Road To Khalsa

Talk of a ‘pacifist’ Gurunanak and ‘militant’ Gobind Singh oversimplifies Sikh history

- J.S. Grewal and Karamjit K. Malhotra

In the late 18th century, the East India Company began to take interest in the affairs of the Sikhs, who had emerged as a political power. Advised by Warren Hastings, James Browne collected information on the Sikhs and published his History of the Origin and Progress of Sicks. He made a general statement that the Sikhs were at first quiet, inoffensive and unarmed, but persecution by Aurangzeb made them take up arms against the Mughal empire under the leadership of Guru Gobind Singh, whose militancy presented a contrast to Gurunanak’s pacifism. A dichotomy between the first and the 10th Gurus became a stereotype in later British historical writing.

Meanwhile, the idea of the unity of Guruship was developing among Sikhs. They saw no difference between Guru Nanak and his successors. In the early 17th century, Bhai Gurdas projected Guru Nanak and his five successors as one. In the Sri Gur Sobha, written soon after the death of Guru Gobind Singh, all the 10 Gurus are projected as one. In the early 18th century, in the inscriptions on the seal of Banda Singh and the coin stuck in his time, Guru Nanak is regarded as the source of inspiration and power. Ratan Singh Bhangu, writing in the early decades of the 19th century, records that when Captain Murray, the British political agent at Ludhiana, asked him who gave sovereignty to the Khalsa, Bhangu’s reply was “Guru Nanak”. Teja Singh and Ganda Singh suggested in 1950 that Guru Nanak would have done something similar to what Guru Gobind Singh did if he had the same resources. It has been argued that the Sikh panth developed steadily from the time of Guru Nanak to the institution of the Khalsa as a culmina­tion of the movement started by him.