indichawla
SPNer
- Sep 20, 2025
- 16
- 2
- 62
Abstract
This essay focuses on the convergence of military conquest, cultural adaptation and folklore by analysing the legend and life of General Hari Singh Nalwa and the origin and emergence of the Pathani suit (Shalwar Kameez). The essay examines the expansion of the Sikh Empire in the North-West Frontier in the first half of the 19th century and the impacts of the campaigns by Nalwa on the Pashtun tribes. The essay draws on the oral traditions, historical documents (like the Umdat-ut-Tawarikh) and the crucial testament of the Wali of Swat to explore the theory that Pashtun men would dress up in female attire to avoid the Sikh soldiers, who were prohibited from harming women. Although the essay recognises the Pathani suits being ancient in origin in Central Asia, it argues that the continued existence of this legend serves as a powerful repository of the dynamics of fear caused, trauma of occupation and subversion of honour. The last hypothesis of the essay is that the Pathani suit is not just a traditional attire of the region, but rather a complex historical artefact of the dynamics of fear caused, survival of the community and the fluidity of identity crisis, in the face of complete domination.
Introduction: The Wind in the Khyber
Khyber Pass in the Indian subcontinent has never been a mere geographic landmark. It is a scar in the earth that has been healed by the rocks of various empires. For hundreds of years, the winds of hot, dry cold that roar down this narrow pass, a thirty-mile-long valley between Peshawar and Jalalabad, have borne the dust of invading armies marching through the pass. Persian, Greek, Mongol, and Mughal armies after armies marched eastward towards the fertile plains of Hindustan. However, at the beginning of the 19th century, the wind blew in the opposite direction. For the first in recorded history, the wind that blew from the East, not only defended the gate to the Indian subcontinent, it, marching through it, placed its fluttering flags on the Western banks of the river Indus and stared off towards Kabul and beyond. At the vanguard of this unprecedented reversal stood the mighty Sikh Empire. Leading the cavalry came a man whose name would become a whisper of terror in the mountains, and a legend of valour in the plains: General Hari Singh Nalwa. It is not in the stone forts and battlefields alone on which this Lion of the Punjab left a legacy. It is interwoven, possibly more curiously, into the very fabric of everyday frontier life. The loose, elegant shalwar and kameez, which is known today as the Pathani suit, is celebrated as a timeless icon of Pashtun masculinity and identity. Worn by the presidents and peasants alike, it is a garment of both dignity and ease. But folklore, the obstinate custodian of unrecorded history, points to a much more dramatic and complicated origin story. It breathes that this old traditional clothing was not created by fancy or fashion, but out of fear; that it was a hasty and desperate disguise taken up by Pashtun men in the hope of evading the wrath of Hari Singh Nalwa. The essay attempts to bridge the gap between the dry reports of military history and the living, breathing pulses of cultural memory. Through the tribal history of the Afghans, the Sikh Empire archives and the surviving oral history on either side of the border, we learn the human story behind the legend. It is a tale of conquest and survival, of the psychology of fear, and of how a single man’s shadow was long enough to change the way the people dressed
PART I
The man who would terrify the North West Frontier, one must understand the boy who looked into the eye of the beast. The year was 1804. This was a land that was fractured by the fall of the Mughals and ambitious invading Afghans, while the Sikh Misls(Confederacies) were carving up the Punjab. In the village of Gujranwala, a teenager, Hari Singh, a thirteen-year-old, was on a hunt. It was a rite of passage of the landed gentry, the real test of his manhood.
The encounter that resulted is the stuff of myth, yet it is enshrined in the official annals of the Sikh court with a solemnity that suggests it was a foundational moment of Hari Singh’s psychology. A huge Royal Bengal tiger, rudely awakened, dashed towards the hunting party. Young Hari Singh stood his ground as the horses reared and the grown men scrambled to safety. He expressed no panic, but only a cold and crystalline focus. When the beast sprang, with its claws extended, the boy did not discharge his matchlock; perhaps it misfired, perhaps he chose the intimacy of steel. With one hand, he seized the tiger by its jaw, holding the snapping maw at bay, and with the other, he drove his sword into the chest of the beast. As the dust settled, the tiger lay dead. The boy was bleeding, but unbowed. Maharaja Ranjit Singh at Lahore, when he heard of this exploit, was reported to have been astonished. He gave the boy the name “Nalwa,” a reference to the single-edged sword of the boar-hunter, but also a play on the family name. More to the point, he gave him the name of Baagh Maar, the Tiger Killer.[1] This early encounter with mortality and primal violence forget a persona that feared no man, natural or from the human world. When a thirteen-year-old boy could choke the life out of a tiger with his bare hands, what chance did a mortal enemy have?
The entry into the service of Maharaja Ranjit Singh marked Hari Singh Nalwa’s beginning of his apprenticeship in the art of war. The Durbar of Lahore was a cosmopolitan hub, where the Persianate courtly culture came into contact with the martial ethos of the Khalsa. In this instance, Nalwa was not just trained in the use of the sabre and the musket, but above all, in the intricacies of administration and of statecraft. He studied Persian, the language of the elite, which enabled him to manoeuvre the diplomatic intricacies of the region.[2]
The Sikh army was in the process of transformation under Maharaja Ranjit Singh. It was evolving from regularising the cavalry bands into a disciplined fighting force, the Fauj-i-Khas, trained by European officers, such as the Frenchman Jean-Francois Allard, and the Italian Ventura. However, Nalwa never lost his affinity with the traditional Sikh martial spirit. He was an intermediate between the old ways and the new, at home in the leading charge of horsemen with a flashing talwar (sword), or directing an artillery barrage. His ascent had been meteoric. By 1804, he was a commandant; by 1810, a General. His proven mettle in the conquest of Kasur in 1807 would make him known, and it was his reckless bravery in the midst of the heavy fire that would turn the tide of the battle.[3] But it was the battles against the Pathans across the Indus that would define his legacy. The plains of Punjab were not the same beast as the frontier was. It had a land of great passes, craggy peaks and rugged mountains, and a people who had never bowed bent to any foreign master. Nalwa would have to be more than just a general to conquer them: he would have to be a legend.
The North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the tribal region of Afghanistan were long ago referred to as the Graveyard of Empires. Geography of the frontier, on its part, is itself an enemy. The Hindu Kush range funnels its travellers down into narrow, killable corridors where only a few, resolute, courageous men can hold off an army. Pashtunwali an ancient code of honour that governed the region culturally and focused on Badla (revenge), Nang (honour) and Melmastia (hospitality). The central authority of a king was a distant concept to the tribes of the Pashtun; loyalty was to the clan and to the moral code y. They had gazed down the mountains for centuries and raided the Punjab plains, bringing loot and captives to be sold off as slaves in distant land markets. The idea of such an army from the plains, of people they considered to be soft agricultural people, could ascend into the mountains and govern them, was not only militarily improbable, but culturally insulting. The Afghan Empire, founded by Ahmad Shah Durrani, had once been the terror of India. However, by the early 19th century, the empire was fractured with civil wars between the Barakzai and Sadozai clans. The Sikh Empire, sensing weakness and seeking to make sure that it had to secure its western flank, found a chance to end the cycle of invasion, once and for all. They did not merely desire to raid; they wanted to annex the lands.
When Hari Singh Nalwa led his troops across the Indus at Attock in 1813, he was crossing not only a geographical boundary but also a psychological one. Attock, was the key to the gateway to the NWFP. The fort there had changed hands many times, but the Sikh Empire’s victory there, as Nalwa perceived, would signal that it would turn the tide.[4] This was a deep shock to the Pashtun consciousness. Traditionally, the current of power was from the West to the East. At this point, it was East to West. The Sikhs were not simply occupiers; they were also infidels (in the theological sense of the orthodox Muslims of the region) who dared to rule the believers. This religious aspect provided a layer of fervour to the resistance. The tribesmen fought like holy warriors (Ghazi), believing fighting the Sikhs was a one-way ticket to paradise. Hari Singh Nalwa understood that he could not wage a holy war solely with the use of conventional tactics. He had to demoralise them and break their spirit. He had to instil such a terrifying fear that it would override the promise of heaven. This psychological warfare became his hallmark, and it is in this soil of terror that the roots of the Pathani suit legend are buried.
Before Nalwa turned his gaze towards the task, he was tasked with the conquest of Kashmir, a paradise on earth that had now been turned into a hell of misrule. Governorship of Kashmir was a prestigious prize, and in 1819, it was the forces led by Nalwa that captured Srinagar.[5] As the Governor of Kashmir, Hari Singh Nalwa displayed a side of himself that was often overshadowed by his military ferocity: he was an administrator of fair, surprising fairness and foresight. He reorganised and reformed the revenue system so that the peasantry was not squeezed dry by the corrupt middlemen. He minted coins under his own name, an insignia of sovereign power.[6] But, in the background of the administrative clam, a constant reminder of the sovereign power was the presence of the iron hand. When the powerful and influential Bamba tribe revolted, Nalwa was quick and brutal in his response. He realised that mercy might be mistaken for weakness in the turbulent politics of the frontier. His experience in Kashmir also developed his knowledge in mountain warfare. He learned how to supply troops over rugged and difficult mountainous terrain, how to raise forts in distant parts of the country, and manage the logistics of an army operating from the capital. Such lessons would be invaluable when he moved towards the West, towards Hazara and Peshawar.
The Hazara country in the NWFP, west of the Indus, was a lawless land with fierce tribes such as the Tareen, Dhund, and Karlal. It was as much a place where even the Mughals had found it difficult to exercise their authority. In the year 1922, Nalwa was appointed as the Governor of Hazara by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The challenge was immense. The terrain was even more rugged than Kashmir, and the tribes were notoriously independent. The strategy that Nalwa chose was a combination of military engineering and psychological control. He established the town of Haripur, which was strategically positioned to block the trade routes. He pitched forts at key positions and created a wide network of eyes and ears along the valley.[7] However, it was his personal behaviour that truly intimidated the region. The stories of Nalwa riding, alone, into the camps of hostile chieftains, and the imposing presence and reputation doing more to secure peace than the arms of a thousand soldiers. He established his reputation as a ruler who could never be ambushed, never could be outsmarted and could not be resisted. The Terror of Hari Singh had begun to sweep like a chilly breeze through the passes and was preparing the way to his greatest challenge: Peshawar.
The winter capital of the Afghan Durrani Empire was Peshawar. To lose it was to lose the right to the empire itself. The city was on the approach of the Khyber Pass, a great oasis of orchards and bazaars, enclosed with high walls. To the Sikhs, the ultimate strategic objective was the capture of Peshawar; it would be the final door closed in the face of invasion by the West. Peshawar had been occupied by the Sikhs as early as 1818, but it was a different matter. The tribes (leaders being the Barakzai Sardar Mohammad Azim Khan) fought a guerrilla war that was relentless. The Sikhs found themselves isolated in the citadel, unable to venture into the countryside without being ambushed. In 1823, the Afghans mobilised a huge army to retake the city. The prime minister of Kabul, Azim Khan, led thousands of regular army soldiers and scores of tribal allies marching towards the east. It was now a stage set to engage in the Battle of Nowshera, which would determine the fate of the region for a century.
The Battle of Nowshera, which was fought in March 1823, was perhaps the finest hour of Hari Singh Nalwa’s battles. The Afghan army held the right bank of the Kabul River, in a position of confidence of superior numbers and a defensive position. Maharaja Ranjit Singh personally present, but he extensively trusted Nalwa with his judgment and his Warcraft. The turning point was reached when the Sikh guns, which were firing in the van of Nalwa, came into play. The trained fire destroyed the Afghan cavalry. The Pashtun tribesmen, who had not been accustomed to the stern discipline of the Sikh army, started to waver at seeing their right flank crumble. Watching it go by, Azim Khan knew that the day was lost. He went back to Kabul, and it is said that a few days after, he lamented the loss of Peshawar. It was at Nowshera that the plain broke the back of the Afghan resistance. It solidified Sikh domination of Peshawar and demonstrated that Hari Singh Nalwa was the unquestionable master of the frontier. The Sikhs had accomplished the impossible: they not only had fought the Afghans on their own terms, but also in an open battle. Nalwa knew that the trick of winning was not a frontal assault but in disrupting the cohesion of the enemy. He made a charge of cavalry across the river, and, after a momentary hesitation in the Afghan lines, made the charge. The battle was furious. It was the air filled with the smoke of muskets and the flash of sabres. Nalwa, always in the forefront, fought like a man possessed.[8] The turning point was reached when the Sikh artillery, positioned with Nalwa’s vanguard, found its range. The trained and disciplined firing shattered the Afghan cavalry. The Pashtun tribesmen, who had not been accustomed to the stern discipline of the Sikh army, started to waver, seeing their right flank crumble. Azim Khan, watching from a distance, realised the day was lost. He retreated to Kabul, and he died of a broken heart shortly after, lamenting the loss of Peshawar. It was at Nowshera that the back of the Afghan resistance was broken. It solidified Sikh domination of Peshawar and demonstrated that Hari Singh Nalwa was the undisputed master of the frontier. The Sikhs had accomplished the impossible: they had not only fought and defeated the Afghans on their own terms, but also in an open battle.
Following the victory at Nowshera, Hari Singh Nalwa became the Governor of Peshawar. This was the most dangerous posting in the Sikh empire. The city was surrounded by hostile tribes, the Yusufzais, the Khattaks, and the Afridis, who kept on testing the city’s perimeter. The administration of Nalwa in Peshawar is a study in psychological dominance. He was aware that he lacked the numbers to troops to police all the mountain passes. Therefore, he had to make the cost of rebellion too high to pay. He introduced a collective responsibility system: in case one tribe raided a Sikh convoy, the neighbouring tribes were held accountable. This divided the Pashtuns and prevented them from uniting against him.[9] He also used the Sikh reverence towards religious freedom to his advantage. In contrast to earlier leaders who could have forcibly converted or levied heavy religious taxes (the jizya), Nalwa preserved and protected the mosques and religious sites of the city. He also permitted the Qazis (judges) to adjudicate civil cases according to Islamic law. This practical and pragmatic strategy stripped the leaders of the tribes of the religious justification for jihad. They could not claim that they were fighting to defend their faith if the Sikh governor was protecting their mosques. But behind this administrative leniency lay the iron fist of military retribution. And whenever rebellion did arise, as was so often the case, Nalwa’s response was legendary in its severity. He hunted down insurgents in their mountain hideouts, dismantled their towers and burned their crops. It was this duality, protector of the peaceful, destroyer of the rebel, that contributed to the complex atmosphere of fear and awe. The crowning achievement of the strategic vision of Nalwa was the building of the fort at Jamrud. Jamrud was the key to the Khyber, strategically located at the very mouth of the Pass. The pass was an open pass, Jamrud serving as a highway to raiders. After Jamrud, it was a choked bottleneck. Construction began in 1836. It was a gigantic task and required hauling of the stones and timbers up the barren hills. Nalwa personally oversaw the construction, often labouring alongside his men to speed up the process.[10] The fort was squat with thick walls and bristling with cannons. The Sikhs were in a position to manage all the traffic coming in and out of Afghanistan through its ramparts. The Jamrud construction was a psychological trigger for the Afghans. It was a physical expression of Sikh power, a permanent scare on the landscape screaming, “We are here to stay.” This provocation could not be overlooked by the Emir of Kabul, Dost Muhammad Khan. He began to muster the largest army he could assemble to drive the Sikhs out of the pass. The stage was set to play the final scene of the drama.
The folklore of the Pathani suit must be interpreted within the context of this unrelenting pressure of the Sikh Army. The patrols, strict curfews and the construction of this imposing fort at Jamrud. The legend is not just about the clothes; it is about the breaking of the very human spirit under the weight of occupation. By the mid-1830s, the male population of the Peshawar valley was in a desperate position. The Sikhs were actively seeking to disarm the populace; being caught with a weapon or being identified as a member of the enemy militia attracted immediate execution or imprisonment. The Sikh patrols were active in the hills, and rebellion was paid in blood. Passed over generations, the oral traditions of the Sikhs and Pashtuns alike, the local men faced a terrifying dilemma. They had to move about, tending to their fields, to trade, to visit their relatives, but they were the active targets. However, there was a loophole in the Sikh code of conduct, rooted deeply in the teachings of Guru Gobind Singh. The Sikh soldier was prohibited from harming children, the aged and those who were defenceless. The Khalsa army too prided in this strict moral code.
The legend, as recounted by historians like Vanit Nalwas and validated by the surprising testimony of the Wali of Swat, posits that the Pashtun men exploited this moral code with a desperate ingenuity. [11]The traditional attire of the Punjabi women at the time, the shalwar (baggy trousers) and kameez (long tunic), was very distinct from the male garb of the Pashtun tribesmen, who often wore simpler tunics (different style of trousers). The story goes that the word was spread through the villages: “The Sikhs do not harm women, and in case you want to live, dress as they do.” Thus, the men started to dress in the shalwar kameez. They would pull over the thighs the long tails of the kameez, donned head coverings, and they adopted the gait of women. And when Sikh patrols spotted a glimpse of figures in shalwar kameez moving in the fields or through the streets, they assumed that they were civilians or women, and let them pass. It was a brilliant act of psychological camouflage. It turned the most powerful strength of the enemy, their honour, into a weakness.
What was initially meant to be a tactical rise, as the legend goes, turned out to be a lasting change in the culture. The successive generations that came after did not remember the fear that prompted the change. The shalwar kameez was no longer regarded as a disguise but as a traditional male attire. It was adapted, readjusted, tailored and turned into the Pathani suit- with its own particular cuts, heavier fabrics and its own distinct collars. For any war culture, this is one of the most humiliating narratives. To admit that your national attire, worn by your ancestors to hide from the conquering, strikes the very heart of Pashtunwali. It is an admission of defeat that transcends the battlefield, the very loss of their identity. This is precisely the very factor why the legend is so potent. It is that which has been murmured in the shadows of history, a truth that is very painful to be taught in textbooks, but too real to be just forgotten
Should this tale be no more than a Sikh boast, it might be branded wartime propaganda. The most convincing corroboration, however, is that which originated from a surprisingly source: a Pashtun king. The last ruler of the princely state of Swat, Miangul Aurangzeb, the Wali of Swat, was a man so deeply embedded in the history and culture of the Pashtun people. The Wali penned an open letter in the late 1990s as the Taliban started to ascend to power in Afghanistan and spill over to the border areas, where they imposed strict dress codes and moral policing. It was a scanting critique of the culture and historical interpretation by the Taliban. In this letter, he brought up the legend of Hari Singh Nalwa to deliver to the Taliban a crushing blow to their moral authority. The Wali wrote: "The Sikh army of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, under the leadership of Hari Singh Nalwa, came to the Frontier in the 1820s and swiftly conquered our ancestors... During this time, the word was spread around that the Sikhs did not harm elderly people, women, and children and that the local men who did not wish to earn the wrath of the Sikhs should wear the garb of Punjabi women, which was the Salwar-Kameez.”[12] He went on in a bitter irony: “The Pashtun men were delighted to see themselves clothed in the attire of Punjabi women as they were so much terrified they could not stand up... and this became the traditional dress ever since.” He questioned the Taliban, who were imposing the wearing of the shalwar kameez, whether they had any idea that they were imposing a dress code born out of fear of a Sikh general. Any Pashtun chief to recognise this history is an extraordinary act of honesty. The Wali of Swat had no reason to invent the story which would have humiliated his own people, unless he was led to believe it to be true and useful. His testimony is a bridge between folklore and historical fact. It suggests that this memory of this trauma, fear of Nalwa, was somehow preserved in the royal courts and in the oral history of the region, even though it was omitted from the sanitised versions of the recorded history. Another aspect of fluidity of culture was brought out in the intervention of the Wali. Clothes do not stand still; they change according to the winds of politics. The Pathani suit, which is now viewed as a totem of Pashtun resistance against Westernisation (e.g., the Taliban enforcing it in opposition to jeans), is revealed by the Wali to be a product of a much older resistance, a survival strategy against a different invader.
In order to be rigorous, the counter-narratives have to be addressed. Costume historians and those interested in the legend note that the shalwar and kameez are not of recent invention. The shalwar has a very long history, as it was worn by ancient Persians and Central Asians. The reliefs of Persepolis (500 BC) depict the subjects wearing trousers. The garment of the horseman is the shawlar, which is useful both in riding and moments in extreme and harsh climates.[13] It is argued that the Pashtuns, being an Iranic people related to the Persians, have been wearing variations of the perahan tunban (tunic and trousers) for a millennium. The tunban is essentially a shalwar. Hence, the legends that they have adopted in the 19th century are historically impossible; that they were already wearing this garment. However, proponents of the legend, including the Wali, suggest that the invention of the garment occurred, but a particular shift in style and usage. Or perhaps the men had adapted to the Punjabi cut of the shalwar, which it might have been fuller or pleated differently, or the particular way of wearing it (with the kameez lengthened) that imitated the women of the plains. Moreover, before the Sikh period, Pashtun men of some of their tribes wore specific clothing, such as the farkha or lungi, or shorter tunics that they could easily move about in the highlands. The shift to the longer, looser shalwar kameez may well have been a gradual process, accelerated by the social pressures of the Sikh occupation. The legend in this sense is a metaphor about the civilising or feminising of the warrior class under the thumb of the conqueror. Although the garment may or may not exist, the association of it with the fear of Nalwa is the cultural truth that matters.
The year was 1837. The fort at Jamrud was finished, and a thorn in the flesh of Kabul, an insult that could be tolerated by the Mir of Afghanistan, Dost Muhammad Khan. He mobilised a massive army, estimated to be over 60,000 strong, which included the elite Ghizai cavalry and the tribal irregulars.[14] The goal was to wipe Jamrud off the map and march on to the conquest of Peshawar. Hari Singh Nalwa was at Peshawar when the news reached him. The force at Jamrud was undermanned and commanded by Mahan Singh, but the Afghan horde was descending upon them. Nalwa was aware that once Jamrud was overrun, Peshawar would be too vulnerable to defend. He resolved on a fatal decision to march to the rescue, with a small force of reinforcement, leaving the safety of the city walls. He reached Jamrud and saw the fort besieged. The Afghans had surrounded it and cut off the water supply. The siege had begun. Instead of waiting in the fort, Nalwa decided to fight the enemy in the open to break the siege. It was a reckless, audacious move, which was not out of the character of the man who had wrestled with a tiger.
The battle raged for days. Nalwa made sorties out of the fort, with his sword flashing, cutting swaths of enemy. In the case of the Afghans, so frightful was his presence that they dared not close with him. But numbers have a weight all their own. As a fierce skirmish was going on, Nalwa was struck down. There are conflicting accounts as to whether it was a musket ball or a sword blow, but the injury was grievous. His body was bruised and broken as he fell off his horse. His lieutenants rushed to his side. The Lion of the Frontier was dying. During his last hours, Nalwa revealed a chilling strategic acumen. He knew that once the Afghans learned about his death, the morale of the Sikh defenders would plummet and the gate to Peshawar would open. He ordered his men to hide his death. “Do not let the enemy know” [15] He died soon after, in the shadow of the fort which he had built. His death was kept a secret among the Sikhs. They still fought and shouted that Nalwa was leading the charge, that the Tiger was still on the hunt. The Afghans were not sure what was happening as they heard the battle cries and saw the fierce resistance, hesitated. They could not imagine that the Sikhs could battle so hard and with such vigour without their commander.
Peshawar reinforcements led by Generals Ventura and Court eventually arrived. They broke through the Afghan rear, breaking the siege. When Dost Muhammad Khan saw his forces crumbling and fearing the legendary Nalwa still orchestrating the defence, he ordered a retreat. It was a Sikh triumph, but it felt like a defeat. It was not until the Afghans fled once more into the Khyber that the Sikhs announced that their general was dead. Upon receiving the news, Dost Muhammad Khan is said to have stopped his horse and to have gazed back towards the fort. “We have won the battle, but lost the war,” he lamented, or perhaps he only acknowledged the grim reality: “If such was the fight of the Sikhs without Nalwa, what would it be if he were alive?[16] The death of Hari Singh Nalwa marked the high-water mark of the Sikh Empire. There was no other general that possessed his audacity ot psychological mastery of the frontier. With a decade, the British would annex the Punjab, the Khyber would become a British Imperial problem. But the legend of Nalwa only grew in death. He became a sainted warrior in the Sikh tradition, as well as a ghost that haunted the imagination of the Pashtun.
The question is; why should the story of the Pathani suit persist? It continues to persist since it humanises the history of conquest. The abstractness of battles and dates, the intimacy of the clothing. The point that fear will turn what you wake up in the morning is a visceral, relatable concept. It addresses the trauma of the frontier. To the Pashtuns, the Sikh regime was a traumatic disruption of their cosmic order. They already were the masters of the raid, and now the prey. The adoption of the shalwar kameez, assuming the legend is true, was a coping mechanism, a way to survive in the world that turned upside down. It is a witness to the primordial instinct for survival over honour. For the Sikhs, the legend is a source of immense ethnic pride, that process to be hugely beneficial. It validates their history of martial valour. It tells a story where their ancestors were not just defenders of their own land, but conquerors who tamed the untamable into a manageable country. It transforms Hari Singh Nalwa into a superhero, a figure of mythic proportions.
The irony of the letter of the Wali of Swat resonates till this very day. Whilst the Pathani suit has gained worldwide status of Islamic identity and South Asian heritage, in the contemporary modern context, it often becomes a resistance symbol against Western cultural imperialism. But Wali’s contention reminds us that culture is a palimpsest, a writing over layers of history. What we currently consider traditional today may have occurred due to some compromise made by our ancestors, under duress conditions, centuries ago. This narrative makes us answer the question that makes us feel uncomfortable about our own living traditions. Are our customs chosen freely, or are they some shadow of old fears or submissions? A Pathani suit is a beautiful garment; it is comfortable and elegant. It doesn't matter why it was adopted for its aesthetic value. However, knowing and understanding the legend adds a layer of death to the garment. It makes it heavy, and it makes it historic
North-West Frontier history is written in blood and stone; it is also stitched into cloth. The legend of Hari Singh Nalwa and the Pathani suit is an intermediary bridge between the military history of the Sikh Empire and the cultural anthropology of the Pashtun tribes. Whether the Pashtun men literally wore the clothes of women in order to avoid the Tiger of Punjab, or whether the story is a metaphor concerning the deep cultural submissiveness of their lives, under his rule, the power of the narrative is beyond doubt. It embodies the essence of a time when the will of one man was so strong as to be able to change the daily habits of an entire region.
Hari Singh Nalwa died at Jamrud, but he never actually left the Khyber. He is still found there in the stones of the fort that still stands, and he is there, according to folklore, in the folds of the shalwar, which is fluttering in the wind. A silent testament to an era of terror and survival is the suit that millions of people wear today. It is a reminder of the fact that history is not merely what kings erect, but what people do to survive the kings. Ultimately, the story of the Pathani suit is an extremely human one. It is also about fear, the most basic and simplest of human feelings and emotions, and how it can shape civilisations in ways that we may not always notice. It is of a general who was so feared that he changed the fashion of a conquered people, and people who were so resilient that they turned a mark of disguise into a badge of honour. As the wind continues to howl through the Khyber Pass, it carries the echo of the Tiger's roar and the whisper of the men who wore the garb of women to live another day.
[1] Lepel H. Griffin, The Ranjit Singh and His Successors (London: Oxford University Press, 1848), 78. (Griffin details the tiger hunt incident based on court records).
[2] Hari Ram Gupta, History of the Sikhs (Lahore: Sikh University Press, 1944), Vol. III, 45. (Gupta discusses Nalwa's education and administrative training in Lahore).
[3] Sohan Lal Suri, Umdat-ut-Tawarikh (Lahore: Darbar-i-Mualla, 1885), Vol. II, 120. (The official court chronicle provides a contemporary account of the Kasur campaign.
[4] Jean-Marie Lafont, Maharaja Ranjit Singh: The French Connection (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2002), 112. (Lafont analyses the strategic importance of the Attock crossing).
[5] Ganda Singh, Maharaja Ranjit Singh (Amritsar: Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, 1982), 156. (Standard biography covering the Kashmir conquest).
[6] . J.D. Cunningham, A History of the Sikhs (London: John Murray, 1849), 230. (Cunningham notes Nalwa’s administrative reforms in Kashmir, including coinage).
[7] S.S. Suri, Hari Singh Nalwa: The Great Sikh General (New Delhi: Harman Publishing, 1993), 89. (Suri details the founding of Haripur and the subjugation of the Hazara tribes).
[8] Prem Singh Hoti, Hari Singh Nalwa (Peshawar: S. Hoti, 1937), 145. (A regional account focusing on the tactics used at the Battle of Nowshera).
[9] Shahamat Ali, The Sikhs and Afghans (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1847), 212. (Ali, a contemporary observer, comments on Nalwa’s strict punitive measures and collective responsibility policies).
[10] Vanit Nalwa, Hari Singh Nalwa: Champion of the Khalsaji (New Delhi: Rupa & Co, 2009), 210. (The author, a descendant, provides detailed descriptions of the construction of Jamrud).
[11] Vanit Nalwa, Hari Singh Nalwa, 218. (This work collates the oral traditions regarding the shalwar kameez legend).
[12] Miangul Aurangzeb, “Open Letter to the Taliban,” The News International (Karachi), November 12, 1996. (Primary source of the Wali’s statement).
[13] Willem Vogelsang, The Afghans (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 98. (Vogelsang provides the historical counter-narrative regarding the ancient origins of Pashtun dress).
[14] Henry George Raverty, Notes on Afghanistan and Baluchistan(London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1888), 340. (Raverty estimates the Afghan forces at Jamrud).
[15] Harbans Singh, The Encyclopedia of Sikhism (Patiala: Punjabi University, 1997), 202. (Entry on Hari Singh Nalwa describes his final moments and the order to conceal his death).
[16] Shahamat Ali, The Sikhs and Afghans, 255. (Quotes the reaction of Dost Muhammad Khan upon learning of Nalwa's death).
This essay focuses on the convergence of military conquest, cultural adaptation and folklore by analysing the legend and life of General Hari Singh Nalwa and the origin and emergence of the Pathani suit (Shalwar Kameez). The essay examines the expansion of the Sikh Empire in the North-West Frontier in the first half of the 19th century and the impacts of the campaigns by Nalwa on the Pashtun tribes. The essay draws on the oral traditions, historical documents (like the Umdat-ut-Tawarikh) and the crucial testament of the Wali of Swat to explore the theory that Pashtun men would dress up in female attire to avoid the Sikh soldiers, who were prohibited from harming women. Although the essay recognises the Pathani suits being ancient in origin in Central Asia, it argues that the continued existence of this legend serves as a powerful repository of the dynamics of fear caused, trauma of occupation and subversion of honour. The last hypothesis of the essay is that the Pathani suit is not just a traditional attire of the region, but rather a complex historical artefact of the dynamics of fear caused, survival of the community and the fluidity of identity crisis, in the face of complete domination.
Introduction: The Wind in the Khyber
Khyber Pass in the Indian subcontinent has never been a mere geographic landmark. It is a scar in the earth that has been healed by the rocks of various empires. For hundreds of years, the winds of hot, dry cold that roar down this narrow pass, a thirty-mile-long valley between Peshawar and Jalalabad, have borne the dust of invading armies marching through the pass. Persian, Greek, Mongol, and Mughal armies after armies marched eastward towards the fertile plains of Hindustan. However, at the beginning of the 19th century, the wind blew in the opposite direction. For the first in recorded history, the wind that blew from the East, not only defended the gate to the Indian subcontinent, it, marching through it, placed its fluttering flags on the Western banks of the river Indus and stared off towards Kabul and beyond. At the vanguard of this unprecedented reversal stood the mighty Sikh Empire. Leading the cavalry came a man whose name would become a whisper of terror in the mountains, and a legend of valour in the plains: General Hari Singh Nalwa. It is not in the stone forts and battlefields alone on which this Lion of the Punjab left a legacy. It is interwoven, possibly more curiously, into the very fabric of everyday frontier life. The loose, elegant shalwar and kameez, which is known today as the Pathani suit, is celebrated as a timeless icon of Pashtun masculinity and identity. Worn by the presidents and peasants alike, it is a garment of both dignity and ease. But folklore, the obstinate custodian of unrecorded history, points to a much more dramatic and complicated origin story. It breathes that this old traditional clothing was not created by fancy or fashion, but out of fear; that it was a hasty and desperate disguise taken up by Pashtun men in the hope of evading the wrath of Hari Singh Nalwa. The essay attempts to bridge the gap between the dry reports of military history and the living, breathing pulses of cultural memory. Through the tribal history of the Afghans, the Sikh Empire archives and the surviving oral history on either side of the border, we learn the human story behind the legend. It is a tale of conquest and survival, of the psychology of fear, and of how a single man’s shadow was long enough to change the way the people dressed
PART I
The man who would terrify the North West Frontier, one must understand the boy who looked into the eye of the beast. The year was 1804. This was a land that was fractured by the fall of the Mughals and ambitious invading Afghans, while the Sikh Misls(Confederacies) were carving up the Punjab. In the village of Gujranwala, a teenager, Hari Singh, a thirteen-year-old, was on a hunt. It was a rite of passage of the landed gentry, the real test of his manhood.
The encounter that resulted is the stuff of myth, yet it is enshrined in the official annals of the Sikh court with a solemnity that suggests it was a foundational moment of Hari Singh’s psychology. A huge Royal Bengal tiger, rudely awakened, dashed towards the hunting party. Young Hari Singh stood his ground as the horses reared and the grown men scrambled to safety. He expressed no panic, but only a cold and crystalline focus. When the beast sprang, with its claws extended, the boy did not discharge his matchlock; perhaps it misfired, perhaps he chose the intimacy of steel. With one hand, he seized the tiger by its jaw, holding the snapping maw at bay, and with the other, he drove his sword into the chest of the beast. As the dust settled, the tiger lay dead. The boy was bleeding, but unbowed. Maharaja Ranjit Singh at Lahore, when he heard of this exploit, was reported to have been astonished. He gave the boy the name “Nalwa,” a reference to the single-edged sword of the boar-hunter, but also a play on the family name. More to the point, he gave him the name of Baagh Maar, the Tiger Killer.[1] This early encounter with mortality and primal violence forget a persona that feared no man, natural or from the human world. When a thirteen-year-old boy could choke the life out of a tiger with his bare hands, what chance did a mortal enemy have?
The entry into the service of Maharaja Ranjit Singh marked Hari Singh Nalwa’s beginning of his apprenticeship in the art of war. The Durbar of Lahore was a cosmopolitan hub, where the Persianate courtly culture came into contact with the martial ethos of the Khalsa. In this instance, Nalwa was not just trained in the use of the sabre and the musket, but above all, in the intricacies of administration and of statecraft. He studied Persian, the language of the elite, which enabled him to manoeuvre the diplomatic intricacies of the region.[2]
The Sikh army was in the process of transformation under Maharaja Ranjit Singh. It was evolving from regularising the cavalry bands into a disciplined fighting force, the Fauj-i-Khas, trained by European officers, such as the Frenchman Jean-Francois Allard, and the Italian Ventura. However, Nalwa never lost his affinity with the traditional Sikh martial spirit. He was an intermediate between the old ways and the new, at home in the leading charge of horsemen with a flashing talwar (sword), or directing an artillery barrage. His ascent had been meteoric. By 1804, he was a commandant; by 1810, a General. His proven mettle in the conquest of Kasur in 1807 would make him known, and it was his reckless bravery in the midst of the heavy fire that would turn the tide of the battle.[3] But it was the battles against the Pathans across the Indus that would define his legacy. The plains of Punjab were not the same beast as the frontier was. It had a land of great passes, craggy peaks and rugged mountains, and a people who had never bowed bent to any foreign master. Nalwa would have to be more than just a general to conquer them: he would have to be a legend.
The North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the tribal region of Afghanistan were long ago referred to as the Graveyard of Empires. Geography of the frontier, on its part, is itself an enemy. The Hindu Kush range funnels its travellers down into narrow, killable corridors where only a few, resolute, courageous men can hold off an army. Pashtunwali an ancient code of honour that governed the region culturally and focused on Badla (revenge), Nang (honour) and Melmastia (hospitality). The central authority of a king was a distant concept to the tribes of the Pashtun; loyalty was to the clan and to the moral code y. They had gazed down the mountains for centuries and raided the Punjab plains, bringing loot and captives to be sold off as slaves in distant land markets. The idea of such an army from the plains, of people they considered to be soft agricultural people, could ascend into the mountains and govern them, was not only militarily improbable, but culturally insulting. The Afghan Empire, founded by Ahmad Shah Durrani, had once been the terror of India. However, by the early 19th century, the empire was fractured with civil wars between the Barakzai and Sadozai clans. The Sikh Empire, sensing weakness and seeking to make sure that it had to secure its western flank, found a chance to end the cycle of invasion, once and for all. They did not merely desire to raid; they wanted to annex the lands.
When Hari Singh Nalwa led his troops across the Indus at Attock in 1813, he was crossing not only a geographical boundary but also a psychological one. Attock, was the key to the gateway to the NWFP. The fort there had changed hands many times, but the Sikh Empire’s victory there, as Nalwa perceived, would signal that it would turn the tide.[4] This was a deep shock to the Pashtun consciousness. Traditionally, the current of power was from the West to the East. At this point, it was East to West. The Sikhs were not simply occupiers; they were also infidels (in the theological sense of the orthodox Muslims of the region) who dared to rule the believers. This religious aspect provided a layer of fervour to the resistance. The tribesmen fought like holy warriors (Ghazi), believing fighting the Sikhs was a one-way ticket to paradise. Hari Singh Nalwa understood that he could not wage a holy war solely with the use of conventional tactics. He had to demoralise them and break their spirit. He had to instil such a terrifying fear that it would override the promise of heaven. This psychological warfare became his hallmark, and it is in this soil of terror that the roots of the Pathani suit legend are buried.
Before Nalwa turned his gaze towards the task, he was tasked with the conquest of Kashmir, a paradise on earth that had now been turned into a hell of misrule. Governorship of Kashmir was a prestigious prize, and in 1819, it was the forces led by Nalwa that captured Srinagar.[5] As the Governor of Kashmir, Hari Singh Nalwa displayed a side of himself that was often overshadowed by his military ferocity: he was an administrator of fair, surprising fairness and foresight. He reorganised and reformed the revenue system so that the peasantry was not squeezed dry by the corrupt middlemen. He minted coins under his own name, an insignia of sovereign power.[6] But, in the background of the administrative clam, a constant reminder of the sovereign power was the presence of the iron hand. When the powerful and influential Bamba tribe revolted, Nalwa was quick and brutal in his response. He realised that mercy might be mistaken for weakness in the turbulent politics of the frontier. His experience in Kashmir also developed his knowledge in mountain warfare. He learned how to supply troops over rugged and difficult mountainous terrain, how to raise forts in distant parts of the country, and manage the logistics of an army operating from the capital. Such lessons would be invaluable when he moved towards the West, towards Hazara and Peshawar.
The Hazara country in the NWFP, west of the Indus, was a lawless land with fierce tribes such as the Tareen, Dhund, and Karlal. It was as much a place where even the Mughals had found it difficult to exercise their authority. In the year 1922, Nalwa was appointed as the Governor of Hazara by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The challenge was immense. The terrain was even more rugged than Kashmir, and the tribes were notoriously independent. The strategy that Nalwa chose was a combination of military engineering and psychological control. He established the town of Haripur, which was strategically positioned to block the trade routes. He pitched forts at key positions and created a wide network of eyes and ears along the valley.[7] However, it was his personal behaviour that truly intimidated the region. The stories of Nalwa riding, alone, into the camps of hostile chieftains, and the imposing presence and reputation doing more to secure peace than the arms of a thousand soldiers. He established his reputation as a ruler who could never be ambushed, never could be outsmarted and could not be resisted. The Terror of Hari Singh had begun to sweep like a chilly breeze through the passes and was preparing the way to his greatest challenge: Peshawar.
The winter capital of the Afghan Durrani Empire was Peshawar. To lose it was to lose the right to the empire itself. The city was on the approach of the Khyber Pass, a great oasis of orchards and bazaars, enclosed with high walls. To the Sikhs, the ultimate strategic objective was the capture of Peshawar; it would be the final door closed in the face of invasion by the West. Peshawar had been occupied by the Sikhs as early as 1818, but it was a different matter. The tribes (leaders being the Barakzai Sardar Mohammad Azim Khan) fought a guerrilla war that was relentless. The Sikhs found themselves isolated in the citadel, unable to venture into the countryside without being ambushed. In 1823, the Afghans mobilised a huge army to retake the city. The prime minister of Kabul, Azim Khan, led thousands of regular army soldiers and scores of tribal allies marching towards the east. It was now a stage set to engage in the Battle of Nowshera, which would determine the fate of the region for a century.
The Battle of Nowshera, which was fought in March 1823, was perhaps the finest hour of Hari Singh Nalwa’s battles. The Afghan army held the right bank of the Kabul River, in a position of confidence of superior numbers and a defensive position. Maharaja Ranjit Singh personally present, but he extensively trusted Nalwa with his judgment and his Warcraft. The turning point was reached when the Sikh guns, which were firing in the van of Nalwa, came into play. The trained fire destroyed the Afghan cavalry. The Pashtun tribesmen, who had not been accustomed to the stern discipline of the Sikh army, started to waver at seeing their right flank crumble. Watching it go by, Azim Khan knew that the day was lost. He went back to Kabul, and it is said that a few days after, he lamented the loss of Peshawar. It was at Nowshera that the plain broke the back of the Afghan resistance. It solidified Sikh domination of Peshawar and demonstrated that Hari Singh Nalwa was the unquestionable master of the frontier. The Sikhs had accomplished the impossible: they not only had fought the Afghans on their own terms, but also in an open battle. Nalwa knew that the trick of winning was not a frontal assault but in disrupting the cohesion of the enemy. He made a charge of cavalry across the river, and, after a momentary hesitation in the Afghan lines, made the charge. The battle was furious. It was the air filled with the smoke of muskets and the flash of sabres. Nalwa, always in the forefront, fought like a man possessed.[8] The turning point was reached when the Sikh artillery, positioned with Nalwa’s vanguard, found its range. The trained and disciplined firing shattered the Afghan cavalry. The Pashtun tribesmen, who had not been accustomed to the stern discipline of the Sikh army, started to waver, seeing their right flank crumble. Azim Khan, watching from a distance, realised the day was lost. He retreated to Kabul, and he died of a broken heart shortly after, lamenting the loss of Peshawar. It was at Nowshera that the back of the Afghan resistance was broken. It solidified Sikh domination of Peshawar and demonstrated that Hari Singh Nalwa was the undisputed master of the frontier. The Sikhs had accomplished the impossible: they had not only fought and defeated the Afghans on their own terms, but also in an open battle.
Following the victory at Nowshera, Hari Singh Nalwa became the Governor of Peshawar. This was the most dangerous posting in the Sikh empire. The city was surrounded by hostile tribes, the Yusufzais, the Khattaks, and the Afridis, who kept on testing the city’s perimeter. The administration of Nalwa in Peshawar is a study in psychological dominance. He was aware that he lacked the numbers to troops to police all the mountain passes. Therefore, he had to make the cost of rebellion too high to pay. He introduced a collective responsibility system: in case one tribe raided a Sikh convoy, the neighbouring tribes were held accountable. This divided the Pashtuns and prevented them from uniting against him.[9] He also used the Sikh reverence towards religious freedom to his advantage. In contrast to earlier leaders who could have forcibly converted or levied heavy religious taxes (the jizya), Nalwa preserved and protected the mosques and religious sites of the city. He also permitted the Qazis (judges) to adjudicate civil cases according to Islamic law. This practical and pragmatic strategy stripped the leaders of the tribes of the religious justification for jihad. They could not claim that they were fighting to defend their faith if the Sikh governor was protecting their mosques. But behind this administrative leniency lay the iron fist of military retribution. And whenever rebellion did arise, as was so often the case, Nalwa’s response was legendary in its severity. He hunted down insurgents in their mountain hideouts, dismantled their towers and burned their crops. It was this duality, protector of the peaceful, destroyer of the rebel, that contributed to the complex atmosphere of fear and awe. The crowning achievement of the strategic vision of Nalwa was the building of the fort at Jamrud. Jamrud was the key to the Khyber, strategically located at the very mouth of the Pass. The pass was an open pass, Jamrud serving as a highway to raiders. After Jamrud, it was a choked bottleneck. Construction began in 1836. It was a gigantic task and required hauling of the stones and timbers up the barren hills. Nalwa personally oversaw the construction, often labouring alongside his men to speed up the process.[10] The fort was squat with thick walls and bristling with cannons. The Sikhs were in a position to manage all the traffic coming in and out of Afghanistan through its ramparts. The Jamrud construction was a psychological trigger for the Afghans. It was a physical expression of Sikh power, a permanent scare on the landscape screaming, “We are here to stay.” This provocation could not be overlooked by the Emir of Kabul, Dost Muhammad Khan. He began to muster the largest army he could assemble to drive the Sikhs out of the pass. The stage was set to play the final scene of the drama.
The folklore of the Pathani suit must be interpreted within the context of this unrelenting pressure of the Sikh Army. The patrols, strict curfews and the construction of this imposing fort at Jamrud. The legend is not just about the clothes; it is about the breaking of the very human spirit under the weight of occupation. By the mid-1830s, the male population of the Peshawar valley was in a desperate position. The Sikhs were actively seeking to disarm the populace; being caught with a weapon or being identified as a member of the enemy militia attracted immediate execution or imprisonment. The Sikh patrols were active in the hills, and rebellion was paid in blood. Passed over generations, the oral traditions of the Sikhs and Pashtuns alike, the local men faced a terrifying dilemma. They had to move about, tending to their fields, to trade, to visit their relatives, but they were the active targets. However, there was a loophole in the Sikh code of conduct, rooted deeply in the teachings of Guru Gobind Singh. The Sikh soldier was prohibited from harming children, the aged and those who were defenceless. The Khalsa army too prided in this strict moral code.
The legend, as recounted by historians like Vanit Nalwas and validated by the surprising testimony of the Wali of Swat, posits that the Pashtun men exploited this moral code with a desperate ingenuity. [11]The traditional attire of the Punjabi women at the time, the shalwar (baggy trousers) and kameez (long tunic), was very distinct from the male garb of the Pashtun tribesmen, who often wore simpler tunics (different style of trousers). The story goes that the word was spread through the villages: “The Sikhs do not harm women, and in case you want to live, dress as they do.” Thus, the men started to dress in the shalwar kameez. They would pull over the thighs the long tails of the kameez, donned head coverings, and they adopted the gait of women. And when Sikh patrols spotted a glimpse of figures in shalwar kameez moving in the fields or through the streets, they assumed that they were civilians or women, and let them pass. It was a brilliant act of psychological camouflage. It turned the most powerful strength of the enemy, their honour, into a weakness.
What was initially meant to be a tactical rise, as the legend goes, turned out to be a lasting change in the culture. The successive generations that came after did not remember the fear that prompted the change. The shalwar kameez was no longer regarded as a disguise but as a traditional male attire. It was adapted, readjusted, tailored and turned into the Pathani suit- with its own particular cuts, heavier fabrics and its own distinct collars. For any war culture, this is one of the most humiliating narratives. To admit that your national attire, worn by your ancestors to hide from the conquering, strikes the very heart of Pashtunwali. It is an admission of defeat that transcends the battlefield, the very loss of their identity. This is precisely the very factor why the legend is so potent. It is that which has been murmured in the shadows of history, a truth that is very painful to be taught in textbooks, but too real to be just forgotten
Should this tale be no more than a Sikh boast, it might be branded wartime propaganda. The most convincing corroboration, however, is that which originated from a surprisingly source: a Pashtun king. The last ruler of the princely state of Swat, Miangul Aurangzeb, the Wali of Swat, was a man so deeply embedded in the history and culture of the Pashtun people. The Wali penned an open letter in the late 1990s as the Taliban started to ascend to power in Afghanistan and spill over to the border areas, where they imposed strict dress codes and moral policing. It was a scanting critique of the culture and historical interpretation by the Taliban. In this letter, he brought up the legend of Hari Singh Nalwa to deliver to the Taliban a crushing blow to their moral authority. The Wali wrote: "The Sikh army of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, under the leadership of Hari Singh Nalwa, came to the Frontier in the 1820s and swiftly conquered our ancestors... During this time, the word was spread around that the Sikhs did not harm elderly people, women, and children and that the local men who did not wish to earn the wrath of the Sikhs should wear the garb of Punjabi women, which was the Salwar-Kameez.”[12] He went on in a bitter irony: “The Pashtun men were delighted to see themselves clothed in the attire of Punjabi women as they were so much terrified they could not stand up... and this became the traditional dress ever since.” He questioned the Taliban, who were imposing the wearing of the shalwar kameez, whether they had any idea that they were imposing a dress code born out of fear of a Sikh general. Any Pashtun chief to recognise this history is an extraordinary act of honesty. The Wali of Swat had no reason to invent the story which would have humiliated his own people, unless he was led to believe it to be true and useful. His testimony is a bridge between folklore and historical fact. It suggests that this memory of this trauma, fear of Nalwa, was somehow preserved in the royal courts and in the oral history of the region, even though it was omitted from the sanitised versions of the recorded history. Another aspect of fluidity of culture was brought out in the intervention of the Wali. Clothes do not stand still; they change according to the winds of politics. The Pathani suit, which is now viewed as a totem of Pashtun resistance against Westernisation (e.g., the Taliban enforcing it in opposition to jeans), is revealed by the Wali to be a product of a much older resistance, a survival strategy against a different invader.
In order to be rigorous, the counter-narratives have to be addressed. Costume historians and those interested in the legend note that the shalwar and kameez are not of recent invention. The shalwar has a very long history, as it was worn by ancient Persians and Central Asians. The reliefs of Persepolis (500 BC) depict the subjects wearing trousers. The garment of the horseman is the shawlar, which is useful both in riding and moments in extreme and harsh climates.[13] It is argued that the Pashtuns, being an Iranic people related to the Persians, have been wearing variations of the perahan tunban (tunic and trousers) for a millennium. The tunban is essentially a shalwar. Hence, the legends that they have adopted in the 19th century are historically impossible; that they were already wearing this garment. However, proponents of the legend, including the Wali, suggest that the invention of the garment occurred, but a particular shift in style and usage. Or perhaps the men had adapted to the Punjabi cut of the shalwar, which it might have been fuller or pleated differently, or the particular way of wearing it (with the kameez lengthened) that imitated the women of the plains. Moreover, before the Sikh period, Pashtun men of some of their tribes wore specific clothing, such as the farkha or lungi, or shorter tunics that they could easily move about in the highlands. The shift to the longer, looser shalwar kameez may well have been a gradual process, accelerated by the social pressures of the Sikh occupation. The legend in this sense is a metaphor about the civilising or feminising of the warrior class under the thumb of the conqueror. Although the garment may or may not exist, the association of it with the fear of Nalwa is the cultural truth that matters.
PART II
The year was 1837. The fort at Jamrud was finished, and a thorn in the flesh of Kabul, an insult that could be tolerated by the Mir of Afghanistan, Dost Muhammad Khan. He mobilised a massive army, estimated to be over 60,000 strong, which included the elite Ghizai cavalry and the tribal irregulars.[14] The goal was to wipe Jamrud off the map and march on to the conquest of Peshawar. Hari Singh Nalwa was at Peshawar when the news reached him. The force at Jamrud was undermanned and commanded by Mahan Singh, but the Afghan horde was descending upon them. Nalwa was aware that once Jamrud was overrun, Peshawar would be too vulnerable to defend. He resolved on a fatal decision to march to the rescue, with a small force of reinforcement, leaving the safety of the city walls. He reached Jamrud and saw the fort besieged. The Afghans had surrounded it and cut off the water supply. The siege had begun. Instead of waiting in the fort, Nalwa decided to fight the enemy in the open to break the siege. It was a reckless, audacious move, which was not out of the character of the man who had wrestled with a tiger.
The battle raged for days. Nalwa made sorties out of the fort, with his sword flashing, cutting swaths of enemy. In the case of the Afghans, so frightful was his presence that they dared not close with him. But numbers have a weight all their own. As a fierce skirmish was going on, Nalwa was struck down. There are conflicting accounts as to whether it was a musket ball or a sword blow, but the injury was grievous. His body was bruised and broken as he fell off his horse. His lieutenants rushed to his side. The Lion of the Frontier was dying. During his last hours, Nalwa revealed a chilling strategic acumen. He knew that once the Afghans learned about his death, the morale of the Sikh defenders would plummet and the gate to Peshawar would open. He ordered his men to hide his death. “Do not let the enemy know” [15] He died soon after, in the shadow of the fort which he had built. His death was kept a secret among the Sikhs. They still fought and shouted that Nalwa was leading the charge, that the Tiger was still on the hunt. The Afghans were not sure what was happening as they heard the battle cries and saw the fierce resistance, hesitated. They could not imagine that the Sikhs could battle so hard and with such vigour without their commander.
Peshawar reinforcements led by Generals Ventura and Court eventually arrived. They broke through the Afghan rear, breaking the siege. When Dost Muhammad Khan saw his forces crumbling and fearing the legendary Nalwa still orchestrating the defence, he ordered a retreat. It was a Sikh triumph, but it felt like a defeat. It was not until the Afghans fled once more into the Khyber that the Sikhs announced that their general was dead. Upon receiving the news, Dost Muhammad Khan is said to have stopped his horse and to have gazed back towards the fort. “We have won the battle, but lost the war,” he lamented, or perhaps he only acknowledged the grim reality: “If such was the fight of the Sikhs without Nalwa, what would it be if he were alive?[16] The death of Hari Singh Nalwa marked the high-water mark of the Sikh Empire. There was no other general that possessed his audacity ot psychological mastery of the frontier. With a decade, the British would annex the Punjab, the Khyber would become a British Imperial problem. But the legend of Nalwa only grew in death. He became a sainted warrior in the Sikh tradition, as well as a ghost that haunted the imagination of the Pashtun.
The question is; why should the story of the Pathani suit persist? It continues to persist since it humanises the history of conquest. The abstractness of battles and dates, the intimacy of the clothing. The point that fear will turn what you wake up in the morning is a visceral, relatable concept. It addresses the trauma of the frontier. To the Pashtuns, the Sikh regime was a traumatic disruption of their cosmic order. They already were the masters of the raid, and now the prey. The adoption of the shalwar kameez, assuming the legend is true, was a coping mechanism, a way to survive in the world that turned upside down. It is a witness to the primordial instinct for survival over honour. For the Sikhs, the legend is a source of immense ethnic pride, that process to be hugely beneficial. It validates their history of martial valour. It tells a story where their ancestors were not just defenders of their own land, but conquerors who tamed the untamable into a manageable country. It transforms Hari Singh Nalwa into a superhero, a figure of mythic proportions.
The irony of the letter of the Wali of Swat resonates till this very day. Whilst the Pathani suit has gained worldwide status of Islamic identity and South Asian heritage, in the contemporary modern context, it often becomes a resistance symbol against Western cultural imperialism. But Wali’s contention reminds us that culture is a palimpsest, a writing over layers of history. What we currently consider traditional today may have occurred due to some compromise made by our ancestors, under duress conditions, centuries ago. This narrative makes us answer the question that makes us feel uncomfortable about our own living traditions. Are our customs chosen freely, or are they some shadow of old fears or submissions? A Pathani suit is a beautiful garment; it is comfortable and elegant. It doesn't matter why it was adopted for its aesthetic value. However, knowing and understanding the legend adds a layer of death to the garment. It makes it heavy, and it makes it historic
North-West Frontier history is written in blood and stone; it is also stitched into cloth. The legend of Hari Singh Nalwa and the Pathani suit is an intermediary bridge between the military history of the Sikh Empire and the cultural anthropology of the Pashtun tribes. Whether the Pashtun men literally wore the clothes of women in order to avoid the Tiger of Punjab, or whether the story is a metaphor concerning the deep cultural submissiveness of their lives, under his rule, the power of the narrative is beyond doubt. It embodies the essence of a time when the will of one man was so strong as to be able to change the daily habits of an entire region.
Hari Singh Nalwa died at Jamrud, but he never actually left the Khyber. He is still found there in the stones of the fort that still stands, and he is there, according to folklore, in the folds of the shalwar, which is fluttering in the wind. A silent testament to an era of terror and survival is the suit that millions of people wear today. It is a reminder of the fact that history is not merely what kings erect, but what people do to survive the kings. Ultimately, the story of the Pathani suit is an extremely human one. It is also about fear, the most basic and simplest of human feelings and emotions, and how it can shape civilisations in ways that we may not always notice. It is of a general who was so feared that he changed the fashion of a conquered people, and people who were so resilient that they turned a mark of disguise into a badge of honour. As the wind continues to howl through the Khyber Pass, it carries the echo of the Tiger's roar and the whisper of the men who wore the garb of women to live another day.
[1] Lepel H. Griffin, The Ranjit Singh and His Successors (London: Oxford University Press, 1848), 78. (Griffin details the tiger hunt incident based on court records).
[2] Hari Ram Gupta, History of the Sikhs (Lahore: Sikh University Press, 1944), Vol. III, 45. (Gupta discusses Nalwa's education and administrative training in Lahore).
[3] Sohan Lal Suri, Umdat-ut-Tawarikh (Lahore: Darbar-i-Mualla, 1885), Vol. II, 120. (The official court chronicle provides a contemporary account of the Kasur campaign.
[4] Jean-Marie Lafont, Maharaja Ranjit Singh: The French Connection (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2002), 112. (Lafont analyses the strategic importance of the Attock crossing).
[5] Ganda Singh, Maharaja Ranjit Singh (Amritsar: Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, 1982), 156. (Standard biography covering the Kashmir conquest).
[6] . J.D. Cunningham, A History of the Sikhs (London: John Murray, 1849), 230. (Cunningham notes Nalwa’s administrative reforms in Kashmir, including coinage).
[7] S.S. Suri, Hari Singh Nalwa: The Great Sikh General (New Delhi: Harman Publishing, 1993), 89. (Suri details the founding of Haripur and the subjugation of the Hazara tribes).
[8] Prem Singh Hoti, Hari Singh Nalwa (Peshawar: S. Hoti, 1937), 145. (A regional account focusing on the tactics used at the Battle of Nowshera).
[9] Shahamat Ali, The Sikhs and Afghans (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1847), 212. (Ali, a contemporary observer, comments on Nalwa’s strict punitive measures and collective responsibility policies).
[10] Vanit Nalwa, Hari Singh Nalwa: Champion of the Khalsaji (New Delhi: Rupa & Co, 2009), 210. (The author, a descendant, provides detailed descriptions of the construction of Jamrud).
[11] Vanit Nalwa, Hari Singh Nalwa, 218. (This work collates the oral traditions regarding the shalwar kameez legend).
[12] Miangul Aurangzeb, “Open Letter to the Taliban,” The News International (Karachi), November 12, 1996. (Primary source of the Wali’s statement).
[13] Willem Vogelsang, The Afghans (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 98. (Vogelsang provides the historical counter-narrative regarding the ancient origins of Pashtun dress).
[14] Henry George Raverty, Notes on Afghanistan and Baluchistan(London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1888), 340. (Raverty estimates the Afghan forces at Jamrud).
[15] Harbans Singh, The Encyclopedia of Sikhism (Patiala: Punjabi University, 1997), 202. (Entry on Hari Singh Nalwa describes his final moments and the order to conceal his death).
[16] Shahamat Ali, The Sikhs and Afghans, 255. (Quotes the reaction of Dost Muhammad Khan upon learning of Nalwa's death).
