The Akali leaders present in the Golden Temple complex during Operation BlueStar were taken into custody along with some ‘extremists’ and ordinary visitors, including women and children. The countryside was combed in search of arms and ‘rebels’, and about 5, 000 young men were taken into custody. Quite a few innocent persons were killed in the process. Those who were supposed to have waged war against the state were to be tried by Special Courts. In reaction to the rumours of an attack on the Golden Temple, Sikh soldiers at several places in Bihar, Rajasthan, Assam and Jammu ‘mutinied’ to march towards Amritsar. Scores of them got killed in the attempt and a few thousand were marked for court martial. Some retired Sikh Generals who thought that these men had acted on the spur of the moment ‘under a great emotional stress’ wanted them not to be treated as ‘ordinary deserters’ but their appeal had no immediate effect on the trials.

Sikh reaction to BlueStar induced Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to rebuild the Akāl Takht. The octogenerian Baba Kharak Singh agreed to undertake this service (kār sewā) but only on the condition that the Golden Temple was cleared of troops. This was not acceptable to the Prime Minister. Her Minister Buta Singh persuaded Nihang Santa Singh to preside over the reconstruction undertaken essentially by the government. The speedily rebuilt Akāl Takht was handed back to the SGPC by October, 1984. This could hardly help; the building or rebuilding of the Akāl Takht had always been regarded as a prerogative of the Sikhs and their chosen representatives.

The eighteenth century in Indian history is known for the decline of the Mughal empire and the rise of successor states and new powers like the Marathas and the British. The rise of the Singhs into power during the eighteenth century was a part of this political process. But there was nothing in the process itself to ensure their rise to power. The combination of religious piety and disciplined worldliness that was evolved by Guru Nanak and elaborated by his successors was extended to the realm of politics by Guru Gobind Singh. The political struggle of the Singhs can be appreciated not merely in terms of the growing weakness of the Mughal empire but also as an extrapolation of the pontificate of Guru Gobind Singh.

Only about a year after Guru Gobind Singh's death, Bahadur Shah heard of a serious uprising in the Punjab and left the Deccan for the north. This uprising was led by Banda Bahadur who had met Guru Gobind Singh at Nanded and become his follower. He was commissioned to lead the Singhs in the Punjab against their oppressors. Some of the old followers of Guru Gobind Singh accompanied him, and he was also given letters (hukmnāmas) addressed to the Singhs for coming to his support. Banda Bahadur and his companions moved cautiously towards Delhi, entered the sarkār of Hissar and started collecting men and materials for military action. By November, 1709, they had gathered enough strength to storm the town of Samana in the sarkār of Sarhind.

This essay is by no means exhaustive. It is meant to serve as a guide to some of the best material on Sikh history, but the omission of a work is no reflection on its character. What is included is sufficiently representative of historical writing and major categories of source materials on the subject. The essay is divided into five parts. The first four cover the four distinct periods of Sikh history mentioned in the Preface. The last contains a few general observations.

After the classic work of Joseph Davey Cunningham, A History of the Sikhs (London, 1849), Gokal Chand Narang picked up the threads more than six decades later in his Transformation of Sikhism (4th edn, New Delhi, 1956) to be followed by J. C. Archer, The Sikhs in Relation to Hindus, Moslems, Christians and Ahmadiyas: A Study in Comparative Religion (Princeton, 1946); Teja Singh and Ganda Singh, A Short History of the Sikhs (Bombay, 1950); Indubhusan Banerjee, Evolution of the Khalsa (2nd edn, Calcutta, 1962); and Khushwant Singh, A History of the Sikhs (Oxford, 1963). More analytical than these general histories is Niharranjan Ray's The Sikh Gurus and Sikh Society: A Study in Social Analysis (Patiala, 1970). W. Owen Cole attempts to place the Sikh movement in a broad context in Sikhism and its Indian Context 1469-1708 (New Delhi, 1984). For ideas and institutions, the trail was blazed by Teja Singh in Sikhism: Its Ideals and Institutions (Bombay, 1937), to be followed much later by W. H. McLeod, The Evolution of the Sikh Community (Oxford, 1975). A few critical essays on the period by J.S. Grewal, From Guru Nanak to Maharaja Ranjit Singh (2nd edn, Amritsar, 1982) provide some new insights.

The new Punjab state created new problems because of the way in which it was formed. Sant Fateh Singh expressed his dissatisfaction several months before the new state was inaugurated: genuinely Punjabi-speaking areas were being left out of the new state and given to Haryana or Himachal Pradesh; Chandigarh was unjustly being turned into a Union Territory; power and irrigation projects were being taken over by the Union Government. Opposing the Reorganization Bill in the Parliament, Kapur Singh referred to the promises made by the Congress and its leaders on various occasions; as late as July, 1946 Jawaharlal Nehru had told a press conference that the Sikhs were entitled to special consideration: ‘I see no wrong in an area and a set-up in the North wherein the Sikhs can also experience a glow of freedom.’ Kapur Singh too favoured a larger state irrespective of Sikh population, but a state standing in a special relationship to the Centre and having a special internal constitution, a Sikh homeland.

Sant Fateh Singh demanded ‘the same rights for the Suba administration as were allowed to other states, and the same status for the language as enjoyed in other areas’. On 17 December 1966 he went on a fast with the declared intention of immolating himself ten days later. On the afternoon of December 27 Hukam Singh reached Amritsar to tell a large congregation in the Golden Temple that the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had agreed to arbitrate on the issues involved and that Chandigarh belonged to the Punjab.

The phase of about three decades from the end of the First World War to the Act of Independence in 1947 was marked by intense political activity appearing first in the form of the Act of 1935 and then in the form of independence and partition. However, the struggle for freedom was not always constitutional; it was also agitational, and even militant. The Sikhs participated in the struggle for freedom in all its forms.

In a general meeting of the Sikh leaders at Lahore in March, 1919, a new political party known as the Central Sikh League was announced, and it was formally inaugurated at Amritsar in the last week of December. The immediate and long-term objectives of the new party were put forth in the first issue of its organ, the Akālī: to rebuild the demolished wall of the Rakabganj Gurdwara, to bring the Khalsa College at Amritsar under the control of the representatives of the Sikh community, to liberate gurdwāras from the control of the mahants, and to inspire the Sikhs to participate in the struggle for the country's freedom.

The Rakabganj issue was taken up by the Central Sikh League when a few of the prominent individuals who had participated in the agitation of 1914 approached Sardul Singh Caveeshar at Lahore to revive the agitation. Caveeshar issued an appeal in the Akālī of September 2, 1920: ‘Wanted 100 martyrs to save gurdwāras’. Within a fortnight, he received 700 offers. The method and the mood had changed.

By the beginning of the seventeenth century the socio-religious community of Guru Nanak's followers became ‘a state within the state’. Each of his first four successors made his own distinctive contribution, working within the ideological and institutional parameters adumbrated by him. We have to study their own compositions closely to perceive the slow but sure development of the Sikh Panth in terms of numbers, composition, material resources, social institutions and a multi-dimensional transmutation of ideas in a creative response to changing situations. To listen to those who were closely connected with them is equally rewarding. The context for this development was provided by the politico-administrative arrangements evolved by Akbar, giving peace and prosperity to a vast empire. The position of the Sikh Panth at the end of his reign may be seen as the culmination of a peaceful evolution of nearly three-quarters of a century. This evolutionary phase came dramatically to a grave end with the martyrdom of Guru Arjan in the very first year of Jahangir's reign.

Babur ruled over the territory he conquered from Bhera to Bihar for only four years till his death in 1530. His son and successor, Nasirud-din Humayun, temporarily added Malwa and Gujarat to the dominions inherited from Babur. The Afghan resurgence under the leadership of the Sur Afghan Sher Khan obliged Humayun to abandon the Mughal territory in India in 1540. Sher Shah Sur and his successors ruled over northern India for fifteen years before Humayun staged a successful return in 1555.

A rigorous analysis of the compositions of Guru Nanak reveals that there is hardly anything in contemporary politics, society or religion that he finds commendable. Yet the age of Guru Nanak was not fundamentally or even radically different from the previous or the following few centuries. Much of his denunciation, therefore, can be understood in terms of his moral fervour. For a rational conceptualization of his position it may be suggested that the entire social order had lost its legitimacy in the eyes of Guru Nanak because it had lost its support from the prevalent religious ideologies: it was neither ‘Hindu’ nor ‘Muslim’. A new religious ideology was needed to become the basis of a new social order. At one stage in his life Guru Nanak came to believe that he had discovered a new ideology and he was looking at the contemporary situation from the standpoint of this new ideology. His denunciation of contemporary practices and beliefs is only an inverted statement of his positive ideals.

Guru Nanak was thoroughly familiar with the politico-administrative arrangements made by the Afghan rulers, particularly in the Punjab. This familiarity, reflected in the use of his metaphors, is a measure of his preoccupation with this vital aspect of the social situation. Moreover, there is direct denunciation of contemporary rule. The rulers are unjust; they discriminate against their non-Muslim subjects by extorting jizya and pilgrimage tax. The ruling class is oppressing the cultivators and the common people.

During the seventeenth century five Gurus succeeded Guru Arjan. His son, Guru Hargobind was succeeded by a grandson, Guru Har Rai. The younger son of Guru Har Rai, Guru Har Krishan was succeeded by a grand uncle, Guru Tegh Bahadur, the youngest son of Guru Hargobind. Guru Gobind Singh, who succeeded his father Guru Tegh Bahadur in 1675, abolished personal Guruship before his death in 1708.

Interference by the Mughal emperors Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb in the affairs of the Sikh Panth was an important feature of this period. We have already referred to the martyrdom of Guru Arjan at the beginning of Jahangir's rule. A few years later, Jahangir ordered the detention of Guru Hargobind in the fort of Gwalior which was generally used for detaining political prisoners. In the reign of Shah Jahan the Mughal administrators of the Punjab came into armed conflict with Guru Hargobind. Aurangzeb took an active interest in the issue of succession, passed orders for the execution of Guru Tegh Bahadur, and at one time ordered total extirpation of Guru Gobind Singh and his family. State interference was, thus, a serious matter.

State interference encouraged dissent within the Sikh Panth and accentuated disunity. Prithi Chand, significantly, put forth his claim to be the successor of Guru Arjan after his martyrdom, becoming thus a rival of Guru Hargobind. Dhir Mai, a grandson of Guru Hargobind, preferred to remain in the good books of the emperors and chose to have his own centre in the province of Lahore rather than succeeding to the office of Guru Hargobind at his headquarters in a vassal principality.

Babur's invading army in the eyes of Guru Nanak was a ‘marriage-party of sin’. Not even the ladies of the nobles were spared dishonour. With heads once of luxuriant tresses and partings adorned with red, they suffered now the shears of brutality; their throats were filled with choking dust; they wandered forlorn, away from the places that had sheltered them. No longer were there the sports of the nobles themselves, and gone were their horses and stables, their trumpets and clarions, their scarlet tunics and sword belts, their mansions and palaces, and their seraglios with soft beds and ‘beautiful women whose sight banished sleep’. Rocklike buildings were razed to the ground and princes were trampled into dust. ‘It is Babur who rules in their place now’.

Guru Nanak's sharp response to Babur's invasions underlines the most important political development during his life, the transition from Afghan to Mughal rule in the Punjab and in northern India. The first fifty years of Guru Nanak's life had been marked by a period of peace in the Punjab. At the time of his birth in 1469 the Punjab was a part of the Sultanate of Delhi under Bahlol Lodhi. The major conquest of Bahlol and his successors was that of the Sharqi kingdom of Jaunpur. Their battles for minor political or territorial gains were fought in Rajasthan. There were only a few insignificant revolts in the Punjab during a period of about seventy years.

The Punjab as a province of the British empire was larger than the kingdom of Ranjit Singh and it was also placed in a context almost of global economy and polity. The colonial rulers introduced a large measure of bureaucracy and the rule of law, which established a new kind of relationship between the individual and the state. The ‘paternal’ rule of the early decades was eventually replaced by the ‘machine rule’ of laws, codes and procedures. The executive, financial and judicial functions were separated. An elaborate administration was geared to the purposes of peace and prosperity. For political and economic purposes as well as for administration, new forms of communication and transportation were developed, symbolized by the post office, the telegraph office, the metalled road, the railway and the press.

To increase agricultural production and revenue from land the British administrators of the Punjab introduced reform in the agrarian system with periodic settlements and records of rights as its major planks. Land revenue began to increase steadily. New sources of revenue were tapped. Irrigation projects completed between 1860 and 1920 brought nearly 10,000,000 acres of land under cultivation, creating a ‘prosperous, progressive and modern’ region in the province and changing not only its agrarian economy but also its demographic distribution and even its physical appearance. The increase in production was reflected in the increasing volume and value of trade.

In the early 1520s the Reformation took root in Denmark and quickly spread over a wide area. As in Germany, the ground had been prepared beforehand. There were many signs in the later middle ages of an increasing need for religion among the people, as well as numerous complaints that the church was on the decline and willing to abuse its power. With few exceptions the bishops were inadequate for their tasks – noble landowners without any real sense of the religious needs of the age. Bishoprics and greater benefices were reserved for the aristocracy, which meant that the higher clerics were closely bound to the nobility and the gap between them and the parish priests was wide. Humanism was widespread among the clergy, many of whom had studied at foreign universities.

One of the most important representatives of this biblically based humanism and of the movement for Catholic reform was the Carmelite friar Paulus Helie who in 1520 became the head of the order’s new foundation in Copenhagen, while at the same time lecturing on the Bible at the university. His ideas rested on the Bible which he interpreted according to the Fathers of the church. He violently attacked the worldliness of the clergy and the customs and superstitions fostered by the church, but although he had originally hailed Luther as a welcome ally, he completely rejected him when he realised that the Lutheran movement was leading to a break with the church, for ‘abuse does not abolish use’. Though consistent, Helie’s standpoint was untenable.

The traditional idea according to which there is an intrinsic connection between the ‘Reformed Churches’ led by the likes of Zwingli, Bucer or Oecolampadius and the Anabaptists is broadly correct. Switzerland, south Germany and the Netherlands were the home territories of both Reformed and Anabaptists, while Anabaptists and other nonconformists were less prominent in Lutheran lands. Lutheran churches tended to be organised by secular rulers, while in Zurich, Strassburg and Basel long-established structures of guild government legitimised the popular pressure that accompanied the Reformation. It was easier to establish nonconformist conventicles where the commoner’s initiative in the church could not be totally denied than in places where he was expected to be an obedient subject in this as in all other matters. The communal elements in the ‘Zwinglian’ version of the Reformation made it generate ‘sects’ in a way that authoritarian Lutheranism did not. To this extent the old debate about whether Anabaptism began in Saxony in 1521 or in Zurich in 1525 was correctly settled in favour of Zurich.

Religious radicalism, however, was endemic in all regions of the early Reformation, in the years between the Diet of Worms (1521) and the Peasants’ War (1525). During this time the princes who later organised Lutheran territorial churches still evaded responsibility for the Reformation. To fill the vacuum created by the interacting conservatism of Luther and the princes, radical figures like Andreas Carlstadt and Thomas Müntzer took the lead in implementing changes in religious practice and articulating a non-Lutheran theology. They made it a matter of principle that there should be no ‘tarrying for the magistrate’ in the reform of the church.

Many historians of the Habsburg–Valois wars have followed the broad outline of Blaise de Monluc’s retrospective assessment, fascinated by what appears at first glance to be a destructive and almost incomprehensible duel between two highly cultured Renaissance princes: the Habsburg Charles V, and the Valois Francis I. Yet the wars, which took place in an age that produced both Erasmus and Machiavelli, involved many Christian and Muslim powers. They continued after Charles and Francis were dead, and their repercussions were felt throughout the known world either directly – as participants or victims of the fighting – or indirectly, since the struggle consumed Christian resources and enabled the Ottoman state to expand. And while the conflict was extremely destructive, states and individuals – such as Monluc – participated in the wars because they also brought considerable benefits.