Proof of this was the fact that no other ruler in the sprawling subcontinent had ever had in his cabinet as many men owing allegiance to other religions as Ranjit Singh. At the peak of his power, there were only seven Sikhs in his cabinet of fifteen ministers, and the rest were Hindus and Muslims. Many others of different religions, such as Jains, Buddhists, Christians and the bewildering subdivisions of these faiths, were accommodated according to their talents.
How was this leader able to achieve the seemingly impossible goals he set himself? The answer lies in his veneration of the ten founding fathers of the Sikh faith and the ethos of decency and discipline they preached. A part of the answer also lies in the fact that at the age of nine he had to assume the chieftainship of his father’s misl or confederacy which was one of the more powerful in Punjab. To take on the chief’s mantle was an awesome responsibility. But Ranjit Singh, by handling it with energy and élan, gained the self-confidence that never left him.
The achievements of his grandfather and his father before him, who were warriors and leaders of great repute, were of fundamental importance to his own career. But the distinctive quality that makes Ranjit Singh truly exceptional was his humanitarianism, his respect for other faiths and his total disgust for the inhumane treatment which rulers of the day inflicted on their defeated adversaries. As the British writer Sir Lepel Griffin observed in Rulers of India: Ranjit Singh (1911), ‘Ranjit Singh was not cruel or bloodthirsty. After a victory or the capture of a fortress he treated the vanquished with leniency and kindness however stout their resistance might have been, and there were at his Court many chiefs despoiled of their estates but to whom he had given suitable employ.’
Another fascinating aspect of this multi-faceted man was his refusal to allow any cities, towns, forts, highways, gardens, statues, archways, monuments and such to commemorate him. Most extraordinary of all was that, even though he established many mints which produced fine coins, there is just one coin of very small dimensions with his image on it, which shows Ranjit Singh kneeling before Guru Nanak with folded hands. If any one thing highlights his self-effacing qualities and his total rejection of the time-worn ways of self-aggrandizement, this is it.
It is also worth recording that even after he had wrested control of Amritsar from the chiefs of the Bhangi misl in 1802, Ranjit Singh arrived at the Harmandir, the Golden Temple, not as a victorious military leader or the monarch of a Sikh state but as a devotee – among countless others – come to pray at the holiest of Sikh shrines. This was his way of demonstrating his conviction that within the precincts of the Durbar Sahib there was no place for the self-important or arrogant.
Equally significant is the fact that the Harmandir Sahib in the centre of the pool of the Durbar Sahib in Amritsar has an inscription of a few lines at the entrance to the shrine, acknowledging Ranjit Singh’s contribution towards making the Golden Temple one of the world’s great religious places. The inscription, translated from Gurmukhi, reads: ‘The great Guru in his wisdom looked upon Maharaja Ranjit Singh as his chief servitor and Sikh, and in his benevolence bestowed upon him the privilege of serving the Durbar Sahib.’
There could be no more telling acknowledgement of Ranjit Singh’s lasting legacy than these lines at the entrance of the fountainhead of the Sikh faith. To this day they inspire Sikhs the world over, no matter where they have put down their roots, since Sikhs now live in all corners of the world – confident, purposeful, productive and proud of their incomparable heritage.
1
The Legacy That Made the Sikhs Proud
History is not a calculating machine. It unfolds in the mind and the imagination, and it takes body in the multifarious responses of a people’s culture, itself the infinitely subtle mediation of material realities, of underpinning economic fact, of gritty objectivities.
BASIL DAVIDSON
Over the centuries many invaders from far-off lands, lured by India’s untold wealth in gold, diamonds, pearls and gems and its bountiful earth, followed the footsteps of Alexander the Great into India. One quality the Macedonian showed soon after he crossed into India through the Khyber Pass in 327 BC, his magnanimity towards the vanquished, Ranjit Singh shared in abundance. It was not a quality frequently found either in classical times or since.
Defeating King Porus, ruler of Paurava, through which flow two of Punjab’s great rivers, Jhelum and Chenab (Hydaspes and Acesines in Greek), Alexander, deeply impressed by the dignified bearing of the vanquished king, asked him what he could do for him, to which Porus replied: ‘Treat me like a king.’ Alexander said: ‘I would do that for my own sake, but tell me what I may do for thee.’ ‘All my wishes,’ said Porus, ‘are summed up in my first reply.’1 The pride and noble bearing of Porus led to a friendship that resulted in the fallen king’s ascension once again to his ancestors’ throne and the restoration of not only his old territories but many more as well. Porus was not the only one of his fallen foes to be treated royally by Alexander. There were many others who, impressed by his civilized behaviour towards them, brought their own levies of troops to fight alongside the Macedonians.
And among testimonies of Ranjit Singh’s generosity towards foes may be cited this from Major H.M.L. Lawrence, political agent in charge of British relations with Lahore, during Ranjit’s rule: ‘While those of the royal blood are all but begging their bread in Delhi and Kabul, he [Ranjit Singh] almost invariably provides for the families of his conquered enemies.’2 Such behaviour had not been known on the subcontinent since the days of Alexander the Great. More familiar experience was the general three-day massacre during Tamerlane’s sack of Delhi in 1398 and the similar savagery of the invading Nadir Shah of Persia in 1739 and the Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1748.
On the departure of Alexander the Great from India in 323 BC there was comparative peace in the subcontinent for a century under the Mauryans. But in the course of the next two millennia of Indian history repeated conflicts on Indian soil continued to weaken it. While each new period enriched the culture of the land, it also brought a further proliferation of religious pressures, languages, creeds and customs which inevitably led to big and small wars. The various regional, linguistic and other divisions so very obvious in India today go far back, and they have only increased with time. The clash of arms and relentless bloodshed over the centuries inevitably facilitated the gradual colonization of the country by forces which came to the subcontinent to plunder but ended up ruling it.
The first Muslim invaders entered the subcontinent at the beginning of the eighth century, but the main Islamic assault came with the appearance of Sabuktigin from the Afghan kingdom of Ghazni on the northern plains of the Punjab with his Central Asian horsemen in 986. His and then his son Mahmud’s annual expeditions over several decades set a model for hordes of future invaders who systematically looted the sacred and secular treasures of northern India and decimated its inhabitants. Most of the next millennium saw eight successive Muslim dynasties in India, the last of these, the Mughals, establishing an empire that brought all of India under its rule until the British took over after the suppression of the Indian Mutiny in 1858.
It was the people of the Punjab, the land of the legendary five rivers – the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej and Beas3 – who bore the brunt of centuries of invasions, and their rugged character was honed in the unceasing clash of arms. ‘From the remotest antiquity,’ an Indian historian has written, ‘an interest has attached to the land of the five Rivers unequalled by that attaching to any other land of this great Peninsula’; it is ‘placed […] by nature in a locality which gives it a crowning position, and serving as the gateway to India’ and ‘every invader from the North has, by its possession, sought the road to fame’.4
For hundreds of miles to the north of Punjab lie the Himalayan and Sub-Himalayan ranges, and nestling in them are the ancient centres of Nahan, Chamba, Mandi, Suket and Simla, which was the summer capital of British India. Then there are the flowering valleys of Kulu and Kangra, t
he upland herding towns of Lahaul and Spiti and the hill town of Dalhousie. To the west lie the Sulaiman and Safed Koh ranges, to the east the River Jamuna, and to the south are the deserts of Sind and Rajasthan and the River Sutlej. Covering an area of 100,436 square miles, well defined by its natural boundaries, amply watered by its five rivers, with extensive areas of rich alluvial soil deposited by them, the Punjab has always held rich agricultural potential. And when to all these natural assets are added the indomitable character of its people this region has been justifiably considered a priceless jewel in the crown of whichever ruler sat on the throne of Delhi.
Ranjit Singh’s accomplishments, his consolidation of the territories he conquered, the diverse backgrounds of the men he chose as his political advisers, military generals and ministers, can be fully appreciated only in long historical context: against the backdrop of India’s self-destructive pressures rooted in religion, class, caste and customs and, above all, in the context of the actions and ethical, philosophical, spiritual and social goals of the founding fathers of Sikhism.
Nanak, founder of the Sikh faith, was born in times when wars, terror, turbulence and periodic invasions were savaging the subcontinent, although at the time of his birth on 15 April 1469 India was experiencing a spell of rare stability under the benign rule of Bahlol Khan, founder of the Lodhi Dynasty (1451-1526). Nanak’s life coincided with the religious renaissance in Europe, and by an interesting coincidence Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-64) were his contemporaries.
Nanak, too, felt very early in life that the divisive and destructive trends which had been tearing his country, the Punjab, apart – and the very village of his birth, Talwandi near Lahore, on the direct route of invading armies that had not so long ago poured in through the Hindu Kush – could only be met by the resoluteness and impetus provided by a new religion which would revitalize people to meet these destructive forces. His resolve to give shape and form to such a movement led him to lay the groundwork for Sikhism. The new faith, he was determined, must give a new life, add a new cultural dimension and a wholly new dynamic to India’s religious mosaic.
Nanak was born into a Hindu family and a very happy one at that.5 At a very young age he astonished his parents and the family’s Brahmin priest with some forthright statements and questions. ‘There is no Hindu. There is no Mussulman,’ he pronounced.6 And at the age of eleven he baffled a gathering of family, friends and relations when he refused to wear the janeu or sacred thread of the Hindus which all male offspring are enjoined to wear from that age onwards, which consists of strands of cotton woven into a thin cord looped from the left shoulder around the right hip. Nanak asked the priest presiding over the ceremony to explain to him what difference wearing the thread would make to his life. If he was unconvinced it could make any real difference, he would prefer not to be a party to the ceremony. He then recited his own composition to him and the assembled guests:
Out of the cotton of compassion
Spin the thread of contentment
Tie the knot of continence, and the twist of virtue;
Make such a sacred thread,
O Pundit, for your inner self.7
When he took his father’s cattle out to graze he would spend hours listening to the sages and mystics who have always been a part of India’s human mosaic. Although he was most attentive to what they had to say, he usually drew his own conclusions which were, more times than not, at odds with theirs.
At the age of sixteen, on the persuasion of his adoring sister Nanaki, he moved to the town of Sultanpur, a hundred miles away from the parental home, to live with her and her husband, who worked for Nawab Daulat Khan Lodhi, the region’s powerful governor and a relative of the ruler of Delhi, Bahlol Khan. A refined and scholarly man, Daulat Khan was so impressed by Nanak that he offered him a job, which he accepted, even though a job wasn’t exactly what he was looking for in life.
During his eight years in Sultanpur Nanak married at nineteen and became the father of two sons, Srichand and Lakhmidas. When he was barely in his twenties word spread about his saintli-ness and scholarly insights into the purpose and meaning of life and the code by which it should be lived. This drew people – even from distant places – to him, and they listened to him with growing reverence. But Nanak knew that he still had much to probe, question and absorb before he could meaningfully communicate with the disciples who had begun to gravitate towards him.
At this stage he took an extraordinary decision: to visit all the centres of religious learning in his country that he could and to travel to those of far-off countries as well, to see and understand the essence of their beliefs and what helped to sustain them. He himself believed in the concept of one god and was increasingly of the view that only this could help a war-ridden, conflict-prone and utterly divided world in which millions of weak and demoralized victims of aggressors were left to their fate. He wished to meet the scholars and sages at the great religious centres and learn their view of these critical human concerns.
Starting in 1496, Nanak’s travels lasted twenty-eight years. His journeys were a remarkable feat for those times. But Nanak’s gentle and saintly appearance belied his iron will. His travels in India took him from Hardwar to Benares, Kamrup (Assam), Jagannath (Orissa) and to southern India and Ceylon. In the next phase of his travels he visited Tibet, Kabul, Mecca and Baghdad. Each new encounter with men of learning and philosophical bent helped him to define more sharply the contours of the faith he was shaping in a number of newly composed hymns, in which he drew on the basic compassion of Hinduism and the essential brotherhood of Islam, rejecting the demeaning role of the caste system which, in his view, was no less pernicious than the destruction of temples and places of worship.
The word ‘Sikh’ comes from the Sanskrit word shishya, which means a devoted follower. It was very much in tune with the new faith. After Nanak’s return from his travels he settled in a peaceful spot by the River Ravi, where he spent the last fifteen years of his life. There he built a village which he called Kartarpur, where his devoted disciples gathered in increasing numbers. Its idyllic setting, the easy flow of the community’s daily routine in which all participated, Nanak’s reading of his own hymns – he composed 974 in all – and the philosophical discourses he initiated, all helped to establish a daily format which Sikhs have followed, with some variations, ever since.
This man of extraordinary vision, exemplary concern for fellow humans and a resoluteness which helped him achieve the seemingly impossible died a peaceful death in Kartarpur on 7 September 1539.
The founder of Sikhism was succeeded as Guru by Angad, who had been chosen by Nanak in preference to his two sons. He began the task of assembling all Guru Nanak’s hymns – and sixty-two of his own – in a book. The script he chose was the Gurmukhi (which is also used for modern secular writing and printing); the hymns were composed in medieval Punjabi, in Hindi and other languages of the time. This book would be the precursor of the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of the Sikhs. On his death in 1552 his chosen successor and close disciple Amar Das succeeded him.
Amar Das gave priority to organizationally strengthening the Sikh faith by meeting the many needs of the sangats or assemblies of Sikhs which were beginning to be formed in many parts of India. Guru Amar Das organized these into twenty-two manjis or districts, which brought a much-needed cohesiveness and continuity to the faith. He also institutionalized the concept of langar, a community kitchen where all, no matter what their caste or religion, could eat.
Guru Amar Das’s major reform was the emancipation of women. He allowed widows to remarry and broke the tradition of not appointing women preachers. He prohibited followers of the Sikh faith from practising sati – the self-immolation of widows on their husband’s funeral pyres – and made clear that they were no longer obliged to wear veils. These decisions and others introducing equality between men and women were unprecedented in the subcontinent.
A scholar and thinker, Guru Amar Das
also wrote 907 hymns which are included in the Guru Granth Sahib. Many of them emphatically reiterate Sikhism’s unbending opposition to caste, cults, clergy and idols while expressing firm belief in one god.
There were no divisions of caste or rank, no sectarian antagonisms,
No idols nor temples, nor creeds of particular nations,
There were no clashing forms of prayer and worship,
Nor any to worship or pray.
There were no mullas or qazis or hadjis;
No Sufis and no disciples of the Sufis,
No proud Kings, nor their subjects,
Nor Masters either, nor slaves.
There did not exist either the cult based on adoring worship of Vishnu,
Nor that based on Siva, the passive male,
And Sakti, the active female:
There was neither friendship nor sexual appetite;
God was both creditor and debtor then,
Such being His pleasure.
GURU GRANTH SAHIB, Rag Maru, p. 1035
Guru Amar Das also took the first steps to construct the holiest of all Sikh shrines, the Harmandir, which later came to be known as the Golden Temple, by choosing a site with a beautiful clear pool surrounded by a terrain of trees, flora and fauna. The actual construction of the building destined to become the emblematic core of Sikhism would take several decades and owed much to the fourth and fifth Gurus, Ram Das and Arjan Dev.
When Amar Das died in 1574, the leadership of the faith passed to Ram Das, who had created a lasting impression on the third Guru by totally identifying himself with the principles and purposes of Sikhism. He took the development of the Golden Temple’s site under his personal direction. None of the Sikh Gurus, it should be noted, used his position to lead a privileged life but worked alongside the congregation on everyday duties and anything else that needed to be done.
Empire of the Sikhs Page 2