. With a wise prescience he held aloof from the great struggle for empire between the Marhatas and the warriors from the north, and when the fatal day of Panipat (1761) had completely overwhelmed the former, he showed his sense of the importance of the defeat by proclaiming himself Rana of Gohad, and seizing the fortress of Gwalior. That independence remained unquestioned for six years. But, in 1767, the Marhata power, carefully nursed in the interval, was beginning to feel all the symptoms of revival, and its general, Ragonath Rao, afterwards Peshwa, being then in Hindostan, thought that the opportunity should not be lost of teaching the Rana of Gohad a lesson which he would not forget. Accordingly he marched with his army to attack the town of Gohad. But the Rana had in the meanwhile strengthened its defences ; he had drilled his troops ; and being a hardy, daring man himself, with an especial
- 1 According to Colonel Tod, no mean authority, the Jats are a mixture of the Rajput and Jit or Gete race.
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dislike to be ridden over roughshod, he gave the assailants some very hard and unpleasant work. He defended himself, in fact, so valiantly, that Ragonath Rao proposed at last to treat. An accommodation was agreed upon, by which, for a consideration of three lakhs of rupees, the Marhatas agreed to retire, and to recognise the independence, under their suzerainty, of the Rana, Lakindar Singh.
I have been unable to trace the exact date when the Rana of Gohad lost Gwalior, but it was probably about this period. It fell into the hands of Madhaji Sindhia.
It was in his possession when, in 1779, the British Government entered into an alliance with that ‘turbulent tributary' 1 of the Marhatas, the Rana of Gohad. By this treaty the Government agreed to furnish the Rana with a force for the defence of his dominions or for their enlargement from the Marhatas, to share with him their joint conquests, except the territories constituting his jaghir and then in possession of the Marhatas, and to embrace the Rana in any treaty concluded with the Marhatas.
In pursuance of the terms of this treaty, a British force of 2,400 men, under the command of Captain William Popham, was sent into the Gohad country to expel thence the Marhata marauders, and to concert measures with the Rana (February 1780). Popham drove out the Marhatas, carried the fort of Lahar by storm, and on August 4 surprised and carried the fortress of Gwalior, till then reputed impregnable. The fortress was transferred to the Rana of Gohad. By the treaty made by the British with Madhaji Sindhia, dated October 13, 1781, Gwalior and his other territories were guaranteed to the Rana, ' so long as he observes his treaty with the English.' But the Rana did not observe his treaty with the English. On the contrary, several acts showing that he was quite prepared to aid in the confederacy forming
:1. Grant Duff.
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against them in 1781-2 were brought home to him, and as a consequence the treaty of mutual assistance was regarded as abrogated. Consequently, when Madhaji Sindhia, left free by the treaty of Salbye, attacked Gwalior and Gohad, the English left the Rana to his fate. It was too strong for him, for Gwalior had to surrender after a protracted siege, Gohad was taken, and the Rana was forced to constitute himself a prisoner.
But there was to be a turn again in the wheel. In 1802 the British declared war against the successor of Madhaji, Daolat Rao. Ambaji Inglia, his governor of the province of Gohad, seeing the rapid progress of the British arms, revolted, or pretended to revolt, against his master, and joined the British. With these he made a treaty by which he agreed to surrender to them the fortress of Gwalior and certain districts which they intended to transfer to the Rana of Gohad, on being himself guaranteed the remainder of the territory free of tribute. The ceded districts were made over to Rana Kirat Singh, son and successor of Lakindar Singh, by a treaty dated January 17, 1804, with the exception of the fortress and city of Gwalior, which the British retained.
Subsequently, in consequence of a dispute with Sindhia as to the meaning of the clause in the treaty of Surji Anjengaom, by which he had agreed to renounce all claims on his feudatories with whom the British Government had made treaties, 'provided that none of the territories belonging to the Maharaja situated to the south- ward of those of the Rajas of Jaipur and Jodhpur, and the Rana of Gohad, of which the revenues have been collected by him and his Amildars, or have been applicable as Serinjami (materials) to the payment of the troops, are granted away by such treaties' Sindhia contending that the Rana of Gohad could not be included, inasmuch as the pretensions of that family had been extinct, and their territories in Sindhia's possession for thirty years the British Government determined to abandon Gwalior and Gohad
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to Sindhia. But to compensate the Rana, and in consideration of the fact that the failure in the stipulations of the former treaty had arisen from no fault of the Rana, they agreed to grant him the pergunnahs of Dholpur, Barah, and Rajkerah. Thus it was that the ci-devant Rana of Gohad became Rana of Dholpur.
Rana Kirat Singh accepted the exchange, although, naturally perhaps, he would have preferred that the previous arrangement should remain unaltered. But he never forgave the Sindhia. When, in 1831, the Baiza Bai and her brother were ejected from Gwalior, he showed his dislike to the government of Gwalior by giving them a splendid reception. He died in 1836 at a good old age.
His son, Rana Bhagwant Singh, succeeded him, and in 1837 was invested with a robe of honour by the British Government. In 1841 he showed in an unworthy manner that the hatred of Sindhia was in his blood. He desecrated a Jain temple, by dethroning the god Parasnath and substituting Mahadeo, the god of his own partisans, simply because the Jain votaries were connected with Gwalior. Sindhia took up the matter as a personal affront, and appealed to the British Government. But it was explained to him that, however blameworthy the action might have been, it was not one that warranted the interposition of the paramount power.
In 1857, Rana Bhagwant Singh did good service by rendering assistance to the British fugitives from Gwalior. His minister, Deo Hans, however, incurred the displeasure of Government by plundering villages in the Agra district, and, in 1862, in consequence of the intrigues of that individual, and his endeavours to supplant his prince, it became necessary to remove him to Banaras, and place him under surveillance.
Rana Bhagwant Singh has received the right of adoption, and is entitled to a salute of fifteen guns.
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