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Bikaner
Bikaner
Walled desert city founded in 1488 by Rao Bika; capital of Bikaner State until 1947.
Rao Karan Singh
Ninth ruler of Bikaner, 1631–1667. Backed Aurangzeb in the war of succession, then was deposed by him in January 1667 for dereliction of duty at Attock and exiled to the Deccan, dying in 1669.
p>Karan Singh, eldest son of Sur Singh, came to the gadi in 1631 and held it for thirty-six years — the longest reign in Bikaner's history to that point. He served in Shah Jahan's campaigns in the south, and when the war of succession came he backed Aurangzeb against his brothers, which for a time looked like the shrewdest decision of his career.</p><p>He is remembered in Rajasthan for a title and for a quarrel about a watermelon. The title — <em>Jangaldhar Badshah</em>, king of the desert country — stuck to the house and survives in the state motto, <em>Jai Jungaldhar Badshah</em>. The quarrel was the <em>Matira ri Raad</em>, the Battle of the Watermelon of 1644, fought against Amar Singh Rathore of Nagaur over a melon vine that had grown across the boundary between the two states. It is treated in the Rajasthani tradition as both a real engagement and a standing joke about the touchiness of Rajput frontier honour.</p>
p>Karan Singh was a working man of letters, not merely a patron with a library. He is credited with the <em>Sahitya Kalpadrum</em>, and his court supported the scholars Gaganand Maithil, who took the title Karnabhushan, and Hosik Bhatt, who took Karnavantas — both names built on his own. Chintamani Bhatt's <em>Shukasaptati</em> is a principal source for his reign.</p><p>This is the beginning of a strand that runs through Bikaner for the next century: a small desert state, rich from imperial jagirs, using the money on manuscripts, scholars and painters. His son Anup Singh took it much further with the Anup Sanskrit Library, and the Bikaner school of miniature painting grew out of the same court culture.</p>
p>Backing Aurangzeb bought Karan Singh nothing in the end. On 11 January 1667 the emperor deposed him for dereliction of duty during military operations at Attock, on the north-west frontier, and exiled him to his betel gardens at Karanpura in the Deccan.</p><p>The deposition did not immediately produce a successor. In July 1667, while Karan Singh was still alive, Aurangzeb conferred on his eldest son Anup Singh the right to rule Bikaner after his father — a formula that acknowledged the son without quite creating a reigning ruler, and which the regnal list treats as an interregnum running from 1667 to 1669. Karan Singh died in 1669 while on campaign near Aurangabad, and only then did Anup Singh's reign properly begin.</p><p>The episode is a clear statement of where sovereignty actually lay by the 1660s. Bikaner's ruler could be removed from his own throne by an imperial order for a failure of duty a thousand miles away, and the state's own succession suspended for two years while the emperor decided what to do about it.</p>
p>Wikipedia, 'Bikaner State' regnal list and 'Anup Singh of Bikaner'; Grokipedia, 'Anup Singh of Bikaner' — the source for the precise deposition date of 11 January 1667, the stated cause (dereliction of duty at Attock), the exile to the betel gardens at Karanpura and the death at Aurangabad in 1669; RAS/RajRAS, 'Bikaner and Kishangarh Rathores', for the Matira ri Raad, the Jangaldhar Badshah title and the literary material; the Bikaner genealogical tables (b. 1616, d. 1669, r. 1631–1667).</p><p><strong>Grokipedia-only material.</strong> The 11 January 1667 deposition date and the Attock cause are drawn from Grokipedia and are not stated in the Wikipedia articles consulted, which say only that he was deposed by Aurangzeb and exiled to Karanapura. Flagged accordingly.</p><p><strong>Title attribution.</strong> The conferral of Jangaldhar Badshah is attributed to Aurangzeb in some Rajasthani sources; the title also functions as a general style of the Bikaner house and appears in the state motto, so the attribution should be treated with caution.</p><p><strong>QID note.</strong> No Wikidata item confirmed; local QID minted pending verification.</p>
Significance · REGIONAL
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