The former chief minister’s third book traces the history of Lahore during the legendary king’s reign
In an age where politician-writers’ breed is fast getting extinct, Punjab’s former Congress chief minister, Amarinder Singh, looks determined to keep up the trend. The scion of Patiala royal family has released his third book — The Last Sunset: Rise and Fall of Lahore Durbar.
Bracketed among the non-fiction best-sellers of the week, the book had distinctly brought to the fore a seasoned writer in the veteran Congress leader.
“When the Akalis were busy registering cases of corruption against me, I was busy giving final touches to my book,” says Amarinder with a chuckle, who is facing two cases of amassing assets disproportionate to his income. The cases were registered against him by the Parkash Singh Badal government.
The Last Sunset details a comprehensive history of Lahore during the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
“Many historians have recorded Maharaja Ranjit Singh but I found that it had been done in a dry and monotonous manner. The Maharaja was an illiterate man but a genius who learnt military tactics on the battlefield and even brought in Napoleon’s officers after the Battle of the Waterloo. He brought in 42 of them to create a modern army,” says the author who was part of the Indian army for two years during the sixties.
Describing Ranjit Singh as one of the most able rulers and military commanders India had, Amarindar says, “He was a military general much ahead of his times. But for treachery from within his own Durbar, he could have stalled the evil designs of the East Indian Company.”
Amarindar said he spent over five years researching the book, making trips across the globe and studied literature and documents in British and Pakistani museums and archives.
“The book documents Ranjit Singh’s exemplary organisational skills that led to the formation of the formidable Sikh army and the fiercely fought Anglo-Sikh wars.
Both the Anglo-Sikh wars of 1845 and 1848 have been covered in detail in the book,” Amarinder said.
Amarinder’s earlier books too chronicle wars during different time.
His Lest We Forget speaks about the 1965 Indo-Pak war, which he fought as a commissioned army officer, while his A Ridge Too Far is a commentary on the Kargil conflict.
Amarinder a commissioned army officer of 1963, quit within two years. But joined again when the Indo-Pak hostilities broke out.
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