Sikhs in India and the Sikh diaspora in North America are occasionally in the news around controversies regarding the demand for a separate state. For those interested in the deeper history of power and politics of the idea of the Sikh republic, Sarbpreet Singh’s Cauldron, Sword and Victory: The Rise of the Sikhs (which is volume two of The Story of the Sikhs series) will be of immense use. While the first volume engaged with the formulation of the tenets of the faith by the ten Gurus from Guru Nanak to Guru Gobind Singh, this second one deals with the 18th-century translation of the religious identity into a political one.
At the time of his death, Guru Gobind Singh chose not to appoint a successor to lead the Sikhs. Instead, he vested his temporal power in the Guru Granth Sahib, the scripture, and the Khalsa Panth, the sect of the Sikh warriors, that would uphold the faith and walk on the path of fighting against tyranny. In Sarbpreet Singh’s words about what happened between 1708 (with the death of Guru Gobind Singh) and 1780 (when Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh Empire was born):
The Sikhs, who were just beginning to find their feet and make their way in the world … must have surely felt orphaned after the passing of Guru Gobind Singh. It was all very well to have the spiritual guidance of the Guru Granth Sahib, but what did the empowering of the Sikh Panth with the temporal power of the Guru really mean? … The seventy-two years that followed the passing of Guru Gobind Singh were a period of great pain, great despair and also great glory for the Sikh Panth. It was a period in which a leaderless and orphaned people rose from the ashes of oppression and challenged the might of the Mughal empire.
As the book goes on to explain, the political conditions prevalent in these years made the Sikhs rise up against many forces as these sought to control Punjab or crush the Sikhs as a rising force: the Mughals, the governors of Punjab (under the Mughal Empire, but increasingly becoming powerful as the Empire began to weaken) who sought to control the region as the Mughal empire began to decline after the death of Aurangzeb, the Afghans under Ahmad Shah Abdali, Nadir Shah of Persia, and the regional powers such as the Marathas, the Rohillas, the Jats, and the British. The century is a labyrinth difficult to navigate, with different “villains” turning against the Sikhs. Here is Nawab Zakriya Singh, the Governor of Lahore, issuing an edict against the Sikhs:
A bounty of fifty rupees would be offered for the head of a Sikh.
The same bounty would be offered for a Sikh, captured alive.
A reward of ten rupees would be offered to anyone reporting on the whereabouts of a Sikh.
The list of rewards is quite long, incentivizing different ways of bringing Sikhs under control, attempting to repress their spirit with force, and sometimes, humiliating them by desecrating the Golden Temple. The descriptions of the torture and killing of Sikh leaders such as Banda Singh Bahadur are too horrifying to repeat here. Singh uses the word “holocaust” to describe a brutal episode in history: the massacre of the Sikhs by Lakhpat Rai, the revenue minister of Lahore, in 1746 to avenge the death of his brother at the hands of the Sikh leader Jassa Singh Ahluwalia. It is a complex string—a circle, rather—of events of tyranny, resistance and revenge.
While these parts of the book can be quite overwhelming in terms of the violence they narrate, equally strong in the book are stories of courage and dignity displayed by the Sikhs in the face of death. There are legends about Sikhs who wanted to take on mighty enemies. Here is one about Bota Singh and Garja Singh who were roused to action and decided to take on the mighty Mughal empire by mocking Nawab Zakriya Khan. They started collecting the toll on a road in Lahore without being authorized to do so. To the Nawab, they sent a cheeky message:
A letter then Bota Singh wrote
Staff in hand on the road I stand
A penny an ass, sixpence a cart
That is the toll that I command
My sister-in-law, my dear Khan
A response does Bota Singh demand
Singh concludes the narration of this legend in the context of similar stories of valour from the period:
A detachment of 100 horse, armed to the teeth, was sent to arrest the impudent boys. Armed just with sticks, Bota Singh and Garja Singh fought valiantly, parrying the soldiers’ swords and landing several blows, before they were felled by a musket barrage.
There are many stories like this one about the spirit of the Sikhs during the dark days of Nawab Zakriya Khan’s repression. Quixotic acts of valor like Bota Singh’s became the stuff of legend and inspired others, who continued to resist during the turbulence, which was to last for decades.
The legend of Taru Singh is another example. Khalsas are expected to keep their hair unshorn. Zakriya Khan had Singh’s head skinned, a torture Singh bore without a sound. The story continues to be narrated among young Sikhs even today as they encounter bullying for this marker of their identity in societies where the tradition is not understood.
Coverage of the wars aside, Singh’s book is notable for the skill of blending historical sources (British, modern Indian ones in English, Punjabi, Mughal and so on) with poetry of some of the Punjabi sources that he freshly translates into English, trying to maintain the rhythm of the original:
On the hallowed earth of Amritsar
Martyrdom did the man embrace
Join with me O gentle ones
As the mighty fallen Nihang I praise
The rhyme, coupled with commentary on the stories and histories from contemporary perspective, makes Cauldron, Sword and Victory a feat in storytelling about a difficult time. The reader might be forgiven for not being able to keep up with the wide canvas of places, characters and sources that Singh so adroitly moves in and out of because the key takeaways from the book may not be the 18th-century history from a Sikh perspective per se (for which several historical and scholarly materials exist). The key takeaway is Singh’s framing of the period in terms of the transition from theological foundations (in volume one) to the Sikh empire (hopefully in volume three) as an important time to be understood in terms of martyrdom for one’s faith. It helps one contextualize the community’s political aspirations, or at least, the search for a political identity.