I am Daarji

If I f one tries to think about history, it seems to me - it's like looking at a range of mountains. And the first time you see them, they look one way. But then time changes, the pattern of light shifts. Maybe you've moved slightly, your perspective has changed. The mountains are the same... but they look very different. - Richard Harris It was in the summer of 1967/68 that my mother and I first came to Kashmir valley. My father was stationed at Baramulla, on the banks of Jhelum River, a little outside of Srinagar. Baramulla was even then, an important military town sitting astride the Uri- Srinagar Road, which along with its travelling companion, the Jhelum river crossed over to POK a little ahead at Uri. Twenty years ago bloody history of rape and loot had been taken place on this road…. But to ­me the scars of the humanitarian crisis were not perceptible. Perhaps my teen years could not perceive. Once again it was summer, but it was summer of 1975, and as an ad...

The film Rebel Queen tells the remarkable story of the last Sikh ruler of Lahore – a fearless Maharani who waged two wars against British rule in India. She is an inspiring figure for young Asian women today. An Indian woman wearing a crinoline over her traditional clothes, and emeralds and pearls under her bonnet, walks in Kensington Gardens in 1861. She is the last Sikh queen of Lahore, the capital of the Punjab empire, and her name is   Jindan   Kaur.  She died two years later, in 1863, and was buried in west London. MaharaniJindan Kaur's life – much of which was spent raging against the British empire for cheating her out of Punjab, then a vast country stretching from the Khyber Pass to Kashmir – is the subject of a film called 'The Rebel Queen', which premiered at New York's International Sikh film festival and is set to be shown in the UK in February. Her revolt began when her husband, the last Maharaja of  Punjab, died of a stroke in...