In the Samadhi of Maharajah Ranjit Singh next to the Lahore Fort are the ashes of the great Punjabi maharajah, his wives and maids who were burnt alive with him, as are also those of his sons and their wives and maids, all burnt alive with them.

All these ashes represent almost the entire ruling family of the Lahore Darbar. The last great Maharani was Jind Kaur, who died in Abingdon House, Kensington, in London, on the first of August, 1863. She was first buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London because in England cremation was banned. The British were scared of sending her body back to Lahore fearing an uprising. It took almost two years for her son to negotiate the setting up of a Samadhi in Bombay, now called Mumbai, with the undertaking that her ashes would not be moved to Lahore.

Ultimately it took Ranjit Singh’s granddaughter, Princess Bamba Duleep Singh, to get the colonial rulers to let the British secretly move her ashes to Lahore in 1924, which was exactly 63 years after her death. Initially, no plaque was allowed there, which the Pakistani government only recently allowed. Princess Bamba lived in Lahore’s Model Town ‘A’ Block and died in Lahore and was buried in the Jail Road Christian Graveyard.

So we have Jind Kaur, known better as Jindan, whose ashes reached the family Samadhi. But then there is one last Maharajah whose ashes remain to reach where he himself wished to be, next to those of his father. Hence this narration is the tale of the missing last Maharajah of the Lahore Darbar and the Khalsa Punjab, whose last wishes remain to be fulfilled.

So on to Maharajah Duleep Singh. Born to Maharajah Ranjit Singh and his wife Maharani Jind Kaur, on the 4thof September, 1838, in Lahore, this youngest child of Ranjit Singh represented the last living child of the ruling Sikh family. In 1839 Maharajah Ranjit Singh died, and was followed by strife and struggle. In the end power, purely by the right of accession, passed on to the five-year old Duleep Singh in September 1843. De-facto power was exercised by his mother and her advisers.

In March, 1849, the British East India Company took over the Punjab after the Second Anglo-Sikh War, who recognised the five-year old as the legally-accepted maharajah. By the time he was ten-years old he was deposed and moved to Fatehgarh under the care of Dr. John Login.

In 1853 the British forced Duleep Singh to convert to Christianity, a move that the Governor General Lord Dalhousie approved. The Sikhs of Lahore and Amritsar immediately refused to recognise this conversion, for their religious tenants did not recognise conversion before the age of 15 years of age. Maharajah Duleep Singh himself had his doubts and much later in life officially reconverted to Sikhism.

In 1854 the British shipped him to England for his presence was proving the rallying point for the Khalsa Sikhs. In England Queen Victoria took a liking for him and he acquired considerable influence in the British court. She in 1855 granted him an annual grant of UK£25,000 a year, which one calculation puts its current value to UK£2.5 million a year.

By 1861 Duleep Singh had managed to get his mother Maharani Jind Kaur to come to England and join him. In that year Duleep Singh purchased a 17,000-acre country estate at Elveden which is close to Thetford. The estate had a huge castle and Duleep Singh converted it into an oriental-style palace.

With time Maharajah Duleep Singh developed the urge to return and win back his kingdom. Naturally, he did not have the power to do so, and the ruling British stopped all attempts to let him reach the land and city of his birth. By this time he had become a strict practicing Sikh. With these thoughts he died in Paris in 1893 at the young age of 55 years.

His body was taken back to his palace in Elveden, and he was buried next to his wife Maharani Bamba in the Elveden Churchyard, and the India Office made sure that Christian rites were not only followed, but also widely publicised. But the Sikhs of Lahore and Amritsar, as also his daughters, declared that he was not a Christian, but a strict practicing Sikh. Now comes the real purpose of this piece.

Maharajah Duleep Singh died in 1893 in Paris, and his body was brought back to his home in Elveden and buried in the church graveyard. This means that he has been buried there for the last 130 years, which is about twice the time his mother’s body, and then ashes, remained away from his birthplace Lahore. Last week an Indian Sikh Member of the Rajya Sabha has demanded that the body of the maharajah be brought to India, cremated and the ashes appropriately placed in India, most probably he meant at the Golden Temple.

To my way of thinking, which remains strictly non-communal, the facts are that Duleep Singh was born in Lahore and his entire family have their ashes in the premises of the Samadhi of Ranjit Singh, including those of his mother Jind Kaur Aulakh. It took 63 years for the ashes of his mother to reach the Samadhi. We know that it was a dying wish of Maharajah Duleep Singh that his ashes be placed next his father’s in the Samadhi of Ranjit Singh.

The demand of the Indian parliamentarian, as much as one respects his religious sentiments, are completely misplaced. The ashes of the entire Ranjit Singh family are at one place in Lahore, and the wishes of the late maharajah not only need to be respected, but also that as the entire family are together in Lahore, it would be unfair to the last wishes of Maharajah Duleep Singh.

Just to be clear about Sikhism and the late last maharajah, we know that in 1886 three Sikhs came to England on the urging of the maharajah. These three were his cousin Sarda Thakar Singh Sandhawalia, and his two sons Narinder Singh andGurdit Singh. They brought along a fourth person, a Sikh ‘granthi’ named Partap Singh Giani. A proper reconversion to Sikhism ceremony was held and it was declared that as the age of Duleep Singh was less than 15 years when the conversion took place, it was invalid.

The question is who should initiate this request to the British Government to allow the remains of Lahore Darbar’s last maharajah to be shifted to Lahore? Just where should the cremation take place? Naturally at exactly where that of his father, Maharajah Ranjit Singh, took place, as well as those of his brothers. The ashes should then be placed in an appropriate place next to his father’s ashes. All this should be done for the sake of the man, his family, and for the city of his birth.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2023