About the Book

Ranjit Singh was the most adventurous, audacious, and sagacious ruler of the Indian subcontinent since Chandragupta Maurya. Like the Kohinoor he wore, he was a gem among rulers. He rose like a bright and brief firmament when India became a part of the global colonial geopolitics. He abolished the death sentence and created a new empire based on principles of statecraft. In the 1770s, the Punjab was sixty-eight pieces of a wild and prosperous land inhabited by a brutal and querulous people making a living by plunder even as invasion after invasion from the north-west frontier trampled it. Ranjit Singh stemmed these Afghan raids by capturing all the passes on the Hindu Kush and wresting from Kabul the fairest of its provinces. His matchless and modern army comprised 100,000 disciplined and well-armed men and 300 canons that stood between expansionist Britain and imperial Russia. In his fourth biographical work, RNP Singh brings our readers this incredible life story of a self-made Maharaja who became the last bastion of a free India in the 1830s.

About the Author

RNP Singh is a Senior Fellow at the Vivekananda International Foundation, a Delhi-based think-tank. He is also Chairman of the College of Vocational Studies (Delhi University). A former officer of the Government of India’s Intelligence Bureau, his distinguished service credentials earned him a coveted President’s Police Medal, Indian Police Medal, the Sukriti and Kautilya awards. He has written a number of books including Riots & Wrongs, Bangladesh Decoded, ISI ka Aatank, Pakistan ki Haquiqat (both in Hindi), Nehru: A Troubled Legacy (2015), Sardar Patel: Unifier of Modern India (2018), Politics of Opportunism and Durand Line: Did India Fail Frontier Gandhi?