Alwar: Steeped in history
Heritage

Alwar, being near Delhi, always remained embroiled in central politics. Particularly during the staunch reign of Feroze Shah Tughlaq, the Mev tribals and the other Hindu Kshatriyas were converted into Muslims and later became renowned as Khanzadas, writes Arun Gaur

AT the Siddhartha, I fork the double omelette sandwich. It is a cosy little coffee house. Light is dim and the background music lilting. Fluffy is the double sandwiched omelette and it disappears quickly, pincered beyond hope, as every good thing at Alwar, it seems, must go. This is what has been happening these eight years. The few wonderful stone figures of the ancient goolar tree over the Bhartrihari’s samadhi, as well as many portions of the grievously injured Aravalli are gone too.

But one good addition to the Alwar town in the recent times is the newly-metalled road that leads to the Bala Qila. Now it is an easy drive of 10 minutes to the top. A veritable much needed short cut to the past! Five years back, I had forced my car over a thousand stones, loose or jutting out of the kutcha path, right up to the main portal of the fort at the top and had thought it to be a marvellous feat. This 10-minute steady ascent has now made me realise how disproportionately I look at my achievements! How puny they are in fact! Perhaps, I will never have the sense of proportion. Or perhaps the time is a reducing factor. But who knows? Well, I don’t know!

Passing for a moment at the Jaipol, looking downward and then upward may take one’s breath away — if the season is right. The fort-wall slips down and after bridging the narrow ravine shoots up to the top, high up; a flight of steps continuously accompanying it on one side. Very steeply it climbs on the sheer rock, reflecting reddish hues in the late afternoon sun. The shades of the wall stones and the rocks match. The bushes are crisp brown — their blades a sea of slender rapiers, and every rock is bare. At Gwalior, the fort sandstone was creamish; at Orchha the stone pieces studded in the walls, particularly near the Betwa had irregular geometry; at Kalinjar, it was grainy and grey (there the man wielding the axe — my trusted guide through the jungle even told me that gur had been mixed in that. Here the wall is made of rectangular slabs, coloured, not strong but in delicate hues.

The flowers from the trees growing along it, crimson and pink, dangle languorously and limpidly over the edges. The rugged and delicate are the hues of bushes, the wall, the rock, the flowers and they match — intertwined as if they were a part of a premeditated design. But then the month is the key! After the season of rains the romance of the rock ends, everything covered with dense green foliage — the walls, the rocks, the trees. A new romance begins. O this endless, this aching cycle of leaves and rocks!

The fort is the key to the past. In itself it might be more than 1000 years old. At what time exactly it was built, we cannot specify. The long history of Alwar includes the Matsya Kingdom, Prithviraj Chauhan, the Nikumbha Rajputs, the Khanzadas, Rana Sanga, the Mughals, the Jats, and the Britishers.

One of the earliest authentic builders of the fort were probably the Nikumbha Rajputs who came into conflict with Prithviraj Chauhan and later with the Khanzadas and were finally displaced by Alawalkhan Khanzada. Later it was altered, and reinforced. The Nikumbhas, it is said, practised human sacrifice. One day when the turn of the son of a domini — a professional female singer on auspicious occasions — came for sacrifice, the mother made a sign by throwing dust through a tower crevice for Alawal Khan, who promptly captured the fort.

Alwar, being near to Delhi, always remained embroiled in central politics. Particularly during the staunch reign of Feroze Shah Tughlaq, the Mev tribals and the other Hindu Kshatriyas were converted into Muslims and later became renowned as Khanzadas. Hasankhan Mewati was the son of Alawal Khan and like his father, in spite of the temptations of Babur, and against the forbiddings of his own guru, fought against the Mughals on the side of Rana Sanga. This fact underlines the complexity of the relationship that existed among the Muslims, the converts and the Hindus and the oddities of the power-politics they were involved in. Both the father and the son laid down their lives along with Rana Sanga. We are told that despite the suggestion of Alawal Khan that Babur, once defeated, should be chased tooth and nail, Rana with his army chose to celebrate his momentary triumph. That was strategically a grim error. Within three weeks Babur sprang back. Hasan Khan died and was buried within Alwar, and Rana Sanga, fatally wounded, being brought from Khanwa, died at Baswa before reaching the town.

Some historians ask whether there could have been any Mughal rule in India had Rana Sanga followed the advice of the Khanzadas of Alwar. A similar question had echoed in me at Kalinjar. Had Shershah Suri not died in the siege of Kalinjar, when a canon shot from his own almost vertically-trained gun at the fort exploded over him, would the Mughals be there? Well, I don’t know!

Then Babur came to Alwar, stayed in the fort for a night, and handed it over to his son Hindal. Later Humayun married a Khanzada princess — the grand-daughter of Hasan Khan in relation. Hasan Khan and Ibrahim Lodhi were cousins. If it is true, then it is another piece of an odd mix-up. The Mughals, thus, through the matrimonial alliance with the conquered Khanzadas came indirectly also into a relation with the Lodhis, whom they had already crushed at the battle of Panipat.

During the weakening rule of the later Mughals, the Jats of Bharatpur grabbed the fort and while the war raged between Bharatpur and Jaipur, Pratap Singh, the founder of modern Alwar in the 18th century, found it a good opportunity to carve out an independent kingdom. In the first decade of the nineteenth century at the battle of Laswari, the king helped the Britishers in the rout of the Marathas. But was it a nationalist move?

From the fort when we come down to the plain of the town, we find that we have come down to the modern age. All the palaces and other related buildings are primarily the nineteenth century structures. Various departments of the government are now occupying many of the rooms. The shabby sign boards glued onto the fine lattice work in red stone, the cowdung in the dim sloping galleries, courts, the make-shift canopies, wooden seats, clerks and lawyers and harsh keystrokes of typewriters — the usual paraphernalia and much din and noise. This is another layer of Alwar, one of the many — ancient, colonial and the modern and everything seems to be melting down in a big crucible.

With the passage of years — the Sagar — the tank before the chhatri of Moosi Maharani, who performed sati on the pyre of Bhaktawar Singh, is becoming increasingly choked with weeds and dirt. Above the perfect symmetry of kiosks, there is a perfect formation of a rugged segment of Aravalli, making the landscape exceedingly picturesque.

Over-looking the Sagar, there is the palace-museum. With the weakening of the Mughals, the artists came to Alwar. Viney Singh patronised them. As his art treasure grew, his masses became poorer. In the museum one comes to see once again the complexity of relation that existed between the Muslims and the Hindus. Not only are there the mixture of themes from both the religions in paintings, calligraphic works, the illustrated myths and romances, but often the artists from both the sides have worked in unison to bring out a masterpiece like the Gulistan, which was illustrated with the paintings by Baldev and Gulam Ali.

At the entrance of the painting section, the cunning grey English eyes of Mr Kedal — the British agent at Alwar, loom large. The company’s watch-dog is still on duty!

Beneath a dark tree Majnu sits, in the Laila Majnu of the Mughal school, having his abnormally long legs folded and tucked under his chin, held together by his threadbare arms. He is pale and fleshless — almost a skeleton surrounded with river water. The melancholia of this forlorn human figure is shared by the sorrowing animal world. On the bank of the river Laila has just come down from her seat on the camel. The procession of the beloved and her friends is being led by an elderly saintly figure with a white beard. His gently lifted hand points out to Laila the drooping figure of Majnu. With a handkerchief, she seems to be wiping her eyes or perhaps merely blowing her nose.

Another masterpiece depicts the besieging of the fort of Daultabad. The shades are dark, solemn and black. In the background is the fort with the grey billowing clouds. Near its wall, there are numerous canons tilted upwards belching smoke and fire and the hundreds of armoured horse-riders. At a safe distance from all this cannonade, in the foreground in a carriage lifted by eight carriers in orange gowns sits Aurangzeb dressed in immaculately white apparel, with his crowning black plume, his arched back and stooped shoulders, scribbling something on a piece of paper. What a contrast — greys, orange, white; the tumult and the subdued posture of the world conqueror. Almost tragic!

To the left of the Siddhartha is the Mani ka bar. The banyan tree said to have been planted by the woman called Mani has since long fallen down. On the right, across the road, is a dome-shaped wiry green house in a deep depression at the centre of the Company Bagh.

This was a device, christened Shimla, to keep the British cool during the scorching heat of the summer. Eight years back thick green climbers had covered the dome from all sides. Inside, the myriad kinds of plants flourished, fountains played from all sides and from various points of elevation, coloured fish glided in the ponds and fine stone images stood amid the little pools. A lady carried a water vessel and a fairy child seated on a swan blew out the water shower out of a knotted horn — rare colonial pieces, the only of their kind in Alwar. Two months back robbers came and merrily packed away the lady and the horn.

We take another beautiful drive. The passage skirts round the hill on which the fort stands.

It passes by the ancient village of Ravandevra and then moves along the blue water of the lake where white flocks of the migratory birds are gathering in the transparent December light. We pass many lasses with their heads over-laden with the broad green leaves of dhak, sometimes beaming a smile at us. The road goes towards the locked Vijay Mandir Palace where a tipsy watchman is waiting to scare us out of our wits.