Jhandi Raj is the seat of an old Rajput family of Kheri district in Awadh. The family's history runs from a Chauhan ancestor who settled in the region under the Mughals to Raja Raghubar Singh, whose gifts of land in the first half of the twentieth century are still remembered in Lucknow.
The family is a branch of the Songarha Chauhans, a name that goes back to the fort of Sohangarh in Jalwar, Marwar. Because of their later home in Kheri they became known as the Jangra Chauhans.
The first ancestor of the estate, Akhairaj Singh, a Chauhan from the Ajmer side, settled in Kheri during the reign of Jahangir. Either he or his grandson Chaturbhuj Singh distinguished himself in war in the Deccan and was rewarded with land and the title Jangangez Khakani Raja, from which the name Jangra is said to derive.
Raja Lalta Singh, son of Raja Ranjeet Singh, lived at Lalpur, about three kilometres from Jhandi, where he held a mansion and lands. He founded the Jhandi Raj and Majgai estates. His three sons were Raj Debi Baksh Singh, Raja Raghubar Singh and Raj Mangal Singh, and Raja Raghubar Singh became the Raja of Jhandi Raj.
1876 – 1932
Great-grandfather of Raja Raj Rajeshwar Singh
Raja Raghubar Singh was born in 1876 and raised in the Rajput manner at Jhandipurwa. He learned Persian and Sanskrit at home and was later sent to the Government High School at Lakhimpur, where he studied English.
Family affairs soon drew him away from study. A civil suit had been filed against the whole estate by Rani Parbati Kunwar, wife of Raja Debi Bakhsh Singh of Mallanpur, who claimed to be the heir of her father, Raj Milap Singh. The case went up to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and was finally decided in his favour.
The colonial government made him an Honorary Magistrate, recognised his title of “Raj”, and gave him a seat in Durbar as his family's representative. He was also connected by marriage and kinship to several Rajput houses, among them the Kachwaha Sirdars of Tanira and the Keonthal family of the Simla Hills.
The family's record of donations, as set out in its own history.
The family built temples in its own area and in other districts, and gave hundreds of acres of land to them. The temples named in the family record are:
Around 1925–30 Raja Raghubar Singh gave roughly 2,200 acres of land to the Antarved Ashram.
Raja Raghubar Singh gave a large plot of land opposite Lalbagh in Lucknow to the city's municipal corporation for public use, so that people coming to that part of the city would have a place to sit. It is still known as Jhandi Park. On 24 October 2000 the Lucknow Municipal Corporation installed a statue of Raja Raghubar Singh in the park.
Alongside the temples, the family also gave land for a mosque at Bazar Bagh in Jhandi Raj, for a Karbala at Harsinghpur, and for a gurudwara at Rani Farm, Govindpur-Ludhauri.
After Raja Raghubar Singh's death, his second son Kunwar Raj Bahadur Singh became Raja; the elder son, Rajkumar Iqbal Bahadur Singh, had died in 1936 at the age of seventeen. Raja Raj Bahadur Singh died in June 1945, and his widow then took over the administration of the estate.
The fort of Jhandi Raj still stands at Jhandi in Kheri district, about five kilometres south of Nighasan tehsil. The place is now a small town.
Sources: Drawn from a Hindi local-history book, an English account of the Talukdars of Oudh, and the family's own printed profile.