Hari Singh Nalwa, the longest serving the great Commander-in- Chief of the Sikh Khalsa Fauj, was the right hand of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. He joined the Sikh army at a tender age of 13 and led the first victory at the age of 18. He killed a tiger in hand-to-hand combat when he was 17. He fought 22 battles in his lifetime and lost none.
But today, this warrior, who was so revered by one and all, is probably not known to the millennials. Call it lack of interest in history or the changing means of consuming content. No one can deny the reach of visual medium and author Vanit Nalwa, a direct descendent of Hari Singh Nalwa, after having written the biography of the greatest Sikh general ever, she has now given the rights to Almighty Motion Picture to turn it into a web series.
“I was prompted to write the book during an interview. Towards the end of the conversation, the journalist very casually asked me about my surname and then it veered towards Hari Singh Nalwa. There were questions I had answers to but there were some to which I told him I would look up and let him know. That got me thinking that I didn’t know enough about my background.”
Her quest for credibility led to a research spanning eight years. “When I went to the National Archives of India, the lady there took me to the foreign section and it startled me. I asked her why foreign section and she said because Sikh empire was a foreign country.” There has been no looking back. She got so much information from thereon that she is today working on her second book on Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
