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India: Raja Abhiraj Singh of Jaswan (Rajpura, Himachal Pradesh). Kangra, circa 1770

India: Raja Abhiraj Singh of Jaswan (Rajpura, Himachal Pradesh). Kangra, circa 1770

Jaswan was a precolonial Indian state centred at Rajpura, in modern-day Himachal Pradesh. It was founded in 1170 by Raja Purab Chand, a scion of the ancient royal family of Kangra.

In 1815, the Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singh ordered all his available forces to assemble at Sialkot. The raja of Jaswan, Ummed Singh (1800–1849), failed to obey the summons and was fined a sum beyond his means. The raja was forced to relinquish his state to the Sikh emperor, and accepted a jagir of 21 villages and 12,000 Rs per annum. In 1848, he joined the Sikh in an unsuccessful revolt against the British. His palaces were plundered and razed to the ground, and his territory annexed. He was stripped of his title and exiled to Almora, where he died a year later.

In 1877, the jagir in Jaswan, along with several other former properties in Rajpura and Amb, was restored to Ummed's grandson Ran Singh (b. 1833), who also later acquired the jagir of Ramkot in Jammu upon marriage to a granddaughter of Maharaja Gulab Singh.

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