Introductory - Global Sikh Studies

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revolts by lower castes in a vast country like India, and over a long
period of history, are not unlikely. But, there is a difference between
sporadic revolts and a revolution. The question is whether there was
any consciously organized protest, movement or revolt against the
straight jacket of the caste system led by the castes adversely affected
by it? Compared to slave insurrections in other lands, there is not
much evidence of a Sudra uprising, initiated and led by them and
having the collective interests of that caste as its aim. None of the
followers of the medieval schools of Bhakti attempted to found a
society outside the caste order. This is very significant. Whatever the
reasons, the caste ideology had thrown such a spell on its victims, and
the unfortunate Sudras were bound, hand and foot, to such an extent,
that they never tried to shake off their shackles in any organized
manner. Thus, all liberal social movements started at the top and came
downwards to the masses, and not vice-versa. With this background,
one way justifiably presume that the Sikh movement could not be an
exception to the rule. Any hypothesis to the contrary will have to be
established and not assumed.
There is another circumstances that favours the above conclusion.
Not only did the ideological movements usually start with the upper
strata of society, these also took a longer time to infilterate into the
masses. It is recognized that the idealistic content of the French
Revolution was prepared by the ideals of the political writers of the
Enlightenment which were widely disseminated because of the printing
machine. Rosseau’s Social Contract appeared in thirteen Frenchlanguage
editions in 1762-3. 13 But it was the elite and the middle classes
who were the first to be influenced by these ideas, —because they
were more literate than the commoners. In India, there was no press in
the medieval times and there was no oragnized party, the like of ones
in modern times, which undertook to educate the masses on radical
ideological lines. This may be one reason why the enlightened classes.
We find that in the list of prominent Sikhs mentioned by Bhai
Gurdas, the number of Sikhs from commercial castes exceeds
the one from other castes. Out of the commoners, the
peasantry left to itself was, somehow, more immune from
ideological influences. It is the castes lower than the peasant