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He abandoned his native place, Kaleke, near Kasur, founded the village
of Thehpur in Lahore district and took possession of a number of
villages in its vincity and in Gujrat and Gujranwala districts.
Nor content with these possessions, he marched northward and seized
Rawalpindi then an insignificant place inhabited by Rawal mendicants.
Milkha Singh fixed his headquarters there, building new houses and
fortifying the town. Rawalpindi being on the highway into India,
was a vulnerable possession exposed to attacks of Afghan invaders,
but Milkha Singh held his own. He conquered a tract around Rawalpindi
worth several lakhs of rupees a year and had won the esteem of the
warlike tribes of Hazara. He had adopted the cognomen of Thehpuria
from the village he had founded, but in the north he was known as
Milkha Singh Pindivala. Maharaja Ranjit Singh, whom Milkha Singh
had joined in his early expeditions, called him Babaji, i.e. the
revered grandfather.
Milkha Singh died in 1804. Jivan Singh, his
only son, who succeeded to his father's estates, fought in the Maharaja's
Kashmir campaign in 1814, and died the next year. The force which
Milkha Singh and Jivan Singh had maintained was transferred to the
service of the Sikh State and placed under Sardar Atar Singh Sandhanvalia,
bearing the name of Dera Pindivala.
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