Karorasinghia misl

The Karorasinghia, also called Panjgarhia, was named for Karora Singh of Paijgarh and was led from 1761 by Baghel Singh, who is the reason it is remembered.

Baghel Singh commanded the Sikh force that entered Delhi in March 1783 and held the Red Fort area. The settlement he negotiated with Shah Alam II secured the right to build gurdwaras at the sites associated with the Gurus and a share of the city's duties. Seven were built in about eight months and the force withdrew.

That is the only occasion the Khalsa held Delhi and it was ended by agreement rather than by defeat, which is unusual enough to be worth stating.

The misl's territory in the Jalandhar Doab and the Cis-Sutlej was broken up after Baghel Singh's death in 1802 and absorbed on both sides of the river.

Baghel Singh's terms for withdrawing from Delhi included permission to build gurdwaras at the sites in the city associated with the Gurus. Sis Ganj, Rakab Ganj, Bangla Sahib and several others were founded under that agreement.

The occupation lasted about eight months in 1783 and ended by negotiation with the Mughal court rather than by force.

The misl's holdings around Hariana and Chhalodi in Hoshiarpur district went into the Lahore state, and its Cis-Sutlej parcels came under British protection after 1809.

What we don't know

  • The terms agreed at Delhi in 1783, which survive only in Sikh accounts.

Where to check this

  1. Hari Ram Gupta on Baghel Singh and the 1783 expedition. Hari Ram Gupta, History of the Sikhs (Internet Archive) ↗

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

  • Delhi gurdwara institutional histories.

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 67 accounts in The Khalsa Raj, the chapter of this site covering the eighteenth century, from Banda Singh Bahadur Ji to the misls.