As Mughal power declined, the misls eventually faced the Afghan army of Aḥmad Shāh, with whom an important Sikh tradition is associated. After the Afghans occupied the Harmandir Sahib in 1757, Dip Singh, a member of the Shahid misl, pledged to free the shrine or die in the attempt. His small army was met by a much larger one several kilometres from Amritsar, and in the ensuing battle Dip Singh’s head was cut off. According to one version of events, the body of Dip Singh, holding the head in one hand, continued fighting, eventually dropping dead in the precincts of the Harmandir Sahib. Another account reports that the body fought its way to the outskirts of Amritsar and then hurled the head toward the Harmandir Sahib, the head landing very close to the shrine; the place where the head is believed to have landed is marked by a hexagonal stone.
By the end of Aḥmad Shāh’s invasions in 1769, the Punjab was largely in the hands of 12 misls, and, with the external threat removed, the misls turned to fighting between themselves. Eventually, one misldar (commander), Ranjit Singh, the leader of the Sukerchakia misl (named after the town of Sukkarchak in what is now northeastern Punjab province, Pakistan), which included territories north and west of Lahore, won almost complete control of the Punjab. The lone exception was the Phulkian misl (so called after its founder, Phul, the disciple of Guru Har Rai) on the southeastern border of the Punjab, which survived because the English East India Company had reached the Sutlej River and Ranjit Singh recognized that he was not yet ready to fight the British army. For their part, the British recognized that Ranjit Singh was in the process of establishing a strong kingdom, and, for as long as it survived, they were content to have it as a buffer state between their territories and their ultimate objective, Afghanistan.
Sikhs remember Ranjit Singh with respect and affection as their greatest leader after the Gurus. He succeeded as Sukerchakia misldar when his father died in 1792. By 1799 he had entered Lahore, and in 1801 he proclaimed himself maharaja of the Punjab. He sheathed the two upper stories of the Harmandir Sahib in gold leaf, thereby converting it into what became known as the Golden Temple. Within the kingdom that replaced the misl system, Sikhs of the Khalsa received special consideration, but places were also found for Hindus and Muslims. The army was Ranjit Singh’s particular interest. His objective was to create an entirely new army on a Western model, and for this purpose he employed numerous Europeans, only the British being excepted. When his new army was ready to do battle, the city of Multan, the Vale of Kashmir, and the citadel of Peshawar were all added to the kingdom of the Punjab.
Notwithstanding his many accomplishments, Ranjit Singh failed to provide a firm financial footing for his government, nor was he interested in training a successor. When he died in 1839, he was succeeded by his eldest son, Kharak Singh, though effective authority was exercised by Kharak Singh’s son Nau Nihal Singh. Kharak Singh died in 1840 as a result of excessive opium consumption, and Nau Nihal Singh was killed by a falling arch on the day of his father’s funeral. The Punjab quickly descended into chaos, and, following two wars with the British, the state was annexed in 1849 to become a part of British India. After annexation, the British favoured the Sikhs for recruitment as soldiers, and many Sikhs made the British army their career.
For their loyalty to the British administration during the unsuccessful Indian Mutiny of 1857–58, the Sikhs were rewarded with grants of land and other privileges. Peace and prosperity within the Punjab made possible the founding of the first Singh Sabha, a religious and educational reform movement, in Amritsar in 1873. Its purpose was to demonstrate that Sikhs were not involved in the Indian Mutiny and to respond to signs of decay within the Panth, such as haircutting and tobacco smoking. Because the men who gathered in Amritsar were, for the most part, large landowners and persons of high status, the positions they adopted were generally conservative. In response a more radical branch of the Singh Sabha was established in Lahore in 1879. The Amritsar group came to be known as the Sanatan (“Traditional”) Sikhs, whereas the radical Lahore branch was known as the Tat Khalsa.
The differences between the two groups were considerable. The Sanatan Sikhs regarded themselves as part of the wider Hindu community (then the dominant view within the Panth), and they tolerated such things as idols in the Golden Temple. The Tat Khalsa, on the other hand, insisted that Sikhism was a distinct and independent faith. The pamphlet Ham Hindu Nahin (1898; “We Are Not Hindus”), by the Tat Khalsa writer Kahn Singh Nabha, provided an effective slogan for the movement. Other radical adherents, influenced by Western standards of scholarship, set out to revise and rationalize the rahit-namas (the manuals containing the Rahit), removing parts that were erroneous, inconsistent, or antiquated. Many prohibitions were eliminated, though tobacco and halal meat (flesh of an animal killed according to Muslim ritual) continued to be enjoined. Their work eventually resulted in a clear statement of the Five Ks, which has since been adopted by all orthodox Sikhs. Marriage was also reformed according to Tat Khalsa views.
The controversy between the Sanatan Sikhs and the Tat Khalsa Sikhs continued for some time, as other factions within the Singh Sabha lent their support to one group or the other. Most factions, however, supported the radical group, and, by the beginning of the 20th century, the dominance of the Tat Khalsa movement had become apparent. Eventually its victory was total, and, during the early decades of the 20th century, it converted the Panth to its distinctive way of thinking, so much so that the accepted contemporary understanding of the Sikh faith is the Tat Khalsa interpretation. The 20th century to the present
During the early 1920s the Akali movement, a semimilitary corps of volunteers raised to oppose the British government, disputed with the British over control of the larger gurdwaras" class="md-crosslink">gurdwaras (Punjabi: “doorways to the Guru”), the Sikh houses of worship, in the Punjab. This conflict led eventually to the adoption by the Legislative Council of the Punjab of the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925, whereby the principal gurdwaras were entrusted to Sikh control. The gurdwaras have been governed ever since by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (Supreme Committee of Temple Management), an elected body that is regarded by many Sikhs as the supreme authority within the Panth.
Akal Takht crowdA crowd of people in front of the Akal Takht, the chief centre of authority for Sikhism, in Amritsar, Punjab state, northwestern India.© lehic/Fotolia
The Punjabi suba
During India’s struggle for independence, the Sikhs were on both sides of the conflict, many continuing to serve in the British military and others opposing the colonial government. The partition between India and Pakistan in 1947 produced deep dissatisfaction among the Sikhs, who saw the Punjab divided between the two new states. Almost all Sikhs in the western Punjab migrated to the portion retained by India. Having settled there, however, they soon felt that the government of the Indian National Congress lacked sympathy for them, a situation that was put right by the creation in 1966 of the Punjabi suba, or the Punjabi state, within the union of India. Because the boundaries of the Punjab were redrawn to embrace those whose first language was Punjabi, the Sikhs constituted a majority in the new state.