The Reconquest of Chitor

In Rajputana in central India lies the high rock of Chitor. "The swell of its sides," wrote Rudyard Kipling, "follows the form of a ship--from bow to stern more than three miles long and from three to five hundred feet high." Four centuries ago, in the land battleship of Chitor, the Rajputs held out against the invading Moguls. The Rajputs wore armor and fought with spears; the Moguls used cannon. In the last decisive engagement, a lucky Mogul shot killed the Rajput chieftain Jaimal, and the garrison, losing hope, performed the dreaded rite of jauhar,

The women and children were immolated on funeral pyres, and the warriors threw themselves on the Mogul swords. To complete his victory (which consolidated the Moslem conquest of Hindustan), the Mogul Emperor Akbar massacred 30,000 Rajput retainers, but failed to arrest the flight of the Rajput's famed armorers. With their families they followed their own Prince Pratap Singh into the forests, and took a solemn oath never to sleep under a roof or on a bed until Chitor was reconquered.

The Long Vow. Abandoned, Chitor became a haunt of tigers, one of a thousand Hindu shrines, and today the only recurring evocation of its stirring last days is the curse which may sometimes be heard on Indian lips: "By the sin of the sack of Chitor." The Rajput armorers became a tribe of wandering blacksmiths called the Gadia Lohars, big, fork-bearded men in pink turbans, women wearing silver bangles and big silver nose rings, and untouchables worshiping the smallpox goddess, Sheetala. Without quite knowing why, they still observe their ancient vow: never do they sleep under a roof, but live in carts, wherein children are born and the old die, in which their beds, or charpais, are always upside down. Instead of swords and spears, they make axes and sickles, but in recent years their ancient craft products, overwhelmed by a flood of cheap manufactured tools, have been less in demand. The Gadia Lohars have been facing an extinction more complete, if slower, than that offered by the Moguls.

Last week from all over India the Lohars converged on Chitor. In the great plain below the landship fortress, their 4,000 bullock carts were drawn up in huge circles like the covered wagons of American pioneers. Over their wagons flew tattered Rajput sun flags (symbolizing the god Rama) and banners reading, "Hail Emperor Nehru." Few of the tribesmen had ever heard of Prime Minister Nehru, but they knew that a great badshah (ruler) had offered to succor them at Chitor, a place they had always avoided in their wanderings.

The Return. Riding in a jeep, Badshah Nehru led the Lohars up the steep winding road to one of the fort's seven iron-spiked gateways, wide enough for two elephants to pass abreast. Here he ceremoniously applied the vermilion-tinted rice dust to the forehead of the leading Lohar, while the Indian flag was raised on a 120-ft. marble tower erected to commemorate a Rajput victory in the 15th century. "Brothers, come on. Let us enter our fort," cried Nehru.

A hundred top security officials having flushed the ruin for potential assassins--men or beasts--Nehru wandered through the old walls, peered down the deep, dark stone pit where the Rajput women were cremated, then squatted on the stone floor to take sugar cakes with the Lohars. Said Nehru: "What was once for 13 centuries yours is yours again from today onward."

A page of forgotten history, an outmoded fort, a chance to sleep on a bed and under a roof, was not all that the Indian government was offering: on the nearby Gambiri River there would be land for the Lohars to farm. The big, bearded descendants of the Rajput armorers, victims of modern India's shift from village craft to modern industry, grinned happily.

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