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When Sparrows Became Hawks: The Making of the Sikh Warrior Tradition, 1699-1799
Abstract
This study interrogates the dominant historiography about the origins and early history of the Sikh warrior community, the Khalsa. Contrary to the commonly accepted belief that the distinctive rituals, ceremonies, and cultural practices associated with the Khalsa were formed during the lifetime of the Tenth and last Sikh Guru, Gobind Singh, this study reveals how such markers of Khalsa identity evolved slowly over the course of the eighteenth century. By placing the experience of peasant communities at the heart of its historical analysis, this book traces the multiple perspectives and debates that eventually coalesced to create a composite Khalsa culture by 1799. This approach incorporates and analyzes Sikh normative religious literature, including rahitnamas and gurbilas texts, created during this period by reading it in the larger context of sources such as news reports, court histories and other primary sources that show how actual practices were shaped in response to religious reforms. Recovering the agency of the peasants who dominated this community, this study demonstrates how a dynamic process of debates, collaboration, and conflict among Sikh peasants, scholars, and chiefs transformed Sikh practices and shaped a new martial community.
... Shackle (2017), one of the foremost linguistic experts of this period and region, 2 finds the translations to be "more elegant than most of those which have appeared in earlier versions". Dhavan (2020), herself the author of a major history of the Sikh community in the 18 th century (Dhavan, 2011) says that "they offer at present the most mellifluous English rendering of the work of this important Sikh scholar and poet" [p. 83]. 3 ...
... This later circulation and legacy of Bhai Gurdas' work is not the primary focus Drinking from Love's Cup, but scholars rightly point to the importance of the eighteenth-century manuscript record and particularly the circulation of later manuscripts of Bhai Gurdas' vars as important facets for understanding the central role that Bhai Gurdas came to hold in Sikh practice for understanding and explaining Sikh ethical thoughts. From my own experience of writing about the eighteenth century, it would make perfect sense for Sikhs in this time period to look to Bhai Gurdas' meditations on martyrdom and justice with renewed interest (Dhavan, 2011). The themes that Gill finds prominent in Bhai Gurdas' compositions are also ones that resonate with the texts of the eighteenth century that center sacrifice, heroism, and justice. ...
... women during warfare, and their conduct more generally is viewed as embodying ideals of equality and justice. 18 However, Dhavan (2011) brings out individual material and instrumental motives in the evolution of Khalsa rulers, and the influence of status norms and those associated with their rule. There is ample evidence of Sikh practices that adhere to core values such as equality and humility. ...
... It does not make claims about the desirability of Sikhs adopting the Khalsa order, merely notes that 30 Oberoi (1994) is often associated with this claim of a rupture, though he positions it as a phenomenon of the colonial period, arguing that the Khalsa ideal did not have durable salience in the prior two centuries after its founding. What is missing from his arguments is much of Sikh history (e.g., Dhavan, 2011;Fenech, 2014;Chann, 2017), and a recognition that both sides of his "Khalsa-Sahajdhari" binary were led by Sikhs initiated in the Khalsa. 31 One can also appeal to the "lived religion" approach (e.g., Hall, 1997) to give weight to the opinions of members of the tradition. ...
... Bhakt-māl 509:1-3 (Nahta 1965, p. 235) Indeed, by the late eighteenth century Dadu-panthi and Khalsa Sikhs both possessed extensive and systematically arranged anthologies of poetry, both expressed martial dimensions within their respective traditions while simultaneously embracing both a general Sant emphasis on the transcendent and unqualified divine; both enjoyed, as well, an interior discipline by which one could attune oneself to that divine which reverberates throughout the universe, as demonstrated above (Pinch 2006). At a much more mundane level, too, both communities were generally prospering economically by the late eighteenth century, benefitting from the many changes precipitated by the various transformations of the Mughal empire after the sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah in 1739, and were composed of those who embraced more ascetic lifestyles (Sikh Udasis and Dadu-panthi sadhus and sadhvis) as well as those who did not, particularly lay followers and householders (Dhavan 2011). As Raghavdas intones, dādū jī ke panth maim . ...
This essay examines the issue of Guru Nanak’s inclusion in the mid-to-late seventeenth-century devotional text prepared by the Dadu-panthi savant, Raghavdas, the Bhakt-māl or Garland of Devotees. This text follows by some decades the similarly titled Bhakt-māl of Nabha Das. However, while Nabha Das excludes Guru Nanak, Raghavdas’ Bhakt-māl embraces him and includes a much more diverse seventeenth- and pre-seventeenth-century saintly clientele that was particular to both northern and southern India. The essay is one of the first to examine this text in Sikh studies and tease out the reasons which may have prompted Raghavdas to include Guru Nanak. In the process, it attempts to understand early non-Sikh bhakti views of the Sikh Gurus while also providing fresh looks at Sikh numbers in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and at the diverse and multi-ideological environment of northern India from the early 1600s onward. It also suggests Raghavadas’ familiarity with the poetry of his near contemporary ideologue, the great Sikh scholar Bhai Gurdas Bhalla.
... However, lack of historiography on the subject as well as limited study of the 2 Dogra history, beyond its effect on literature and language, has resulted in limited knowledge of Dogra Culture beyond Jammu and Kashmir. 3 Although several Dogra culture reviving conferences have been held from time to time, there is still relative ignorance about the craftsmanship and artistic range of those living beyond Western Himalayas. Additionally, socio-political movements, migration, religious conversion and neighbouring influences have overshadowed the indigenous Dogra customs and beliefs, limiting our study of this ethno-linguistic group to the Hindu Dogras of Jammu and Himachal. ...
The Dogras are an ethno-linguistic tribe, based in India and Pakistan. Historically, the residents of Duggar Pradesh , the tribe is presently scattered in the areas of Jammu and Kashmir, parts of Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and northeastern Pakistan and has diversified both religiously and linguistically, with only a small fraction still using the Dogri language. The Dogras, in the present times, belong to Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jain and Buddhist communities and are virtually indistinguishable from the non-Dogra ethnic tribes, except for their jewellery, which still serves as an ethnic identification of sorts. Among a wide array of gold and silver objects, which include rural and urban ornaments, that represent cultural evolution and regional variations, is a single silver bangle called Mrijhri, which is perhaps the only ornament that still retains its original cultural value. This paper presentation is based on an independent research conducted by way of interviews and in-depth object analysis of the Mrijhri and attempts to trace the overshadowed and forgotten culture of the Dogras .
Military institutions can be seen as a solution to a type of principal-agent problem, in which a government principal contracts with a military agent to produce violence on their behalf. Absent extensive monitoring, low effort should be expected from the military agent. This should especially be the case for a mercenary force which cannot rely on patriotism or ideology. Yet the mercenary army of the British-ruled India consistently produced high and dedicated performance. In this paper, I argue that the otherwise curious institution of recruiting predominantly from the so-called ‘martial races’ helps to explain this puzzle. Drawing on Iannaccone’s club goods model, I argue that the martial race recruitment system represented an effective solution to the principal-agent problem by allowing the British to benefit from a repeat business arrangement with a small number of ethno-religious groups whose costly in-group prohibitions and poor outside options helped both to screen out potential shirkers and deter poor performance on the battlefield.
The study of ‘Hinduism’ in contemporary academia has generated considerable controversy. Many scholars have argued that the idea of a single ancient religion is difficult to substantiate based on the historical record. A common alternative position is that Hinduism is a colonial construct, without well-defined historical antecedents. This paper contributes to a scholarly middle ground, which provides an empirically based yet still contingent analysis of the evolution of ‘Hinduism’, by drawing on evidence from the Sikh tradition. In doing so, it also draws on approaches which interpret Islam as a discursive tradition, subject to contestable representations, shaped by conditions of knowledge and power, as well as by collective aspirations. Sikh attempts at self-definition included distinguishing their tradition from the two larger, pre-existing traditions of Muslims and Hindus in an explicit and self-conscious manner. In doing so, Sikh leaders recognised ‘Hindu’ as a religious category to some degree, well before the colonial period.
This article reconsiders a religious institution in India during the early colonial era as a manifestation of regional influence, or a non-statist public force. Founded by Sahajanand Swami, the Hindu devotional (bhakti) community known as the Swaminarayan Sampradaya expanded in the area that is today Gujarat in western India. The community arose as a source of popular influence in a region that lacked a dominant state at this time. Its creation was forged in relation to local struggles for power and resources, involving princely states, Maratha and East India Company powers, Kathi chieftains, and broader social and cultural changes in the nineteenth century. Historically examining the process of community expansion in the region through aspects like patronage and cultural production, I argue that the sampradaya’s articulation of devotion internalized political acumen to navigate material realities successfully. Effectively, the modern articulation enabled adherents to broker power from diverse networks and strengthen the community’s complex, multifaceted authority in Gujarat.
Bhangra music has generically functioned as the site for the articulation of a particular form of Jat masculinity that may be described as hypermasculine. In its glorification of Jat machismo and reification of the female as an object of the Jat’s adoration, it has perpetuated gendered stereotypes originating in feudal Punjabi cultures of honour. Several Punjabi folksongs or those attributed to legendary Punjabi folk singers map strength, courage, and virility on the Jat body in which the objectification of the female body is traditionally sanctioned as a desirable Jat attribute. In hybrid Bhangra genres, Punjabi hypermasculinity is remodelled in relation to the hypermasculinist aesthetic of black genres like rap to produce an explosive toxic masculinity. This article focuses on the hypermasculine ethic underpinning popular bhangra music, particularly the songs of two popular singers, Jazzy B and Yo Yo Honey Singh, to examine the Canadian Punjabi youth masculinities that converge on Punjabi music to reproduce traditional Punjabi patriarchies. It shows that while the appropriation of these bhangra genres enables brown Indo-Canadians and “Surrey Jacks” to constitute alternative protest masculinities in opposition to hegemonic white masculinities, they engender different forms of misogyny and violence.
Sikhism was founded with the words, practices, and institutions initiated by Nanak (1469–1539), who is revered as the first of ten human‐embodied Gurus of the tradition, before Guruship came to be invested in the sacred scripture that stands at the center of the community, the Guru Granth Sahib. The community is believed today to be comprised of approximately 27 million adherents, the great majority of them living in the Indian state of Punjab, the locus of the historical development of the community. The Sikh Diaspora, however, is large and influential, with significant communities in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Singapore. The tradition reflects its early modern origins as well as its ongoing modern transformations, and is notable for its prominence both within Indian society and in many diasporic locations.
This Companion offers a global, comparative history of the interplay between religion and war from ancient times to the present. Moving beyond sensationalist theories that seek to explain why 'religion causes war,' the volume takes a thoughtful look at the connection between religion and war through a variety of lenses - historical, literary, and sociological-as well as the particular features of religious war. The twenty-three carefully nuanced and historically grounded chapters comprehensively examine the religious foundations for war, classical just war doctrines, sociological accounts of religious nationalism, and featured conflicts that illustrate interdisciplinary expressions of the intertwining of religion and war. Written by a distinguished, international team of scholars, whose essays were specially commissioned for this volume, The Cambridge Companion to Religion and War will be an indispensable resource for students and scholars of the history and sociology of religion and war, as well as other disciplines.
This Companion offers a global, comparative history of the interplay between religion and war from ancient times to the present. Moving beyond sensationalist theories that seek to explain why 'religion causes war,' the volume takes a thoughtful look at the connection between religion and war through a variety of lenses - historical, literary, and sociological-as well as the particular features of religious war. The twenty-three carefully nuanced and historically grounded chapters comprehensively examine the religious foundations for war, classical just war doctrines, sociological accounts of religious nationalism, and featured conflicts that illustrate interdisciplinary expressions of the intertwining of religion and war. Written by a distinguished, international team of scholars, whose essays were specially commissioned for this volume, The Cambridge Companion to Religion and War will be an indispensable resource for students and scholars of the history and sociology of religion and war, as well as other disciplines.
This paper analyses the Sikh religious tradition in light of research on the connections between religion, morality, and economics. Sikhism provides a compact and well-documented example of the creation and evolution of a religious community, in which moral guidance is paramount, but interacts with material incentives and material conditions. The time scale of this case, and its geographic and conceptual location in juxtaposition to Hinduism and Islam, make Sikh tradition a useful additional data point for analyses of the relationship of religion, morality, and economics. At the same time, considering the Sikh tradition in these more general conceptual frameworks provides a clearer understanding of this specific case.
Merchants of Virtue explores the question of what it meant to be Hindu in precolonial South Asia. Divya Cherian presents a fine-grained study of everyday life and local politics in the kingdom of Marwar in eighteenth-century western India to uncover how merchants enforced their caste ideals of vegetarianism and bodily austerity as universal markers of Hindu identity. Using legal strategies and alliances with elites, these merchants successfully remade the category of “Hindu,” setting it in contrast to “Untouchable” in a process that reconfigured Hinduism in caste terms. In a history pertinent to understanding India today, Cherian establishes the centrality of caste to the early-modern Hindu self and to its imagination of inadmissible others.
This essay traces the changing contours of a Panjabi state during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It focuses on the Kalsia principality, founded by a family of rural warlords who had transformed themselves from village elders to the rulers of a distinct principality within a generation. Using a chronicle left by a retainer and scribe of the Kalsia administration, it studies a handful of the chiefly lineage’s dependents (tābeʻīn), to try to understand what their position within the ruling household was, what rendered them dependent, and what kept them loyal. It argues that jural status was of some, but not determinant, importance in creating deeply hierarchical bonds; just as important was the value that patron and client, master and slave alike attached to such unequal relations, as a source of honour, status, and influence. This value was moreover shared across and attached to a range of relationships, from kinship bonds to servitude, blurring the distinction between family and service. This began to change, at least in law, in the wake of colonization, as the British sought to impose fixed boundaries on the household, to progressively strip ruling houses of their land.
Sikh dominance in the Indian military started under the British in the late nineteenth century. The Sikh insurgency which rocked Punjab in the 1980s remains independent India’s most serious internal rebellion. In fact, the warrior ethos and military martyrdom in the Sikh community could be traced back to the precolonial era. This essay traces the history of the evolution of Khalsa’s military culture. I argue that the Sikhs were already a ‘martial race’ like the Marathas, Rajputs and the Gurkhas before the British imperial conquest. By making a case study of Sikh insurgency against the Mughal Empire, this essay shows that insurgency serves as a major educational and military mobilising tool in the creation of martial cultures/races.
This article examines the shifting nature of patriarchy and gender among Sikhs in Indian Punjab through the 1980s and into the 1990s in relation to the Indian state's counterinsurgent policies and practices. The authors’ research reveals that Sikh masculinities were altered during its separatist insurgency as the patriarchal state and communities both relied on violence for their own ends. Specifically, the article argues that the regimes of precolonial and colonial militarism, which constructed hegemonic notions of Sikh masculinity in service to the colonial and postcolonial state, were altered in this period, and that a dominant caste-based warrior masculinity came to be fractured to include a more securitized version. The authors see the targeting of Sikhs as part of a broader process of postcolonial nation making through militarism and security that alters the nature of its patriarchy. The article draws from interviews and fieldwork in Punjab, textual analysis of primary sources, human rights reports, and news articles to reveal the shifting nature of gender and patriarchy in the transnational security state.
This article connects the Sikh tradition to wider cultural and literary worlds by examining how gurbilās literature—written from the end of the seventeenth century into the nineteenth—is tied to the wider Braj literary world and more specifically to Braj martial poetry. Gurbilās literature—or “the play or pastimes of the Guru”—refers to a collection of biographies of the Sikh Gurus emphasizing the narration of life stories of Guru Gobind Singh and his heroic deeds. This essay focuses on the portrayal of an important battle widely narrated in Sikh history, the battle of Bhangani (dated to 1688), in three gurbilās texts. Its goal is to examine two main issues: first, how these three narratives, and gurbilās literature more broadly, interact along multiple poles with the wider world of Braj literary traditions, specifically with Braj martial poetry; and second, how these texts provide us with material to think about the context of performance of these texts. It concludes with a broad reflection on how these three narratives represent a textual microcosm that reveals the many connections gurbilās literature—and more broadly the Sikh cultural world—has with other genres and traditions.
Violence and the Sikhs interrogates conventional typologies of violence and non-violence in Sikhism by rethinking the dominant narrative of Sikhism as a deviation from the ostensibly original pacifist-religious intentions and practices of its founders. This Element highlights competing logics of violence drawn from primary sources of Sikh literature, thereby complicating our understanding of the relationship between spirituality and violence, connecting it to issues of sovereignty and the relationship between Sikhism and the State during the five centuries of its history. By cultivating a non-oppositional understanding of violence and spirituality, this Element provides an innovative method for interpreting events of 'religious violence'. In doing so it provides a novel perspective on familiar themes such as martyrdom, Martial Race theory, warfare and (post)colonial conflicts in the Sikh context.
This Element explores religious nationalism in Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism and how it manifests in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. At the core, nationalists contend that the continuation of their group is threatened by some other group. Much of these fears are rooted in the colonial experience and have been exacerbated in the modern era. For the Hindu and Buddhist nationalists explored in this Element, the predominant source of fear is directed toward the Muslim minority and their secular allies. For Sikhs, minorities within India, the fear is primarily of the state. For Muslims in Pakistan, the fear is more dynamic and includes secularists and minority sects, including Shias and Ahmadis. In all instances, the groups fear that their ability to practice and express their religion is under immediate threat. Additionally, Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim nationalists wish for the state to adopt or promote their religious ideology.
Although past anthropological research on Britain’s religious minority communities, such as Sikhs – and also Sikh Studies research – has principally focused on exploring issues of ‘identity’ and ‘assimilation’ within (public) religious practice, since 9/11 and the 7/7 bombings, practising Sikhī (the vernacular for the Sikh faith) in public has become increasingly problematic, not just for Sikhs, but also for Britain’s wider society. Indeed, these increasingly problematic public practises of Sikhī compound problems with past research’s focus on Sikhs’ public identity and assimilation. To provide a richer, more nuanced understanding of this increasingly problematic practice, my research takes an ‘anthropology at home’ approach – and focusses on both public and private forms of Sikh expression deployed in contemporary Britain. From this dual focus of working from the inside outwards – as well as taking seriously a longer history of the making of the complex relationship between Sikhs and Britain – I argue that because the British public sphere has a religious and racialised hierarchy, public expressions of minority religions, such as Sikhī, are frequently problematic for those who practise it. Sikh ideas of ‘home’ are multi layered and for my interlocutors, Sikhī is the thread that runs through each of these layers of what home means. My thesis explores how one ‘becomes’ a Sikh and the different ways of becoming a Sikh in various sites from the most private setting of the home to the most public arena in the form of sevā (selfless service). Importantly, as a result of the development of Sikh history a ‘multiplicity of identities’ (Werbner, 2013) has developed leading to a ‘spectrum of Sikhs’ that still maintain a significant link to Sikhī through the practice of the interrelation of kinship and religion (Cannell, 2013; Cannell, 2015; Cannell, 2019; McKinnon et al., 2013; Orsi, 2010). Christian and post-Christian legacies in anthropology create default categories such as spirituality, politics, and religion. The perceived tension of religion and politics frames our 4 understandings of those that we study and impacts our interpretation of their beliefs and praxis. My thesis is primarily about understanding how Sikhs in Britain comprehend the relationship between the religious and political through the lens of mīrī pīrī (the vernacular understanding of the relationship between spirituality and politics). Ultimately, my thesis argues that whilst Sikhī was a faith that emerged as one to “dismantle structures of oppression and hierarchy” (Kaur, 2020, p. 8) it has been appropriated in the British context to allow for acceptance into a non-compatible nation and is not without compromise and sacrifice.
In this chapter, I focus on Sikh Americans to argue that minority groups’ racialization is not limited to U.S. society. For Sikh Americans, two “critical events” represent key moments of racialization: the anti-Sikh violence of 1984 in India, and the racial profiling and hate crimes following the 9/11 terror attacks in the U.S. Both events compelled certain diasporic Sikhs to performatively reaffirm and reinterpret identity by adopting religious symbols. Thus, Sikh Americans who embody identity are not just motivated by the meanings associated with the origin story of symbols. Their embodied performance shows the ever-evolving relationship between individual subjectivity and the Sikh community in both national and transnational contexts. For diasporic Sikhs, performing embodied identity contains meaning as both belonging and resistance: belonging to the faith-based community, and resistance against the tyranny of the Indian state in 1984 and the violence of racist individuals and groups post-9/11, 2001.KeywordsTransnational racializationEmbodied identitySikh AmericansCollective bodyResistance
This paper is grounded in a study of the diplomatic and personal relations that existed between the royal families of Maharajah Ranjit Singh (ruler of the Sikh Empire) and the British queen, Victoria. It uses this background to analyse the varying ways in which the concept of ‘dynasty’ was differentially constructed and deployed across the increasingly entangled contexts of nineteenth-century Britain and India; especially once the Sikh Empire’s last Maharajah, Duleep Singh, became a ward of the East India Company and a close friend to Victoria. The meanings of ‘royal blood’ and ‘lineage’ applied to Duleep Singh in the European courtly context are particularly examined within this article. However, in connection with this, the paper further outlines how the accordance of such recognition to the deposed Maharajah can be seen as ironically marking the apogee of Ranjit Singh’s ambition to establish his closest kin as superior and exalted rulers (arguably as a new imperial dynasty during its earlier heyday) – despite the fact that notions of blood were not valued in entirely the same way within the Punjabi context.
‘Relic’ objects, such as garments and weapons related to the Gurus and other important persons in the Sikh tradition, act as signifiers of authority and connection that are collected, revered, and displayed. They are connected to a broader intellectual and religious engagement with the representation of the past that is attested in a range of texts and is central to the discursive formation of the Sikh community. They also represent a connection to the past that is expressed in a range of historical sites that are similarly revered for their historical connection to the Gurus and heroes of the tradition. The status of such sites and objects changed in the colonial period, within the emergence of a new territorial imagination of the Sikh past in the early twentieth century that drew on but also changed existing historical imaginaries centred in place and object and which reflected new understandings of the community and its domain. The life of the object today and in the past demonstrates the crucial role material representations have played within the Sikh tradition, without challenging the fundamental nirgun (non‐material) commitments of Sikh thought and practice to that which lies beyond representation.
How do we define India? In historical terms, India originated in the Indus River Valley, today on Pakistani territory. In cultural and religious terms, India was home to Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism among others, and sheltered the Zoroastrians from the Persian lands to the west, as well as the place where Islam flourished since the 7th century through Gujarat and Sindh in northwest India. In geographical terms the country since 1947 is bordered to the north with Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and China. With ex-Burma, today Myanmar, to the east. Also the proximity to the island of Sri Lanka to the south. Or would India be its enormous diaspora community in the world estimated at more than 30 million? Is India simply Hindu that makes up almost 80% of its population? If so, would the Hindus be only the Brahmins, followers of Vaishnavism or Shaivism, or other popular currents? And the large Hindu communities in Nepal, Mauritius, Bali and other parts of the world? Are they India as well? And the approximately 14% of the Indian population claiming to be Muslims, around 180 million people, the second largest Muslim community in the world, are not they also Indians? And the Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains and Christian community in India? In linguistic terms, India has more than 20 official languages, more than 1,500 dialects and ethnic groups. Who would be more Indian than the others?
The concept of India, therefore, is much more complex than it seems to be at first glance. In order to understand this stunning and kaleidoscopic country, we must seek its history that may give us some insight into how India has formed, consolidated, influenced and assimilated its policies, identities, values and cultures. India is perhaps much more a civilizational concept than a mere expression defined only in geographical, religious and ethnic terms.
This paper undertakes a detailed reading of BVS’ novel Sundarī. Commenting on the as yet uncertain and experimental form of the modernist novel, the essay demonstrates how fiction and history, genealogy and folksong, contribute to the heteroglossia and polysemy of this much read and analyzed book. Through characters like Lakhpat Rai and his own ancestor Kaura Mal, BVS explores the relations between Hindus and Sikhs. Through Sundari, her multiple abductions and escapades, he constructs notions of Muslimness, but also of purity of Sikhness, besides creating a character representing an ideal Sikh woman, invested in her own chastity.
Jewellery has been an indicator of cultural identity from the prehistoric times. However, the study of traditional jewellery in India is largely dominated by art-historical approaches and very rarely is its role in determining migration patterns and understanding socio-political patterns understood. A previous study by the author, taking into consideration one of the wrist ornaments of the Dogra tribe, that is geographically scattered in the areas of Jammu and Kashmir, parts of Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, northeastern Pakistan and some parts of Haryana redefined our understanding of this so-called "ethno-linguistic" group. It was thus concluded that language no longer serves as a unifying factor of Dogra identity and an in-depth analysis of material culture may be something that anthropologists might have to undertake in order to understand the cultural past as well as the sociological constructs of the Dogras ( cf. Gautam, 2018). The present study is a step further in the same direction and attempts to analyse how a quantitative method of studying jewellery can be useful in generating rigorous data, easily accessible for similar approaches and can enable quantifiable conclusions, significant for both archaeological and anthropological discourses. It may be noted that whilst the case study focuses largely on Dogra Jewellery, a similar approach can be applied to jewellery analysis of any particular tribe or other media.
This paper explores how notions of intertextuality and reception history unfold in a Sikh literary context by examining interactions between Bhai Vir Singh’s Srī Kalgīdhar Camatkār and gurbilās literature. These texts’ portrayals of an important battle of Sikh history, the battle of Bhangani, illustrate how the various historical circumstances of the seventeenth to twentieth centuries shaped the modes and content of historical representation of the Sikh past at different points in time. It also sheds light on the life and reception of gurbilās texts beyond the nineteenth century and allows us to further interrogate the relationship between the literary premodernity of gurbilās texts and the literary modernity of Bhai Vir Singh’s historical writing in colonial Punjab.
This article focuses on performing artists at the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (r. 1801–39), the last fully sovereign ruler of the Punjab and leader of what is termed the Sikh empire. After Ranjit's death, his successors ruled for a mere decade before British annexation in 1849. Ranjit Singh's kingdom has been studied for the extraordinary authority it exercised over warring Sikh factions and for the strong challenge it posed to political rivals like the British. Scholarly exploration of cultural efflorescence at the Lahore court has ignored the role of performing artistes, despite a preponderance of references to them in both Persian chronicles of the Lahore court and in European travelogues of the time. I demonstrate how Ranjit Singh was partial to musicians and dancers as a class, even marrying two Muslim courtesans in the face of stiff Sikh orthodoxy. A particular focus is on Ranjit's corps of ‘Amazons’—female dancers performing martial feats dressed as men—the cynosure of all eyes, especially male European, and their significance in representing the martial glory of the Sikh state. Finally, I evaluate the curious cultural misunderstandings that arose when English ‘dancing’ encountered Indian ‘nautching’, revealing how gender was the primary axis around which Indian and European male statesmen alike expressed their power. Ubiquitous in the daily routine of Ranjit and the lavish entertainments set up for visitors, musicians and female performers lay at the interstices of the Indo-European encounter, and Anglo-Sikh interactions in particular.
This article looks at the intersection of religion and politics in the evolution of the Sikh tradition in the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial periods in the Indian subcontinent. The Sikh notion of sovereignty is at the heart of the intersection of religious and secular domains, and this relationship is examined empirically and theoretically. In particular, the conception of mīrī-pīrī is presented as a possible explanation for understanding the ‘new developments’ in contemporary Sikh politics in India.
The meaning of land revenue farming in Indian history has eluded consensus. Some view it as an administrative aberration indicating weak state control, while others see it as a strategy for consolidating authority. This essay traces the historical development of iqā and ijārah, two Perso-Arabic terms frequently translated from the sources as 'revenue farming estate'. I then suggest that existing perspectives do not capture the broader structure and significance of various entitlements to land revenue. Instead, I suggest that entitlements be schematized according to how regularized the right was, whether it was permanent, and how duty-bound the right holder was. In this formulation, revenue farm refers to a complex of rights and duties secured by contract in which a sovereign transferred the temporary exploitation of a holding for rent in advance. It was one of four tenurial complexes under which entitlements fell, the others being estates from bureaucratic assignment, hereditary occupation or possession by grant/gift, and tributary or chieftaincy.
Medieval Bihar served as an important corridor for Sikh dispersal to other areas in eastern and north-eastern India. It stimulated the birth of native Sikh groups who significantly differ from their Punjabi-speaking counterparts in physical presentation and mother tongue. The essay examines why the native Sikhs’ perception of Sikhism differs from Singh Sabha’s (1873–1909) narrative of a monolithic Sikh identity, distinct from Hinduism. The study debates whether it is the perceived centrality of Sikhism’s self-representation in Punjab that stimulates fissures in the Punjabi-Bihari Sikh relationship – fissures that periodically surface and rupture an imagined, homogenized Sikh identity within the sacred precincts of twenty-first-century Patna city.
This article argues for the value of looking past the emperor Aurangzeb, in seeking to understand how he has been portrayed. The eighteenth century Braj source from Punjab examined here portrays local debates and conflicts at the centre, and the Mughal state at the periphery, of the project of communitarian self-formation. Here, the emperor operates from the outside. Internal communitarian concerns, particularly regarding caste inclusion, dominate, linking the text in question to larger questions around caste and community that emerged in early modern South Asia in a range of contexts.
The presence of Iranian émigrés in the Durrani Empire has garnered minimal attention, even though the formation of the polity by Ahmad Shah Durr-i Durran (r. 1747–72) was accompanied by a steady rise in Iranian migrations to the Durrani territories of Indo-Khurasan. Nejatie’s article seeks to better understand the movement of Iranians to the Durrani Empire and their ascendency therein, particularly during the reigns of Ahmad Shah and his son and successor, Timur Shah (r. 1772–93). It does so by investigating some of the key factors that prompted the growth in Iranian migrations to the Durrani Empire and the considerable role they came to play in the extension and consolidation of Durrani authority in Indo-Khurasan. Although the influence of these Iranian émigré communities would gradually decline following the reign of Timur Shah, their contributions to the complex process of state building in Indo- Khurasan left a lasting mark on the political culture of the early Durrani state and its contemporary counterpart, Afghanistan.
This chapter is based on a community co-produced heritage exhibition in Punjab which was funded by the British Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The event was designed to highlight the layered and interwoven histories of Sirhind and its twin town, Fatehgarh Sahib. In post-partition Punjab, much of the area’s Islamic built heritage has deteriorated beyond recognition, mirroring the increasingly fragile and fragmentary memories of a pre-partition Sirhind, which was a Muslim-dominated area. The interest and investment in Sikh sights has led to the neglect of Islamic architecture. By discussing the process and politics of staging a public exhibition that attempts to restore to memory the significance of Sirhind’s Islamic past, this chapter works through some of the conditions and complexities of memory and memorialisation in the contemporary Punjabi landscape.
In the late seventeenth century Mughal India, Guru Gobind Singh and his Sikh army became politically and militarily opposed to the policies of Emperor Aurangzeb in the Punjab country. The Sikhs were not unique in this regard as across Aurangzeb’s Empire credible insurgencies began undermining Mughal authority. While an earlier historiography of this era reasoned that such revolts were caused by Aurangzeb’s abandonment of secularism for Islamic fundamentalism, contemporary research has provided a more nuanced analysis by exploring the history and ideas of the rebels. In this article, I explore how the Sikh community engaged in a dialogue on Kshatriyahood which was both specific to the Punjab country and similar to dialogues found across Mughal India. In addition, my article explores the social history of caste in medieval and early modern Punjab and the contested identities of Kshatriyahood and Brahminhood.
The end of the 18th century saw the beginning of the process of unification of Sikh confederacies (misls) in the Punjab, leading to the establishment of an empire by Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780–1839) in the early decades of the 19th century. Strategically, he made use of an efficient army, marriages, alliances, and suzerain–vassal polity to establish his political control over a domain extending from the Khyber Pass in the west to the River Satluj in the east, from the northern boundary of Kashmir to the deserts of Sindh in the South, comprising the provinces of Lahore, Multan, Peshawar, and Kashmir. It covered an area of 100 436 square miles with an estimated population of 12 million people. Designated as the Sarkar Khalsa Ji it was an absolute centralized monarchy, but a liberal and benevolent one that included Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims in the ruling class.
Guerre et martyre dans l'histoire et la tradition des sikhs Paru dans Jean Baechler (dir.), Guerre et religion, Paris, Hermann, coll. « L'Homme et la Guerre, une collection de l'Académie des sciences morales politiques », 2016, p. 185-195. C'est en août 1858, après que la révolte des cipayes eut été matée au cours d'affrontements militaires d'une grande violence, que le Parlement du Royaume-Uni adopta l'India Act qui transférait tous les pouvoirs de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales à la couronne britannique. C'est aussi au lendemain de cette très rude épreuve qu'ethnographes coloniaux et responsables militaires commencèrent à identifier les sikhs du Panjab et les Gurkhas du Népal, mais aussi les Highlanders d'Écosse, comme les plus féroces et les plus virils des soldats, comme formant ce que l'on appela dès lors des races martiales 1. Ces hommes étaient censés posséder une disposition, à la fois biologique et culturelle, à manifester toutes les qualités nécessaires à la pratique de l'art de la guerre. Pour cette raison, sikhs et Gurkhas firent l'objet d'un recrutement préférentiel et d'un traitement de choix dans les régiments indiens, et l'on fit d'eux des icônes pour le recrutement dans les armées de l'Inde britannique. Et pourtant, si l'on se réfère à l'origine de leur histoire, qui commence au début du 16 e siècle, rien de prédisposait les sikhs à être un jour caractérisés comme l'une des « races martiales » de l'Inde 2. En effet, les sikhs sont alors de paisibles dévots appartenant à l'un des divers courants de dévotion hindous qui fleurissent en Inde du Nord. Que s'est-il donc passé ? Pourquoi au sein de cette paisible communauté un noyau militant s'est-il développé, à la faveur de quels conflits ? Comment les sikhs se sont-ils trouvés engagés dans des guerres et ont-ils fini par fonder un royaume au Panjab avant de devenir le fer de lance de l'armée britannique des Indes puis celui de l'armée indienne ? Et comment ont-ils eux-mêmes, au fil de leur histoire, perçu la guerre et leur rapport à cette pratique ? Telles sont les questions que j'aborderai succinctement dans les pages qui suivent.
This essay surveys the sites, artifacts, and literary texts associated with Guru Gobind Singh's period (1675-1708). In the process, it introduces a set of sources of information as well as attempts at reorientation of the context that produced them. In a brief conclusion, the essay highlights the need for expanding and revising the current understanding of the Guru's life.
This book examines three closely related questions in the process of canon formation in the Sikh tradition: how the text of the Adi Granth came into being, the meaning of gurbani, and how the Adi Granth became the Guru Granth Sahib. The censure of scholarly research on the Adi Granth was closely related to the complex political situation of Punjab and brought the whole issue of academic freedom into sharper focus. This book addresses some of these issues from an academic perspective. The Adi Granth, the sacred scripture of the Sikhs, means 'first religious book' (from the word 'adi' which means 'first' and 'granth' which means 'religious book'). Sikhs normally refer to the Adi Granth as the Guru Granth Sahib to indicate a confession of faith in the scripture as Guru. The contents of the Adi Granth are commonly known as bani (utterance) or gurbani (the utterance of the Guru). The transcendental origin (or ontological status) of the hymns of the Adi Granth is termed dhur ki bani (utterance from the beginning). This particular understanding of revelation is based upon the doctrine of the sabad, or divine word, defined by Guru Nanak and the succeeding Gurus. This book also explores the revelation of the bani and its verbal expression, devotional music in the Sikh tradition, the role of the scripture in Sikh ceremonies, and the hymns of Guru Nanak and Guru Arjan.
This essay examines the prevailing critique of "social banditry' in Latin American studies, reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of the recent literature. It suggests that focusing too narrowly on Hobsbawm's model, individual bandits, or bandit phenomena per se tends to remove Latin Americanists from broader, fresher discussions of peasant social action and mentality now underway for Europe, Latin America, and other Third World areas. By focusing on the internal organization of the rural sector and its links with external loci of power, the best revisionist work demonstrates how an interest in bandits contributes to a better understanding of rural communities and vice versa. For example, in addition to documenting a rather diverse set of social backgrounds for the region's most visible bandit chieftains, scholars are beginning to reassess the social composition of brigand gangs. Ethnohistorical research on the social fabric and political culture of village and hacienda communities in Mexico and the Andes has begun to reveal the active participation of older smallholding peasants with dependents in a variety of bandit operations. Such studies have also raised new questions about the role of women, families, gender relations, and wider networks of kinship and patronage in banditry. -from Author
Ugradanti, a composition addressed to the goddess, is found in the Patna Birh of the Dasam Granth [1698]. Unlike the other goddess compositions in the Dasam Granth - Chandi Charitar, Chandi Ukti Bilas, and Chandi di Var - very little is known about Ugradanti and the history of its liturgical association with the Sikh tradition, especially within Namdhari and Nihang communities. Highlighting the distinctive imagery and vocabulary of the text, this essay introduces the composition in English translation.
This article interrogates the ideological foundations of modern Sikh theology as found in the exegetical commentaries on Sikh
scripture written by scholars belonging to the neocolonial reformist movement, the Singh Sabha. Drawing on post-structuralist
critiques of transcendence, I argue that attempts by the Singh Sabha’s leading ideologue, Bhai Vir Singh (BVS), to construct
a hermeneutic faithful to scripture could not avoid transforming what can be termed as the “middle ground” of Sikhism, a ground
that is broadly continuous with Indic patterns of time and ontology. Breaking with earlier traditions of exegesis, the form
of BVS’s commentary on the nature of the nondual One begins to resemble an ontological proof for God’s existence. Deploying
a strategy in which all links to time and sense are systematically erased allows BVS to disguise the work of theological transcendence
as a process that’s entirely natural to the meaning of Sikh scripture and by implication continuous with a tradition which
claims to reproduce the original teachings of the Sikh Gurus (gurmat). By eclipsing the paradoxical notion of the One common to premodern Indic traditions with a consistent and systematic concept
of God, BVS not only lays the foundations for modern “Sikh theology,” he also helps to underwrite the future master narrative
of Sikhism as a “world religion.”
Professor Athar Ali (born 18 January 1925) studied at Aligarh Muslim University 1948–53. His PhD studies were supervised by Professor Satish Chandra. In 1953 he was appointed research assistant at the university and became a Professor in 1978. He was Wilson Fellow at the Smithsonian Institute in 1986, Smuts Fellow, Cambridge, 1974–5 a nd President of the Indian History Congress in 1989. His major publications are The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb (Aligarh, 1966) and The Apparatus of Empire (Delhi, 1985). Sadly he died not long after this article was accepted for publication and was therefore unable to see it in print.