Patiala. Nabha. Jind.
Three names that continued into the age of princely states - and three reasons the history of the confederacy cannot end with all the misls united under Ranjit Singh.
The Phulkian houses shared ancestry, Sikh affiliations and important family connections. They also defended separate interests.
Their story explains how different political futures emerged within the same wider community.
WHO WAS PHUL?
Chaudhary Phul was the seventeenth-century ancestor from whom the Phulkian houses took their name.
His descendants established different ruling lines in Malwa, the broad region south of the Sutlej.
The Patiala line developed through his son Ram Singh. Nabha and Jind descended through another son, Tilok Singh.
A useful detail survives from before the great territorial expansion: Guru Gobind Singh issued a hukamnama, a written directive, to Ram and Tilok in 1696, calling upon them to come with men and horses.
The family’s connection to the Sikh community therefore preceded the later princely states.
WHY THE PHULKIANS WERE DIFFERENT
The Phulkian houses are conventionally counted within the twelve misls, but their organisation was distinct.
They were linked principally through descent from a common ancestor. They did not form one uniformly governed state under a single Dal Khalsa commander.
That difference helps explain their later behaviour.
A shared family origin could support cooperation. It could also create disputes over ancestral possessions, precedence and inheritance.
The three houses were related, but they were not interchangeable.
ALA SINGH: THE FOUNDER OF PATIALA’S POWER
Ala Singh, born in 1691, was Phul’s grandson through Ram Singh.
He developed a base at Barnala before establishing Patiala as the centre of a growing state.
In 1763, he laid the foundation of Qila Mubarak. The fort became the centre around which the city developed.
Its earliest form was much more modest than the palace complex associated with later rulers.
A fort supplied defence and a place from which authority could operate. Around such a centre, households, suppliers, craftspeople and traders could establish relationships with the ruling establishment.
Patiala’s growth was therefore a process involving settlement and work as well as military ambition.
MAI FATTO: ANOTHER BUILDER OF THE STATE
Ala Singh’s wife Fateh Kaur, known as Mai Fatto, played an important political role.
She was the daughter of a landed family from Kaleke and became involved in diplomacy and dynastic affairs.
After the Battle of Panipat in 1761, when Ahmad Shah Durrani’s actions threatened the family’s position around Barnala, she helped initiate negotiations that secured peace through payment.
She also maintained an open langar for Sikh forces.
That detail connects high politics to practical support. Feeding an armed gathering required grain, preparation, labour and continuing resources.
After Ala Singh’s death, Mai Fatto helped secure the succession of their grandson Amar Singh and intervened in a dispute within the family.
Patiala was built through her decisions as well as her husband’s campaigns.
MUGHAL, MARATHA AND AFGHAN CONNECTIONS
Ala Singh’s political relationships changed with circumstances.
He assisted the Mughal side against the Afghan invasion in 1748. Later, he supplied the Maratha forces before their defeat by Durrani at Panipat in 1761.
The Marathas were a major power expanding from western India, and their contest with Durrani affected the balance across northern India.
After their defeat, Ala Singh negotiated with the Afghan ruler and accepted recognition within the Durrani political order.
An imperial title or robe of honour could strengthen a regional chief’s standing. It did not necessarily mean that imperial officials supervised every village he held.
These arrangements combined military pressure, payments and recognition.
For Ala Singh, the objective was to preserve and extend a state surrounded by stronger and competing armies.
WHAT DID THAT MEAN FOR THE COUNTRYSIDE?
Diplomatic changes reached ordinary people through practical demands.
Supplying an army meant obtaining food and transport. Paying tribute required resources drawn from the ruler’s income. Fort construction involved materials and labour.
A settlement that prevented an attack could protect households from immediate destruction while still imposing costs.
The Phulkian territories contained Hindu, Muslim and Sikh inhabitants. Their agricultural and commercial life supported a Sikh dynasty without becoming religiously uniform.
Existing local leaders remained important to collecting revenue and managing disputes.
The experience of rule therefore depended on more than whether Ala Singh was, at a particular moment, cooperating with the Mughals, Marathas or Afghans. It depended on how those relationships affected security and demands at home.
NABHA AND JIND
Hamir Singh established the Nabha ruling house.
Gajpat Singh established Jind.
Gajpat was also Ranjit Singh’s maternal grandfather: his daughter Raj Kaur married Maha Singh Sukerchakia and became Ranjit Singh’s mother.
The connection placed the future Maharaja within Phulkian family politics from birth.
Yet relatives could become rivals.
Gajpat Singh took Hamir Singh prisoner during a dispute and seized territory, including Sangrur. The episode demonstrates how fiercely related houses could defend their own ambitions.
Their common ancestry did not provide a government above them capable of preventing conflict.
WHY THEY RESISTED RANJIT SINGH
By the early nineteenth century, Ranjit Singh had shown that he could absorb independent chiefships.
His expeditions southeast of the Sutlej raised an immediate question for the Phulkian rulers: would their states be next?
From Lahore, supremacy over the other chiefs could appear a natural extension of growing power.
From Patiala, Nabha or Jind, it meant the possible loss of authority that the families had spent generations establishing.
The disagreement was about who would rule.
A Sikh chief did not need to reject Sikh identity to oppose subordination to another Sikh dynasty.
THE BRITISH OPTION
The chiefs appealed to the East India Company because it possessed the strength to restrain Lahore.
British interests were strategic. The Company wanted a secure frontier and a political arrangement that limited uncertainty to the northwest.
The Treaty of Amritsar in 1809, together with the protection extended to the cis-Sutlej chiefs, restricted Ranjit Singh’s further expansion in that direction.
The settlement did not erase every possession he already held beyond the river. Its practical effect was to establish limits and preserve a group of states outside his permanent control.
For their rulers, this secured dynastic survival.
It also created dependence on British power.
WHY THESE STATES SURVIVED 1849
When the British annexed the Lahore kingdom in 1849, the Phulkian states already occupied a different political position.
They were not simply remaining districts of Ranjit Singh’s empire. They had developed separate protected relationships with the Company.
Their princely existence continued under British supremacy.
This was survival with restrictions, rather than unchanged independence. External relations and other important matters increasingly depended on the paramount power.
After Indian independence, Patiala, Nabha and Jind became part of the Patiala and East Punjab States Union in 1948.
Their history therefore extends far beyond the usual closing date assigned to the confederacy.
MORE THAN ONE FUTURE
The Phulkian houses show why the rise of Sikh power should not be told as one straight road towards Lahore.
It produced several states, several dynasties and several choices about how to survive.
Ranjit Singh built the largest kingdom. Patiala, Nabha and Jind preserved different political identities through accommodation with another expanding power.
Their shared ancestry connected them.
Their decisions gave them separate futures.
In memory of The Phulkian Misl, whose dynasties flourished through alliances and vision & to the chapters of the Confederacy that shaped Punjab. with deep respect and marvel - Trish Saab