Pothi Jang Khan and Chahi: The Line of Raja Chhel Khan

Pothi Jang Khan (پوٹھی جنگ خاں) is a Chib Rajput village in Tehsil and District Bhimber, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, founded by Raja Jang Khan, a descendant of Raja Chhel Khan, brother of Baba Shadi Shaheed. With the related Chibs of Chahi in Tehsil Samahni, its family has produced village headmen, revenue officials and soldiers, and in October 1947 its Numbardar, Raja Datta Khan, led the people of Pothi and its fourteen hamlets to safety across the border, as the 1997 Chib history records (pp. 73–80).

Raja Chhel Khan and his two sons

Raja Chhel Khan, born Chhel Chand, was the third of the four sons of Raja Goja Chand of Bhimber and a younger brother of Raja Shadab Khan, revered as Baba Shadi Shaheed, the ancestor of the Chib Rajputs. When Shadab Khan shared out the state among his brothers, as their father had asked, Chhel Khan received Chahi, Pothi and other villages about fourteen miles north of Bhimber. Unlike his brothers Dal Khan and Dom Khan, who fought the raja, he stayed on good terms with him (p. 69).

Chhel Khan had two sons. The descendants of Ismail Khan, known as Samlu Khan, are the Chibs of Chahi in Tehsil Samahni; those of Pahlwan Khan settled at Pothi Jang Khan (p. 73). The family-tree chart at the end of the book places descendants of both brothers in both villages (p. 389).

Jang Khan, founder of Pothi Jang Khan

Pahlwan Khan’s son was Bahadur Khan, and Bahadur Khan’s son was Jang Khan, the founder of the village that bears his name and the forefather of its Chibs, who remember him as Baba-e-Pothi, the father of Pothi. His son Amir Ali Khan had two sons, Datta Khan and Pir Bakhsh, of whom Pir Bakhsh died without children (p. 73). The family tree below follows the book’s text and the genealogy compiled for it by Raja Bashir Ahmad Khan of Pothi Jang Khan (p. 427).

• Raja Chhel Khan — son of Raja Goja Chand
  • Ismail Khan (Samlu Khan) — the Chibs of Chahi
  • Pahlwan Khan
    • Bahadur Khan
      • Jang Khan — founder of Pothi Jang Khan
        • Amir Ali Khan
          • Raja Datta Khan — Numbardar of Pothi
            • Wilayat Khan, Girdawar — sons Khizar Hayat Khan, Zafar Iqbal
            • Shafa’at Khan — sons Muhammad Sharif Khan, Abdul Aziz Khan
            • Hakim Khan — sons Bashir Ahmad Khan, Nazir Ahmad Khan
            • Syed Muhammad Khan
            • Muhammad Zaman Khan — sons Fazal-ur-Rehman Khan, Gulzar Ahmad Khan, Pervez Khan
            • Diwan Ali Khan — no children
          • Pir Bakhsh — no children

Raja Datta Khan and October 1947

Raja Datta Khan was, in the book’s words, the true heir of his grandfather Jang Khan. Under Dogra rule he was the Numbardar, the village headman, of Pothi, a man of standing with the government and a well-known figure in Pothi and the villages around it, so much so that Pothi Jang Khan also came to be called Pothi Datta Khan. He made the service of the area’s Muslims his life’s work (p. 73).

His great test came in October 1947, when the partition of India brought war and terrible violence to the Jammu region, and people of every community lost homes and lives. That month, the book records, the tehsildar of Bhimber ordered the people of several villages near the town to leave their homes and take refuge in the northern hills (p. 45). Datta Khan judged that his people would be safer across the border and, although as Numbardar and a government functionary he was bound to obey the state’s orders, he led the Muslims of Pothi and of the fourteen hamlets (mohras) belonging to it into Pakistan. Their first halt was at Sokra and Char, two villages of Tehsil Kharian, District Gujrat, where the state’s border met Pakistan. After some days they moved on and settled at Balani and at Bisa, a village of Tehsil Kharian, where Datta Khan worked day and night to resettle them; the book says his self-sacrifice was long remembered by rich and poor alike (pp. 73–74). The wider story of those months is told in The Chib Rajputs in 1947.

Datta Khan’s six sons

Datta Khan had six sons, whose lives span the Dogra state, the Second World War, 1947 and the early decades of Azad Kashmir (pp. 74–77).

• Girdawar Raja Wilayat Khan, the eldest, joined the Revenue Department of the Jammu and Kashmir state as a patwari (village revenue accountant) and served until 1947. He then continued in the revenue service of the new Azad Kashmir government, rose to girdawar (field revenue inspector), retired around 1976 and died, probably, in 1984.
• Ghazi Raja Shafa’at Khan, the second, took part in the fighting of 1947. As a commander of camel transport he carried arms from the depot at Bhimber to Jandi Chontra, Sarai Saadabad and other points for the volunteers and the newly formed Azad Kashmir forces. More than once he came under air attack; on one run his camel, laden with arms, was killed by a bomb and he escaped by a hair’s breadth. The Government of Pakistan later paid compensation for the camel, and the book cites the records of Pakistan Army GHQ in Rawalpindi for his service.
• Raja Hakim Khan, the third, served in the state police under Dogra rule. In October 1947 he witnessed the killing of Sub-Inspector Raja Suhbat Ali Khan, remembered as the Martyr of Jammu, and escaped the same mob only with great difficulty, crossing the Tawi into Pakistan. He rejoined the police in Azad Kashmir, where he was known for his integrity, and died in 1997. Raja Suhbat Ali Khan’s story is told in Raja Suhbat Ali Khan Shaheed.
• Ghazi Raja Syed Muhammad Khan, the fourth, fought in 1947 shoulder to shoulder with his brother Shafa’at Khan.
• Raja Muhammad Zaman Khan, the fifth, joined the Supply Corps of the British Indian Army after passing the Middle examination. Captured by the Japanese early in the Second World War, he spent years as a prisoner of war, about five by the book’s reckoning, held with a hundred or two hundred others in rooms so small that they could neither sit nor sleep, until he was freed at the end of the war. He later served in the Azad Kashmir Forest Department, retiring as a Forester, and died about a decade before the book was written.
• Raja Diwan Ali Khan, the youngest, was Sarbarah (head) Numbardar of Pothi and a lifelong worker of the Muslim Conference, the right-hand man of Haji Chaudhry Muhammad Yousaf Khan, president of the party in Mirpur district and father of Chaudhry Tariq Farooq, member of the Legislative Assembly for constituency No. 7. In October 1947 he fought in the battle for Bhimber under Brigadier Raja Habib-ur-Rehman Khan of Panjeri, the “Conqueror of Bhimber”, described in Brigadier Raja Habib-ur-Rahman Khan.

The next generation

Datta Khan’s grandsons and great-grandsons served in Pakistan’s wars and in the public life of Bhimber (pp. 77–80).

Two of them have a special link with the shrine of their ancestor’s brother. On 20 March 1961, as a patwari of the Revenue Department, Raja Bashir Ahmad Khan became the first government official to take over the Darbar of Baba Shadi Shaheed on behalf of the Azad Kashmir Auqaf Department from the hereditary custodians (mujawirs) who had kept it for centuries; he ran it for a month before handing over to another patwari, Syed Sarwar Shah, on 22 April 1961 (pp. 77, 188–192). He also compiled family trees for the book (pp. 426–427). The handover is the subject of From Mujawirs to Auqaf.

Raja Fazal-ur-Rehman Khan, whose portrait appears in the book (p. 80), is described by the compiler as a truly working member of the shrine’s Advisory Committee, which has some twenty-five other members, pressing the Auqaf Department and the district administration for better facilities for pilgrims (p. 79); he is shown at the annual urs beside Chaudhry Tariq Farooq, MLA (p. 107). He should not be confused with Raja Fazal-ur-Rehman Khan of Bandala, another informant of the book (p. 94).

The Chibs of Chahi

The Chibs of Chahi, in Tehsil Samahni, descend from Chhel Khan’s elder son, Ismail Khan, known as Samlu Khan. Among them the book names Numbardar Raja Lal Khan; his son Raja Mir Akbar Khan, manager of the Muslim Commercial Bank at Bhimber; Major (retd) Raja Abdul Rashid Khan; and Raja Muhammad Tabarak, advocate, of Samahni (p. 80). Raja Lal Khan compiled his family’s tree for the book. It begins with Shah Muhammad Khan, whose son Fojdar Khan was the father of Raj Muhammad Khan, known as Raju Khan; one of Raju Khan’s seven sons, Amir Muhammad Khan, was the father of Lal Khan and of Inayatullah Khan and Faizullah Khan (p. 429).

The two village names also appear in the chronicle of Raja Sultan Khan, the last raja of Bhimber. It was at a “Mauza Chahi” that his Sikh-installed rival, Raja Ikhtiyar Khan, was captured (p. 130), and at a “Mauza Pothi” that Sultan Khan defeated a Sikh force, which then fell back to Chowki Bandi (pp. 41, 131). The book does not say whether these are the same Chahi and Pothi; those campaigns are told in Raja Sultan Khan and the Sikh Wars.

Timeline

• 1939–45 Raja Muhammad Zaman Khan serves in the British Indian Army and spends years as a prisoner of the Japanese.
• October 1947 Raja Datta Khan leads the Muslims of Pothi and its fourteen hamlets to Sokra and Char, then to Balani and Bisa; Shafa’at Khan runs arms by camel; Diwan Ali Khan fights at Bhimber; Hakim Khan escapes from Jammu.
• 20 March 1961 Raja Bashir Ahmad Khan takes charge of Baba Shadi Shaheed’s shrine for the Auqaf Department.
• 1965 Raja Abdul Aziz Khan fights on the Chhamb front; Raja Nazir Ahmad Khan serves with Risala No. 5.
• 1971 Abdul Aziz Khan, Nazir Ahmad Khan, Gulzar Ahmad Khan and Shabbir Ahmad Khan serve in the war.
• c. 1976 Girdawar Raja Wilayat Khan retires.
• 1996 Raja Bashir Ahmad Khan holds the post of Girdawar at the end of his service.
• 1997 Death of Raja Hakim Khan.

Frequently asked questions

Continue reading

• Raja Goja Chand and His Four SonsRoots of the Chib, Chahi and Domal lines
• The Chib Rajputs in 1947Battles, refugees and martyrs
• From Mujawirs to AuqafThe custodians of Baba Shadi Shaheed’s shrine
• Chib SoldiersFrom the British Indian Army to Pakistan’s generals
• Pothi and LehriTwo Chib jagirs, one ancestor
• Baba Shadi ShaheedRuler, healer and martyr