Introductory - Global Sikh Studies

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who became the followers of the Radical Bhaktas in larger
number than the peasants.
The episode of Satnami revolt is very illustrative. Besides the
Sikh movement, it was the only armed uprising of the peasants and
the lower castes who had been indoctrinated by the Bhakti ideology
of human freedom and equality. The outbreak started with a hot dispute
between a Satnami cultivator and a foot-soldier and soon took the
form of a war of liberation. The rebels fought desperately with the
Imperial forces sent against them but were overpowered. The points
to be noted are that nothing was heard of the Satnami resistance either
before this uprising or after it. The Bhakti ideology had awakened a
spirit of equality and freedom among the plebian Satnamies, but this
had not been organized into a militant movement. There is no evidence
to suggest that the Satnamis, before this outbreak, had ever conceived
of challenging the Mughal authority. The result was that, without a
determined leadership that would set goals, make a plan and
preparations, and create a military organisation, the newly aroused
spirit of the Satnamis found expression and ended just in an ephemeral
flare-up. Without a guiding spirit, the Satnamis could not give a
permanent revolutionary shape to their fervour. The conclusion is plain
that without the initiative, ideology, leadership and guidance of the
Sikh Gurus, the Sikh movement would have fared no better than the
Satnami wave.
It was in 1633 A.D. that Guru Hargobind declared that he would
wrest sovereignty from the Mughal and ‘bestow this all on the
downtrodden and the helpless. 14 Guru Gobind Singh created the Khalsa
in 1699 in order to capture political power for a plebian mission. This
egalitarian political aim could not be born out of the hierarchical caste
society, or out of the Indian Muslim polity, which had politically
dominated the non-Muslims and had come to regard a Muslim Emperor
as ‘Zillullah’, the shadow of the Divine Being. 15 The Indian masses
had been mentally immobilized by the caste ideology to such an extent
that they had ceased even to entertain such ideas. Nor was such a
radical programme on the political horizon or agenda elsewhere at
that period in the world; because the American Revolution was
essentially a war of independence, and the French Revolution started