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Pashaura Singh: Revisiting Evolution of Sikh Community 47
disagreement with the traditional interpretation
concerns its simplicity. It starts too late and ends too
soon. It omits vital elements within the limited area
which it claims to cover. It over-simplifies the events
to which it does attribute importance and lays upon
them a weight of emphasis which in all three cases is
considerably in excess of their true significance. (ESC,
pp. 4-5)
McLeod thus intended to closely look at a much wide range of historical
and sociological phenomenon to offer his ‘radical concept of
development’ of the Sikh Panth. He proposed the hypothesis that
explained the progressive development of the Panth not in terms of
purposeful intention of the Gurus but in terms of the influence of the
social, economic and historical environment. This specifically included
such major features as the militant cultural traditions of the dominant
group of the Jats (‘rural peasantry’) within the Panth, the economic
context within which it evolved, and the influence of contemporary
events such as those produced by local political rivalry and foreign
invasion. 1 This interpretation, however, came under vigorous attack
within the Sikh scholarly circles. In his later works McLeod reassessed
his earlier stance in the light of criticisms and acknowledged the
“intention of the Gurus as an important factor” in the gradual growth of
the Sikh Panth, along with environmental factors that were
overemphasized in his earlier analysis. 2
II
W.H. McLeod took great pride in being ‘a western historian’ who was
trained at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of
London during the mid-sixties. In his personal narrative he claimed: “The
work of a western historian must involve a considerable amount of time
spent on the slow, patient, and (for many) monotonous search for
evidence. This does not mean searching in places which reveal only
evidence which will suit a pre-formed view of the subject. It does not
involve the suppression of inconvenient evidence either. Most assuredly,
it does not. From the evidence which emerges, the historian must seek to
frame a pattern for the course of events of any particular period, one
which takes into full account the testimony of all the evidence which has
been uncovered.” 3 It is not surprising that McLeod came to be known as
a ‘rational empiricist’ or ‘positivist historian’ who rigorously followed a
skeptic approach in his analysis.
One of the great contributions of Enlightenment criticism was the
analysis of society and its individuals through sociological study. In