By SOMEN SENGUPTA :
V
isiting an ancient fort in India can sometimes be an uncommon experience for a
tourist. At the gate you might have seen a
guide negotiating hard with a group of
tourists or a picture post card vendor trying to push his products to the visitors or may be a
service man bothering your driver for parking your
car in right way. But here at the entry gate of
Bhangarh fort, you will find an exceptional group of
people offering you an unique service which has no
match with any other fort in India.
“Do you want to hear the ghost story of this
haunted place” or “ do you want to get scared
inside” is the offer that comes from local self- educated guides at the gate of 16th century fortified
ruins of Bhangarh situated in the Alwar district of
Rajasthan.
500 years old magnificent Bhangarh Qilla popularised as the only officially declared haunted fort of
India has much more of history to explore than
some century old legends of haunting saga often
exaggerated to an extreme limit of baseless surmises.
Thanks to its extraordinary location that falls at
the border line of deep woods of Sariska Tiger
Reserve on the slope of mighty Aravalli hills, the
stone built deserted human settlement walled by
massive fortification is a perfect back ground to create a shivering climax if presented with perfect voice
articulation.
Rajasthan, the land of royals, is decorated with
innumerable century old edifices and every single of
those has its own story to tell. In that grand list of
forts dotted from Marwar to Rajputana, Bhangarh
stands with a notorious reputation of being the
most haunted fort India, though till now there is no
substantial evidence of any supernormal thing
found inside this ruin.
With its picture postcard background of rough
terrain of dry and difficult surface, fort Bhangarh
houses temples, pavilions, palaces, market places,
watch tower and many more, but all in extreme
dilapidation as it was abandoned more than 300
years ago, and it was abandoned overnight. Once a
bustling fortified human settlement Bhangarh saw
series of devastation and its fast depopulation perhaps was the reason of all extra superficial surmises
that includes necromancy, curse, prejudices and
political conflicts.
It was Bhagwant Das, the king of Amer, who first
acquired this place to build a fort for his younger
son Madho Singh, younger brother of Man Singh –I
one of the important members of Akbar’s team.
Madho Singh himself became a diwan of Akbar later on and showed his unconditional loyalty to
Mughal court.
In 1631Madho Singh then an important figure in
Mughal court moved his capital in Bhangarh and
real expansion of this fort was started.
The mystic
story of Bhangarh started from that point of time. It
is believed that this place was occupied by a local
God man named Guru Balunath who used the area
for his meditation and penance. Madho Singh negotiated with the God man that his construction of
fort will be a humble one and shadow of its structure will never fall on the hut of Balunath .
Legend has it that this commitment was not kept
by next generation and they increased the wall
height of the fort, the result of which was that its
shadow fell on Balunath’s hut. A curse was given to
the royal family by Balunath that this fort will be
turned into a necropolis. Thus a thriving city with
more than 9000 houses became a city of dead from
1720 and the entire fort was reduced into rubble
that we get to see now.
In all the villages around the fort there is another
story that has been in circulation for many centuries now, and till today village elders love to share
this with the younger generation. This legend says
there was one beautiful princess of the royal family
named Ratnavati daughter of one Chatr Singh.
Ratnavati’s peerless beauty mesmerized one man
who used to practice black magic.
With his power of
necromancy the man got closer to Ratnavati when
she was visiting market to buy perfume. Ratnavati
on realizing the evil design of the man pushed a
boulder that killed the man. Before his last breath
the man uttered the curse that the entire habitation
will be hushed up and the place will become a ghost
city. A few years later a gory war between Bhangarh
and Ajabgah resulted in slaughtering of many citizens of the fort and soon last batch of survivors also
left it overnight – Thus the legend of Bhangarh was
born and cemented its position in people’s mind.
The stunning architecture of Bhangarh is replete
with history and heritage rather than entertaining
ghost hunters and thrill seekers.
The three successive layers of fortification to protect the habitation of the fort is an extraordinary
engineering plan and the outermost fortification is
designed with five massive gates viz Lahori, Ajmeri,
Phulbari, Delhi and Hanuman gate.
Just after entering into the fort a long sketch of
stone made road goes towards the main palaces.
This walk of around 10 minutes is perhaps the best
part of this fort visit.
This part is called jauhari bazar that was the market place.
The long road holds an array of ruined stone
made houses and small establishments on both the
sides and it is astonishing to notice that every single
structure is roofless. Many of the remaining plinth
of the structure has staircases giving a clear indications that these houses were multi storied but now
except the ground floor there remains nothing. The
dilapidation state is so stunning and so mind blowing that it is bound to create a thrill of suspense in
any visitors mind. The silence in the milieu, the eye
catching texture of the stone and shape of the ruins
all put together really create a mystic world much
good for an atmosphere of dark tourism. In this
mysterious rows of ruined stone houses, light and
shadows play hide and sick. The design of the blocks
are so perplexing that while walking side by side one
may hide himself behind any wall easily and such
conduct strongly establishes the saga of paranormal
associated with this fort.
The mystic rows of ruined roofless stone houses
ends at gate after crossing of which one lands on a
huge plain field dotted with few temples and an
Islamic dome kind structure.
It is really a matter of surprise that though every
single house in the market sections are ruined all
temples of the forts are in very good condition
thanks to careful supervision of Archaeological
Society of India.
There are temples dedicated to
Hanuman, Gopinath, Someswar, Kesav Rai,
Mangala Devi, Ganesh etc and out of all these
Gopinath and Someswar temples are two excellent
piece of architecture. Both built in splendid Nagara
style of North Indian school of architecture, these
yellow and pink soft sand stone temples, have huge
pinnacle circulated by votive towers on top, and over
the plinth the roof is supported on many heavily
ornamented decorative pillars with extraordinary
stone carving that features many Hindu motifs like
floral designs, blooming lotus, musicians playing
instruments, dancing girls and many animals. The
inclusion of camel rider apart from horse and elephant motifs in temple carving clearly shows the
local influence.
The image of Ganesha and some other Hindu
Gods are also erected on the stone wall. The most
eye catching figures are of some human on the apex
of every pillars. Those are carved in such a way to
give a look that they are holding the roof of the
temple. Near the temple lie purohit ki haveli - the
house of the priest.
A small walk after this takes on to the steep
upwards sloping stone path way which ends at the
landing of the first floor of the main palace. It houses all royal chambers and a dance hall as assumed.
The main palace which was once seven stories
high, now after gradual dilapidation is reduced to
three only, and every floor is designed with several
chambers with large arched windows facing the
front gate of the fort.
The top floors still have a part
with many standing and fallen stone pillars and
some of those are having floral designs.
Local guides take liberty to shape up history as per
their own wish to entertain tourists.
Once you are at the top of the palace, the entire
Bhangarh fort is visible and the dark jungle that
runs on its one of the wall can be seen clearly. From
here all structures including the wooded kewda is
also visible. The huge amount of rubble, broken pillars, big sized stones all scattered in a messy state on
the top clearly gives an indication of roof collapsing
many, many years ago.
As the fort is almost adjacent to Sariska Tiger
Reserve wild animals frequent the fort and in day
time peacocks, Neel gai, deers etc can be spotted. At
night out of many mysterious sound, roar of tigers
and leopards are also heard to add steam on it’s so
called ”most haunted place” tag.
The ghost story of Bhangarh is many centuries
old. People say that at night they have seen shadows
moving in rooms, suddenly temperature comes
down to freezing cold, weird sounds, screaming and
stone displacement from top occurs. Some of the
stories talk of young friends who tried to be adventurous and dared to stay in the fort in the night only
to be banished into oblivion and those who managed to escape the horror inside die as soon as they
came out.
All these stories have been passed on for for centuries. Whether these all are really the curse of the
black magician or a sheer hoax is still a big question. Sometimes back a group of rational science
loving team spent a night inside the fort and as per
them some sounds of stone falling may with the
sound of wild animals moving inside the fort at
night, might have given rise to these tales.
ASI has issued strict restrictions for not entering
the fort after 6 pm and foreign tourists are not sold
any entry ticket unless a special permission is
obtained.
Haunted or not, the ruined fort of Bhangarh is a
gem of edifice in the landscape of Rajasthan. The
increasing number of visitors to this fort clearly
shows that interest and curiosity of history will
attract more people to Bhangarh who will equally
enjoy the magic of exploring heritage and the throb
of visiting a so called “most haunted place of India.”