Atma Ram (politician)

Atma Ram was a Hindu minister in Afghanistan during the 1820s and 1830s. A native of Peshawar, he held the office of Diwanbegi in Kunduz under Murad Beg. He was said to have dominated trade between India and Turan in this period. A tax farmer, he purchased the right to collect taxes on the Kabul–Bukhara caravans. Unusually for a Hindu in an Islamic state, he was even permitted to own Muslim slaves.

There is a coloured lithograph of Atma Ram based on the work of James Rattray at the time of the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838–1842).