Bilaspur

Kahlur

The Kahlur rajas held the lower Sutlej country, and their fortunes turned on their position between the Punjab plains and the higher hill states. They were involved in the wars between the hill rajas and Guru Gobind Singh at Anandpur, which lay in their territory, and afterwards came under Sikh and then British authority.

The Naina Devi temple, on a hill in the state, is one of the śakti pīṭhas and among the most visited shrines in the western Himalaya.

Bhakra

Bilaspur acceded to India in 1948. In the following decade the Bhakra Nangal project — the largest dam built in India at that time, and the centrepiece of the country's first phase of development planning — flooded the valley, and the old town of Bilaspur was submerged. A new town was built above the waterline.

The state's disappearance under a reservoir, like Tehri's forty years later, is worth recording in a census of kingdoms: several Himalayan capitals are now under water, and the development projects that put them there were among the defining acts of the republic that succeeded them.