Mamdot

Mamdot was a Muslim jagir on the Sutlej near Ferozepur, held by a family that was among the leading Muslim landholders of the Cis-Sutlej country. Iftikhar Hussain Khan of Mamdot was president of the Punjab Muslim League and became the first Chief Minister of West Punjab in Pakistan in 1947.

The estate itself was on the Indian side of the boundary. The family left and the property became evacuee land.

That is the compressed version of what happened to Muslim landholding across east Punjab in 1947: an estate on one side, its owner governing the other side, and the land redistributed to refugees within two years.

The same happened in reverse for Sikh and Hindu landholders in west Punjab.

Almost nothing physical survives of Muslim aristocratic Punjab in the Indian districts. The buildings were occupied, converted or fell down, and the families are in Lahore.

Evacuee property was administered under custodian legislation on both sides and then allotted, which turned a single estate into a bundle of small holdings inside about three years. The paperwork of that conversion sits in the district revenue record and has never been studied.

Iftikhar Hussain Khan's government in West Punjab fell within two years in a dispute with the centre, and he later held a provincial governorship. The family stayed in politics on that side for another generation.

Mamdot is an ordinary settlement near the border now. The estate buildings are gone or converted and there is no marker of the family that gave the place its name.

What we don't know

  • The condition of the Mamdot estate buildings today.

Where to check this

Named but not linked. These are real, findable documents. This project has not consulted them for this page.

  • Punjab states and jagir records.

This page has not yet been read through by the editor. Treat it with more caution than the rest.

How this page was written. The text is compiled from the standard published histories and reference works, not from a document held in hand. Nobody from this project has visited the place or read the archive. The list above is where a reader can go to check it, not a record of what was consulted line by line. Dates and figures are the received account. If you hold something better, write in and it will be corrected.

This is one of 69 accounts in The Crossing, the chapter of this site covering 1947 and what it did.