Remembering Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab

Professor M.L. Ahluwalia, M.A. (Hons) is a prominent historian- archivist. He taught for several years, history of modern India including constitutional history, modern Europe and also political science to the de- gree and post-graduate students. During the last 50 years of his active career he has written several books and research papers on Punjab history alone, which have been widely commended by prominent historians in India and abroad. He is the founder Secretary of the Punjab History Forum and Society, Delhi; founder Secretary & Vice-President of the Association of Indian Archivists and its Corresponding Member on the SPAA, of the International Council on Archives. In 1978 Prof. Ahluwalia was deputed by the Govt. of India to U.S.S.R. and Hungary under the Cultural Ex- change Programme. The author uúlized this opportunity to explore a large number of hither-to unknown documents useful for the history of freedom movement in India and Indo-U.S.S.R. and Indo-Hungarian relations. He was Sectional President, of the Seminar held by the Punjabi University, Patiala to celebrate the 200th Birth Centenary of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. He was President of the Modern History Section at the 17th Session of the Punjab History Conference and again Sectional President of the Medieval history Section at the 28th Session of the Conference. For his contributions towards an objective research in Punjab history, the All India Sikh History Board gave a Man Patra to Prof. Ahluwalia on 30 Oct, 1982 and the Indian Council of Historical Research conferred a Senior Research Fellowship upon him. He is the Chairman of the Research Committee of Baba Jassa Singh Ahluwalia Bi-Centenary Society Profes- sor Ahluwalia currently Fellow of the B.P. Koirala India-Nepal Foundation for writing the history of Political and diplimatic relations between the two countries.

No other sovereign of Hindustan was studied so profusely by European scholars as Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab. The main reason for this unusual exercise, particularly by almost every British official of the Political service in their government was their anxiety to measure up the person who since his assumption of the role of a sovereign in 1799 A.D. till his death in 1839, had successfully prevented them from encroaching upon the independence of the people of Punjab and rather of the entire north western and south western region at a time when they had spread their tentacles in almost the entire south-east Asia on the one hand and from Tehran to Istrambol in west Asia.

Ranjit Singh's hour of destiny came when Zaman Shah emperor of Afghanistan had reached Lahore in the later part of 1798 A.D, with a large army with the aim, as he declared. to free the Mughal King Shah Alam II from the clutches of the British imperial power. Ranjit Singh then aged only 19 years stood up before the assemblage of Sikh Misldars with better resources and armies, finding them jittery, declared his resolve to deal with Zaman Shah by himself, he came to the notice of the Earl of Wellesely, the dyed in wool imperialist Governor General of the British Government in Hindustan, who decided to woo Ranjit Singh for the long term imperial interests of the British in Asia

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