MAHARAJA DULEEP SINGH

Dec. 6, 2019

Congress MP Pratap Singh Bajwa made a demand in the Rajya Sabha to exhume the remains of Maharaja Duleep Singh from his grave in England, and have them brought to Amritsar. Bajwa said the issue is close to the heart of Punjab and that “history should be corrected”.

About:

Maharaja Duleep Singh was the youngest son of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and the last ruler of Punjab.
He was born in 1838 in Lahore and was declared Maharaja of Punjab in 1843 at the age of five.
In 1849, after the British defeated the Sikhs in the second Anglo-Sikh war, Singh was forced to sign a legal document that amended the Treaty of Lahore, requiring him to give up claims
- of sovereignty over the region in exchange for a pension of £40,000 a year,
- on the Koh-i-noor diamond. The diamond eventually made its way to England, where the British East India Company presented it to the Queen.
In 1853, he converted to Christianity, and settled in the UK in 1854.
Later on, he re-converted to Sikhism and lived in Paris where he is believed to have sought the help of Irish revolutionaries and Russians to launch a revolt against the British in Punjab. Ultimately, however, Singh was unsuccessful in doing so.
While he died in Paris in 1893 at the age of 55, his body was brought to England, where he was buried.