Kutlehr

A very small state

The Kutlehria rajas held a territory of a few valleys between Kangra and Bilaspur, and are attested from the medieval period. Their state is among the smallest in any census of Indian kingdoms — a reminder that the political map of the western Himalaya consisted of dozens of such units, each with a fort, a tutelary deity and a genealogy, and each genuinely sovereign within its own valleys.

Kutlehr resisted Ranjit Singh's expansion into the hills longer than most, and was finally annexed in 1825. Under the British the family retained a jagir rather than a state.

The distinction between a state and a large landholding was in practice a matter of what the paramount power chose to recognise, and a great many hill houses found themselves on one side or the other of it for reasons that had little to do with their own history.