Kuldhara Mystery Solved: Why 80,000 People Left the Village - timesofedn

In 2013, in the middle of the desert, at 2 in the night, a paranormal investigator came with his team to this desolate village. After completing the investigation, they were returning to their car, when they saw something strange on the bonnet of their car. The marks of a child's hand. Small hands, like the hands of a 4-5 year old

 child. They were clearly visible in the dust. But just a few minutes ago, there were no marks. The surprising thing was that there was no child here. In fact, there was no human in this entire village. For the last 200 years, there has been no human in this village. These people started to look around, and then one after the other, new signs started to appear before their eyes. When they called the journalist, the same signs started to appear on their vehicles. This is not a horror movie script. This is an actual village. In the Thar Desert of Rajasthan, just 17 km from Jaisalmer, Kuldhara village. It is called India's most haunted विलेज

. There are more than 400 houses in this village. The streets are made up of everything. There are temples, wells, walls, doors. Everything is there, except for humans. It is said that women scream in the village. The head is moving. When a man sees it, he has no head. No head at all. You can smell food. It's a whole barren area. Even today, people say that it smells like food. The tourists come to this village to see the ruins. But before nightfall, everyone returns. Because nightfall is forbidden here. It is said that 200 years

 ago, Kuldhara was a laughing, flourishing village. And then one day, all the villagers suddenly disappeared. Without a sound, without a sign. As if someone pressed a button at night, and thousands of people vanished Namaskar to get to the facts of Kuldhara Saj you need to know about a person first A person whose नाम

 shivered the whole Jaisalmer. This was in the early 1800s. Jaisalmer was a princely state at the time. The kings were in power, but the actual power was with the Diwan. Basically, the Prime Minister. And the Diwan of Jaisalmer was Salim Singh. extremely cruel and cruel. But Salim Singh was not always like this. His story also begins with a tragedy. Salim Singh's father, Saroop Singh, was also a fan of Jaisalmer. But the royal officials cheated him, and killed him. Salim Singh was only 11 years old at the time. And a 11-year-old boy saw his father die. This thing set his mind on fire. A few years later, when Salim Singh became a fan, he crossed all the limits of cruelty. Whoever disobeyed him, would be killed. It is said that Salim Singh alone,

 killed as many people in Jaisalmer, as all the enemies could. His taxation policies were so brutal, that it was difficult for the farmers and merchants to survive. Due to his extortions, Salim Singh had saved up Rs 2 crore at one time. Think about it, Rs 2 crore of that era, His mansion was one of the most magnificent buildings इन

 Jaisalmer. The King of Jaisalmer could do nothing in front of him. King Rawal Mulraj was like a puppet in his hands. To be honest, the real ruler of Jaisalmer was Salim Singh. And this is not a story. This is actual history. The British officers of that time, had recorded it in their official government documents. The एक्सएक्ट

 timeline is not that clear, But these events are between 1790-1820. In the midst of all this, Salim Singh sees a village, called Kuldhra. The story of Kuldhara begins in the 13th century. When many Brahmins from the Pali district of Rajasthan, came to Jaisalmer. And they settled here in 84 villages. Because they came from the Pali district, they were called the Paliwal Brahmins. And Kuldhara was their most important hub in Jaisalmer. Now, let's look at the geography of this place. The Thar Desert is the largest desert in India. Temperatures rise from 40 to 50 degrees in the summers. the rainfall is almost equal to zero. And as far as you can see, you can see sand dunes. No one would ever think of living in such a place. But Paliwal Brahmacharya did something, that is still praised by scientists. He developed a revolutionary water harvesting system. The Khadeen System. In the diagram, you can see how interestingly hill slopes are used in it, to collect and store water. to the extent that the sand of the desert turns into fertile land. During the rainy season, water is collected in this area. And slowly, in the next few months, it keeps seeping down. By the time the winter season arrives, and the water above evaporates, the land becomes so nutrient-rich that crops can be grown here. It was as if someone was farming rice in the Sahara Desert. With the help of this system, In the middle of the desert, the people of Kuldhara used to grow two crops a year. And not only the farmers, the Paliwal Brahmans were also experts in trade and banking. Kuldhara used to come on the trade route of Jaisalmer and Sindh. So the entire kingdom's trade was done by them. As a result, where nothing was to be done, they established a civilization, where Kuldhara was more prosperous than Jaisalmer city. The Paliwal Brahmans had more wealth than the kings of Jaisalmer The question arises how did such a wealth and strong community all change overnight The story goes that Salim Singh's eyes fell on the village chief's daughter. He wanted to marry her. He threatened that if the villagers didn't do so, he would forcefully take her away. Later, Salim Singh gave the village an ultimatum. If the Paliwal Brahmans didn't hand her over to the village in a day, he would destroy the entire village. If you look at it, these people didn't have many options. First, they wanted to hand over one girl. Second, they wanted to fight Salim Singh. Which was practically impossible. Because they didn't have their own army. So the Palewal Brahmans chose the third option. An option that neither Salim Singh nor anyone else had expected. An option that shocked people even after 200 years. In 1882, on the full moon of Shravan, On the night of 29th July 1825, they left the village. Not just Kuldhara, the 83 other villages of the Palewal Brahmans, all of them were vacated that night. There were 20,000 houses in these villages. There were about 80,000 people living there. And all of them disappeared in one night. Thousands of people, hundreds of families, old people, children, women, men, all left their homes in one night. The house that their ancestors built 600 years ago. The land that they had taken from the desert to make a shelter. The wells that they dug with their own hands. Everything was left behind. Without any leak. Without anyone's knowledge. And without anyone's knowledge, Salim Singh was warned. This coordination was a miracle. No one knew where he went. You know, even today, there's one thing that disappears like this. Your data. Your email. your passwords, your bank details, just one wrong click on the phishing link, The details get leaked. And it gets directly to the scammers. This is a very common scam. 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It is said that while leaving the village, the Kuldhara residents had cursed that no one would be able to live in the village And because of this curse this village never settled down in the last 200 years It is believed that whoever tried to live here had to escape from strange paranormal activities No one spends the night here. The official website of Rajasthan Tourism also says the same thing. That's why no one is allowed to enter Kuldhara after 6 pm. It is said that the night of Purnima, once the village settled down, Cows were coming, an anklets were ringing, bells were ringing in the temples, the old mills were running, the voices were coming, people were visible, but their faces were not. The founder of the Indian Paranormal Society, Gaurav Tiwari, had many meetings with his team. And what he experienced was quite strange. First, the temperature. Suddenly, dramatic drops were recorded in the temperature. When the team reached a certain point, the temperature was minus 2 degrees. And here, unexplained electromagnetic fields were detected. When the investigators asked questions, the EMF readings changed. The motion sensor was on and when it remained silent, the readings remained stable. I want you to come forward and try to talk to us without being afraid, without feeling shy, and without being scared. One team member thought that someone had touched him. I just realized that someone has touched me. There were orbs in the camera, which were said to be ghosts. I promise I won't bother you. CCTV footage was shown in the camera, but when Gaurav went to see it, the camera was turned off. Once, he saw something like a shadow on the camera, but when he rewinded and tried to see it again, the entire system crashed. The screams were not coming from any visible source. But they were being captured on audio equipment. 1, 2, 3, 4. I got the answer to what I said. And here's the incident I talked about in the beginning of the video. There, on the cars, suddenly, you can see the handprints of children. In a desolate village, where no human being lives. No child lives. Gaurav Tiwari summarized his findings, saying that he collected significant anomalies, which suggest that something is happening in Kuldhara, that cannot be explained with simple scientific theory. Now the question is, what is the truth behind it? If यू

 remember, in the video on the Bhangarh Fort, I told you about the same story. It is said that the ghostly fort was there because of the curse. But there is one important difference between the Bhangarh and the Kuldhara. All the characters in the Bhangarh story, were fictional characters. They were not real stories. But the characters in the Kuldhara story, are real. their actual historical record exists. Diwan Salim Singh was in the real world. It's clearly written in the Gazette of the Jaisalmer Estate, that Salim Singh, through his atrocious policies, had driven the Paliwal Brahmans out of the Jaisalmer Estate. These are the words of the British officers, which are recorded in the official government documents of that time. The story of the Paliwal Brahmans is also true. The torture that took place on them is also true. There's only one thing in this entire story, that has no historical proof. the story of the village chief's daughter. No book, document, or royal decree has mentioned any such story. This specific part of the story is a folklore. So you may wonder, if this is not true, then why did the people of Kuldhra leave this village? Is it true that they left the village overnight? Before we know this let look at the things that make Kuldhra India most haunted village In January 2017 a peer journal Current Science published a study that challenged the entire story This study did a forensic analysis of the structures of the nearby villages, the fallen roofs, the broken pillars. They argued that this damage pattern could only match with earthquakes. The data from the Geological Survey of India also shows this area was close to the active faults and epicenters. All the 84 villages. This study theorised that the Palewal Brahmans had not gone anywhere. The earthquake destroyed the houses that were built in a bad manner. Many people were buried under heavy stone blocks. And the mass exodus story was later added to the folklore. But a year later, a rebuttal was published in the same journal, which systematically broke this earthquake theory. In this paper, it was said that the biggest problem in the earthquake theory was that no earthquake record was made around the time of migration, 1825. There was an earthquake in Jaisalmer on 16th June, 1819. Six years before the migration. And the next one was on 4th April, 1905. 80 years after the migration. So when did the earthquake occur if people died from the earthquake? Secondly, if the earthquake occurred, the nearby non-Paliwal villages should have been damaged as well. But no devastation report has been made in any neighboring village. Earthquakes are never selective, that it will affect this village and not others. The third and most convincing argument is that the walls of Kuldhara are still in contact with each other. If the earthquake had come in such a terrible condition, cracks would have been seen in these walls, gaps would have been formed. But these walls are still aligned. This paper concluded that the earthquake would have damaged the structures later. But leaving the village suddenly, and the reason for that is not the earthquakes. So the question is, what was the reason? There's one factor that almost everyone agrees on. The water crisis. The foundation of Kuldhara's prosperity was water. Farming, trade, banking, all of this was possible in the desert, because the Paliwal Brahmans had taken over the water. But the truth is, despite making such a sophisticated system, this system would ultimately depend on the monsoon rains. And in the Thar Desert, rainfall has always been unpredictable. There's a Kalk river near Kuldhara, it was tied down 300 years ago, and it slowly dried up. According to the secretary of the NGO Jasalmer Vikas Samiti, Prakash Vyas, this could be the main reason why people left this place. As long as the river was there, the groundwater was being recharged. The wells were being filled. But as soon as the river dried up, everything disappeared. The research of Professor Syed Ali Nadeem Rizavi of Aligarh Muslim University, shows that by 1815, most of the wells in Kuldhra had dried up. Because of the drying up of the wells, farming was becoming impossible. and at the same time, due to the lack of security, trade was also stopped. This was also the reason for the decrease in sources of income. And in this situation, the wealth of Kuldhara, which was more wealthy than Jaisalmer, was becoming a threat to him. Author Nand Kishore Sharma has written more than 40 books on Jaisalmer's history. According to him, as trade routes stopped, and the river dried up, Salim Singh started to collect more tax from the Palewal Brahmans of Kuldhara and the rest of the village. On the other hand, the robbers and robbers started looting the people of Kuldhara. They would take women from the village, and until they were given money, they would keep them as prisoners. So this is the reason. The water was running out, the wells were drying up, and the farming was becoming impossible. On the other hand, the oppressive taxation of Salim Singh, and the looting of the robbers, the people of Kuldhara left the village, after being troubled by all this. The biggest proof of all this, is the famous book of the British officer Colonel James Todd 1829 Annals and Antiquities of about what he saw in Rajasthan with his own eyes James Todd saw that almost all the Palewal Brahmans in the area were living in voluntary exile. Because if they returned to their lands, Salim Singh would have taken all their earnings from them. At that time, the farming was almost over. The trade was also closed due to the lack of security. And Salim Singh had made the residents of the Palewal bank, hostages. so that they could be financially controlled. This is not a legendary story or folklore. This is a documented historical fact. The truth is that the people of Kuldhara did not leave the village overnight. At the peak of the 15th to 17th century, the population of Kuldhara was 1,588. But in 1815, the population of Kuldhara, according to the British officer James Todd, was 800. Supposedly, the population had disappeared overnight, 10 years ago. Nearly 800 people had left Kuldhara before. And this decline continued even after 1825. In historical records, we can see that in 1890, 37 people were still living in Kuldhara. That means that even after 1825, some people continued to live there. It was a gradual decline. Not everyone disappeared in one night. People slowly left. Some migrated to Jodhpur state. Jodhpur was outside the influence area of Salim Singh at that time. Some people went to Uttarakhand and Bihar. And the villages where they settled, we still have their identity. They were only looking for a better life. Now you might ask, if this is true, then what about the stories of those ghosts? , the answer to that is quite simple. And quite human. Confirmation bias. I told you about this in the Bhaangad Fort video. The places that are considered haunted, the more you read about those places, the more you get a confirmation bias. You have heard everyone say that this place is haunted. So your brain starts finding patterns. Every little sound becomes a ghost. Every shadow becomes a spirit. In psychology, there is a term for it, pareidolia. The human brain tries to find a pattern in everything. We see faces in places where no one exists. To tell you the truth, I myself went to Kuldhara. 7 years ago, in 2019. You can see the photos on the screen. But before I left, I didn't know that people consider this place haunted. In fact, it is called the most haunted village in India. So I had no confirmation bias about it. So obviously, I didn't notice anything unusual or mysterious. I may have heard shadows and strange sounds, but my brain didn't connect it to the haunted village. My brain thought that there must be someone around, from where the sounds were coming from. It could be the sound of the wind. And the videos of Gaurav Tiwari, where the motion sensor is on, all of this happens. In those videos, it is also said that it could be that the motion sensor is on due to the wind. Or it could be that the device is faulty. It could be that the wind is bent. It could be that the device is faulty. A local tourist guide, Shaitan Singh, says that Kuldhara is just an abandoned place. And even the locals themselves don't believe that this place is haunted. When tourists come to see it, the local guides show them what the tourists want to see. The Secretary of the Jassalmer Vikas Committee, Chandraprakash Vyas, also says that he has been coming here for 25 years. But they didn't see any invisible power here. Nor did they hear any screams. These are the ghosts of the Komarzao. I have not experienced anything like this in the past 30 years. And here, there is another twist in the story. The real reason behind the ghost story is not just tourism. But the real reason is the treasure. It is claimed that there was a lot of treasure and gold hidden in the ruins of Kuldhara. Which the Palewal Brahmans left here. At one time a lot of thieves used to come here to search for this treasure and would search the night to find something If someone found gold someone would steal the windows and doors And if these thieves wanted to steal it was important that no one would come here at night That's why these people spread the stories of ghosts. Today, no one would know about the Kuldhara if they didn't have the greed for this treasure. No one would come here until the 1990s. And no one outside the country knew about the Kuldhara. But in 1998, a man named Sumer Ram started living in a shabby house in Kuldhara with his father. Because he had nowhere else to live. He saw two foreigners, a Dutch and a German, coming with metal detectors. They dug a house, and found some gold and silver coins there. They took them away. When Sumer Ram stopped them, a foreigner stabbed him. But Sumer Ram called the police, and both the foreigners were arrested. They were imprisoned. that the stolen items are still in the custody of the Jaisalmer Court. You can see this article from the Indian Express in 2010. After this incident, the local government built a boundary wall all around Kuldhara, and Sumer Ram was made the watchman of Kuldhara. You might still have a doubt, what about the handprints on the car? The truth is, that's just one video. It's hard to say how much one can trust it. On top of that, just 4 km from Kuldhara, there's another village, where people live and play. Sometimes, while the children play, Kuldhara also comes. Even the herders of that village, often go out with their animals. So the next time you visit Kuldhara, don't go to find ghosts. Instead, go to salute a civilization, that had planted gold in the sand. If you want to know scientific facts about ghosts, then do watch the video on the Bhaangad Fort. By clicking here. Thank you very much!