How the Chibs Divided into Hindu and Muslim Lines

According to the oldest written history of the clan, Thakur Major Singh’s Tarikh-e-Chibhal (c. 1926), the Hindu and Muslim Chibs parted ways in the two generations after Raja Dharam Chand, the ruler of Bhimber remembered as Baba Shadi Shaheed. Two of his four sons became Muslims while his eldest, Bhup Chand, stayed Hindu; then, when Delhi ordered that only a Muslim could inherit the throne, Bhup Chand’s younger son converted and reigned as Raja Ghanni Khan, while the elder, Ghaggi, kept his faith and became the ancestor of the Hindu Chibs of Deva Vatala.

The four sons of Raja Dharam Chand

Bhimber, in today’s Azad Jammu and Kashmir close to the Punjab border, was ruled for centuries by the Chib Rajputs. Most Chibs today are Muslims, yet one branch stayed Hindu into the twentieth century, and its historian, Thakur Major Singh of Deva Vatala, set out to explain how one family came to have two faiths. He was himself a Hindu Chib, and his book, printed in 1983 Bikrami (about 1926), is the oldest history of the clan (see Tarikh-e-Chibhal, chapter by chapter).

His story begins with Raja Dharam Chand, whom Muslims know as Raja Shadab Khan or Baba Shadi Shaheed. In the author’s account the Raja was made a Muslim against his will at the court of Delhi, escaped home and was killed in single combat with Haibat Qandhari. During his long absence his eldest son, Bhup Chand, governed Bhimber, though not well, because the other shareholders of the family kept harassing him and meddling in the administration. Muslims, the author notes, called Bhup Chand “Bhum Khan” (Major Singh (c. 1926), p. 35).

After the Raja’s death the state was split in two. The part east of the Bhimber Nala, the stream that runs past the town, went to Bhup Chand; the part west of it went to his brother Raja Mal Khan, by an order issued from Delhi. Two of the four brothers, Mal Khan and Gul Muhammad Khan, accepted Islam, and the names by which the book knows them are their Muslim names (p. 35). The family tree on p. 42 shows where each line settled:

The author was not certain of every branch. In a later chapter he notes that the Samahni family is said to descend from this fourth son, but that the accounts of the Hindu Bhats and Mirasis, the hereditary genealogists, mention only three sons of Raja Dharam Chand (p. 92). Nor did the division always follow the lines of descent. At Barhang, the village of Rup Chand’s descendants, one section (band) of the village was Hindu and the other Muslim until shortly before he wrote, when the Hindus too accepted Islam, though government papers still called their section “Band Hinduwal” (reading uncertain) (p. 91; see Barhang).

How the Hindu and Muslim Chibs parted: Ghaggi and Ghanni Chand

Bhup Chand went on ruling his half and remained a Hindu. Pressure came from the Emperor’s side, the author writes, but the Afghan sultanate of Delhi was then flickering out, Babar was laying the foundations of Mughal rule, and for a long time the kings of Delhi paid little attention to these hills. In those years Bhup Chand founded a town named after himself, Bhum Pur, which in time was corrupted into “Bhimber” (p. 36). A later chapter offers two other explanations of the town’s name (p. 62).

The real break came at the next succession. When Bhup Chand died the gaddi was disputed again, and an order came from the Emperor that whoever accepted Islam would be made Raja. Bhup Chand had two sons. The elder, Ghaggi, weighed the offer against his dharma and “thought the bargain of the raj too dear”; he left for Batwala (reading uncertain; perhaps Vatala), taking his brother’s young sons with him. The younger, Ghanni Chand, seeing his father’s inheritance slipping away, accepted Islam and became Raja Ghanni Khan, ancestor of the great Muslim Rajgan of Bhimber, whose story the author keeps for a later part of his book (p. 36). The chart on p. 42 traces the Rajgan of Bhimber, Bandala and Malot to him; see the rajas of Bhimber.

The split ran through Ghanni Chand’s own household. Before his conversion he had four sons by a Hindu Rani, while his heir, Jamshed Khan, was born of a Muslim Rani and received the gaddi (p. 81). The four Hindu-born sons were Malu, Anbu, Sanjhu (reading uncertain) and Dolu. Their descendants were settled at Chak Chiban in Tehsil Sialkot, at Khair Ghansar and Khair Kattu, at Sangla, Salawan and Kot, and at Machhlian, Sarsal, Mughlora, Tiyad (reading uncertain) and Vahora in Tehsil Samba (pp. 81, 110). On p. 36, however, the author says that Ghaggi lived at Chhatar (reading uncertain) with three of these boys and names them Ambo, Dolu and Joga Jit, so the lists within the book do not quite agree.

Takhti Chand and the posthumous Dasu Khan

Ghaggi had two sons, Kandu and Bharu (spelled Piru in a later chapter), and Kandu had one son, Takhti Chand (pp. 36, 60). By then the Muslim Rajgan had become the Hindu branch’s opponents, and skirmishes and petty fights went on until Takhti Chand was killed in battle with his companions. No man of the family was left; only his Rani survived, and she was pregnant (p. 36).

Chapter Five tells what followed, as the family remembered it (pp. 37–39):

• A hidden birth. Takhti Chand’s widow, a daughter of the Babla Rajputs (reading uncertain), went to her parents at Mauza Tal (reading uncertain). Two or three months later she bore a son, Dasu, who was brought up quietly at his maternal uncle’s house because the opposing faction was still strong.
• The buried treasure. A family mirasi (bard), Jhangu (reading uncertain), buried the family’s goods, cash and weapons beside a spring-tank, a ban in the Pahari language, and sat over them dressed as a faqir, waiting for the heir to grow up.
• The taunt. When his uncle scolded and abused him one day for coming late to work, Dasu demanded to know his lineage. His mother sent him to the faqir, who told him the whole story but said that the time had not yet come to hand over the treasure.
• The Mehta of Dhan. Dasu went to Mauza Dhan (reading uncertain) and took service with the kardar (revenue officer) of the hill country, an old Brahmin with the title Mehta and no son of his own, who taught him and came to trust him with carrying the revenue to the treasury.
• Kardar in his turn. When the Mehta died, Dasu claimed the post and won it over the Mehta’s relatives. He then dug up his inheritance, married and lived in peace.

The chapter gives a glimpse of how the hills were governed in those days. The revenue station for the area was Bahlolpur, an old town on the west bank of the Chenab in Gujrat District, opposite today’s Upper Chenab Canal. There were no separate departments: the kardar did everything, with only the qanungo above him, and the demand was light, twenty-five rupees and one hawk after every harvest (p. 38).

The author calls Dasu Khan the original ancestor (muris-e-a’la) of the Hindu Chibs. He had four sons: Sikandar, whose descendants live at Vatala (the word is unclear in the print); Data, at Nah in the Naushera area; Manak Dev, at Pandoriyan; and Marlal or Marhal (reading uncertain), at Kotli (pp. 37, 39). Sikandar’s descendants are followed in Deva Vatala in 1926, and their wars with the Sikh and Dogra rulers in Vatala against Ranjit Singh.

The Hindu Chib families in the 1920s

By the author’s day the Muslim Chibs far outnumbered the Hindus. Apart from Deva Vatala and a few other villages, he writes, the Chibs everywhere were Muslims, living in large numbers in Mirpur, Bhimber, Kharian, Jhelum and Gujrat (p. 97). The Hindu families he names are these:

The book also shows how closely the two faiths lived together. The title “Khan”, the author explains, was once used by Hindu Rajputs as freely as “Mian”, which is why Hindu ancestors such as Dasu Khan bear it (p. 53). In the four mandis (great fiefs) of Chibhal proper, everyone except the Hindu Tikka family of Ghawliyan was a Muslim descended from Raja Jamshed Khan (pp. 93–94; see Mandi Ghawaliyan), and that Hindu family had married a daughter of Thakur Onkar Singh to Raja Amar Singh, father of Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir (p. 94). The Machhlian family’s place at the Jammu Darbar ended when Mian Sawal Singh, who rode out from Jammu to Machhlian every day, was killed on the road one night by dacoits (pp. 110–111).

How Islam spread, in the author’s view

Thakur Major Singh wrote as a Hindu about a clan that was by then overwhelmingly Muslim, and he was open about his view: Raja Dharam Chand, he held, had been converted against his will, and he set out six arguments for it (pp. 97–99). The 1997 history by Raja Muhammad Iftikhar Ali Khan holds that the conversion was willing; both cases are weighed in Forced or Free? Either way, the author insisted, no one’s present faith was at stake (pp. 97–98). After the first conversions, he explains, Islam spread through Chibhal by the power of the kings of Delhi, by the policy of the Rajgan of Bhimber and by marriage. A Hindu bride in a Muslim raja’s house still counted herself a Hindu, but her children were Muslims, so that Muslim rajas often had Hindu and Muslim Ranis side by side, a practice that had ended only a few years before he wrote (pp. 99–101).

What the 1997 history says instead

Much of this account survives in the 1997 history only in summary or not at all, and its own version, told in The Hindu Chibs of Dewa Vatala, differs on several points.

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• Vatala Against Ranjit SinghShatab Garh, the eight-anna settlement and the burnings
• Deva Vatala in 1926Bands, shrines and service to the Maharajas of Jammu
• Thakur Major Singh ChibThe Hindu Chib who wrote the first history of the clan
• The Hindu Chibs of Dewa VatalaRaja Ghaggi Khan’s line in the 1997 history
• The Rajas of BhimberEvery Chib ruler from Chib Chand to Sultan Khan
• Forced or Free?How Baba Shadi Shaheed embraced Islam