Introductory - Global Sikh Studies

240
as their companions and partners. 52 We have already referred to Forster’s
observation that an ordinary member of the Khalsa did not regard
himself as anybody’s servant except his Guru’s. 53 The Sikh society
was very much circumspect in safeguarding its internal equality. 54 This
was the reason why Ranjit Singh had to camouflage his monarchy. He
knew that he merely directed into a particular channel a power which
he could neither destroy nor control 55 . ‘Free followers of Gobind could
not be the observant slaves of an equal member of the Khalsa. Ranjit
Singh concealed his motives and ‘everything was done for the sake of
the Guru for the advantage of the Khalsa and in the name of the
Lord.’ 56 He never installed himself on the throne as a king. In the very
first public Darbar he declared that his government would be styled as
the Sarkar-i-Khalsa. 57 After Ranjit Singh, effective political power did
not remain in the hands of his descendants or chiefs. The elected
army panchayats usurped executive authority under the designation
of ‘Panth Khalsa Jeo.’ 58 However, feudalism is afterall feudalism. But,
the ruins of a monument have sometimes their own tale to tell about
its previous grandeur.
As against it, what the French Revolution achieved was the
establishment of a bourgeois Republic. At no stage, common peasants
and the sans-culottes, much less social strata lower than these, came
near to wielding political power directly or indirectly. Guru Gobind
Singh ‘opened, at once, to men of the lowest tribe, the prospect of
earthly glory. 59 ‘Grocers, carpenters, oilmen....rallied into bands...so
well Gobind amalgamated discordant elements for a time.’ 60 In the
French Revolution, even the sans-culottes, who were in the van of
revolutionary insurrection, would not join on equal terms, the wageearners,
the homeless and the like.
(e) Zamindari (Land-lordism)
One of the great achievements of the French Revolution
was that it abolished feudal institutions. But, as this was also
done through constitutional channels, it made a difference from
the way it was done by the Sikh Revolution. It had important
consequences. The French peasants were so much obsessed by
the norms of the old order that, in their uprisings during the