Continuing chapter 8
Recreations

Lala Barru Shah was a fine old man of the Victorian age. He lived in his village Masrehr in Kangra District. In spite of two or three marriages he had no children. He was charitably inclined and had planted many mango trees on the roadside for travellers and used to set up chhabils for supply of drinking water to travellers during the summer. He was a sahukar and landowner and lived well. I once enjoyed an excellent meal at his house at Masrehr in the company of Lala Sain Das, Bakshi Tek Chand and Lala Hanmant Das. His young wife was also charitably inclined. Except for the provision of some jewellery and a decent maintenance allowance for her, he converted the rest of his property into a charitable trust of which father, some of his relations, Chaudhari Sital Ram, Zaildar and I were the trustees. After his death father started the Barru Shah Aushdhalaya at Dharamsala with Vaid Raghvanand in charge. Sometime, later on. the trustees built a commodious building for the Aushdhalaya which is doing good work at Dharamsala.

During my six years of legal practice and social activities at Dharamsala and Gurdaspur, I attended four Mahajan conferences, two of which I had organised. Mahajans are a conservative money-lending, shop-keeper class. They lived mostly in the sub-mountainous parts of the country like Kangra, Gurdaspur, Sialkot and Mirpur tehsil of Jammu and Kashmir State, near Jhelum. It was a well-off community and owned considerable landed and house property. The Mahajans’ mode of living and conformity to old customs entailed a good deal of extravagance reminiscent of medieval times. Their outlook on life was not very bright. Lala Hans Raj who hailed from Mirpur Sidhar in Jammu State was a practising lawyer at Jammu, a great social reformer and leader of the Dogra Sabha. He was an enthusiastic reformer of the Mahajan community and started a central sabha of Mahajans at Jammu in the last decade of the 19th century, with a monthly organ the Mahajan Niti Pattar.

to be continued...