Pandit Mohan Lal Kashmiri alias Agha Hasan Jan

Ramnath alias Pandit Mohan Lal, born in 1812 AC, of an offshoot of the Zutshi’s who had migrated to Delhi, was a remarkable man. Mohan’s father was Rai Brahm Nath whose father Pandit Mani Ram held a high rank at the Mughul court in the Reign of Sah Alam II (1759-1806), the son of ‘Alamgir II.

Mohan Lal was taught Urdu and Persian at home. He joined the English class opened in 1829 at the persian College at Delhi that was founded in 1729 during Mughul rule. In 1829 this college acquired a large accession of income by the munificent gift of rs. 1,70,000 from Nawwab I’timad-ud-Daula, formerly minister at Lucknow, buried in the premises of the Anglo-Arabic College, Mohan Lal studied here for three years. In 1831, when about 19, he went to Bukhara as the Persian interpreter to Sir Alexander Burnes ona salary of rs 1,000 per annum. The earliest classmate of Mohan was Shahamat Ali, Later the author of an Historical Account of the Sikhs and Afghans, who was persian Secretary with the mission of Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Claud M wade, CB, to Peshawar in 1839. Shahamat Ali accompanied Sir Claud in the military expedition on which he was sent to conduct Shahzada Timur, the eldest son of Shuja-ul-Mulk, with the auxiliary force, by the Khaibar pass to Kabul.

Mohan Lal was probably the first Kashmiri Pandit to receive English education, and probably the first Indian to educate his daughter in England. After Central Asia, Mohan Lal visited Egypt, England Scotland, Ireland, Belgium and Germany.

Shah Kamran of Herat was delighted with his Persian. Mirza Abbas of Iran created him, at the age of 20, a Knight of the Persian Order of the Lion and Sun. Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk, King of Afghanistan, granted him an order of the Lion and Sun. Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk, king of Afghanistan, granted him an Order of the Durrani Empire. Maharaja Ranjit Singh presented him with rs. 500 and a robe of honour. The Mughul Emperor Muhammad Akbar Shah conferred upon him a Khilat with some Jewels on a turban which his Majesty tied with his own hands. Mohan Lal was well received in England and other countries of Europe. Queen Victoria invited him to a royal ball. Frederick William iv of Prussia entertained him at a dinner.

Mohan Lal published a journal of his tour on his return from Central Asia in, 1834. Twelve Years later, this work was re-published with the addition of his travels in Europe. At this time, he published his life of Dust Muhammad Khan, the Amir of Kabul, in two volumes. His style of English received a very favourable comment from the editor of the now defunct Englishman of Calcutta. Mohan Lal retired at 32.

Nawab Mirza Ala-ud-Din Khan (1833-1884), ruler of Loharu State near Delhi, whose pen-name was Alai calls Mohan Lal in a pension poem Agha Hasan jan, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru says, that Mohan Lal became a Muslim and in Iran married a girl of royal family, hence his title of Mirza. Dr Hari Ram Gupta says that a grandson of Mohan Lal is Agha Hydar Hasan of Hydarabad (Deccan) who states that Mohan Lal kept a diary from 1831 till his death though strangely enough Dr Gupta omits to mention the fact of Mohan Lal’s conversion to Islam. Mohan Lal had in all seventeen wives. Wherever he went, he managed to take a new wife. In his later days “he was swept away by the love of wine and women.”

At Ludhiana Mohal Lal built for the Shi’as what is known as Agha Hasan Jan’s imambara. Close by it there runs a road bearing his name. Mohan lal died in 1877 at the age of 65, and was buried in Delhi in his garden called the lal Bagh, near Azadpur on the Delhi-Panipat road. There is no tomb, but only paltform, said to contain the bodies of Mohan Lal or Agha Hasan Jan and his favourite wife Hydari Begam whom Mohan Lal obtained by implicating some male members of the Begam’s family during the confusion of the Indian Revolt. The platform is in a dilapidated condition. The garden no longer belongs to Mohan Lal’s family.

The fascinating personality of Mohan lal gives us “intimate and revealing glimpses of the early days of British rule in North India, of the Punjab under Maharaja Ranjit Singh,of the British campaigns through Sind and in Afghanistan, of the disasters in Kabul and of the prevailing conditions in Central Asia in the thirties of the nineteenth Century.” Welcoming risk and danger and facing death often enough, Mohan Lal, in the words of Pandit Jawahar lal Nehru, “was yet a lover of pleasure and the soft way of life- a politician ans scholar, with something of the poet and the artist in him, which peeps out continoually from his Memoirs and Travels.”

Major B D Basu, however,reproduces John William Kaye’s following remark:

“The Moonshee (Mohan Lal) seems to have been endowed with a genius for traitor-making the luster of which remained undimmed to the very end of the war”. The Major adds that the English found in Mohan Lal “a tool ready at hand to give effect to their nefarious scheme “in creating trouble in Afghanistan.

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