Shimla Hill States

A landscape of small states

The hills between the Sutlej and the Yamuna were divided among a large number of very small states — Keonthal, Jubbal, Baghal, Bhajji, Balsan, Kumharsain, Bhagat, Mahlog and many others, some no larger than a few valleys. Each had its own raja or thakur, its own tutelary deity and its own genealogy.

All of them were overrun by the Gorkhas between 1803 and 1815 and all were restored under British protection after the Anglo-Nepalese War, on terms that made them protectorates rather than sovereign states. That common experience is why they are treated as a group.

Shimla

The ground on which Shimla was built was ceded from Keonthal territory, and the town grew from a few houses in the 1820s into the summer capital of the government of India from 1864 — so that for half the year the administration of the subcontinent was conducted from a ridge in the middle of these small kingdoms, whose rulers attended durbars there.

The states merged into Himachal Pradesh after 1948. The wooden temples of the region — at Hatkoti, Sarahan, Nirmand and elsewhere — and the village-deity system that binds them are the more durable legacy.