REDEMPTIVE PASTS AND IMPERILED FUTURES: THE WRITING OF A SIKH HISTORY

Abstract

This article examines the narrative frameworks of the Persian histories of the Sikhs commissioned by the East India Company. These texts are important sources for understanding the development of individual Sikh states in the late eighteenth century, however, very little is known about the information networks and scholarly practices of the authors of such texts. Using the Tarikh-i Ahwal-i Sikhan of Khushwaqt Rai, I examine the ways in which Rai created a narrative that emphasized the heroism of the Sikh chiefs in a way that departed from earlier Punjabi and Persian accounts of the Sikhs. Although the narrative voice of the text preserves a deliberate neutrality; in re-interpreting his Punjabi sources and silencing the negative portrayals of Sikhs from earlier Persian works, Khushwaqt Rai created a text that emphasized the individual agency and sovereignty of Sikh chiefs. The masked partiality of authors such as Rai, I argue, must be understood in terms of the location of the authors at the intersection of multiple intellectual, linguistic, and political communities.

Notes

1 This is a vast and growing field, too vast to fully reproduce here. The most important publications that speak to the matters explored in this article would include Fox (1985), Oberoi (1994), Cohn (1996, 108–11), and Ballantyne (2006). Very few scholars have examined the role of indigenous information orders in the production of colonial knowledge, the exception being Ganda Singh (1962).

2 These two terms do not necessarily reflect distinctive genres. Sakhis, or narratives of the lives of the Sikh Gurus, had an oral and textual existence within the Sikh community from an early time. The earliest surviving textual manuscripts are from the early seventeenth century (McLeod 1968, 15–21). Gurbilas, most often narratives of the Tenth Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, were first written in the early eighteenth century, but follow the conventions of sakhis. Thus, in the gurbilas of Swarup Das Bhalla, Mahima Prakash, composed in 1776, the author refers to his work as a ‘sakhi’ (f. 1a).

3 The Punjabi name ‘Bhaktmal’ is often written as ‘Bakhtmal’.

4 A detailed examination of this process occurs in chapters 2 and 6 of my forthcoming book From Sparrows into Hawks: The Formation of the Khalsa Martial Tradition, 1709–1799.

5 For a discussion of the controversy surrounding the dating of Sainpati, see McLeod (2003, 59–60). Surjit Singh Hans makes the strongest case for a later date for Koer Singh's work in the early nineteenth century (Hans 1988, 266).

6 I am grateful to the author for sharing an earlier version of this article.

7 This is explicitly suggested when the Guru says in the text, ‘The whole sangat is from beginning to end my Khalsa,’ since the word ‘khalsa’ in Mughal administrative terms implied land under the direct control of the crown (Sainapati 1967, 33).

8 Many undated copies of this work have survived; three are to be found in the Sikh History Research Library, Khalsa College, Amritsar: S. H. R. 2899B, S. H. R. 1435, and S. H. R. 2244 B.

9 See Letter no. 21 to Jassa Singh in which Major Browne mentions Lakhpat Rai's writings that have informed him of ‘the good qualities and excellent disposition’ of Jassa Singh Ahluwalia, and again in another letter to Siaji Singh, Browne mentions his knowledge of ‘the valor of his family’ (Calendar 1953, 103).

10 This manuscript is a later copy made by a scribe Dil Sukh Rai in 1839. I compared this copy with S. H. R. 1274 in the Khalsa College Amritsar collection. I will refer to the Khalsa College copy as ‘Tarikh b’ to distinguish it from the Patiala copy. This copy is a complete reproduction of the manuscript cataloged by Suri in the Punjab Public Library in Lahore prior to Partition, but the Lahore copy lacked the front piece identifying the author (Suri 1956, 8). Multiple copies of this work in Punjab indicate that it was valued and reproduced many times.

11 The negative evaluation of the Sikhs and their Gurus is most frequent in books by authors who held government positions at Lahore or Delhi. For example, Muhammad Qasim ‘Ibrat’ Lahori, author of Ibratnama, disparagingly contrasts the spirituality of Guru Nanak with the prosperity and warlike nature of Guru Gobind Singh (1977, 134–136). He was writing in the aftermath of Banda's rebellion on 1709-1715. By the middle of the eighteenth century as the Sikhs raided cities such as Lahore and continued to gain power, authors such as Tahmas Khan describe them as robbers and marauders (1782, f. 78 a-b).

12 For a discussion of this story in the various janamsakhi traditions, see McLeod (1968, 122–5).

13 Bakhtmal, for example, notes the lack of learning among the predominantly Jat Khalsa Sikhs (Bakhtmal 1807, f.1b-2a).

14 See note 10 above. The late-eighteenth-century work Jam-i Jahannama expresses this opinion (Khan 1785, 16b). Among colonial officers, Malcolm notes that the weakened state of the Mughals and the death of Nadir Shah were a boon to the Sikhs (Malcolm 1812/1981, 69). William Francklin adds to this list the aid rendered to the Sikhs by Afghan nobles such as Zabita Khan (Francklin 1798, 71–2).

15 An earlier manuscript from Patiala is the anonymously authored Halat-i Rajgan-i Patiala, M/942, Punjab State Archives, Patiala (Anonymous n.d.). Another important work is the Tazkira-i Khandan-i Rajaha-ye Patiala, M/806, Punjab State Archives, Patiala (Anonymous 1813). This manuscript consists of two bound copies of the same text. References are to the second of these works.

16 In the Tazkira-i Khandan-i Rajaha-ye Patiala, these claims to the territory around Patiala begins with documenting the Phulkian family's Rajput origins from the ruling family of Jaisalmer, and the encounter of Phul, the family's founder with Guru Hargobind (51), alliances with the Bhaikian family (63), and conquest of the territories of their regional rival, the Bhattis (64). I follow the roman numerals in the bound text.

17 A detailed account of a dispute brought by the widow of the Mani Majra ruler is found in the notebooks of George Birch of the Karnal Agency (Birch 1921, 1–34).