Early Panjab From Gateway to Metaphor - A Historiography

The historiography of the nineteenth century Panjab privileges the core constituency of Maharaja Ranjit Singh's 'empire', whereby the margins are represented only as conquered territories. This article shifts the perspective by highlighting the context of 'Zomian' margins in the making of an 'empire'. Based on coeval travellers' accounts, news from Lahore Durbar and British Indian governmental sources, the focus is on the impact of economic and political contingencies on the policies of Sikh Sardars, the Maharaja of Lahore and, ultimately, the British Indian government in the Western Himalayan region. We shall, however, limit ourselves to economic interaction between the hegemonic empire and Kangra hill states to bring out the dynamics of dominance and subversion. The underlying assumption of dominance and eventual integration into the 'empire' was rather economic: in services, materials and money. It was, however, not a relationship of political dominance only. While the subjugation of hill states alienated revenue to the 'empire', it also opened new markets to the hill products and services that had cultural and economic implications. The new markets were welcomed; the alienation of revenue was not. The alliance, therefore, had an uneasy aspect, nuanced by a subtle protest, that of the weak against the strong: an indirect, meek and symbolic resistance. Consequently, when the strength of 'empire' dwindled, such protests acquired accentuated dimensions. The process of such protests is vital in understanding the decline of Lahore 'empire', barely a decade after the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal [Online], 1 | 2007, URL : http://samaj.revues.org/136

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2018

This article argues for the value of looking past the emperor Aurangzeb, in seeking to understand how he has been portrayed. The eighteenth-century Braj source from Punjab examined here portrays local debates and conflicts at the centre, and the Mughal state at the periphery, of the project of communitarian self-formation. Here, the emperor operates from the outside. Internal communitarian concerns, particularly regarding caste inclusion, dominate, linking the text in question to larger questions around caste and community that emerged in early modern South Asia in a range of contexts. Aurangzeb/Alamgir figures most prominently in Sikh historiographical sources in association with two events: the arrest and execution of the ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur, and the assault and seizure of the Sikh centre of Anandpur during the tenure of the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh. The greatest periods of open conflict between Sikhs and the state occurred after the death of Aurangzeb, including a period of widespread revolt under a follower of Guru Gobind Singh, Banda Bahadur, in the second decade of the eighteenth century and just after the death of the Guru, and two particularly deadly periods of persecution in following decades. 1 Sikh relations with Mughal authority had not however always been so fraught. Under Akbar's long rule, from 1556 to 1605, the Sikh community had flourished under the third, fourth, and fifth Gurus, growing into a sizable and prominent community in Punjab centred from the time of the fourth Guru at Ramdaspur, the modern city of Amritsar. It was with the ascension of the emperor Jahangir to the throne in 1605 (which he occupied until 1627) that Sikh relations with the state took an agonistic turn, culminating in the execution of the fifth Guru. 2 The long reign of Aurangzeb (1658-1707) corresponds, in Sikh communitarian terms, with the period of Guruship of the four final Gurus:

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2018

This document represents the text that was published as "Thinking Beyond Aurangzeb and the Mughal State in a Late Eighteenth-Century Punjabi Braj Source" This article argues for the value of looking past the emperor Aurangzeb, in seeking to understand how he has been portrayed. The eighteenth-century Braj source from Punjab examined here portrays local debates and conflicts at the centre, and the Mughal state at the periphery, of the project of communitarian self-formation. Here, the emperor operates from the outside. Internal communitarian concerns, particularly regarding caste inclusion, dominate, linking the text in question to larger questions around caste and community that emerged in early modern South Asia in a range of contexts. Aurangzeb/Alamgir figures most prominently in Sikh historiographical sources in association with two events: the arrest and execution of the ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur, and the assault and seizure of the Sikh centre of Anandpur during the tenure of the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh. The greatest periods of open conflict between Sikhs and the state occurred after the death of Aurangzeb, including a period of widespread revolt under a follower of Guru Gobind Singh, Banda Bahadur, in the second decade of the eighteenth century and just after the death of the Guru, and two particularly deadly periods of persecution in following decades. 1 Sikh relations with Mughal authority had not however always been so fraught. Under Akbar's long rule, from 1556 to 1605, the Sikh community had flourished under the third, fourth, and fifth Gurus, growing into a sizable and prominent community in Punjab centred from the time of the fourth Guru at Ramdaspur, the modern city of Amritsar. It was with the ascension of the emperor Jahangir to the throne in 1605 (which he occupied until 1627) that Sikh relations with the state took an agonistic turn, culminating in the execution of the fifth Guru. 2 The long reign of Aurangzeb (1658-1707) corresponds, in Sikh communitarian terms, with the period of Guruship of the four final Gurus:

Journal of the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions, 2017

This article pursues two interconnected inquiries into the work of M.A. Macauliffe. Firstly, the paper examines Macauliffe's work in light of general discussion in the historiography of colonial and modern South Asia regarding the relative influence of colonial forms of knowledge in the formation of South Asian subjectivities and texts in the period. This allows for understanding of the differentials in power imbedded within the 'dialogues' that produced texts like Macauliffe's. The paper explores the specifics of this question by, secondly, demonstrating the ways in which Macauliffe's work-presumably through his interaction with his interlocutors among the Sikhs and/or reading of Sikh texts-reflects existing Sikh historiographical commitments. In this, we attempt to assess the work in relation to a range of existing works in Punjabi and determine the genealogy of its creation, in Sikh historiographical terms. Assessment of these two seemingly contradictory contexts allows us to assess what was new-and what was not-in Macauliffe's representation of the Sikh past, and how we can assess the purportedly dialogical nature of the text within a broader field of power and knowledge.

The Road to Empire: The Political Education of Khalsa Sikhs in the Late 1600s, 2024

From the late seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century, the Sikh community transformed from a relatively insignificant religious minority to an elevated position of kingship and empire. Under the leadership of Guru Gobind Singh (1661–1708), Sikh elites and peasants began to align themselves with discourses of power and authority, and within a few decades Khalsa Sikh warriors conquered some of the wealthiest provinces of the Mughal and Afghan empires. In this book, Satnam Singh argues that the Sikhs’ increasing self-assertion was not simply a reaction to Mughal persecution but also a result of an active program initiated by the Guru to pursue larger visions of scholarship, conquest, and political sovereignty. Using a vast trove of understudied court literature, Singh shows how Sikhs grappled with Indo-Islamic traditions to forge their own unique ideas of governance and kingship with the aim to establish an independent Sikh polity. The Road to Empire offers an impressive intellectual history of the early modern Sikh world.

2017

This article pursues two interconnected inquiries into the work of M.A. Macauliffe. Firstly, the paper examines Macauliffe's work in light of general discussion in the historiography of colonial and modern South Asia regarding the relative influence of colonial forms of knowledge in the formation of South Asian subjectivities and texts in the period. This allows for understanding of the differentials in power imbedded within the ‘dialogues’ that produced texts like Macauliffe’s. The paper explores the specifics of this question by, secondly, demonstrating the ways in which Macauliffe’s work—presumably through his interaction with his interlocutors among the Sikhs and/or reading of Sikh texts—reflects existing Sikh historiographical commitments. In this, we attempt to assess the work in relation to a range of existing works in Punjabi and determine the genealogy of its creation, in Sikh historiographical terms. Assessment of these two seemingly contradictory contexts allows us to...

SCTIW Review, 2015

Story and fact are always in uneasy tension with each other. No matter how carefully we line up the historical data or how honestly we report the actual events through which we have lived, these do not by themselves tell the story of our lives. To tell all is not to tell a tale. Getting the facts straight is not enough to find the story to which they belong. In fact, getting the facts straight is a very different activity from that of finding a story that can be 'faithful' to the facts. . Breakfast at the Victory: The Mysticism of Ordinary Experience, 171-172. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco.]

Movement of peoples can be seen as a defining hallmark of the twentieth century, but the aftermath of these movements rarely falls under the critical eye of the intellectual. This paper collides and interprets the affects of two historical movements of people: the division of Panjab in 1947 and the migration to Canada from Panjab after the Green Revolution. I understand the process of movement in these contexts as a disturbance and therefore violent in nature. Through my reading of the stories Tobha Tek Singh, by Saadat Hasan Manto, Baraf da Geet, by Sadhu Binning, and Do Tapu, by Jarnail Singh I seek to understand the migration alternately than the Freudian distinction of Heimlich/Unheimlich. Away from a binary modality and unbeknownst to an interstiti- ality, I seek to put forward the term Dis-locatia, as a term that emerges from an engage- ment with the disorienting e ́migre ́ pose that describes a haunted dispossessed space of searching occupied by emigre authors