A BRIEF HISTORY OF SAVISTA

The origins of Savista and its environs go back to over three hundred years ago, when Amber (of Amber Fort fame) was the seat of the Kacchawa royal clan, and the city of Jaipur had not yet been created by the Kacchawa scientist-city planner king, Maharaja Jai Singh.

The story goes that a prince of Amber, Behrisal Singh – the eldest son and heir apparent to the throne but, like the legendary Prince Rama of Ayodhya (the hero of the epic Ramayana) , resented by his step-mother who wished to see her own son crowned king - set out to expand the frontiers of the Amber kingdom. He chose to venture into those parts – south-west of Amber, traditionally known as the southern Dhundhar region - where the small Muslim chieftains who represented the Mughal Empire in the region appeared to him to be weak. With his military skills and expansionary ambitions, he soon overran such extensive territories that he envisioned his own independent kingdom, free of Amber and its intrigues. For this, he was prepared to relinquish his claim to the Amber throne.

As the first demonstration of his independence from Amber, he set up his own capital city, Narayanpura (Narayanpura is situated 10 km. from the Sambhar Lake, a large salt water lake, from which salt has traditionally been harvested for hundreds of years). From this new capital, he began his rule of a kingdom that proved to be fertile territory, richly watered by a network of rivers and yielding enough revenues for local prosperity and further military conquests. Sanjharia (where Savista is located) was one of the key settlements of this principality, along with Kachroda, Hirnoda, Rojadi, Boras, Ugriyavas and Dehmi.

What began as parental indulgence of a proud son’s desire to grow wings, soon became a worry for the House of Amber. It saw Behrisal Singh’s runaway success as a real threat – at worst, to its own preeminence and sovereignty and, at best, to its own expansion south. The potential loss of revenue for its coffers from a clearly well-endowed region that it had hitherto failed to explore, also became a cause for anxiety. The Maharaja of Amber made a truce with his eldest son. He offered him autonomy over his own kingdom in all internal matters - of land grants and other resources including revenue collection, dispensation of justice, administration of temples, etc., - in return for remaining under the umbrella of the House of Amber, and sharing revenues and army manpower. Lacking in ruthless political ambition, Behrisal Singh assented to the truce in return for his own space, and neither he nor his descendants ever came back to stake their claim to the Jaipur throne.

In the generations that followed, the House of Jaipur prospered and acquired pre-eminence, first as an ally of the Mughals of Delhi and, subsequently, as the leading princely state within the region of Rajputana that the British allowed to remain outside their direct rule. In contrast, the fraternal Kacchawa kingdom of Narayanpura, after its brief flowering under Behrisal, gradually retreated into the backwaters. Behrisal’s descendants proved singularly unambitious, content to remain local chieftains of smaller components of the erstwhile kingdom. The Narayanpura principality lost its standing as an autonomous political entity, and split up into jagirs - large hereditary estates under the control of aristocratic landed gentry known as jagirdars -, whose duties included overseeing an army of tenant tillers, collecting revenues from the land, dispensing local justice, maintaining horses and military personnel on behalf of the Royal Court of Jaipur, and yielding steady revenues to the Court. In return, they continued to be acknowledged by the Jaipur Royal Court as kin, conferred with land grants in the walled city to build stately homes, and given preference in the recruitment for jobs and military service.

After the declaration of Indian independence, the princely States of India (including Jaipur) were dissolved and absorbed into the democratic Indian Republic, and the institution of hereditary landlords was abolished. The then jagirdar of the area and patriarch of the family that owns Savista, set about implementing the new democratic laws in both letter and spirit, making out land ownership deeds in the name of every household in the area, irrespective of caste and social rank, and setting an example by observing the country’s land ceiling laws in the matter of land ownership by members of his own family. Today, the Savista estate consists of just 12 acres, and represents the average size of landholding in the area.