48. Another Blunder - but not mine

Gogunda Palace in the 1950s 
© Remo Serafin- ARS Studio

Someone asked me who on earth were Ajja and Sajja at the court of Maharana Raimal in my last entry but one. Since much of Indian history is not recorded my friends weren’t able to figure out where Ajja and Sajja sprang from. They, were two brothers of the Jhala clan who having been usurped of their throne of Halvad in Gujarat fled to the court of Mewar where Maharana Raimal accepted their services and granted Ajja the Jagir (lands) of Bari-Sadri and Sajja, granted the Jagir of Delwara. It is from Sajja of Delwara that the dynasty of the Jhala family which reigned in Gogunda Palace with the title of Raja, came from. Sajja, in effect is the great-grand father of the first Ruler of Gogunda Palace, Rana Raja Shatrushal Singh I. Gogunda Palace has been recently restored by the Italian architect Remo Serafin.

 Gogunda Palace recently restored by the Architect

Remo Serafin 

 © Remo Serafin - ARS Studio

Research for the origin of this dynasty brought me to the ancestors of Ajja and Sajja in Kuwa but I had a hell of a time to find out where Kuwa is which I believe must be somewhere in Gujarat but I have no proof of such, can anyone help out? To locate Kuwa with certainty would be for me one headache less to cope with since Kuwa was fundamental to the historical consequences of this dynasty, as I will proceed to unfold herewith.

In 1469, Wagho Ji replaces his father as Ruler in Kuwa. Wagho Ji in effect is not the Crown 
Prince, not even the second son but the third. However there is no sign of this having been a take over bid on behalf of Wagho Ji, with all the battles that this Jhala Rajput family had to face, he was one of the few surviving sons left. It was said that Wagho Ji was rebellious as he would not accept the Sultan’s dominion, that itself seems a colossal miscarriage of justice that Wagho Ji should go down in history as rebellious- it is to be questioned as to which ruler would have just stood by and allowed another to take over one’s kith, kin, religion, pots and pans to boot! Anyway, history claims that because Wagho Ji was rebellious made the son of the Sultan of Gujarat, Prince Khali Khan, later Muzaffar Shah, attack him. The battle took place at Sadipur and going beyond every aspiration, the Rajput won. The Muslim Prince retreated to the safety of his father’s capital, Ahmedabad claiming that no one had the power to put in position of inferiority the son of a Sultan and since Wagho Ji succeeded in doing so, every Rajput in the land had to taste the end of a Muslim sword, in other words Gujarat had to be rid of these miserable infidels- an opinion not shared by those concerned by any means. Hence Mahmud Shah musters together an immense army and marched upon the Jhala’s capital Kuwa. 

When Wagho Ji sees that his relative small city is completely swamped by Muslim soldiers who had turned out in their thousands to avenge their Prince’s honour, knew he had to take one of the two options available to him, be slain or starve to death- none of which, he thought, was apt for him. He therefore decided to persuade the enemy that he was still there when he wasn’t. Before leaving however, he instructed his Ranis(queens) that while he was out there on the battlefield, should his banner fall which would be the sign that he had passed to a better life, they would put themselves on the funeral pyre, making sure of constructing one first in case of the need for its use. Fighting with his Rajput soldiers as he had never fought in his entire life, Wagho Ji managed to regain Kuwa, the Jhala capital. But exhausted as they all were, the standard bearer not having slept for a week, collapsed to the ground in fatigue with the banner on top of him and slept. The Ranis who were always on a look out from the fortress above the city not seeing the banner flying for several hours thought the worst, but not having prepared the funeral pyre, as they had sinned of optimism, decided to do the next best thing and threw themselves down a well inside the palace walls. When Wagho Ji returned to the Palace and saw that he had been bereft of all his conjugal affections decided that life wasn’t worth living for and went back unto the field and thrust himself into battle so completely that he refused to leave the field until he and his Sarders (Chieftains) were accurately slain in true Rajput style. This meant that the Mahmudeons were victorious and captured the Jhala capital which was so destroyed that it never was a capital for anyone anymore and would have disappeared into oblivion were it not for the fact that it remains memorable among the Jhalas as Kuwa-no-ker, in other words, a great cock-up for anything that goes wrong.

© 2007 Eva Ulian – The best of the worst 

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By Eva Ulian: Impressionist Painter- Writer

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