Jamrud Fort (Pakistan) is under the control of Pakistan military and out of bounds for public. During my trip in October 2014, I remained unsatiated as I could not enter the fort which was built by the famous Sikh general, Hari Singh Nalwa. In silence, I had returned, wondering how I can provide a voice!
Irrational faith is an assertion that we must revolt against the world’s meaninglessness through our passion! Death, the ultimate reality, which will assassinate all our memories, will torment us in the end by resounding, “YOU SAW NOTHING. YOU DID NOT LIVE!”
A passionate persistence for years, and finally in January 2017, I was inside the Jamrud Fort. Scaling the rubble of the central structure, I headed to the room where Hari Singh Nalwa’s body was kept after he was killed during a battle with the Afghans in 1837. It pained to see the room crumbling in its last phase of existence.
In departing, I requested the Army Commander to repair the room as this chapter of Pakistan’s history needs to be kept alive. I reminded him that there is an immense sentimental association of the Sikhs with this structure, as the room symbolizes Hari Singh Nalwa’s passionate ‘leap of faith’ to seal the centuries of invasions of the Indian subcontinent from the dreaded Khyber Pass.
Photographed in Jan 2017, during the research for the book “THE QUEST CONTINUES: LOST HERITAGE The Sikh Legacy in Pakistan”
