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Bikaner
Bikaner
Walled desert city founded in 1488 by Rao Bika; capital of Bikaner State until 1947.
Sardar Singhji
Nineteenth ruler of Bikaner, 1851–1872. Banned sati and samadhi by decree in 1854 and honoured the 1818 treaty during the Rebellion of 1857, sheltering European fugitives.
p>Sardar Singh succeeded his father Ratan Singh on 7 August 1851 and was crowned at the Karan Mahal in Junagarh Fort on the 19th, following the ceremonial pattern of his predecessors — which still included the Godara Jat headman's hereditary right to apply the <em>tilak</em>, an arrangement dating to Rao Bika's settlement of the 1480s.</p><p>His mother was Raj Kanwar of Dundlod in Shekhawati, and the connection produced one of the first recorded acts of his reign: in 1851 he intervened with Ram Singh II of Jaipur on behalf of the Thakur of Dundlod, a relative, over villages seized by Shyam Singh of Bissau. Ram Singh assigned the Raja of Khandela to arbitrate.</p><p>He was an unsettled administrator. Between his accession and 1869 he appointed eighteen diwans — an average of one a year, which suggests a ruler who governed personally and dispensed with ministers who disagreed.</p>
p>In 1854 Sardar Singh issued decrees prohibiting sati — the immolation of widows — and samadhi, self-immolation, across his domains. Both had deep roots in the region; six of Dalpat Singh's queens had performed sati at Bhatner in the seventeenth century, and the practice was bound up with Rajput ideas of honour.</p><p>The timing is not accidental. The Company had banned sati in its own territories in 1829, and by the 1850s the princely states were under steady pressure to follow. Sardar Singh's decrees align with that pressure while also serving his own purpose: prohibitions issued from the palace were an assertion that the Maharaja, not the thakurs, defined what was lawful in Bikaner. His father Ratan Singh had used a decree against female infanticide the same way.</p>
p>When the Rebellion of 1857 broke out, Bikaner's position was exposed. Sirsa, Hissar and Hansi — the British districts along its own frontier — fell into rebel hands, and the state's northern border became the edge of a war.</p><p>Sardar Singh honoured the treaty his great-grandfather Surat Singh had signed in 1818, under which the friends and enemies of one party were the friends and enemies of both. He sided with the British, gave shelter to European fugitives coming out of the rebel districts, and provided military assistance in suppressing the rising.</p><p>The decision secured Bikaner's standing for the rest of the colonial period — loyalty in 1857 was the currency that bought princely states their guarantees under the Crown after 1858. It is also the clearest instance in the state's history of the 1818 treaty being called in and paid.</p><p>Authority at home was less secure. In 1868 the thakurs revolted against his extortions, and a British political agent had to intervene to mediate a settlement — a repeat of the pattern that had destroyed his great-grandfather's reign, now resolved by the paramount power rather than by force.</p>
p>Wikipedia, 'Sardar Singh of Bikaner' and the 'Bikaner State' regnal list; Grokipedia, 'Sardar Singh of Bikaner', which is the source for the 1854 sati and samadhi decrees, the 1868 thakur revolt and the British political agent's mediation, and the coronation at Karan Mahal.</p><p><strong>Grokipedia-only material.</strong> The 1854 decrees and the 1868 revolt are drawn from Grokipedia and are not stated in the Wikipedia article consulted. Flagged accordingly.</p><p><strong>Conflicts.</strong> Wikipedia's article calls him the eldest son of Ratan Singh; the regnal list calls him the second son. Birth is given as 18 September 1818 in the infobox and 13 September 1818 in the body of the same article. Grokipedia numbers him the nineteenth ruler, which matches the sequence used here.</p><p><strong>QID note.</strong> No Wikidata item confirmed; local QID minted pending verification.</p>
Significance · REGIONAL
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