01Rajapuri and Lachhman Dev
Xuanzang passed through Rajapura on his way out of Kashmir in the seventh century and found it a small kingdom subject to Kashmir. Kalhana names its rulers again and again as allies, rivals and refuges of the Kashmir kings; the road over the Pir Panjal ran through it. In 1670 a boy named Lachhman Dev was born here into a Rajput family. Tradition says that as a young man he shot a pregnant doe while hunting and, shaken by her death, renounced the world. As the bairagi Madho Das he settled at Nanded on the Godavari, where in 1708 he met Guru Gobind Singh, became his disciple and was sent north as Banda Singh to punish the killers of the Guru’s sons.
021947–48
In November 1947 tribal raiders and Pakistani troops captured Rajouri, and many of its Hindu and Sikh residents were killed or carried off. In April 1948 the Indian Army fought its way up from Naushera. Second Lieutenant Rama Raghoba Rane of the Bombay Sappers cleared mines and roadblocks under fire for days to open the road, and won the Param Vir Chakra; the town was retaken on 12 April 1948. Rajouri is now a district headquarters on the Jammu–Poonch road.
The life of this place
- 7th centuryXuanzang visits Rajapura, then subject to Kashmir.
- 1670Lachhman Dev, later Banda Singh Bahadur, is born at Rajouri.
- November 1947Raiders capture Rajouri; many Hindu and Sikh residents are killed.
- 12 April 1948The Indian Army retakes Rajouri.
