Sikh Empire

“ There were two circumstances which in the most providential manner enabled our countrymen to hold their own until succour reached them from England. These were the loyalty of the Sikhs, who had recently been conquered, and the passage across the seas of British troops on their way to China. These troops were intercepted at Cape Town and Singapore, and diverted to India. The Sikhs threw in their lot with their conquerors, and fought like lions for them throughout the Mutiny. A few weeks after the first outbreak, a combined British and Sikh force arrived at Delhi. ”

“ Once aroused to sense of duty towards the weak and the oppressed, they have always been found willing to give their lives without remorse or regret. Sikhs constitute a major portion of the military and police forces of India and of several British colonies. Those tourists who have been in the East will recall the tall, bearded Sikh policemen of the British principalities of Shanghai and Hongkong. Since the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, Sikhs have always been regarded as the most loyal and devoted subjects of the British Crown in India. ”

“ THE SIKH It has often been said that the Indian Army has kept Sikhism alive. War is a conserver of the Khalsa, peace a dissolvent. When one understands how this is so, one has grasped what Sikhism has done for the followers of the faith, and why the Sikh is different in habit and thought from his Hindu and Muhammadan neighbour, though in most cases he derives from the same stock.
The Sikhs are a community, not a race. The son of a Sikh is not himself a Sikh until he has taken the pahul, the ceremony by which he is admitted into the Khalsa, the community of the faithful. ”

“ The Sikhs do not now detest us. They willingly furnish soldiers and military police of the best class, equal to the Gōrkhās, and fit to fight in line with English soldiers. The Panjāb chieftains have been among the foremost in offers of loyal assistance to the Government of India in times of danger, and in organizing the Imperial Service troops. The Sikh states are now sufficiently well governed. ”

“ In a will case lately before the Punjab law courts, the decision was that the Sikhs at the present time are regarded only as a sect of Hindus; but the local Sikh organ, 'The Khalsa,'—its policy being to maintain the original reformed religion and worship of the Sikh Church,—protested that Sikhism differs widely from Hinduism in fundamental doctrine; that Sikhs do not consider themselves Hindus, and do not respect the Hindu pantheon or observe their religious rites; that Nanak, though born in a Hindu family, was not a Hindu, but established an independent religious sect of his own ”

“ A happy consequence of our wars with the Sikhs was that we learned their great value as soldiers when mutual respect was won by valour in the field. After the first war some Sikh regiments were raised for our service, and after the annexation Sikhs were freely enlisted in the Frontier Force, and also in some regiments of the Bengal army, where they were not, however, welcomed by the Brahman fraternity, who resented intrusion on their own preserves as tending to break up their solidarity. ”

“ The publication of orders, in which it was considered that services performed by the Sikhs were referred to in exaggerated terms as compared with the purely British, produced for the time being one effect to which allusion may here be made. “Why,” said a very intelligent officer of that nationality, who was well known to most of us in cantonments, “you admit yourselves that we saved India for you; if we can do that for you foreigners, why should we not take the country for ourselves?” At the very time he spoke there were 82,000 Sikh troops in British employ. ”

“ The Sikhs had now reached nationhood under an able king fully equipped with confidence and energy, who, by transforming the Khalsa into a territorial power, decided once and for all whether the Sikh or the Afghan was to rule the Punjab. ”

“ After the defeat and death of Banda, every measure was taken, that an active resentment could suggest, not only to destroy the power, but to extirpate the race, of the Sikhs. An astonishing number of that sect must have fallen, in the last two or three years of the contest with the imperial armies, as the irritated Muhammedans gave them no quarter. After the execution of their chief, a royal edict was issued, ordering all who professed the religion of Nánac to be taken and put to death, wherever found. To give effect to this mandate, a reward was offered for the head of every Sikh ”

“ War is a necessary stimulus for Sikhism. In the reaction of peace the Sikh population dwindles. It was in the struggle with Islam, during the ascendency of Ranjit Singh, in the two wars against the British, and after in the Mutiny, when the Sikhs proved our loyal allies, that the Khalsa was strongest. Without the incentive to honour and the door open to military service the ineradicable instincts of the Hindu reassert themselves. ”

“ The Sikh never shaves or trims his hair or beard, parting the latter and twisting and tucking it behind his ears and under the turban. He always wears a sword, if only the miniature tulwar in his turban, and he terrorizes the timid babu, the limp Bengali, and the cowardly Kashmiri as he does the Chinese, and in general is the first man one meets in India.
The heart of the Sikh city and the soul of its people is the Golden Temple in the center of the sacred tank, the Pool of Immortality, and for beauty and impressiveness this Amritsar shrine is second only to the Taj Mahal. ”

“ The fidelity of the Sikhs had long been suspected. It was now considered by no means an impossible event, that the march of our army, worn, sick, and incumbered, through the Punjab, would offer a temptation too strong to be resisted by the mutinous Sikh soldiery, whose real feeling had betrayed itself early in the year at Peshawur. ”

“ Even the Sikh religion, as taught by its founder Nanak, has modified the hard-and-fast prejudices of the Hindu on the one hand, and on the other has eliminated the baser rancour and fanaticism of the more exoteric Mahomedanism.
The Sikh of to-day is a level-headed, sober-minded, tolerant man, keenly alive to practical issues. And from this may be judged his valour as a soldier. In the thick of battle the Sikh is cool and resolute. He is possessed of grim determination and tenacity. ”

“ I must spare a moment to mention the Sikhs, a name well known in England five-and-twenty years ago, in connection with the fierce battles on the Sutlej, and afterwards at Chillianwala and Goojerat. At first only an insignificant sect, they were raised by persecution to importance as a faction, their founder being one of those earnest men who appear from time to time in every age, and, disgusted with the corruptions of religion, strive to erect a creed of Theism and morality in its stead. Now that their empire has been destroyed, their numbers are dwindling daily. ”

“ Such an opinion may be taken as typical of the views of a great number of officers, who have some title to speak on the subject, as it is one on which their lives might at any moment depend.
The Sikh is the guardian of the Marches. He was originally invented to combat the Pathan. His religion was designed to be diametrically opposed to Mahommedanism. It was a shrewd act of policy. Fanaticism was met by fanaticism. Religious abhorrence was added to racial hatred. The Pathan invaders were rolled back to the mountains, and the Sikhs established themselves at Lahore and Peshawar. ”

“ They seem to have drifted towards this just as the Guruship, which commenced as a democratic institution, became hereditary, thereby firmly establishing the Sikh religion. Political influence and power thus fell into the hands of a military aristocracy—an oligarchy based on republican principles. There were no wide distinctions between class and class. Powerful as was the influence of bold independent action which brought fame and rank, it was an influence which pervaded all, and in which none was too poor to share. ”

“ A large part of the money spent on the army finds its way to the Punjabi villages, which, with what also comes from well-paid foreign service, are being steadily enriched, for the Sikh is too fond of his own country to settle abroad. All that can be saved goes to the homes. They do not waste money on the occasion of domestic ceremonies, as in other priest-ridden parts of India. ”

“ At last, [85] in 1823, the Sikhs were united under Ranjit Singh into the greatest power of India. But he died in 1839; four wives and seven concubines were burned with him, and you can see their tombs under marble lotuses in Lahore. Ten years later the second Sikh War was over, and the Punjab was British. If the Sikh rule was short, their battles have ever been long.
GOLDEN TEMPLE OF THE SIKHS, INDIA.
The later history of the Sikhs—how kindly they accepted British rule, which has still treated their religion with more than tolerant respect ”

“ They soon rallied, and once more emerged from the wreckage, beginning life again at Amritsar, and restoring their temple and sacred tank. They then showed what a powerful force character is in the formation of a nation—character moulded by religious persecution and the unflinching courage of the true Sikh, instilled by Govind, "who never fears though oft overcome," which engendered vitality under all conditions, the more adverse the better, with a determination to struggle for the triumph of the Khalsa at all costs. ”

“ In spite of religious ferment, there is little in the bazaar or temples of Umritsur to remind one of the times—only some twenty years ago—when the Sikh army crossed the Sutlej, and its leaders threatened to sack Delhi and Calcutta, and drive the English out of India; it is impossible, however, to believe that there is no undercurrent in existence. Eighteen years cannot have sufficed to extinguish the Sikh nationality, and the men who beat us at Chillianwallah are not yet dead, or even old. ”

“ The Sikh converts, it has been before stated, continue, after they have quitted their original religion, all those civil usages and customs of the tribes to which they belonged, that they can practise, without infringing the tenets of Nánac, or the institutions of Gúrú Góvind. They are most particular with regard to their intermarriages; and, on this point, Sikhs descended from Hindús almost invariably conform to Hindú customs, every tribe intermarrying within [136] itself. ”

“ Had the master and founder of the Sikh military power been spared, or his sagacity and political wisdom been inherited by any of his successors, this day of death would have been averted, or at least deferred to a succeeding generation. ”

“ By converting a horde of undisciplined peasants into enthusiastic soldiers animated with religious fervour, by inuring them to warfare, and by his new ordinances moulding them into the distinct community of the Khalsa,—the Commonwealth bonded together to fight until they triumphed,—Govind Singh contributed much to the weakening of the Mahomedan power at a time when the Emperor Aurangzeb, by his bigotry towards Hindus, was paving the way for the disintegration of his Empire. Under his strong hand the Sikhs rose by a feeling of nationality among a people who had none. ”

“ When we recollect that at the commencement of the recent mutiny it was not uncommonly said that one cause of our weakness in other parts of India was the necessity which existed of concentrating our forces for the purpose of occupying the Sikh territory ”

“ The protected states are indeed to a great extent Sikh, and even now, although they owe the continuance of their existence as separate states to our protection, and the chiefs are all with us, the sympathies of the great body of the people are entirely with the Sikhs across the Sutlej. ”

“ The temple is the centre and inspiration of the Sikh religion. The Sikhs are an interesting people. They rallied round one of the multitude of the Hindu religious reformers, named Nanak Shah, who established this cult about the end of the fifteenth century. It may be called an amalgam of Mohammedanism and Hinduism. It unites the monotheism and the stern morality of the former with much of the petty ritual of the latter. It does not observe caste. Still, in outer matters of observances, Sikhs are not easily distinguishable from ordinary Hindus. ”

“ The Raja of Jhind was the first in the field, declaring that he would abide by the British, under whom he had lived happily for fifty years. He cleared the road for the English troops advancing on Delhi. The Maharaja of Patiala supplied 5000 men, and held the line of communication between the Punjab and the British army before Delhi for a distance of 120 miles. The Raja of Nabha, with 800 of his men, occupied for us the fort of Ludhiana and escorted the siege-train to Delhi. The petty Sikh chiefs complained of it as a grievance if they were not called on for our service. ”

“ The Punjaub still (1854) supplies all the necessaries of life, and the district between the Indus and the Jelum contains salt-mines. In regard to commerce, as well as to manufactures, such as those of cotton-cloths, various stuffs, curious carpets, etc., the Sikhs are behind the other nations of India; yet, considering they are a military people, they shew less contempt for the occupations and amusements of civil life, and the peaceful cultivation of the soil, than might have been expected.
There can be no doubt that this country will become very flourishing under British rule. ”

“ The peculiar tribe of the Sikhs, besides occupying the Punjaub, inhabit a wide region on the east or left bank of the river Sutlej, generally included under the name of Sirhind. For fifty years the British in India have had to deal, or have made a pretext for dealing, with the petty Sikh chieftains of this Sirhind region: at one time ‘protecting’ those on the east of the Sutlej from the aggression of the great Sikh leader, Runjeet Singh, on the west of that river ”