Introductory - Global Sikh Studies

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environmental factors. The Indians for outnumbered the British in the
administrative machinery of the Government of India, and even in
the army the ratio of the India soldiers to the British soldiers was
roughly three to one. One cannot conclude from this alone that the
Indians were in effective control of the government of the country.
For the purpose of any assessment, the directive purpose and the levers
of power have to be correlated with the objective conditions.
(b)
The Jats and Arms
It has been assumed that the Jats who used to come to Guru
Arjan to pay homage must have come armed. In the first places, it was
on Indian religious custom to go armed to any holy person. Rather,
the general practice was, as a mark of respect, to disarm oneself
beforehand. In fact, Ghulam Hussain Khan asserts that upto the time
of Guru Gobind Singh ‘the Sikhs wore only religious garb, without
any kind of arms.’ Nor is it established that the bearing of arms was
Jat peculiarity. If Mughal policy was to disarm the population, it would
not have left the Jats out. If not, why other elements of the population,
especially Khatirs and those who later became Mazhabi Sikhs, did not
also bear arms? In all probability the exploited class of peasants were,
by and large, unarmed. Arrian noted that husbandmen are not furnished
with arms, nor have any military duties to perform. The revenue and
other demands on them were so excessive that they were compelled
to sell their women, children and cattle to meet them. ‘The peasants
were carried off, attached to heavy iron chains, to various markets
and fairs, with their poor, unhappy wives behind them, carrying their
small children in their arms, all crying and lamenting their evil plight.
When these peasants resisted, their uprisings misfired, because ‘the
purely peasant uprising of a few villages would, perhaps, have
contrasted pitifully with the military efforts of even the smaller
Zamindars. All this point to the probability that the common
peasants were unarmed. These is, therefore, no reason to believe
that the Jat who came to the Guru were differently placed. When
the Sikh visitors to Guru Gobind Singh complained that they were
harassed on their way by Muhammadans, the Guru advised them to