Zalim Singh Jhala: The Regent Who Ran Kota for 50 Years

Zalim Singh Jhala is the most powerful figure in the history of Kota who was never its king. As diwan (chief minister) and regent, he ran the state for about fifty years, from the 1770s until his death in 1824, steering it through the Maratha wars, the collapse of Mughal authority and the arrival of British power. His legacy is written on the map: the state of Jhalawar, carved out of Kota in 1838, was created for his descendants.

Rise to power

Zalim Singh came from a Jhala Rajput family in the service of Kota. He made his name as a young commander at the battle of Bhatwara in 1761, when Kota’s forces defeated an army sent by Jaipur. Court politics then pushed him out of Kota for a time, but he returned, and when the young Maharao Umed Singh I came to the throne in 1771, Zalim Singh became regent. From then on he held the real power in the state, and the Maharao reigned while his minister governed.

Years in Mewar

The break with Kota came under Maharao Guman Singh, who had made him diwan in 1764; the two fell out, and Zalim Singh left for Udaipur. There he entered the service of Maharana Ari Singh, received a jagir and the title of Raj Rana, and fought for the Maharana against Mahadji Shinde on the Shipra in 1769. He was wounded and taken prisoner by the Marathas, and was released the same year through the intervention of a friend, Ambaji Ingle. In 1771 the dying Guman Singh recalled him and entrusted his young son and the state to his care.

Governing Kota

His long administration is remembered for discipline and money. He reorganised the revenue system, encouraged cultivation and kept the treasury full, which allowed Kota to maintain a strong army and to buy off or resist Maratha raids that ruined other Rajput states. He dealt shrewdly with the Marathas, the Pindaris and other powers of the time, and his contemporary James Tod called him the Machiavelli of Rajasthan.

Some of his reforms are well documented:

• Land surveys of the state in 1792 and again in 1807, to record land brought under cultivation.
• A new revenue system from 1805, replacing the Mughal model with one in which village headmen (patels) answered directly to him and a council of senior patels.
• Territory: in 1823 the British transferred eight sub-chiefships, including Indragarh and Khatoli, from Bundi’s allegiance to Kota through his efforts.

Builder of forts, walls, temples and towns

Zalim Singh left a large physical mark on Hadoti. He repaired and strengthened outlying forts as defensive posts, especially Shergarh, Gagron, Nahargarh and Shahabad. In Kota he built the city wall from Suraj Pol to Ladpura, which Tod compared in strength to the fort at Agra; the old gates such as Patan Pol belong to this walled city. He is credited with nearly forty temples, tanks across almost every pargana of the state and about ten bridges.

In 1796 he founded the town of Jhalrapatan, about half a mile north of the ruins of ancient Chandravati, and built its Dwarkadhish temple, where the image was installed nine years later. The town grew into the trading centre of the later Jhalawar state; see Jhalrapatan. His military camp (chhaoni) near Gagron later grew into the town of Jhalawar.

The 1817 treaty and the British

When the British East India Company moved to settle central India after the Third Anglo-Maratha War, Zalim Singh negotiated Kota’s treaty of 1817, bringing the state under British protection. Supplementary articles agreed the following year confirmed the administration of Kota in Zalim Singh and his heirs, while the Maharao kept the throne. This arrangement suited the British but left the ruling family with a crown and little power.

The quarrel and the birth of Jhalawar

The tension broke into open conflict after Maharao Umed Singh I died in 1819. His successor, Kishore Singh II, tried to recover control, and in 1821 his forces were defeated at Mangrol by Zalim Singh’s troops, who had British backing. Zalim Singh died in 1824, but his son and then his grandson continued to hold the office of regent, and the dispute dragged on. In 1838 the British settled it by separating a group of districts from Kota to create the new princely state of Jhalawar for Zalim Singh’s grandson, Madan Singh, ending the family’s role in Kota. The British agent Colonel James Tod, who admired Zalim Singh, was reprimanded in 1821 for favouring one party in a princely dispute and lost responsibility for Kota; the history of Jhalawar follows the new state from there.

Legacy

In Kota, Zalim Singh is remembered as the administrator who kept the state intact and solvent through its most dangerous century. In Jhalawar, he is the founder figure of the ruling house. To understand why Kota and Jhalawar are separate districts today, and why the old Garh Palace and the Jhalawar Garh Palace tell linked stories, you need to know about him.

Places connected with Zalim Singh

• Jhalawar Fort (Garh Palace), the palace of the Jhalawar rulers descended from him.
• Gagron Fort, the water fort a few kilometres from Jhalawar.
• Jhalrapatan, the temple town he founded in 1796 next to Jhalawar.
• Bhawani Singh of Jhalawar, the reforming ruler of the reconstituted Jhalawar state from 1899, a descendant of the same Jhala line.

Read the full history of Kota or meet the other people who shaped the city.