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history
Baghsar Fort could have been a tourist attraction if it was not positioned upon the Pakistan-India border By Salman Rashid Many years ago a friend
having recently retired from the army said we should go to Now, several years later, when I was ready to go, I was told of the roundabout procedures to be followed in order to be permitted in the restricted area. I called a friend in a high place and asked what I was required to do. "You want to go to Baghsar, so you just go!" said my friend. And so it was that I was put on a jeep in Jhelum with a talkative driver, a native of Kashmir, who spoke Chinese and was quite a man of the world. Down the Grand Trunk Road we went through Kharian in Punjab to Bhimber in Kashmir by a road I did not know existed. At one point I was assigned a 'Conducting Officer', a young lieutenant from Lahore whose unit was deployed around Baghsar. As we drove up the hills, the lieutenant mentioned a caravanserai he had visited not far from Baghsar. Caravanserais mean old routes and this road that now ended at the Pakistan-India border would once have carried right on. I knew if this were the past and another country, we could have gone on and fetched up at Srinagar eventually. Of the several routes leading up into Kashmir from the Punjab plains, this was the Bhimber route. It had been in use for hundreds of years when the Mughals began going by it to Kashmir. So did uncounted trading caravans as well, until partition put an end to it: from being a way-station in the heart of a country, the Saeedabad caravanserai suddenly became an outpost at the edge of our part of Kashmir on the border with an 'enemy' country. And so, as we came to a
fork in the road we took the road going left. The village of My guide in this area was William Finch, an English merchant who travelled up and down the Grand Trunk road in the first two decades of the 17th century. His account is part of a book titled Early Travels in India and despite being utterly confusing at times, makes for good reading. Finch did not take this road to Kashmir himself but wrote of it from hearsay. Not surprising then that he has some odd place names. He says the stage after Bimber (sic) is 'Joagek Hately' followed by 'Chingesque Hately'. Now, we know that Finch's Hately is actually the Punjabi haithli or lower. And we also know that Chingas Hatli was an important staging post on this route to Rajaori via Islamabad. But other than those early Europeans maps which based their information on Finch and marked Joagek Hatli, we do not hear of this place. Finch places this mysterious place at fourteen kos from Bhimber which may well be a slight miscalculation for the distance to Saeedabad. This is understandable for Finch was writing from hearsay. In any case, fourteen kos or some thirty-five miles is a bit of a punishing stage, especially on a winding hill road. Frederic Drew, a geologist who worked for the Maharaja of Kashmir about the middle of the 19th century wrote (The Jummoo and Kashmir Territories) that the stage after Bhimber was Saeedabad. It may therefore be that Finch got Saeedabad terribly mixed up. Strangely enough, neither Finch nor Drew says a word about Baghsar which stood only five kilometres to the east of the caravan stop and was obviously meant to guard the route. We drove back to the fork
in the road and took the other one leading on to Baghsar. The We drove around the hill and right up to the southwest side of the fort. Here, outside the battlements, is a small structure: a low wall (about half a metre high) enclosing an area about two metres by three metres. The north wall has a short minaret on each corner and a slightly taller one in the centre. The minarets all have niches for lamps. In a prayer mat the minarets would have been on the west wall, but since they were on the north side, it could only mark a burial. There was, however, no tumulus within the bounds of the four walls. This, the lieutenant had told me, was where they buried the entrails of emperor Jehangir. Now, from history we know that the king died at the halting place of Chingas Hatli on his way back from kashmir in November 1627. Lahore, where they were taking his corpse, was still a long way off and even in the cool of early November they may well have had to eviscerate the man. But so far as I know, his innards were buried at Gujrat. There they are worshipped to this day as a great saint called Shah Jehangir. Intestine worship became fashionable after independence. We have one great example of this peculiar form of devotion at village Dhamiak where the entrails of Shahab ud Din Ghori were buried. He was killed there by the Khokhar Rajputs and since it was high summer they might have emptied him right there, burying the rubbish where he died. Though history very clearly tells us of his body being taken to Ghazni for burial, we have raised a grandiose tomb over the intestines. Another example could possibly be Khwaspur, a few kilometres north of Lala Musa, where the innards of Sher Shah Suri's trusted and loyal general Khwas Khan may rest. Both Dhamiak and Khwaspur are visited by people praying for all sorts of prizes, mostly sons. Coming back to Jehangir: they worship the royal intestines at Gujrat. Now evisceration of the corpse is that smelly kind of historical detail that never finds its way into official histories. Consequently we do not know where this saint-making event took place. If it had happened at Baghsar, the great shrine to the filth-choked intestines would have been here. That it is at Gujrat is proof enough for me that Gujrat was the favoured place for the viscera. In any case, the emperor would not have stopped at Baghsar. His halting place would be the serai of Saeedabad. And so, if they did open him up there, the royal crap-filled entrails should be looked for at the serai. We entered the fort via a low doorway that was perhaps meant for the servants. A whole chunk of the battlement on this side has disappeared: bombed by the Indians in a past engagement. Past this ruined section we went around to the north side to inspect the main entrance. Inside the gateway was a lavish foyer with a raised platform on the north and east side. If the exterior of the fort had seemed to be 17th century, the multi-cusped arches above the platform were clearly much later. In fact, it was now clear that the entire fort had been renovated and upgraded a number of times. The dominance of Vedic elements of architecture and ornamentation indicate the fort's association with the Dogra rulers of Kashmir. In the absence of maintenance, the ground outside and below the gateway had completely eroded away. But even when it was in top fettle, no charging horseman could have entered the fort at speed. Firstly because of the steep incline and then for the dogleg created by placing the exit into the fort at an angle of ninety degrees to the entrance. And even when entry was forced, the attackers would only have attained the narrow corridor between the outer and inner bastions. Here any attacking force would have been wiped out by the cross-fire of defenders on the inner and outer bastions. We retraced our steps to the gate leading into the enceinte. In its time Baghsar was prepared against assault by war elephants: the timber doors were reinforced with iron braces that had sharp spikes sticking out of them. A battering elephant would have been sorely handicapped against this entrance. But even before the mahouts directed the elephants against the spiked gateway, they would have been watching out for the machicolations with rounded, cupola-shaped hoods among the crenels of the turrets whence boiling water or oil would have been poured down on attackers below. Inside the compound a stepped well, over-filled by recent rains, once provided water to the garrison. All around the ramparts were rooms for the soldiery and in the centre a large mound of limestone blocks. The lieutenant did not know what the jumble of stones was and we concluded this could have been the residence of the Keeper of the Fort, the darogha. When and how it became a heap may have been forgotten long ago. I was led into a large hall under the south wall. Accessible by a narrow staircase it was typical of audience halls built during the Sikh and Dogra rule that I have seen in havelis as far away as Gujranwala and Lahore. Like those in Punjab this one too had jharokas at the upper level. But while the jharokas seen in Punjab were accessible, these had no way of being reached except by ladder from the hall itself. This was most peculiar and I concluded that the jharokas were mere ornaments. We climbed up the rampart to grand vistas all around. The pine trees descended to the valley floor thinly sprinkled with houses and the ridge barely a few hundred metres away to the north was India. Behind us, to the south, was fold after fold of hills with villages nestling between them. The lieutenant said Baghsar was so much of a tourist spot that it should be swamped by visitors. But we know that for many years it may not for it sits smack on the border where ordinary non-local mortals are not permitted. Baghsar could have been a tourist attraction had it not been consigned to the very edge of Pakistan. It may yet turn into one when peace is finally cemented and the bunkers on the hills around dismantled. But that is a distant dream. Until then, only the few who have friends in high places will be permitted within eyeshot of it. Postscript. Though the emperors Akbar and Jehangir both passed this way en route to Kashmir, neither deemed it fit to comment on Baghsar. In fact, it features in no major historical work. Dr Saifur Rahman Dar, the well-known archaeologist, points out that it does find its way into a couple of local histories. This means that Baghsar situated so picturesquely upon its tree-covered knoll in this western extension of the Siwalik Hills was by-passed by history. It was built to be dumped into oblivion.
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Bhimber where his course-mate was the brigade commander. The inducement was a
visit to the fort of Baghsar that stands smack upon the Pakistan-India
border. But we never did. There was always one thing or the other; time went
by and eventually the brigadier friend was posted out.
Saeedabad now grows part inside and part out of the walls of the serai. The
serai itself is no ordinary one, for the massive walls and turrets leave you
in no doubt about this being the royal halting place. A high, imposing gate
leads into a large courtyard where they would have corralled the elephants
and horses. Today it was an enclosed cornfield. But the residential part of
the serai (entered via another grand gateway) has been heavily encroached
upon by the ever-increasing population. One can now hardly explore the old
serai without entering people's homes and not wishing to raise hackles
unnecessarily, I opted against intruding.
road winds through thick groves of pines on the far side of which Baghsar
rears majestically on a hill: double defensive walls and octagonal turrets.
The latter strongly recall the forts of Muzafarabad in Kashmir and Ramkot
which now falls inside Mangla reservoir.