Kahlur State

Kahlur, later called Bilaspur State, was the Himalayan hill kingdom of the Sutlej valley, lasting from 697 to 1948. Thirteen centuries is a long claim: the Chandela-descended rajas held their steep little realm through the age of empires around it, Delhi sultans, Mughals and Sikhs all exacting tribute but none staying to rule. The hills protected and impoverished together; the state's 1931 census counted barely a hundred thousand souls in a thousand square kilometres. In 1815, after the Gurkha War shook the hills, Kahlur accepted British protection and became a princely state under the Punjab agency, keeping its raja, its gods and its customs while the world outside built railways. The last raja signed accession to India in October 1948; Bilaspur lingered as its own province until 1954, then dissolved into Himachal Pradesh as a district, thirteen hundred years of hill kingship ending in a government order. Its forts above the Sutlej watched the old Hindustan–Tibet road long after the rajas stopped collecting its tolls.