JIND KAUR, MAHARANI (1817-1863), popularly known as Jindari, was the wife of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and mother of Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last Sikh sovereign of the Punjab. She was the daughter of Manna Singh, an Aulakh Jat of Gujranwala, who held a humble position at the court as an overseer of the royal kennels. Scant notice of Maharani Jind Kaur is taken either by the official Lahore diarist, Sohan Lal Suri, or the British records until 1838, when, according to the former, a munshi brought the blessed tidings of the birth of a son to her. It appears that she and her son lived a life of obscurity under the care of Raja Dhian Singh at Jammu.
In August 1843, the young prince and his mother were brought to Lahore. In September 1843, both Maharaja Sher Singh and Dhian Singh were assassinated. Raja Hira Singh, Dhian Singh’s son, with the support of the army and chiefs, wiped out the Sandhanwalia faction. Shortly after, Hira Singh captured the Fort of Lahore, and on 16 September 1843, the army proclaimed minor Duleep Singh the sovereign of the state.
Hira Singh was appointed the wazir. The political history of Jind Kaur begins from that date. Gradually, she assumed the role of a de jure regent to the minor Maharaja. Both Hira Singh and his adviser, Pandit Jalla, did not show her the courtesy and consideration she was entitled to. Her establishment was put under the control of Misr Lal Singh.
Jind Kaur mobilized opinion at the Darbar against the dominance of the Dogras. She and her brother, Jawahar Singh, pleaded with the army panchayats (regimental committees) to banish Pandit Jalla and protect the rights of minor Duleep Singh. “Who is the real sovereign?” she angrily asked the regimental committees assembled in council. “Duleep Singh or Hira Singh? If the former, then the Khalsa should ensure that he was not a king with an empty title.” The council assured the Rani that Duleep Singh was the real king of the Punjab.
The army panchayats treated Jind Kaur with deference and addressed her as Mai Sahib or mother of the entire Khalsa commonwealth. The eclipse of the Jalla regime was a political victory for Maharani Jind Kaur, who had goaded the army to overthrow Hira Singh and install her brother Jawahar Singh as the wazir. She now assumed control of the government with the approval of the army panchayats who declared that they would place her on the throne of Delhi. Jind Kaur proclaimed herself regent and cast off her veil.
She became the symbol of the sovereignty of the Khalsa ruling the Punjab in the name of her son. She reviewed the troops and addressed them, held court, and transacted, in public, state business. She reconstituted the supreme Khalsa Council by giving representation to the principal sardars and restored a working balance between the army panchayats and the civil administration. Numerous vexatious problems confronted the Maharani.
Pashaura Singh had bestirred himself again. An alarm was created that an English force was accompanying him to Lahore, and that he was being helped secretly by Gulab Singh. Second, the troops clamored for a raise in their pay. The feudatory chiefs demanded the restoration of their resumed jagirs, remission of fines, and reduction of enhanced taxes and burdens imposed upon them by Hira Singh.
Finally, it appeared that the diminishing revenues of the state could not balance the increasing cost of the civil and military administration. Jind Kaur applied herself to the solution of these problems and secured to this end the assistance of a newly appointed council of elder statesmen and military generals. Karivar Pashaura Singh was summoned to Lahore and persuaded to return to his jagir. Early in 1845, a force 35,000 strong marched to Jammu for the chastisement of Gulab Singh.
The council had accused him of being a traitor to the Panth and charged him with treachery and intrigue against his sovereign. In April 1845, the army returned to Lahore with the Dogra chief as a hostage. The pay of the soldiery was enhanced, and Jawahar Singh was formally installed as wazir. Maharani Jind Kaur’s choice of Jawahar Singh as wazir became the subject of criticism.
To counteract the rising disaffection, Jind Kaur hastily betrothed Duleep Singh in the powerful Atari family, opened up negotiations with Gulab Singh, and promised higher pay to the soldiery. When Jawahar Singh was assassinated by the army panchayats, suspecting his hand in the murder of Karivar Pashaura Singh, Jind Kaur gave vent to her anguish with loud lamentation. Early in November 1845, she, with the approval of the Khalsa Council, nominated Misr Lal Singh to the office of wazir. Maharani Jind Kaur has been accused by some historians of wishing the Khalsa army to destroy itself in a war with the English.
A much more balanced and realistic view will be obtained by a closer examination of the policies of Ellenborough and Hardinge and of other incidental political factors which led to a clash of arms between the Sikhs and the English in December 1845. The Ellenborough papers in the Public Records Office, London, especially Ellenborough’s and Hardinge’s private correspondence with the Duke of Wellington, disclose the extent of British military preparations on the Sikh frontier. The correspondence reveals the inside story of the main causes of the first Anglo-Sikh war—the republican upsurge of the Khalsa soldiery to save Ranjit Singh’s kingdom from foreign aggression, the concentration of large British forces on the Sutlej, the British seizure of Suchel Singh’s treasure, the intrigues of British political officers to subvert the loyalty of the Sikh governors of Kashmir and Multan, the rejection of Lahore’s claim to the village of Morari, and the extraordinarily hostile conduct of Major George Broadfoot, the British Political Agent at the North-West Frontier Agency, towards the Sikhs, particularly the virtual seizure by him of the cis-Sutlej possessions of the Lahore Government. In view of these factors, the theory that the Sikh army had become perilous to the regency and that the courtiers plotted to engage the army against the British becomes untenable.
On the contrary, the Regent was the only person who exhibited determination and courage during the critical period of the war with the British. In December 1846, Maharani Jind Kaur surrendered political power to the council of ministers appointed by the British Resident after the Treaty of Bharoval. The Sikh Darbar ceased to exist as a sovereign political body. The Regent was dismissed with an annuity of Rs 1,50,000, and “an officer of Company’s artillery became, in effect, the successor to Ranjit Singh.” Maharani Jind Kaur was treated with unnecessary acrimony and suspicion.
She had retired gracefully to a life of religious devotion in the palace, yet mindful of the rights of her minor son as the sovereign of the Punjab. Henry Lawrence, the British Resident at Lahore, and Viscount Hardinge both accused her of fomenting intrigue and influencing the Darbar politics. After Bharoval, Hardinge had issued instructions that she must be deprived of all political power. In March 1847, he expressed the view that she must be sent away from Lahore.
At the time of Tej Singh’s investiture as Raja of Sialkot in August 1847, it was suspected that the young Maharaja had refused to confer the title on him at the instigation of his mother. She was also suspected of having a hand in what is known as the Prema Plot, a conspiracy designed to murder the British Resident and Tej Singh at a fête at the Shalamar Gardens. Although neither of the charges against Jind Kaur could be substantiated on inquiry, she was removed to Sheikhupura in September 1847, and her allowance was reduced to Rs 48,000. Lord Dalhousie instructed Sir Frederick Currie, the British Resident at Lahore, to expel her from the Punjab.
Currie acted promptly. He implicated Jind Kaur in a fictitious plot and sent her away from Sheikhupura to Banaras. She remained interned at Banaras under strict surveillance. In 1848, allegations were made by Major MacGregor, in attendance on her, that she was in correspondence with Mulraj and Sher Singh at Multan. A few of her letters were intercepted, and an alarm was created when one of her slave girls escaped from Banaras.
She was removed to the Fort of Chunar, from where she escaped to Nepal disguised as a maidservant. Maharani Jind Kaur arrived at Kathmandu on 29 April 1849. The British Government promptly confiscated her jewelry worth Rs 9,00,000 and stopped her pension. At Kathmandu, the sudden appearance of the widow of Ranjit Singh was both unexpected and unwelcome. Yet Jung Bahadur, the Prime Minister, granted her asylum, mainly as a mark of respect to the memory of the late Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
A residence was assigned to her at Thapathali, on the banks of the Bagmati River, and the Nepalese Government settled upon her an allowance for her maintenance. The Nepal Residency papers relate the details of Jind Kaur’s unhappy sojourn in Nepal till 1860. The British Residency in Kathmandu kept a vigilant eye on her throughout. It believed that she was engaged in political intrigue to secure the revival of the Sikh dynasty in the Punjab.
Under constant pressure from the British, the Nepal Darbar turned hostile towards the Maharani and levied the most humiliating restrictions on her. But the forlorn widow of Ranjit Singh remained undaunted. She quietly protested against the indignities and restrictions imposed upon her by Jung Bahadur. Jung Bahadur expelled from the valley one of her attendants, and the Maharani dismissed the entire staff foisted upon her by the Nepalese Government.
She was then ordered to appear in person in the Darbar to acknowledge Nepalese hospitality, which she refused to do. The breach between her and Jung Bahadur widened. The Nepal Residency Records tell us that an open rift took place, and “several scenes occurred in which each seemed to have given way to temper, to have addressed the other in very insulting language.” Towards the end of 1860, it was signified to Maharani Jind Kaur that her son, Maharaja Duleep Singh, was about to return to India and that she could visit him in Calcutta.
She welcomed the suggestion and traveled to Calcutta to meet her son, who took her with him to England. Maharani Jind Kaur died at Kensington, England, on 1 August 1863.
References :
- Suri, Sohan Lal, Umdat-ut-Twarikh. Lahore, 1885-88.
- Smyth, G. Carmichael, A History of the Reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh [Reprint]. Patiala, 1970.
- Bell, Evans, The Annexation of the Punjab and Maharaja Duleep Singh. London, 1882.
- Ganda Singh, ed., History of the Freedom Movement of the Punjab (Maharaja Duleep Singh Correspondence). Patiala, 1977.
- Khushwant Singh, A History of the Sikhs, vol. II. Princeton, 1966.
- Gill, Avtar Singh, Lahore Darbar and Rani Jindan. Ludhiana, 1983.
Maharani Jind Kaur (1817–1863) is celebrated as one of Punjab’s most resilient and pioneering regents—a woman who steered the declining days of a once-mighty Sikh Empire with determination and vision. Born into modest circumstances as the daughter of Manna Singh, an overseer at the royal kennel in Chicharwali of Sialkot district, she entered the royal household through her marriage to Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1835. Despite her humble origins, Jind Kaur’s innate strength and political acumen allowed her to transcend initial obscurity and eventually become the linchpin in the struggle for the Sikh throne during one of its most turbulent periods .
After Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s death in 1839, the Sikh state found itself embroiled in internal power struggles and increasing external pressures from the British. Amid this chaos, Jind Kaur emerged as the de facto regent and protector of her young son, Duleep Singh—who was declared the sovereign under contentious circumstances. In a landscape rife with factionalism, she positioned herself as the moral and political guardian of the royal heritage. Rallying support from the army panchayats, who respectfully referred to her as Mai Sahib (Mother of the Khalsa), she boldly questioned the legitimacy of rival power brokers. Her insistence that Duleep Singh was the rightful ruler underscored her uncompromising commitment to the sovereignty and dignity of the Sikh state .
Her regency was marked by strategic acumen and relentless resilience. Confronting both internal adversaries—such as the entrenched influence of Dogra factions and the manipulative power structures within the court—and the encroaching ambitions of the British East India Company, Jind Kaur demonstrated astute diplomatic maneuvering. She overcame attempts by detractors to marginalize her, often meeting disparaging characterizations (such as being labeled the “Messalina of Punjab” by her detractors) with decisive leadership. By mobilizing regimental committees and leveraging her natural authority, she managed to keep alive the hope of a sovereign Punjab, even as the political landscape shifted dramatically in the wake of external colonization .
Beyond her political and military interventions, Jind Kaur’s legacy endures in the way she represents the spirit and resilience of the Sikh people. Her leadership not only aimed to secure her son’s rightful claim but also strove to preserve a cherished cultural identity amid the pressures of imperial ambition. In doing so, she came to symbolize the enduring courage of a people who, despite centuries of siege—both literal and metaphorical—managed to reclaim a measure of dignity and self-governance. Her regency, characterized by a blend of maternal care and formidable statecraft, remains a poignant chapter in the history of Punjab and the broader Sikh narrative .
