Maharaja
Ranjit Singh had a crucial French connection: his fauz-e-khas, an inner
cordon of blue-chip warriors dressed in trousers and crocheted jackets,
was raised by Allard and Ventura, former officers of Napoleon. When archaeologist-historian
Jean-Marie Lafont landed in Ranjit Singh's old capital Lahore in 1972
to teach at the university, he vaguely heard that Allard had married a
Hindu princess of Chamba and taken her to what is now the super chic resort
of St Tropez. When Lafont hunted down their descendants in the ski town,
he discovered something even more fascinating: a 1836 painting of the
general and his family possibly authored by the great French artist Eugene
Delacroix. "Unfortunately, it was stolen just after its identification
in 1977," says Lafont. "But it was the Allard adventure that
got me interested in the man who began it all, Ranjit Singh."
For the bicentenary of the Sikh ruler's coronation last November, an
exhibition was mounted in Amritsar and Lafont, now settled in a breezy
farmhouse in Delhi after years of cross-continental research, was asked
by the Punjab government to do the catalogue. His latest book, Maharaja
Ranjit Singh: Lord of the Five Rivers (Oxford), is essentially its detailed
extension that also highlights other achievements of the remarkable ruler,
particularly in archaeology and the arts. "Under him, Ventura discovered
the Buddhist stupa at Manikyala," says Lafont. Yet another excavation
was carried out by the natives at Pahller (Bhallar), the actual site of
Taxila.
Lafont, now a member of the French Educational Service, points out that
his body of work on Indo-French history couldn't have been possible without
his Punjabi wife and academic sounding-board Rehana, whom he met in Libya
in 1968 when she was visiting friends and he was digging monuments. Their
next "collaborative" project is on Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan
... you guessed it ... who French generals.
-Anshul Avijit
 
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CURRENT
ISSUE APRIL 1, 2002
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