Raja Fateh Singh Ahluwalia

The turban exchange was not ceremonial. For the next two decades Fateh Singh was present at most of the campaigns that built the empire — not as a subordinate commander but as an allied chief bringing his own contingent, which is a materially different thing and explains a great deal about his later standing.

The list, compiled from the Kapurthala records, runs through Jamke and Kathua, Sujanpur in 1803, Kasur in 1804 and again in 1807, Amritsar in 1805, Jhang and Sialkot in 1807, the expeditions across the Sutlej between 1806 and 1808, Pind Dadan Khan in 1809–10, Jalandhar in 1810–11, Mandi and Kullu in 1811, Hazara in 1813, Kashmir in 1814, the Yusufzai country in 1824, and Multan and Mankera. He held independent command in the Bhimbar, Rajauri and Bahawalpur expeditions.

Two of those entries matter more than the rest for this page. Amritsar, 1805 is the year the city and its mint came under Ranjit Singh — and VS 1862, the date on the Ahluwalia rupee, is that same year. And Kasur, 1807 is the siege at which Akali Phula Singh’s Nihangs went in at the breach and Hari Singh Nalwa took his first independent command. The three figures published in this series so far who fought in the field were all at Kasur together.

The VS 1862 issue does not stand alone. It looks back to something, and what it looks back to no longer exists.

When the Dal Khalsa took Lahore in 1761 it proclaimed Jassa Singh Ahluwalia Padshah and struck coins in his name. The chronicler Ghulam Ali Azad, writing within months and appalled, recorded that the Sikhs “blackened the face of the coin with his name.” The phrase is worth holding onto: to a Persian-educated observer, putting a Sikh chief’s name where a Mughal emperor’s belonged was not merely presumptuous, it was a defacement. Ganesh Das records that only twenty-one were struck. Not one authentic specimen is known to survive, and this site describes it as the most storied phantom in Sikh numismatics.

Set that beside the VS 1862 piece and the relationship becomes clear. Forty-four years after his grand-uncle’s coins announced a sovereignty that lasted weeks, Fateh Singh struck a piece naming the same house — but carefully, in the reverse field, under the Guru’s legend, with a sovereign’s permission. The 1761 rupee was a taunt aimed at Ahmad Shah Durrani. The 1805 rupee is a memorial to it, issued by a man who had learned what the Punjab now cost.

The friendship held for twenty-three years and then broke over exactly what the treaty had made inevitable. Fateh Singh dealt directly with the British over the Bhirog and Kotla chiefships, built a strong citadel at Isru, and repeatedly asked for British protection — each of which, from Lahore, looked like a vassal conducting his own foreign policy. In December 1825 Ranjit Singh sent two battalions towards Kapurthala. Fateh Singh did not wait for them. On 27 December he crossed the river into his own cis-Sutlej possessions at Jagraon, in British-protected territory, and formally sought the Company’s protection.

What happened next is a small masterpiece of the period’s politics, and nobody comes out of it badly. Ranjit Singh seized the trans-Sutlej estates at once — and simultaneously let it be known that his brother would be forgiven if he came back. The Governor-General confirmed Fateh Singh in his cis-Sutlej villages and declined to interfere north of the river. The Agent at Ludhiana quietly advised Ranjit Singh against confiscating Kapurthala outright. The troops were recalled, the invitation was issued, and Fateh Singh returned.

He was received with honour and his possessions were restored to him in full. The sources differ on the year of the return — 1826 in some, 1827 in others — but not on the outcome. He lived out his last decade at Kapurthala and died there in October 1836, still in possession of everything he had held, and still, formally, the Maharaja’s sworn brother.