When i was in 8th standard i used to know by heart the Stories and Adventures of Shivaji the Maratha King, Rana Pratap the great Rajput warrior, Guru Gobind Singh the last Sikh Guru, and about the whole Mughal dynasty, as From Babur to Indira Gandhi, all of them were part of the syllabus and i realize now, that they were told in a very plain manner, as if the writers were not feeling proud about any of them.
I was sitting in the back row of my class and chupke chupke opened my comic and start reading it for the third time since last night, suddenly someone shouted," what are you reading, come here, bring it, the teacher Mrs. Saxena(name changed) snatched it from my hands and read the title," Hari Singh Nalwa", who is he and when i am teaching you about the rise of Brahmo-Samaj, how dare you read a comic that too in my class, keep your hands above your head and stand there in the corner. I felt insulted not for myself but for Hari Singh Nalwa, he was suddenly at the top of my list of Heroes, with tears in my eyes i start to visualise the scene where Afghani mothers from Kabul to Peshawar were telling their naughty children,"Chup kero, Haria Ai! {Keep quite and go to sleep, otherwise Hari Singh Nalwa will come}. Suddenly the bell rang and the Social Studies class was over, Mrs. Saxena came upto me and gave me the comic back and said,"This is "Amar Chitra Katha", cover it in plastic and never read these stories here in your history class, OK". I will never read the stories that were not told, i promise, but i couldn't keep my promise.
Hari Singh Nalwa (A.D.1791-1837) was the Commander in Chief of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Known as Nalua Sardar, Hari Singh Nalwa never lost a battle and won Kasur, Sialkot, Kashmir, Multan and Peshawar from Afghans, in A.D.1837, He became the first General to march ahead of an Army from India upto the Khyber pass since the time of Aurangzeb. He blocked this wellknown pass through which Conquerors used to invade India since time immemorial and put an end to the invasions of India. He is still remembered by the story-tellers in Peshawar. The samadhi of this Great Sardar is inside Jamrud Fort which he built and there was a memorial to him in Peshawar town but now no-one knows about its existence. British historians of 19th century compared Nalua Sardar's exploits with Nepoleon Bonaparte. The story of "The Murat of Khalsa" should be told or we already have Sikhs too many in our history text books.