ABSTRACT
The untimely death of the raja of Bilaspur in 1839 heralded an astounding bouleversement of West Himalayan politics that revived the pre-colonial practise of kingship and statecraft with a vengeance. Briefly alluded to in the introduction to this book, these upheavals culminated in a brilliant, if short-lived coup d’état under two of the late raja's freshly widowed wives with the tacit support of their brother, the raja of Sirmaur. Disproving the very foundations of the nascent re-conceptualization of Pahari Rajput sovereignty then advanced by EIC administrators and their allies, these events are parsimoniously acknowledged in modern historical narratives, whose focus remains firmly set on their male dynasts’ biographies. 1 However, the scale, intricacy, and tenacious hold of the ranis’ revolution on local memory indicate there is more to this episode than the brief allusions scattered in regional histories seem to suggest. As the archived correspondences surrounding the affair reveal, the ‘rebellion’ not only toppled the prejudices and misconceptions developed (and cherished) by EIC frontier officials over a quarter century of dominance over the hills, but also provided the framework through which the modern interpretation of ‘Rajput Tradition’ came to be defined.
