Chib Soldiers: From the British Indian Army to Pakistan’s Generals

Chib Rajput soldiers (چب راجپوت; the name is also written Chibh or Chhib) appear on almost every page of Raja Muhammad Iftikhar Ali Khan’s 1997 history of the Chibs: risaldars of Punjab cavalry who served in 1857 and Abyssinia, officers of the Jammu and Kashmir State Forces, an Indian National Army brigadier who took Bhimber in 1947, and a lieutenant general who became Deputy Chief of Staff of the Pakistan Army. Their villages, from Panjeri and Kalri near Bhimber to Pothi, Bisa and the Ghanial settlements of Kharian, sent sons to almost every war fought in the region between 1849 and 1971.

A tradition of Chib Rajput soldiers

Soldiering runs through the Chib story long before the British. The book credits the last raja of Bhimber, Raja Sultan Khan, with twice defeating Sikh armies before Chibhal fell (see Raja Sultan Khan and the Sikh wars). In 1926 the first Chib historian, Thakur Major Singh, wrote of Panjeri that “the Rajputs here have made good progress in military service”, and printed a list of seventeen “military commissioned officers of the Chib qaum”, from subedars and risaldars of the Indian Army and the Kashmir Army to a captain. The 1997 book names well over a hundred soldiers; this overview follows them through five eras and links to the family articles where the full rolls appear.

Risaldars and recruiters: the British Indian Army

The first Chib names in British service belong to the former ruling houses. After the loss of Bhimber, Raja Faiz Talab Khan’s son Tikka Raja Fazl Dad Khan became a Risaldar-Major on the Frontier, and another son, Ghulam Qadir Khan, began in 1849 as peshkar (clerk) to Herbert Edwardes at Multan and rose to Risaldar in the 4th Bengal Cavalry. In the Gujrat hills, Khan Bahadur Raja Sultan Khan of Pothi supplied the British with 60 sepoys and 25 horsemen in 1849 and 1857 and fought the mutinous 14th Native Infantry at Jhelum (see The Chibs in The Chiefs of the Punjab). No family had a longer cavalry record than the Chibs of Bisa near Kharian:

Near Bhimber, Sardar Rahim Dad Khan of Panjeri (d. 1921) is remembered as one of the builders of the No. 12 Risala, in which he rose to Risaldar, in the book’s words the highest rank then open to an Indian; his grandson was Brigadier Habib-ur-Rahman Khan, and Panjeri’s army roll in the book runs to more than fifty names (see Panjeri). In the First World War the Punjab chiefs were recruiters as much as soldiers: Raja Sultan Lal Hussain Khan of Pothi was an Honorary Assistant Recruiting Officer, and Raja Muhammad Akbar Khan of Jhelum, head of the Bhimber royal family, was made Khan Bahadur for war services; his son Major Raja Muhammad Afzal Khan was commissioned into the British Indian Army and his grandson Raja Muhammad Salim Khan became a brigadier. The Ghanial villages of Tehsil Kharian filled the ranks of subedars, among them Subedar Raja Shahsawar Khan of Sari’ah, Raja Mehtab Ali Khan of Mithana Chak, holder of the Order of British India, and Honorary Captain Raja Sardar Khan of Jaipur, of the Rajputana Rifles (see The Ghanial Chibs of Kharian).

In the Maharaja’s service: the State Forces

Inside the princely state, Chibs served the Dogra Maharajas whose forebears had displaced their own. The most senior was Sardar Bahadur Major General Raja Farman Ali Khan, CIE, of Kasgumah, who died in 1923. Raja Abdul Rahman Khan of Panjeri (1900–1959) began as a captain in the State Army, became a major general in the army of Alwar State and after 1947 served as Pakistan’s Deputy High Commissioner in India. Khan Inayatullah Khan of Khui Ratta rose from jemadar to subedar under Maharaja Partab Singh and served in the First World War; the Maharaja, the book says, meant to make him a colonel after a posting at Gilgit, but he retired to save his family’s jagir. Major Raja Muzaffar Khan of Kotera Khanka was a captain and ADC to Maharaja Hari Singh, so formidable at polo, hockey and football that rival princely teams at a tournament in Alwar protested his selection until the Maharaja threatened a boycott. Kasgumah and Da’ora supplied further ADCs to the Maharajas of Jammu and Kashmir and of Patiala, and a risaldar of Maharaja Partab Singh’s bodyguard.

The world wars and the Indian National Army

The Second World War produced the most dramatic careers. Raja Muhammad Zaman Khan of Pothi Jang Khan, of the Supply Corps, was taken prisoner by the Japanese and held, the book says, for about five years, released only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Raja Habib-ur-Rahman Khan of Panjeri, the first Muslim of Jammu and Kashmir, the book says, to win a place through the all-India military examination, received the King’s Commission in 1936 and was in Malaya when it fell to Japan in February 1942. That September he joined the Indian National Army, later led by Subhas Chandra Bose, becoming Commandant of its Officers’ Training College and, in 1944, its Deputy Chief of Staff. He was on Bose’s aircraft when it crashed in Formosa on 18 August 1945, survived, and was held in Delhi’s Red Fort until 22 April 1946 (see Brigadier Raja Habib-ur-Rahman Khan). Three days before the crash he had written to his young son:

Whatever I did, I did solely for the sake of my enslaved country.

— Habib-ur-Rahman Khan to his son, Singapore, 15 August 1945, printed in the book, pp. 299–300

1947–49: the Azad Kashmir forces

In October 1947 ex-servicemen formed the backbone of the volunteer squads that rose against the Dogra State forces (see The Chib Rajputs in 1947). Habib-ur-Rahman led the capture of Bhimber and became the founding Chief of Staff of the Azad Kashmir Regular Forces; Muzaffar Khan raised the Darhal Battalion (later AK 16) and Inayatullah Khan the Banah Battalion (later 25 Haidri Battalion). Kalri alone later gave the Azad Kashmir Regular Forces two colonels, Raja Ali Akbar Khan and Raja Dilawar Khan, and in the next generation a brigadier, Raja Ghaus Muhammad Khan.

In Pakistan’s army, navy and air force

The most senior Chib soldier in the book is Lieutenant General Raja Muhammad Akbar Khan of Kalri (1922–1978), son of Subedar Raja Jalal Khan. Enlisting as a recruit in 1942, he rose to Deputy Chief of Staff of the Pakistan Army and Director General of the ISI, and was GOC Azad Kashmir in the 1971 war. Passed over for the army’s top post when General Tikka Khan retired, he resigned, became Pakistan’s ambassador in London at Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s request, and died in office on 22 June 1978. The book calls him the first descendant of Baba Shadi Shaheed, and the first man from Azad Kashmir, to become a lieutenant general.

The wars of 1965 and 1971 drew in a new generation. Four grandsons of Raja Datta Khan of Pothi Jang Khan fought in them: Raja Abdul Aziz Khan of the EME at Chhamb in 1965, Raja Nazir Ahmad Khan with the Armoured Corps’ Risala No. 5 in 1965 and 1971, Raja Gulzar Ahmad Khan with 3rd Baloch at Chawinda in 1971, and Raja Shabbir Ahmad Khan with 19 Sindh in 1971. Gold medals at the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul, went to Raja Tariq Siddiq Khan and Raja Shamriz Salik of Mithana Chak, and the Navy and Air Force lists include Chief Petty Officer Raja Muhammad Yunus Khan of Jaipur and Pilot Muhammad Ashiq of Nandwal.

Honour roll: soldiers the book remembers as martyrs

Sportsmen, bodyguards and villages of soldiers

Soldiering often went with sport and ceremony. Besides Muzaffar Khan’s polo, the book records Jamadar Muhammad Khan of Panjeri as an international hockey player, Captain Raja Allah Ditta Khan of Panjeri as an internationally known pole-vaulter and two Kasgumah brothers as famous tent-peggers. Naib Subedar Raja Fazal Ahmad Khan of Mughlora served as a bodyguard to Queen Victoria and to the Maharaja of Kashmir, and Raja Muhammad Latif Khan of Khair Ghansar, bodyguard to Governor-General Ghulam Muhammad, took part in Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. The rolls show where the soldiers came from: Panjeri and Kalri near Bhimber, Pothi Jang Khan, Thotha Rai Bahadur, Pothi and Bisa, and the Ghanial villages of Kharian, all part of the wider story told in Chib Rajputs: history, origins and clans.

Frequently asked questions

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• Lt. Gen. Raja Muhammad Akbar KhanThe Kalri recruit who became Deputy Chief of Staff.
• Brigadier Raja Habib-ur-Rahman KhanKing’s Commission, the INA and the Conqueror of Bhimber.
• The Chibs in The Chiefs of the PunjabThe Jhelum, Pothi and Bisa families in British records.
• Major Raja Muzaffar KhanADC, polo star and founder of AK 16.
• Kalri and Mandi Da’oraThe Jaskal and Dhauryal Chibs and their soldiers.
• Thotha Rai BahadurThe Rais of Khari Kariali and their officers.