Ram Pyari Gurjar, Fictional Woman Warrior Who Defeated Timur
As we are all aware, Timur, the Turkic conqueror of Central Asia, invaded India in 1398 during the reign of Sultan Mahmud Tughlaq (1394-1413) of the Delhi Sultanate. According to Timur's Memoirs, he invaded India as 'the inhabitants of Hindustan were infidels and unbelievers' as well as to loot her wealth. However, his true intention was to plunder Delhi. Timur ruthlessly massacred 100,000 natives and sacked Delhi. After a fifteen-day stay, he returned to Samarkand with a vast amount of loot. On his way back, he pillaged and plundered Meerut, Haridwar and Jammu.
Some modern historians have been left to ponder what caused Timur to flee India and how he could have left without fully achieving his objective of spreading Islam and looting India. So they created a fictitious story of Timur's defeat by some local heroes. According to this fabrication, a 20-year old Ram Pyari Gurjar, along with 40,000 women warriors inflicted great damage to Timur's army in Meerut and Haridwar, thus forcing him to flee India. 80,000 men attacked Timur and slaughtered a large portion of his army, thus saving Meerut, Haridwar and the surrounding areas from Timur's plunder and massacre.
Story in detail: Timur's atrocities and massacre of Hindus alerted the people of Meerut, Saharanpur, parts of Haryana and Haridwar. People from different communities such as Jats, Gurjars, Ahirs, Valmikis, Rajputs, Brahmins and other tribes united and formed a 'Mahapanchayat' under the leadership of certain Devapala. A wrestler named Jograj Singh Gurjar was chosen as the Supreme General of this 80,000-member panchayat and Ram Pyari Gurjar was made the Commander of the women's wing, which had 40,000 members. 20,000 panchayat warriors launched a surprise attack on Timur's army in the middle of the night in Delhi, slaughtering 9,000 soldiers and throwing their corpses into the Yamuna river. Before daylight, the panchayat warriors disappeared towards the outskirts of Delhi, and this continued for three nights. A frustrated Timur left Delhi and advanced towards Meerut, where the panchayat warriors attacked Timur's army during the day, while Ram Pyari Gurjar and her women warriors conducted guerrilla raids at night, slaughtering Timur's men and looting their food supplies. This continued for several days and the poor Timur marched his forces towards Haridwar. The tribes of the area, who were experts in archery, defeated Timur thrice, as in Meerut. In the last battle, Harveer Singh Gulia struck Timur in the chest with a spear. Although Harveer was severely injured, Jograj Singh managed to take Harveer to safety. The wounded Timur fled from the battlefield with few loyal followers. Timur had come to India with an army of over 150,000 men, but returned with only a few thousand. The rest were killed by the Hindu warriors. About 40000 panchayat warriors were martyred. The End!
If this were true, why don't we pay homage to this brave woman like Rani Lakshmibai or Begum Hazrat Mahal? Why is there not a single mention of this remarkable lady in history text books? The answer is that this is a myth propagated by sources associated with the Gurjar community. There are no reliable sources so far to confirm the existence of this woman, neither contemporary nor near contemporary — Timurid or Indian. Neither Yazdi (author of Zafarnama) nor Arabshah (author of Tamerlane or Timur the Great Amir) makes any mention of such battles or Timur's defeat.
Fiction writers claim that Timur was unable to fully recover from a wound he sustained, leading to his death seven years later. Similar tales of this hoax can be found on numerous websites, with some articles even claiming that 'Taimur Lang was killed by Hindu warrior'! The truth, however, is that Timur did not die from any wounds, but rather from old age in 1405.😀
Once, there existed a Wikipedia article about this fictional woman warrior. Let us explore the references cited in that article:
The first source cited was a book titled 'The Royal Gurjars: Their Contribution to India' by certain Naunihal Singh (2003). Despite not being a qualified historian, Singh's book attempts to glorify his own caste. It also contains other dubious historical arguments, such as the claim that Porus was a Gurjar king who defeated Alexander. Consequently, the Wikipedia article was deleted due to the book being deemed a fake source.
The second reference is 'Rampyari Gurjar' by Jesse Russell and Ronald Conn. It is not a real book but the same deleted Wikipedia article on this fictional character published under the pseudonym of some foreign authors. Additionally, I found another Wikipedia copy under the pseudonym of Lambert M. Surhone, Mariam T. Tennoe & Susan F. Henssonow. It is possible that there are more such fabricated articles out there.
Dalip Singh Ahlawat's 'History of Jat Heroes', Mangal Sen Jindal's 'History of Origin of Some Clans in India', Swami Omanand Saraswati's books, and Gurjara vīra-vīrāṅganāeṃ and Gurjara kāla cakra are all examples of caste-glorifying pseudo-histories that mention Timur's defeat at the hands of this veer lady.
In short, the books that reference Ram Pyari Gurjar also claim that everyone from Vikramaditya to Rajaraja Chola were Gurjars. A Patrika slideshow even claims that Jograj was a 7-foot-9-inch-tall Gurjar warrior, who weighed 320 kilograms!
Interestingly, the widely-circulated image of Ram Pyari Gurjar is actually a photo of the acclaimed actress Anushka Shetty from the 2015 Telugu epic, Rudrama Devi.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Noticeboard_for_India-related_topics/Archive_60#Ram_Pyari_Gurjar
Some modern historians have been left to ponder what caused Timur to flee India and how he could have left without fully achieving his objective of spreading Islam and looting India. So they created a fictitious story of Timur's defeat by some local heroes. According to this fabrication, a 20-year old Ram Pyari Gurjar, along with 40,000 women warriors inflicted great damage to Timur's army in Meerut and Haridwar, thus forcing him to flee India. 80,000 men attacked Timur and slaughtered a large portion of his army, thus saving Meerut, Haridwar and the surrounding areas from Timur's plunder and massacre.
Story in detail: Timur's atrocities and massacre of Hindus alerted the people of Meerut, Saharanpur, parts of Haryana and Haridwar. People from different communities such as Jats, Gurjars, Ahirs, Valmikis, Rajputs, Brahmins and other tribes united and formed a 'Mahapanchayat' under the leadership of certain Devapala. A wrestler named Jograj Singh Gurjar was chosen as the Supreme General of this 80,000-member panchayat and Ram Pyari Gurjar was made the Commander of the women's wing, which had 40,000 members. 20,000 panchayat warriors launched a surprise attack on Timur's army in the middle of the night in Delhi, slaughtering 9,000 soldiers and throwing their corpses into the Yamuna river. Before daylight, the panchayat warriors disappeared towards the outskirts of Delhi, and this continued for three nights. A frustrated Timur left Delhi and advanced towards Meerut, where the panchayat warriors attacked Timur's army during the day, while Ram Pyari Gurjar and her women warriors conducted guerrilla raids at night, slaughtering Timur's men and looting their food supplies. This continued for several days and the poor Timur marched his forces towards Haridwar. The tribes of the area, who were experts in archery, defeated Timur thrice, as in Meerut. In the last battle, Harveer Singh Gulia struck Timur in the chest with a spear. Although Harveer was severely injured, Jograj Singh managed to take Harveer to safety. The wounded Timur fled from the battlefield with few loyal followers. Timur had come to India with an army of over 150,000 men, but returned with only a few thousand. The rest were killed by the Hindu warriors. About 40000 panchayat warriors were martyred. The End!
If this were true, why don't we pay homage to this brave woman like Rani Lakshmibai or Begum Hazrat Mahal? Why is there not a single mention of this remarkable lady in history text books? The answer is that this is a myth propagated by sources associated with the Gurjar community. There are no reliable sources so far to confirm the existence of this woman, neither contemporary nor near contemporary — Timurid or Indian. Neither Yazdi (author of Zafarnama) nor Arabshah (author of Tamerlane or Timur the Great Amir) makes any mention of such battles or Timur's defeat.
Fiction writers claim that Timur was unable to fully recover from a wound he sustained, leading to his death seven years later. Similar tales of this hoax can be found on numerous websites, with some articles even claiming that 'Taimur Lang was killed by Hindu warrior'! The truth, however, is that Timur did not die from any wounds, but rather from old age in 1405.😀
Once, there existed a Wikipedia article about this fictional woman warrior. Let us explore the references cited in that article:
The first source cited was a book titled 'The Royal Gurjars: Their Contribution to India' by certain Naunihal Singh (2003). Despite not being a qualified historian, Singh's book attempts to glorify his own caste. It also contains other dubious historical arguments, such as the claim that Porus was a Gurjar king who defeated Alexander. Consequently, the Wikipedia article was deleted due to the book being deemed a fake source.
The second reference is 'Rampyari Gurjar' by Jesse Russell and Ronald Conn. It is not a real book but the same deleted Wikipedia article on this fictional character published under the pseudonym of some foreign authors. Additionally, I found another Wikipedia copy under the pseudonym of Lambert M. Surhone, Mariam T. Tennoe & Susan F. Henssonow. It is possible that there are more such fabricated articles out there.
Dalip Singh Ahlawat's 'History of Jat Heroes', Mangal Sen Jindal's 'History of Origin of Some Clans in India', Swami Omanand Saraswati's books, and Gurjara vīra-vīrāṅganāeṃ and Gurjara kāla cakra are all examples of caste-glorifying pseudo-histories that mention Timur's defeat at the hands of this veer lady.
In short, the books that reference Ram Pyari Gurjar also claim that everyone from Vikramaditya to Rajaraja Chola were Gurjars. A Patrika slideshow even claims that Jograj was a 7-foot-9-inch-tall Gurjar warrior, who weighed 320 kilograms!
Interestingly, the widely-circulated image of Ram Pyari Gurjar is actually a photo of the acclaimed actress Anushka Shetty from the 2015 Telugu epic, Rudrama Devi.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Noticeboard_for_India-related_topics/Archive_60#Ram_Pyari_Gurjar
Kashmir 1990 exodus is also a fiction for you people if you write an article about what happened in kashmir in 1990
ReplyDeleteNice write up this glorification is more recent as these people have become rich by selling their lands to government and now they are looking for historical figures to legitmize their recently earned status.
ReplyDeleteWeird logic, no homage so no accuracy lol.
ReplyDeleteThere is a mention about this battle in Zafarnama and Mohd Ibn Arabshah in Timurs biography.. You must be a victim of your inferiority complex and hence glorifying a murderer and rapist.
ReplyDelete