Introductory - Global Sikh Studies

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Preface
The Sikh movement was not only an egalitarian social revolution,
it was a plebian political revolution as well. In fact, it was far more
radical than the French Revolution of 1783-1815. The plebian
character of the Sikh Revolution, however, has not received the notice
and the attention it deserves.
One of the possible reasons for its neglect is that the Sikh
movement was beset by the force of circumstances which prevented
it from assuming spectacular dimensions. The battle of Badr has been
recognized as a turning point in the history of Islam. Had that battle
been lost by Muslims, Islam, as one Muslim historian has put it, might
have been 'wiped out for ever from the face of the earth.' In that
battle, Prophet Muhammad and his followers had to contend with
only about one thousand tribesmen. The Sikh movement, on the other
hand, had to struggle for its very existence against the armed might of
the greatest empire of its times. The first impulse of Islamic idealism
carried its arms, within eighty years of the Prophet's death, as far as a
part of Spain. The youth of the Sikh Revolution was spent in ensuring
its own survival.
Islam was lucky, too, that it had to counter at its birth, primitive
heathenic beliefs, which it was easier to pierce than the hard shell of
the elaborate dogma and philosophy the caste had spun around itself.
Moreover, the Arabian society was at that time quite close to the level
of primitive communism. The Sikh movement had to face the uphil
task of overcoming both the caste ideology and the caste system-the
most rigid hierarchical social system devised by human ingenuity.
Luther was politically a conservative who condemned the
German peasants , but Protestant liberalism overflowed the bounds
of religion and influenced freedom of ideas and action in social and
political spheres. Likewise, none of the French political thinkers,
including Rosseau, had shown any marked concern for the lower
classes, but their ideas formed the emotive content of the French
Revolution. It was because the innate human yearning for freedom
and equality found a ready soil to grow in Europe.