Kangra & Dhauladhar · Western Himalaya & Trans-Himalaya

People

Name	Years	Field	Known for
Nainsukh of Guler	c. 1710–1778	Painter	Son of Pandit Seu and brother of Manaku, and the painter who moved Pahari work away from stylised convention towards close observation — portraits of his patron Balwant Singh shaving, listening to music, looking at a drawing. His family's workshop is where the mature Kangra manner begins.
Manaku of Guler	c. 1700–1760	Painter	Nainsukh's elder brother, whose Gita Govinda and Bhagavata Purana series set the narrative format the Kangra workshops used for the next three generations.
Sansar Chand Katoch	1765–1823	Ruler and patron	Recovered Kangra Fort in 1786 and ran a court at Sujanpur Tira and Alampur that employed the painters whose output the valley's name is now attached to. His defeat by the Gurkhas in 1806 and the Sikh occupation from 1809 ended the patronage within a generation.
William Jameson	Active mid-nineteenth century	Botany and colonial administration	As superintendent of the north-western botanical gardens he had tea planted in the Kangra valley from 1849, on the argument that the rainfall and the drainage matched Assam better than anywhere else in the western Himalaya. He was right, and Kangra tea took medals in Europe within four decades.
Norah Richards	1876–1971	Theatre	An Irish theatre worker who helped establish Punjabi-language drama at Lahore, then settled at Andretta in the 1930s, built a mud-walled open-air theatre and taught there for three decades. She left her land to be used for the arts, which it still is.
Sobha Singh	1901–1986	Painter	Settled at Andretta and painted the images of Guru Nanak and of Sohni-Mahiwal that became the most reproduced devotional and romantic pictures in Punjab. His house is now a gallery.
B. C. Sanyal	1901–2003	Painter and teacher	A founding figure of modern art teaching in north India who worked at Andretta with Richards and Sobha Singh, linking a Kangra village to the Lahore and Delhi art worlds.
Mehr Chand Mahajan	1889–1967	Law	Born in the Kangra hills; served as prime minister of Jammu and Kashmir at the moment of its accession in 1947 and later as Chief Justice of India.
The 14th Dalai Lama	b. 1935	Religious leadership	Resident above Dharamshala since 1960. The presence of his office and of the Central Tibetan Administration rebuilt a Himalayan hill station as the political and monastic centre of a diaspora, and made Kangra a place people arrive at from outside India for reasons that have nothing to do with India.
Vikram Batra	1974–1999	Military	From Palampur; awarded the Param Vir Chakra posthumously for the Kargil operations. Recruitment from these valleys into the army is high enough that almost every village has a memorial, and his is the name they are measured against.

People from Kangra & Dhauladhar who shaped its history, arts, science, sport and public life. (10)