A short history of Himachal Pradesh

Modern Himachal Pradesh is a young state assembled from many small hill kingdoms. Its history is really the history of those states and of the routes that ran through the hills.

Early period

The hills were home to Republican tribes — the Audumbaras, Trigartas and Kulindas — whose coins survive from the centuries around the start of the common era. Over time, Rajput clans moving up from the plains founded a patchwork of principalities. Kangra (under the Katoch dynasty) claims one of the oldest continuous lines; Kangra Fort was its seat. Other long-lived states included Chamba, founded in the 10th century, Bushahr in the Sutlej valley, Mandi, Suket, Sirmaur and Bilaspur (Kahlur).

Mughal and Sikh periods

From the 16th century the hill states paid tribute to the Mughals, who garrisoned Kangra Fort. As Mughal power declined, the Gurkhas of Nepal expanded west across the Sutlej in the early 1800s, and then Maharaja Ranjit Singh's Sikh empire pushed into Kangra. The gilded roof of the Jwalamukhi temple is attributed to Ranjit Singh.

British period

The Anglo-Gurkha War of 1814–16 ended with the Gurkhas ceding their hill conquests to the British, who then dealt with the local rulers individually — some kept as princely states, some annexed. The British developed Shimla as the summer capital of India from the 1860s, built the Kalka–Shimla railway, and laid out hill cantonments such as Kasauli and Dagshai.

Statehood

At Independence in 1947 the princely states of the region were merged. Himachal Pradesh was formed as a Chief Commissioner's province in 1948 from about thirty small states, became a Union Territory in 1956, absorbed the hill areas of the former Punjab in 1966, and finally became India's 18th state on 25 January 1971.