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The
Sikh Revolution
A Perspective View
Preface
The Sikh movement
was not only an egalitarian social revolution,
it was a plebian
political revolution as well. In fact, it was far more
radical than the
French Revolution of 1783-1815. The plebian
character of the
Sikh Revolution, however, has not received the notice
and the attention
it deserves.
One of the possible
reasons for its neglect is that the Sikh
movement was beset
by the force of circumstances which prevented
it from assuming
spectacular dimensions. The battle of Badr has been
recognized as a
turning point in the history of Islam. Had that battle
been lost by
Muslims, Islam, as one Muslim historian has put it,
might
have been 'wiped
out for ever from the face of the earth.' In that
battle, Prophet
Muhammad and his followers had to contend with
only about one
thousand tribesmen. The Sikh movement, on the other
hand, had to
struggle for its very existence against the armed might
of
the greatest empire
of its times. The first impulse of Islamic idealism
carried its arms,
within eighty years of the Prophet's death, as far as a
part of Spain. The
youth of the Sikh Revolution was spent in ensuring
its own survival.
Islam was lucky,
too, that it had to counter at its birth, primitive
heathenic beliefs,
which it was easier to pierce than the hard shell of
the elaborate dogma
and philosophy the caste had spun around itself.
Moreover, the
Arabian society was at that time quite close to the
level
of primitive
communism. The Sikh movement had to face the uphil
task of overcoming
both the caste ideology and the caste system-the
most rigid
hierarchical social system devised by human ingenuity.
Luther was
politically a conservative who condemned the
German peasants ,
but Protestant liberalism overflowed the bounds
of religion and
influenced freedom of ideas and action in social and
political spheres.
Likewise, none of the French political thinkers,
including Rosseau,
had shown any marked concern for the lower
classes, but their
ideas formed the emotive content of the French
Revolution. It was
because the innate human yearning for freedom
and equality found
a ready soil to grow in Europe.
4
In India, on the
other hand, the plebian ideals of the Sikh
Revolution did not
catch the imagination of the people to the extent
it should' have
done, because their outlook was warped by the caste
ideology and their
freedom of action curtailed by the caste structure.
It is significant
that the egalitarian character of the Sikh Revolution
drew more
appreciative comments from early European historians or
travellers than
from medieval non-Sikh Indian historians, who either
ignored it or
referred to it in derisive language.
Another possible
reason is that the appreciation of the
revolutionary
character of the Sikh movement is screened by
prejudices
derived from,
opposite directions. On the one extreme is the
viewpoint
that regards
re1igion as an unmixed evil. It cannot even entertain
the
idea that religion
could be a vehicle for the promotion of values of
human freedom and
equality under any set of circumstances. On the
other extreme is
the viewpoint which swears by religion but to which
the use of
revolutionary means for howsoever a noble cause, is an
anathema.
Historiography has little in common with an approach
that
would stick to
absolute theoretical stands at the cost of human
welfare
and progress, or
with an a priori approach that would try to fit in
history into
preconceived hypotheses born out of concepts
impracticable in
human affairs. Toynbee has deprecated the Islamic
and Sikh
revolutions for their use of revolutionary means for
achieving
their political
missions. It is true that the progress towards human
goals has not been
linear. Counter-revolution has followed
Revolution like its
own shadow. But this is not characteristic of
revolutionary
movements alone. The ups and downs are common to
all human movements
because of the inherent limitations of human
nature and
environmental factors. The Inquisition and the Crusades
were launched in
the name of Christianity. Buddhism was no less a
universal religion,
and its adherence to the doctrine of Ahmisa bas
not been matched by
the followers of any other creed. But, it did not
usher in the El
Dorado of Toynbee's concept. Rather, its adherence to
the doctrine of
Ahimsa because one of the major factors responsible
for its banishment
from the land of its birth and, along with the caste,
for its
enslavement, of the country for about one thousand
years. The
ideology of the
Radical Bhaktas was akin to the Sikh ideology and
5
had as much
potentiality of becoming a universal religion as
Sikhism
had. The Radical
Bhaktas did not even think of entering politics. But
their ideology all
the same melted imperceptibly into the caste ideology
and lost its
identity without making any significant social or
political
contribution at any
stage.
Thus, the main
purpose of this book is to bring into focus the
revolutionary
character of the Sikh movement, which cannot be done
by viewing it in
isolation. The movement has to be judged, as all
movements should
be, in the light of the broad historical perspective
of its contemporary
times; and, in this case, especially in that of the
Indian social and
political context of the medieval era.
I am very much
obliged to S. Daljeet Singh, my brother-in-law;
S. Kishan Singh
(ex-lecturer Dyal Singh College, New Delhi); Prof.
Bipan Chandra (Dean
of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
New Delhi) and
Shree B .D. Talib, my friend; for their valuable
suggestions and
criticisms. It becomes necessary to make it clear that
the responsibility
for the views expressed in this volume is entirely
mine, as some of
the above mentioned gentlemen do not share my
approach to the
subject in all its ramifications. I cannot sufficiently
express my
obligation to S. Daljeet Singh, who took great pains in
helping me revise
the manuscript, and to whom I owe a good deal of
my understanding of
the Sikh view of life. Dr. Ganda Singh, the doyen
of Sikh historians,
Pror. Pritam Singh (formerly Professor of Guru
Nanak Dev
University, Amritsar) and S. Gurbax Singh (formerly
Assistant Director,
Punjab Historical Studies, Punjabi University,
Patiala) have been
very kind in providing me with some of the extracts
from Persian
manuscripts given in Chapter xviii. Prof. Ram Singh
(formerly Reader,
Punjab University, Chandigarh), Major General
Gurbakhsh Singh and
S.B.S. Kumedan have kindly helped me in tracing
certain references.
I avail of this
opportunity to express my gratitude to my wife,
which was overdue,
as she has been extending her moral support to
me in all my
undertakings solely for love's own sake.
July, 1980
JAGJIT SINGH
Ghaziabad
6
REFERENCES
1. Nizami, Khaliq
Ahmad : Some Aspects of Religion and Politics
in India During the
Thirteenth Century, p. 15.
2. Ali, K : A Study
of Islamic History, p. 37
3. Ibid, p. 36
4. Nizami, p. 15
5. Rude, George;
Revolutionary Europe, p. 36.
6. Ibid, p. 46
7
Contents
1. Introductory 1
2. The caste and
the class 5
3. The Directive
Force 15
4. The Caste
Ideology, Its Ideologues and the Institution 27
5. The Fate of
Liberal Trends 47
6. The Caste
Society, Islam and the Mohammadan Rule 58
7. The Radical
Bhakti Ideology - Its Social Significance 70
8. The Impact of
Medieval Bhakti Mvement 77
9. The Sikh Idelogy
85
10. The Sikh Panth
103
11. Egaliarian
Society 115
12. Armed Struggle
- Its Egalitarian Basis 136
13. Armed Struggle
- Its Development 147
14. The Khals a 174
15. The Spirit 192
16. Achievements
201
17. The Rajputs,
the Marathas and the Khalsa 213
18. A Plebian
Revolution 224
19.
Characterization 247
Appendix A :
Misinterpretations 260
Appendix B : Sikh
Tradition as a Source of Historical
Testimony 282
Appendix C : Some
Aspecs of the Ideology of the Radical
Bhakti 293
Appendix D : Some
Aspects of the Sikh Ideology 298
Bibliography 345
Index 353
8
CHAPTER 1
Introductory
The Sikh movement
has some exceptional features.
The French
Revolution began in 1789. The Khalsa was created
ninety years
earlier in 1699. The French Revolution was started by
the middle class1,
and ‘ the blind driving power behind it… was an
apparently
accidental upheaval of the poor’.2
Guru Gobind
Singh
established the
Khalsa with the deliberate plan that the down-trodden,
including the
out-castes, should capture political power. During the
first thrust of the
French Revolution (1789 to 1792), ‘the middle class
became a privileged
oligarchy in place of the hitherto privileged, the
feudal
aristocracy’.3
When the
Khalsa wielded political power for the
first time, ‘the
lowest of low in Indian estimation’ were equal
cosharers
of that authority.4
Guru Nanak started
his mission round about the year 1486, and
the Misals were
established in 1764. During this period of 275 years
or so, which is the
period that forms the subject of the book, the Sikh
movement was
continuously engaged, first in propagating the ideals
of complete human
freedom the equality, then in building a society
(The Sikhs Panth)
based on these ideals, and, finally, in creating
through
the Panth a
political revolution. The purposefulness and the
tenacity
with which this
noble, but difficult, mission was pursued for so long
left its own stamp
on the movement.
The significance of
these developments cannot be fully
appreciated unless
these are viewed against the background of the
system of castes on
which the Indian society was based. There is
not a single other
movement of Indian origin, which owned, let
alone having given
shape to, the ideal that the sovereignty of
2
the land vested in
the commoners. Similarly, no other movement
succeeded in
deliberately establishing a distinct social entity
outside
the caste society.
Only the Buddhists had done it, but that was long
ago and it was
confined to the order of the monks.
The caste, in its
fully developed form, is a unique social formation
in human history.
It is based on the avowed principle that ‘men are for
every unequal’. The
caste system is the most rigid social mechanism
devised by human
ingenuity to entrench human inequality and
hierarchies. Wilson
has described graphically how the caste rulers
regulate the life
of an individual, form birth to death, in its minuet
details;5
and on one,
excepting the ascetics, the Sadhus, the mendicants
and the like, could
belong to the orthodox religion without being a
member of one caste
or the other. The caste also covered the entire
orthodox
society and its
spectrum of social, political and economic activities.
The caste has been
a great potent factor. It circumscribed the
limits within which
Indian social, political and economic activities
were to flow and
also set the direction these were to follow. It raised
‘caste status’
above ‘economic status’ and ‘political status’. It
compartmentalized
the economy according to its own social pattern, and
prevented the
economic forces from attaining to their unhindered
growth
and stature. The
caste system also made political power subservient to
priestly patronage.
In fact, the preservation of the caste system and the
maintenance of the
‘caste status’ of castes or sub-castes became the
overriding
motivative
consideration of the orthodox society.
No interpretation
of an Indian movement in the medieval era,
when the caste was
operationally supreme, would, therefore, be
comprehensive
without relating its reactions to, and or its
interactions
with, the caste
ideology and the caste structure of the society. This
becomes even more
necessary in the caste of the Sikh movement
which repudiated
the caste ideology and the social system based upon
it. It is necessary
to give an idea of the Sikh movement which repudiated
the caste ideology
and the social system based upon it. It is necessary
to give an idea of
the social milieu in which it was born, and the
character and
strength of the social reaction it was up against.
Accordingly, we
have devoted four chapters of the book to
comprehending the
social, political and economic implications and
significance of the
caste ideology and the caste system.
The advent of
Muhammadan rule in India introduced a new
3
and a major factor
having a great bearing on the Indian polity. It
almost polarized he
masses into two mutually hostile camps. Being a
foreign domination,
initially, the political domination assumed a new
dimension,
especially as it involved religious dictation as well.
As a
consequence of this
socio-religious confrontation, human values of
freedom and
equality were further relegated to the background, and
the narrow caste
system and religious bigotry gained ascendancy. The
Radical Bhakti
movement was an attempt to resurrect human values.
But this protest of
the Bhaktas did not have much of a social impact,
because it remained
confined to the ideological plane. Three chapters
have been devoted
to these problems.
The Sikhs movement
established the Sikh Panth outside the caste
society and
successfully used it as a base to challenge political
and
religious
dominance. It even captured political power for a
plebian
cause. What the
Radical Bhaktas did not, the Sikh Gurus did. This
development could
not be fortuitous. It was because of the Sikh
Gurus’ view of
religion which, regards the tackling of all problems,
social or political
thrown up by life as a part and parcel of one’s
religious duty. No
understanding of the Sikh movement can be
complete without
understanding the Sikh thesis, because its political
orientation and
development was only a projection of the Sikh view
of religion. In the
succeeding chapters an attempt has been made to
interpret the Sikh
movement in the light of the Sikh thesis and the
Sikh approach to
life.
Movements are the
resultant of varied and complex forces
operating over a
period of history. Any attempt to generalize about
them cannot
possible escape the blemish of over-simplification.
All these varied
factors, moreover, often get mixed up in a manner
that it becomes
next to impossible to demarcated the part played
by them
individually. One can take not of only the dominating
tendencies.
The ideology of the
orthodox social order, which the Sikh
movement
challenged, has been, for the sake of convenience,
termed Brahmanism
or orthodoxy, and the orthodox social order
itself has been
frequently referred to as the Brahmanical order, or
the orthodox order.
Brahmanism, including its later phase of Neo-
Brahmanism, may be
loosely defined as the socio-religious
4
ideology which
served the interests of the caste order, the Brahmin
caste and its
allies. The other dominating castes (e.g. the
Kshatriyas
and the Rajputs),
who allied themselves with Brahmanism, played only
an insignificant or
a subsidiary role in determining its ideological
content. The
secondary role played by these castes is bracketed with
that of the Brahmin
caste and is understood to be included in the
concept of
Brahmanism.
Because of
historical reasons, Neo-Brahmanism has become
identified with
Hinduism. But, Hinduism today is not what it was a
the time of the
rise of the Sikh movement. The impact of scientific
and technological
achievements, the capitalist economy and values,
the spread of
education, the democratic political setup, and many
other
progressive forces
and factors in the world, has generated economic
and social forces
within India which are bound to bring about a
fundamental
transformation of the orthodox social order and its
ideology. As such,
present day Hinduism must sooner or later outgrow
the shackles of
caste-ridden Brahmanism. Significant changes have
already taken
place. In fact, the terms ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Hindu’ are
today coming to
assume more of a political significance than static
social alignments.
These terms now try to cover even unorthodox
creeds and sects
like Jainism, Buddhism, Jains and Buddhists.
However, the
mentioning of the words ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Hindu’ is
unavoidable,
especially where quotations have to be given. In such
cases, these
appellations should be taken to mean Neo-Brahmanism
and its adherents
in the context of the conditions prevailing before
and at the time of
the rise of the Sikh movement.
This leads us to
make another relevant observation. The
reactionary nature
of the caste order is a fact to which one cannot
turn a blind eye.
We should be proud of Indian movements, which
fought this social
reaction. Buddhism was one and the Sikh movement
another. Pride in
one’s past is legitimate if it gives one inspiration
and
strength to work
for human progress. All movements that works for
the welfare of the
human race, including the contribution of Islam
towards the
propagation of egalitarian values, are the common
heritage
of all mankind. We
should not judge progressive movements from
the point of view
of parochial loyalties or antipathies.
5
CHAPTER II
The Caste And The Class
The Indian society
has fundamentally been based on the
institution of
caste. Compared to the social formations in other old
societies, the
caste system is, indeed, a unique social development.
Whereas in other
societies the social process resulted in the
constitution
of classes, in
Indian alone it culminated in the exceptional system of
castes. ‘There is a
wide difference between a profession, or even a
hereditary order,
and a caste in the fully recognized Brahmanical sense.
Even in countries
where the dignity and exclusive prerogatives of the
priesthood are most
fully developed (as in Roman Catholic Europe),
the clergy from
only a profession, and their ranks may be recruited
from all sections
of the community. So, too, it is in most countries
even with a
hereditary nobility. Plebians may be ennobled at the
will
of the sovereign.’1
‘The class
and the caste correspond neither in extent,
in character, nor
in natural tendencies. Each one, even among the
castes which would
belong to one and the same class, is plainly
distinguished from
its fellows; it isolates itself from them with a rigour
which is not
tempered by any regard for an underlying unity.’1a
The
distinction between
class and caste is vital, because it led to the
development of
widely differing patterns of social development.
1. A Unique
Phenomenon
Some important
features of caste were met with, in redimentary
forms atleast, in
some other societies, in some other societies at one
time or the other.
The early population of Iran was divided into four
pishtras analogous
to the four Varnas of India.2
In ancient
Assyria and
Egypt, trades were
forbidden to inter-marry. Goguest writes ‘that in
6
the Assyrian Empire
the people were distributed into a certain number
of tribes, and the
professions were hereditary; that is to say, children
were not permitted
to quit their father’s occupation and embrace
another (Diodorus,
Lib. ii,p. 142). We know not the time nor the
author of this
institution, which from the highest antiquity prevailed
almost over all
Asia and even in several other countries.’3
Hutton has
given many
instances of analogous institutions, where the parallel
to
the various
features of the caste system is close indeed. He has
alluded
to a number of
their aspects; but, as glaring examples, we cite only
some of the extreme
cases which approach the Indian outcastes. The
swineherds of Egypt
could not enter any temple and had to marry
among themselves.4
Among the
Somali of the East Horn of Africa,
“the hereditary
blacksmiths live apart, and a blacksmith may be killed
with impunity by a
Masai (but not a Masai by a blacksmith), and no
Masai would stop at
a blacksmith’s encampment… ; his products are
impure and must be
purified with grease before use, and even the very
name of
‘blacksmith’ must not be uttered at night lest lions
attack the
camp?’5
On the other
side of Africa are the Osu in Ibo society on
whom there are
‘restrictions regarding their intercourse with the free
Ibo; their houses
are segregated, and to call anyone Osu is a gross
insult’.6
The Eta in
Japan form a community of outcastes. ‘So strong
is the prejudice
against them that the very word eta, if it must be
uttered, is only
whispered… They were considered sub-human;
humbered with the
termination - biki used from quadrupeds; lived in
separate quarters
in the village; had to wear distinctive dress; could
only marry among
themselves; had no social intercourse with other
classes, and could
only go abroad between sunset and sunrise.’7
The
closest example to
the Indian outcastes is that of the Pagoda slaves of
Burma. ‘A Pagoda
slave is such for life, and his children and
descendants are
Pagoda slaves in perpetuum; they cannot be liberated
even by a king.’8
In this context, we
shall confine ourselves to only two major
points. Firstly,
the instances given above are in the nature of
aberrations limited
to only a segment of the society concerned. In
no country, except
India, did these rudimentary caste-like
distinctions
develop into a system of castes permeating the entire
social fabric.
Revillout ‘comes to the definite finding that, whatever
7
the nature of these
so-called Egyptian ‘castes’, there is nothing to
show that there was
any caste system which really resembled that of
India…’9
Hutton
writes that the given African instances, “thought
analogous to caste
in some directions do not constitute a caste
system,”9a
and that the
origin of caste ‘has in Burma become stabilized
in an undeveloped
form or even degenerated so as to affect only a
limited part of
society, and leaving the main body of the people
untouched. For the
Burmese as a whole are as free from the working
of the caste system
as the other peoples among whom analogous
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