Gulab Singh 1792-1858: Founder of Kashmir

Description

This short memoir is meant to fill a gap in the history of India in the nineteenth century. Gulab Singh’s name is known to students of Indian history only as an overgrown feudatory of the Lahore kingdom, who, taking advantage of the confusion which followed the death of Ranjit Singh, was able to carve out a State for himself. The establishment of the Jammu and Kashmir State by the treaty of 1846, and its recognition later in the century as one of the great internal States of India, have obscured the essential greatness of Gulab Singh as a soldier and a statesman. His calim to high rank in the roll of Indian statesman was established firmly even before he became the ruler of Kashmir.

K.M. Panikkarwas an Indian statesman and diplomat. He was also a professor, newspaper editor, historian and novelist. He was born in Travancore, then a princely state in the British Indian Empire and was educated in Madras and at the Unversity of Oxford.