The Garhwal Kingdom

Garhwal takes its name from its fifty-two garhs, the hill forts a Panwar king wove into one kingdom. Ruled from Srinagar on the Alaknanda and later from Tehri, the dynasty outlasted invasions, an earthquake and empire, surviving as a princely state until 1949.

Tradition dates the dynasty to Kanak Pal in 823 CE, but the true unifier was Ajay Pal around the turn of the 16th century, who subdued the chieftains of the garhs and fixed his capital at Srinagar in the Alaknanda valley. The kingdom fought off Mughal-era incursions and a long rivalry with the Chands of Kumaon.

Garhwal's darkest decade began in 1803, when the Gorkha army took the kingdom and King Pradyumna Shah fell in battle at Khurbura near Dehradun in 1804. After the Anglo-Nepalese War, the British kept the richer eastern half as British Garhwal and restored the dynasty west of the Alaknanda, where Sudarshan Shah founded a new capital at Tehri in 1815.

Tehri Garhwal ran its own affairs for another 134 years, not always gently: the Rawain firing of 1930, when protesting villagers were shot at Tilari, is still commemorated. Amid India's integration of the princely states, popular pressure ended the raj and Tehri Garhwal merged into the Indian Union in August 1949, becoming a district of Uttar Pradesh.