Moti Mahal The Historical Stalwart of Poonch

Dr Sarabjeet Kour Sudan

harmeetjnu@gmail.com

In the heart of Poonch town, a city that has watched empires rise and borders redraw themselves, stands a building that refuses to be forgotten. Moti Mahal, the "Palace of Pearls" is not merely a heritage structure of Jammu and Kashmir; it is a witness. It has seen the twilight of princely rule, the tremors of war, the devastation of an earthquake, and the slow, patient work of restoration. Nearly a century after its foundation stone was laid, Moti Mahal continues to stand as one of the most evocative architectural landmarks of the Pir Panjal region, a stalwart in every sense of the word. The story of Moti Mahal begins not in Poonch but thousands of miles away, in the drawing rooms and country estates of England. Raja Sukhdev Singh of Poonch, after an extended stay in England and journeys through Ladakh and Gilgit, returned home in 1925 having been deeply impressed by the royal palaces and gentry houses he had encountered abroad. He resolved to bring a piece of that architectural grandeur back to his own kingdom, envisioning a modern palace built in the fashionable English and Scottish country-estate style of the period. Rather than relying solely on local expertise, the Raja engaged a British engineering firm to select the site and prepare the blueprints. The task fell to engineers J. R. Anderson and D.M. Asarpata, whose designs married European sensibilities with the practical demands of a Himalayan foothill town. The foundation stone of the palace was laid by the Raja himself on 15 February 1926, marking the beginning of a decade-long construction effort that would only be completed under his successor, Raja Jagat Dev Singh. The name chosen for the palace was itself an act of remembrance. It was proposed in honour of Raja Moti Singh, the first Dogra ruler of Poonch and son of Raja Dhyan Singh, who had once served as prime minister of the Khalsa Darbar under Sikh rule. In naming the palace Moti Mahal, the builders were not simply describing its pearl-like elegance; they were consciously anchoring the new structure to the dynastic legacy of the family that had shaped Poonch's modern political identity.

What makes Moti Mahal architecturally distinctive is precisely the fusion. Its silhouette

steep roofs, tall chimneys, and stone facades owe an unmistakable debt to the country houses of colonial-era Britain, a style that had become fashionable among India's princely elite as the influence of the British Raj deepened even in nominally autonomous states like Poonch. Yet beneath this European exterior, the palace's soul remained thoroughly Kashmiri.

The intricate woodwork inside the Mahal, the delicate lattice of khatamband ceilings and the ornamental munabatkari carving were executed under the supervision of a master craftsman from the village of Tarluti. So taken was Raja Jagat Dev Singh with the quality of this work that he rewarded the craftsman generously and even sponsored his son, Ibrahim Khan, to travel to England to study law. It is a small but telling detail: a palace built to emulate England ended up sending a local artisan's son back to England, a quiet symbol of the two-way cultural exchange the building itself represented. Beyond its walls, the palace once had a small hunting preserve attached to it, and a military cantonment stood nearby. Historical accounts describe the royal family sitting outside in the pleasant summer evenings for which Poonch is renowned, listening to the regimental band play at the cantonment's bandstand or strolling through the surrounding forest a portrait of princely leisure that feels almost cinematic in retrospect.

Moti Mahal was not an isolated architectural indulgence. It belonged to a broader wave of construction undertaken by the line of Raja Moti Singh and his successors, who reshaped the built landscape of Poonch with new mansions such as the Sheesh Mahal alongside Moti Mahal itself. This building spree ran parallel to the decades-long renovation of the older Poonch Fort, which Raja Moti Singh had worked on for nearly forty years. Eventually, under Raja Baldev Singh, the fort was converted into the state secretariat, while the royal family's official residence shifted to Moti Mahal, a transition that cemented the palace's status as the political and residential heart of the Poonch jagir.

The year 1947 changed everything for Moti Mahal, as it did for the entire subcontinent. With the collapse of princely rule and the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India amid the turmoil of Partition, the palace passed out of royal hands and came under the control of the Indian Army. What had once been a residence built for evening strolls and regimental music became a functional military establishment, its ballrooms and chambers repurposed for the more austere demands of defense administration. This transition, while it ensured the building's continued use and a degree of protection, also meant that Moti Mahal's original character as a royal home gradually receded into the background. Over the following decades, the building bore the ordinary burdens of age and limited conservation funding, its grandeur fading even as it continued to serve an active institutional purpose.

The most severe test to Moti Mahal's survival came not from time but from the earth itself. The catastrophic Kashmir earthquake of 2005, which devastated large parts of the region on both sides of the Line of Control, dealt the palace a heavy blow. The first and second storeys suffered extensive structural damage, with the palace's great masonry chimneys, among its most distinctive Scottish-inspired features, partially collapsing under the force of the tremors. The ground floor fared comparatively better, sustaining cracks in its walls rather than structural failure.

For a building that had already endured decades of institutional use and limited upkeep, the earthquake threatened to be the final chapter. Yet it was not. Recognising the palace's historical and architectural significance, the government brought in heritage experts and experienced architects to lead its repair and renovation. Restoration work began in 2006 and, remarkably, was completed within a single year - a rare instance of heritage conservation moving with real urgency in a region where such projects often languish for want of resources and attention. Today, Moti Mahal stands as a partially preserved heritage structure under the ownership of the Government of Jammu and Kashmir. It is neither the pristine royal residence of the 1U30s nor a ruin lost to neglect - it occupies a middle ground, a building actively used, imperfectly restored, and still carrying visible scars of both age and disaster. For historians and architecture enthusiasts, it remains an important site for understanding the Dogra period's political and cultural legacy in Poonch, and the peculiar way in which colonial aesthetics were absorbed and reinterpreted by India's princely states.

For the people of Poonch, however, Moti Mahal is something more immediate and personal. It is a landmark that has quietly anchored the town's identity through a century of extraordinary change from princely rule to Partition, from military occupation to natural disaster, and now to a slow process of recognition as a piece of shared heritage worth preserving. Its Scottish chimneys and Kashmiri woodwork, its royal foundations and military presence, all sit together in one structure, making Moti Mahal not just a palace, but a layered record of Poonch's modern history.

As conservation efforts continue and heritage tourism gains renewed interest across Jammu and Kashmir, there is a growing case for Moti Mahal to be given the sustained attention it deserves not merely as a functional military property but as one of the region's most significant surviving monuments. A century after its foundation stone was laid by a Raja who dreamed of England in the hills of Poonch, Moti Mahal still stands, quite literally, as a stalwart of history.

(The author is Assistant Professor Commerce, GCW Udhampur)