“Din nun raj Firangi da, Raati raj Malangi da” — during the day the British rule, at night Malangi rules.
Few Punjabi couplets capture colonial Punjab’s contradictions as sharply as these lines: although the British controlled courts, police, administration and official records, figures such as Malangi, Nizam Lohar, Jagga Jatt and Imam Din Gohavia were remembered in folk tradition not simply as daku but as challengers of landlords and foreign authority. After the British annexed Punjab in 1849, colonial systems of revenue, policing and administration reshaped rural society. Although inequality and powerful landlords existed before British rule, colonial policies often reinforced local hierarchies by relying on influential landholders and lambardars to collect revenue and maintain order. For poor cultivators, widows and orphans, losing ancestral land meant losing both livelihood and independence. When the law appeared to favour the powerful, resistance outside its boundaries could seem the only path to justice.
This context shapes the legend of Malangi, also known as Sher Khan, associated with the Kasur and Chunian regions. According to popular accounts, his father died when he was just six months old, leaving land that influential landlords allegedly seized. Versions of his story differ, recounting family tensions, attempts to reclaim the property, violence, imprisonment and escape. While these details remain difficult to verify, the central theme endures: an orphaned young man deprived of his inheritance, confronting powerful landlords when established institutions failed to protect him. In some accounts, the landlords were British-appointed lambardars, turning a personal struggle into a broader symbol of how colonial authority reinforced local privilege. Malangi’s legend thus raises a lasting question: when justice seems inaccessible, should those who defy the law be remembered as criminals or as victims of an unjust system?
Malangi’s transformation from dispossessed villager to outlaw became a symbol of resistance to colonial injustice. Remembered for attacking wealthy and influential figures and helping the poor, he reportedly found refuge in the Changa Manga forests, beyond the immediate reach of British police. While authorities viewed him as a threat to law and order, his admirers saw him as a defender of the oppressed. His reported death in a police encounter following betrayal cemented his legend. Similarly, Nizam Lohar, born into a poor Muslim blacksmith family in Tarn Taran in 1835, grew hostile to British rule after Punjab’s annexation in 1849. Accounts associate him with killing a British official following an insulting confrontation, attacking government officials and wealthy figures, redistributing their wealth to the poor, and supplying weapons to fellow rebels. Like Malangi, he reportedly sought refuge in Changa Manga and died in 1877 after betrayal and a police encounter. Though details of both lives require historical scrutiny, their enduring legends reflect Punjabi resistance to colonial authority and a system perceived to favour the powerful.
Nizam’s story also demonstrates why it is too simple to divide colonial society into “freedom fighters” on one side and “criminals” on the other. Resistance did not always take the form of organised political movements, petitions or mass mobilisation. It could emerge through personal grievances, attacks on officials, armed groups and acts of revenge that gradually acquired a wider political meaning. Nor should every act of violence committed by an opponent of colonial rule be automatically justified. Robbery and killing remained acts of violence, and the victims were not necessarily all wealthy exploiters. What matters historically is understanding why such men could acquire support or admiration in communities where formal institutions were widely perceived as unequal.
The same complexity surrounds Jagga Jatt and Imam Din Gohavia, who also became legendary figures in Punjabi folklore. Jagga is remembered in popular tradition as a challenger of corrupt landlords, moneylenders and officials, with stories of debt records being destroyed and wealth being redistributed among the poor. Such stories had particular resonance in an agrarian society where debt could threaten a family’s land and independence. Imam Din Gohavia, likewise, is remembered as a challenger to powerful local interests and colonial authority. Their motives and circumstances were not identical, and it would be misleading to present them as members of one coordinated nationalist movement. Their common place in folklore is nevertheless revealing: they represent a popular idea of justice in which moral legitimacy depended not simply on obedience to the law, but on whom a person opposed and whom he defended.
Colonial records, including police reports and court proceedings, often portrayed rebels as criminals while overlooking the social injustices and abuses that fuelled their resistance. Although these sources reveal how colonial authorities maintained control, they cannot fully explain how communities viewed such figures. Conversely, folk songs and oral histories preserve popular memories but may romanticise outlaws as flawless heroes. A balanced history must critically examine both sources, recognising that labels such as daku or renegade reflected the colonial system’s priorities without necessarily explaining the causes of rebellion. Rather than accepting official records or popular legends unquestioningly, historians must ask who shaped these narratives, whose voices were excluded, and why communities remembered these figures differently.
Land is central to this question. For rural families, land meant food, income, status and independence. Its loss could push a household into debt or dependence. Colonial revenue arrangements varied across Punjab, and it would be inaccurate to portray every British land policy as uniformly destructive. Yet the wider colonial system depended heavily on local intermediaries, and economic and political power could reinforce each other. A poor cultivator facing an influential landlord might also be facing a network of officials, creditors and local authorities. The legends of Malangi and other rebels repeatedly begin with precisely such an imbalance. When the formal system seemed incapable of delivering justice, the outlaw became an imagined alternative source of justice. The popular story of taking from the rich and giving to the poor thus represented a reversal of the existing order.
The Robin Hood image has limits: not every act of redistribution can be verified, violence could also hurt ordinary people, and conflicts with landlords were not always struggles for national independence. Personal revenge, property disputes, poverty, social conflict and resistance to colonial rule often overlapped. Yet the importance of figures like Malangi, Nizam Lohar, Jagga Jatt and Imam Din Gohavia lies less in proving them perfect heroes than in what their lives and legends reveal about an unjust social order. Punjabi folk songs preserved this alternative memory, even as stories changed and grew over generations. They gave ordinary people a way to express anger against exploitation, abusive authority and foreign rule. So the question “freedom fighters or bandits?” is too simple: a daku could commit real crimes and still become a symbol of resistance, while a folk hero could represent genuine grievances without being morally beyond criticism. The better questions are what these men actually did, what conditions shaped them, and why people remembered them so differently from the colonial state.
Decolonising Punjab’s history does not mean replacing every British villain with a Punjabi hero, but refusing to let colonial records have the final word or romanticising violence simply because it opposed colonial or local elites. It means placing rebels such as Malangi, Nizam Lohar, Jagga Jatt and Imam Din Gohavia within the land disputes, revenue demands, village power struggles and rural inequalities of their time, while comparing official records with folk memory. Their stories show that resistance was not limited to famous political leaders but also emerged from villages, fields and forests, where communities preserved the names of those they believed had challenged injustice. The British could control courts, police and official records, but not memory; as the saying goes, “Din nun raj Firangi da, Raati raj Malangi da.” The line does not make Malangi a flawless hero—it captures the deeper difference between having power and having legitimacy: the Empire wrote its history in files, while Punjab preserved another in its songs.
Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2026
