ਹਰੀ ਸਿੰਘ ਨਲਵਾਹਰੀ ਸਿੰਘ ਨਲਵਾ

Hari Singh Nalwa (1791 to 1837) was a Sikh general from Gujranwala who served as commander in chief along the Afghan frontier of Maharaja Ranjit Singh's Sikh Empire. He helped conquer Kashmir, Multan and Peshawar, governed Kashmir, Hazara and Peshawar, built forts and towns, and died defending Jamrud in 1837.

Early life in Gujranwala

Hari Singh Nalwa was born on 29 April 1791 in Gujranwala, in the Majha region of Punjab, in what is now Pakistan. His parents were Gurdial Singh and Dharam Kaur, of the Uppal Khatri community. His family had served the Sukerchakia Misl, the Sikh grouping from which Maharaja Ranjit Singh also came, and his grandfather Hardas Singh is reported to have been killed fighting Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1762.

His father died in 1798, when Hari Singh was a young boy, and his mother raised him. Accounts of his childhood say that at the age of ten he took Amrit Sanchar and was initiated as a Khalsa, and that by twelve he was managing his father's estate and learning to ride. In 1804 his mother sent him to Ranjit Singh's court at Lahore to settle a property dispute. The Maharaja decided in his favour, was impressed by his background and by his skill as a horseman and musketeer, and took him on as a personal attendant.

Rise in Ranjit Singh's army and the name Nalwa

Tradition gives a striking story for his name. During a hunt in 1804, a tiger is said to have attacked him and killed his horse, and Hari Singh, refusing help from fellow hunters, is said to have killed the tiger himself. From that story he is reported to have gained the name Baghmar, meaning tiger killer, and Nalwa, understood as one with tiger like claws. The details vary between historical texts, so the episode is best read as a reported tradition rather than a settled record, but the name Nalwa stayed with him for life.

His rise after 1804 was fast. He was commissioned as a sardar commanding 800 horse and foot, and at sixteen he took part in the capture of Kasur in 1807, where his bravery earned him a jagir, a grant of land revenue. He then led the force that took Sialkot, his first independent command, and helped take Jammu in 1808. Service in campaign after campaign made him one of the Maharaja's most trusted commanders on the difficult north western frontier.

Conquests at Attock, Multan and Kashmir

In 1813 Hari Singh fought at Attock, on the banks of the Indus, where Sikh forces under Diwan Mohkam Chand defeated Wazir Fateh Khan and Dost Mohammad Khan of Kabul. It was an important early Sikh victory over Afghan forces, and after it the nearby Hazara and Gandhgarh country became tributary to Lahore. He fought in repeated expeditions against Multan, and in the final conquest of Multan in 1818 he was described as chiefly instrumental in the capture of the citadel.

Kashmir followed. Sikh forces entered Srinagar in July 1819 after defeating Durrani forces at Shopian, and Hari Singh played a leading part on the march, routing the force of Raja Agarullah Khan at Rajouri on the way. Peshawar, the summer capital of the Kabul kingdom, had first been entered by Sikh forces in 1818, and Hari Singh was sent there to keep up Sikh pressure. Over the next two decades he either commanded or took part in about twenty major battles and campaigns, including Mangal in 1821, Mankera in 1821, Nowshera in 1823 and Sirikot in 1824.

Governor of Kashmir, Hazara and Peshawar

Nalwa was as much an administrator as a soldier. He served as governor of Kashmir in 1820 to 1821, of greater Hazara from 1822 to 1837, and of Peshawar in 1834 to 1835 and again in 1836 to 1837, and he held command along the Afghan frontier from 1825. In Kashmir, accounts credit him with dividing the territory into parganahs under collectors, restoring order and starting work on forts and gardens. He established a mint for the Sikh Empire in Kashmir and Peshawar to help revenue collection, and coins struck in Kashmir under the Sikhs were long known as Hari Singhee rupees.

He was also a builder on a large scale. More than fifty five buildings are attributed to him in one scholarly account, including forts, ramparts, towers, gurdwaras, tanks, temples, mosques, towns, havelis, sarais and gardens. In Hazara he built the fort of Harkishengarh and founded the town of Haripur in 1822, described as the first planned town in the region. He built or strengthened frontier forts including Jehangira, Nowshera, Sumergarh at Peshawar and Fatehgarh at Jamrud, and he is also credited with building Gurdwara Panja Sahib at Hassan Abdal. In 1831 he led a diplomatic mission to the Governor General of British India, work that led to the meeting between Ranjit Singh and Lord William Bentinck at Ropar.

How did Hari Singh Nalwa die at Jamrud?

Hari Singh Nalwa died on 30 April 1837 at Jamrud, at the mouth of the Khyber Pass, fighting Afghan forces in the Battle of Jamrud. He had built the fort at Jamrud in 1836 to hold the pass. When Afghan forces under Akbar Khan, son of Dost Mohammad Khan, attacked in 1837, Nalwa, who was at Peshawar and reported to have been unwell, rushed to relieve the fort's small garrison. In the fighting outside the fort he was badly wounded.

Accounts of the battle agree on his last order: that news of his death should not be made public until reinforcements from Lahore arrived, so that his troops would not lose heart. He was taken into the fort and died there the same evening, and he was cremated inside Jamrud Fort. The Sikhs held Jamrud, and at his death Jamrud was the western boundary of the Sikh Empire, beyond the Indus at the entrance to the Khyber Pass.

Legacy and remembrance

Nalwa's legacy rests on the frontier he held. For centuries armies had entered the Punjab plains through the Khyber Pass, and under Nalwa the Sikh Empire's border stood at the pass itself. Later writers called him the Champion of the Khalsaji, and stories of his reputation lived on in the region: Afghan mothers were long said to quieten children with words to the effect that Hari Singh was coming, a saying recorded by later travellers and writers. No further Sikh conquest was made on the north west frontier after his death.

He is remembered in the places he built, above all Haripur, which still carries the Hari of his name, and in memorials at Jamrud Fort, where his samadh stands inside the fort he built. The Government of India issued a postage stamp in his honour in 2013. For readers in Punjab, on both sides of the present border, he remains the best known general of Ranjit Singh's empire after the Maharaja himself: a Gujranwala born commander whose career joined conquest, government and building in one short life of forty six years.