Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Death of Gen. Zorawar Singh

Gen. Zorawar Singh joined as a messenger boy in the Dogra Corps of the Khalsa Army of Lahore Darbar. He was stationed in Jammu under the command of Raja Gulab Singh, Governor of Jammu and a favourite of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. It further says that Gen Zorawar Singh was given the command of the best soldiers to bring Leh under the control of the Maharaja of Punjab. He captured Sanku, Ladakh, Purag, Kartee and fort of Suru and Sod.
In violation of the Treaty of 1809 with the Lahore Darbar, the English pressured Maharaja Sher Singh to direct his feudal lords to withdraw from Lama’s territory. Gen Zorawar Singh was recalled but before the order could reach him, he was surrounded by a numerically superior Chinese force.
He was hit by a bullet and the enemy took away his body. About 20 km from the present Indo-Chinese border, the Tibetans raised a memorial in his honour — the only memorial in the world in the honour of a defeated commander at the place of his death at Tpyo, duly sanctified by a samadhi called “Singha-ka-chorten”.
During the Indo-Chinese war in 1962, the samadhi is said to have been demolished by the Chinese forces.

2 comments:

Kalpesh Panchal said...

hey....nice ancestor of your family.

Thakur Rai Singh said...

He was not a Mann Jatt, he was a Hindu rajpoot Dogra...