Empire of the Sikhs (2 page)

As he always has in the past, Jasdev Singh rose magnificently to the occasion by opening up for us the archives of the Imperial Hotel, New Delhi, which have some fine paintings, drawings, sketches and prints of the Sikh period. But it would be an unforgivable oversight not to acknowledge first our deep gratitude to Jasdev's mother, Bibi Nirlep Kaur, an exceptionally gifted person whose profound admiration and respect for the founding Gurus of the Sikh faith sowed the seeds of Jasdev's increasing interest in his own heritage. The veritable treasure house he is creating for it is a tribute to her. The invaluable help of Chowdhary Ominder Singh Mander, the archivist of Jasdev's collection, in putting together the information we needed is gratefully acknowledged.

Four other friends who gave unstintingly of their time and were generous and forthcoming all the way were Harbinder Singh Rana, Hon. Director of the Maharaja Duleep Singh Centenary Trust, Indarjit and Kanwal Singh and Indar Singh Uppal.

The coinage illustrated in this book comes from the Jyoti M. Rai Collection, a private collection of the rarest Sikh coins. Another friend, Narinder Singh Kapany, who has gradually built up a superb collection of Sikh artefacts, very generously allowed us to reproduce whatever we wished out of his collection in
California. As in the past, Susan Stronge responded magnificently each time we asked her for her insightful advice and comments. Bhupinder Singh Bance (Peter Bance), Robert Scoales and Sukhbinder Singh Paul were generous with their time and the wealth of information they shared with us, as also were Ros Savill and Jeremy Warren who were most helpful when we visited London's Wallace Collection. Martin Lutyens was no less generous in setting aside an entire morning to show us around Sir John Soane's Museum. Each of these goodwill gestures helped us locate material for further enriching this book.

We are equally indebted to Rasil Basu and Deidi Von Schaewen and to Rewa Singh who generously loaned us for an indefinite period the very rare (1840) edition of W.G. Osborne's book
The Court and Camp of Runjeet Sing.
We gratefully acknowledge the many insights that were provided by Harjit Partap Rai and the Judge family of Kapurthala, Prabeen Singh, Bubli Brar, the Mool-gavkars, and thank Pat Rai for his consistent encouragement, guidance and wise counsel.

Warmest thanks are also due to Dr Michael Bates, the Curator of Islamic Coins of the American Numismatic Society and its wonderful members who so willingly shared their wisdom and knowledge.

As always, Antony Wood rose heroically to the occasion and read the manuscript with a sharp and critical eye from the first to the last page. The book has benefited enormously from his editorial advice, despite some rather tense moments over some of his suggestions, which actually helped further strengthen our friendship!

The wizardry of Jagjit Singh Anand, the librarian at Bhai Vir Singh Sahitya Sadan, New Delhi, was much in evidence as he produced with ease books that were impossible to lay hands on elsewhere.

While on the subject of wizardry, Jaya Nair, too, worked
miracles with her computer, with her unending secretarial responsibilities and her occasional forays into research. She took on every task confidently and performed it convincingly each time.

We reached port because it was Meher who steered the ship – as she always has in the past. No matter how difficult the task, she was not only there to share the burden but would help us cross yet another hurdle with effortless ease. This book could not have been written without her wondrous interventions.

Historians, for reasons of their own, have often done grave injust-ice to outstanding historical figures by refusing to accord them their rightful place in history. But when even convincing evidence of greatness was overlooked because the political culture of the time required it, it becomes necessary to correct oversights and falsifications, no matter how long after the event.

Ranjit Singh was one such colossus who bestrode the Indian scene but who never received the credit due to him as one of the outstanding figures of India's history. He created the altogether extraordinary empire of the Sikhs, the borders of which extended beyond India and into the thresholds of Kabul and Tibet. He also held the British in check for forty years to the south of his realm and closed the Khyber Pass through which plunderers had for centuries poured into India.

Just as Alexander the Great in 333 BC is said to have fulfilled King Midas's prophecy that whoever untied the Gordian knot would rule Asia, Ranjit Singh and Napoleon Bonaparte, two outstanding visionaries and military commanders who were contemporaries, laid their claims to fulfilling this prophecy by untying the knot and establishing empires in the most divided parts of the world. They each shared a deep mistrust of the British, because they had no illusions about the degree to which their common adversary was driven by its own ambitions of empire.

Even though many books have been published on Ranjit Singh,
we felt that a definitive biography of this rare man had still to be written, to cover not only the entire range of his military achievements but also the just and humane rule he provided during turbulent times when barbarism was the order of the day. The task we set ourselves was to bring out the essence of the man, his daily routine, his likes and dislikes and his dealings with people in every walk of life. Equally important to establish were his relationships with the many women in his life and the courtesies and decencies which he extended to them without exception. Yet another side of Ranjit Singh was reflected in the grandeur of his Lahore Durbar, equal to any European or Mughal court, his jewels,
objets d'art
and the precious artefacts which he collected all his life.

In order to draw upon as many different accounts as we could, we went to original sources with eyewitness accounts by Europeans and Indians alike; court diaries during Ranjit Singh's time; reports of Maratha spies at the Lahore Durbar; British parliamentary papers; Lahore political diaries; British-Indian archives and the libraries of Columbia, New York, Punjab and Chandigarh universities.

What we discovered was that the civilized rule of Ranjit Singh was entirely different from the way many other rulers have treated their people in India. The question that has remained unanswered until now is what made him the man he was – a man who shunned the flagrant violations of humanitarian principles so very common throughout history? What made him adhere so scrupulously throughout his life to the goals he set himself? And what inner resources did he draw upon that enabled him to abide by the ethical and exemplary rules he so diligently observed?

In our efforts to find answers to these questions we were drawn ever deeper into a better understanding of the intense beliefs that helped Ranjit Singh achieve all that he did. His most compelling quality was his total commitment to the religious faith into which he was born. If secularity – or equal respect for other religions –
was the founding principle of Sikhism, then he was determined never to deviate from it.

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.

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.