Introductory - Global Sikh Studies

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revolutionary maintained the highest standards of moral conduct. 7 The
author of Fatuhat Nama-i-Samadi, who otherwise calls the Khalsa
wicked, haughty and ungrateful, nonetheless their mother. 7a Forster
states that the Khalsa derived its strength from the ‘Forbearance of
sensual pleasures.’ 8 ‘There are few stories in Sikh history of outrage to
women and torture to men such as stain the pages of south Indian
history . . . . 8a As most of these revolutionaries were drawn from those
segments of the population which are known to be lax in those very
qualities 8b the Qazi and others praised the Sikhs, the credit for raising
them to lofty ethical levels cannot be traced to any source other than
the ideology of the movement itself. And, it is a feature which cannot
be set aside of bypassed.
Fifthly, the manner in which the downtrodden people were
trained to assume the leadership of their own revolutionary movement,
and not to depend on privileged leadership, is a unique historical
phenomenon in Indian history.
Last, but not the least, the revolutionary spirit, the tenacity of
purpose, the spirit of self-sacrifice and comradeship generated among
the revolutionaries, drawn from castes which had been opposed to
each other and which had been denied by the caste ideology, the use
of arms for centuries on end, could not be a chance occurrence. Abdali
must have been baffled when the Sikhs rebuked his vakil who brought
to them (Sikhs) his offer of a compromised peace. 9 What puzzled no
less a person than Abadli, the best general of the world at that time, is
a knotty problem which needs to be explained.
All those interpretations of the Sikh movement which do not
cover all these issues and fail to take an overall view are inadequate.
For example, the military struggle of the movement for religious and
political freedom and for a plebian mission is a major fact of Sikh
history which cannot be ignored. Some historians have tried to explain
it on the assumption that the militarization of the movement was due
to the influx into it of a large number of Jat elements. Besides being
factually incorrect, it is a very lopsided approach (for a detailed
treatment of this topic see appendix A). Mere presence and the prowess
of the Jats does not explain the ideological and the ethical content of