Raja Jagat Singh was a

Rajput Rajput (from Sanskrit ''raja-putra'' 'son of a king') is a large multi-component cluster of castes, kin bodies, and local groups, sharing social status and ideology of genealogical descent originating from the Indian subcontinent. The term Ra ...

soldier and ruler of the

Nurpur kingdom Nurpur kingdom in the Himalayan foothills of India was founded in 1064 A.D at north-eastern Bari Doab between the Ravi and the Beas rivers at the fusion of Kangra, Duggar, Majha, Dharab and Chamba areas which ended in 1815. The remainants ...

Folklore

In 1630 Jagat Singh sided with his people of Nurpur, who were starving during the famine and paid taxes from his own pocket. A lack of rain for three years caused the

Deccan famine of 1630–32 The large Deccan Plateau in southern India is located between the Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats, and is loosely defined as the peninsular region between these ranges that is south of the Narmada river. To the north, it is bounded by the ...

. It affected the Gujarat, Malwa, and Deccan regions while the

Mughals The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

carried out a war campaign. While the entire province lay dead, Shah Jahan's war camp was “fair and spacious, plentifully stored with all provisions, being supplied with all things from all parts, far and near”. While people in the entire province were dying due to famine caused by his own army, Shah Jahan was collecting money to build the

Taj Mahal The Taj Mahal (; ) is an Islamic ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in the Indian city of Agra. It was commissioned in 1631 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan () to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mu ...

, the construction of which began on 1632. Taxes in the Mughal Empire were among the highest in the world; according to the estimates of J.N.U scholar Shireen Moosvi, Mughals took 56.7% of total produce from peasants. Where the state's revenue needed to be used to quell the famine, Shah Jahan used it to build the Taj Mahal. According to contemporary sources like the letter written by a

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...

lawyer, the famine led to 7.4 million deaths.Winters et al, “A famine in Surat in 1631 and Dodos on Mauritius: a long lost manuscript rediscovered”, Archives of natural history, Volume 44, Issue 1(2017), Edinburgh University Press In contrast to Mughal tax regime of 1632, Hindu kings like Raja Jagat Singh and Raja of Bundelkhand took one-sixth (16.6%) as laid out in the Hindu scriptures. They rebelled to prevent further famines. The Bundelkhand rebellion by

Jhujhar Singh Jhujhar Singh was a Raja of the Orchha region in India during the 17th century. Jhujhar Singh was the first-born son of Vir Singh Deo and the senior of his three queens. In 1626, he succeeded his father as ruler and determined not to remain a ...

was stopped in 1635 but Jagat Singh foughtuntil 1642, when the Taj Mahal was completed and no more additional funds were needed.

References

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External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Singh, Raja Jagat 1575 births 1646 deaths 17th-century Indian monarchs History of Himachal Pradesh Rajput rulers