Introductory - Global Sikh Studies

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Rajputs will not allow inferior castes to wear red clothes or ample lion
cloths in their villages.'29 In the predominantly Muhammadan Western
Punjab, the Jat is 'naturally looked upon as of inferior race, and the
position he occupies is very different from that which he holds in the
centre and east of the Punjab.30
We are not giving these quotations in order to approve of the air
of superiority assumed by the Sikh Jats; because the Sikh movement
aimed at leveling up social status of all kinds and not at substituting
the status-superiority of one caste or class for that of another. However,
these instances do show how far the movement succeeded in breaking
the order of social precedence established by the caste society and in
permanently raising the social status of a social group which now
forms the majority in the Sikh Panth.
The Sikh Jat, who humbled the Rajput, could naturally not be
expected to own the superiority of any other caste. 'The Banya with
his sacred thread, his strict Hinduism, and his twice-born standing
looks down on the Jat as a Sudra. But the Jat looks down upon the
Banya as a cowardly spiritless money- grabber, and the society in general
agrees with the Jat.'31 There- fore, the social distance between the
Sikh Jats and those from the so-called higher castes became minimal.
In fact, it was a relation-ship of rival claims to superiority, or equality,
based on a tussle between hierarchical Brahmanical notions retained
by one section of the community and a new sense of equality born
out of the Sikh movement acquired by the other. Nowhere else in the
caste society, the common peasantry could attain to this position of
equality and dignity.
We are not ignoring or justifying the caste distinctions that later
crept in the Sikh Panth in the post-Khalsa period. There is a general
tendency for societies to lapse into their old ruts even after having
passed through a revolution. But, a revolution, once having taken place,
does secure some gains. The lower menial castes are the only social
strata that did not, in the long run, benefit materially from the Sikh
revolution, although in the Khalsa period the Rangretas occupied an
honourable position in the Khalsa Dal. Rose mentions that one of the
Misals, that of Nishanias, was shared by the Khatris and the