Historians, for reasons of their own, have often done grave injust-ice to outstanding historical figures by refusing to accord them their rightful place in history. But when even convincing evidence of greatness was overlooked because the political culture of the time required it, it becomes necessary to correct oversights and falsifications, no matter how long after the event.
Ranjit Singh was one such colossus who bestrode the Indian scene but who never received the credit due to him as one of the outstanding figures of India’s history. He created the altogether extraordinary empire of the Sikhs, the borders of which extended beyond India and into the thresholds of Kabul and Tibet. He also held the British in check for forty years to the south of his realm and closed the Khyber Pass through which plunderers had for centuries poured into India.
Just as Alexander the Great in 333 BC is said to have fulfilled King Midas’s prophecy that whoever untied the Gordian knot would rule Asia, Ranjit Singh and Napoleon Bonaparte, two outstanding visionaries and military commanders who were contemporaries, laid their claims to fulfilling this prophecy by untying the knot and establishing empires in the most divided parts of the world. They each shared a deep mistrust of the British, because they had no illusions about the degree to which their common adversary was driven by its own ambitions of empire.
Even though many books have been published on Ranjit Singh, we felt that a definitive biography of this rare man had still to be written, to cover not only the entire range of his military achievements but also the just and humane rule he provided during turbulent times when barbarism was the order of the day. The task we set ourselves was to bring out the essence of the man, his daily routine, his likes and dislikes and his dealings with people in every walk of life. Equally important to establish were his relationships with the many women in his life and the courtesies and decencies which he extended to them without exception. Yet another side of Ranjit Singh was reflected in the grandeur of his Lahore Durbar, equal to any European or Mughal court, his jewels, objets d’art and the precious artefacts which he collected all his life.
In order to draw upon as many different accounts as we could, we went to original sources with eyewitness accounts by Europeans and Indians alike; court diaries during Ranjit Singh’s time; reports of Maratha spies at the Lahore Durbar; British parliamentary papers; Lahore political diaries; British-Indian archives and the libraries of Columbia, New York, Punjab and Chandigarh universities.
What we discovered was that the civilized rule of Ranjit Singh was entirely different from the way many other rulers have treated their people in India. The question that has remained unanswered until now is what made him the man he was – a man who shunned the flagrant violations of humanitarian principles so very common throughout history? What made him adhere so scrupulously throughout his life to the goals he set himself? And what inner resources did he draw upon that enabled him to abide by the ethical and exemplary rules he so diligently observed?
In our efforts to find answers to these questions we were drawn ever deeper into a better understanding of the intense beliefs that helped Ranjit Singh achieve all that he did. His most compelling quality was his total commitment to the religious faith into which he was born. If secularity – or equal respect for other religions – was the founding principle of Sikhism, then he was determined never to deviate from it.
Proof of this was the fact that no other ruler in the sprawling subcontinent had ever had in his cabinet as many men owing allegiance to other religions as Ranjit Singh. At the peak of his power, there were only seven Sikhs in his cabinet of fifteen ministers, and the rest were Hindus and Muslims. Many others of different religions, such as Jains, Buddhists, Christians and the bewildering subdivisions of these faiths, were accommodated according to their talents.
How was this leader able to achieve the seemingly impossible goals he set himself? The answer lies in his veneration of the ten founding fathers of the Sikh faith and the ethos of decency and discipline they preached. A part of the answer also lies in the fact that at the age of nine he had to assume the chieftainship of his father’s misl or confederacy which was one of the more powerful in Punjab. To take on the chief’s mantle was an awesome responsibility. But Ranjit Singh, by handling it with energy and élan, gained the self-confidence that never left him.
The achievements of his grandfather and his father before him, who were warriors and leaders of great repute, were of fundamental importance to his own career. But the distinctive quality that makes Ranjit Singh truly exceptional was his humanitarianism, his respect for other faiths and his total disgust for the inhumane treatment which rulers of the day inflicted on their defeated adversaries. As the British writer Sir Lepel Griffin observed in Rulers of India: Ranjit Singh (1911), ‘Ranjit Singh was not cruel or bloodthirsty. After a victory or the capture of a fortress he treated the vanquished with leniency and kindness however stout their resistance might have been, and there were at his Court many chiefs despoiled of their estates but to whom he had given suitable employ.’
Another fascinating aspect of this multi-faceted man was his refusal to allow any cities, towns, forts, highways, gardens, statues, archways, monuments and such to commemorate him. Most extraordinary of all was that, even though he established many mints which produced fine coins, there is just one coin of very small dimensions with his image on it, which shows Ranjit Singh kneeling before Guru Nanak with folded hands. If any one thing highlights his self-effacing qualities and his total rejection of the time-worn ways of self-aggrandizement, this is it.
It is also worth recording that even after he had wrested control of Amritsar from the chiefs of the Bhangi misl in 1802, Ranjit Singh arrived at the Harmandir, the Golden Temple, not as a victorious military leader or the monarch of a Sikh state but as a devotee – among countless others – come to pray at the holiest of Sikh shrines. This was his way of demonstrating his conviction that within the precincts of the Durbar Sahib there was no place for the self-important or arrogant.
Equally significant is the fact that the Harmandir Sahib in the centre of the pool of the Durbar Sahib in Amritsar has an inscription of a few lines at the entrance to the shrine, acknowledging Ranjit Singh’s contribution towards making the Golden Temple one of the world’s great religious places. The inscription, translated from Gurmukhi, reads: ‘The great Guru in his wisdom looked upon Maharaja Ranjit Singh as his chief servitor and Sikh, and in his benevolence bestowed upon him the privilege of serving the Durbar Sahib.’
There could be no more telling acknowledgement of Ranjit Singh’s lasting legacy than these lines at the entrance of the fountainhead of the Sikh faith. To this day they inspire Sikhs the world over, no matter where they have put down their roots, since Sikhs now live in all corners of the world – confident, purposeful, productive and proud of their incomparable heritage.