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April 21, 2002
REVIEW: The making of the Maharaja
KHUSHWANT Singh is one of the most competent authorities on Sikh history, Sikhs, published in two volumes by Princeton University Press being his singular authoritative work on the subject. To this academic work under review, he not only brings his vast knowledge but also an honest history writing and storytelling. Being a Sikh certainly helped. But being one of exceptional intelligence and having a heart to steadfastly sift through contradictory historical accounts of Ranjit Singh’s era was more helpful. As a result, we have the first truly authoritative work on the first and last Maharaja of Punjab.
Ranjit Singh’s life and era have by turns remained victims of Muslim and British historians’ biases. The Sikhs, for their part, did not seem to care much about what the historians had to say about Ranjit Singh. Being the followers of a ferociously independent and egalitarian religion, it is not very Sikh-like to take kindly to a ruler. Ranjit Singh, for one, was an ambivalent man in many ways and known for his feuds with the other Sikh chieftains, whom he finally defeated and proclaimed himself the Maharaja. The term Sikhashahi, derogatory for the Sikh rule and meaning ‘law of the jungle’, was coined largely because of the way the Maharaja ruled.
Ranjit Singh rose to power from a small village near Gujranwala as a local chieftain of a Sikh community at the turn of the nineteenth century. He went on to build alliances with other chieftains to stop the regular Afghan incursions into Punjab, which left both its Muslim and non-Muslim residents ravaged and plundered. The one-eyed chieftain had his sight focussed on the unfolding history before him. With the Afghans to the northwest and an encroaching British empire to the east, Ranjit Singh finally captured Lahore, the jewel of Punjab, saying goodbye to his humble origins for ever.
Eventually, the empire over which he reigned from the Lahore Darbar extended into Tibet in the northeast, the Khyber Pass to the northwest, Sindh in the south and Ambala in the east. Being uneducated himself, he relied on the knowledge and skills of his Sikh, Muslim and Hindu advisers, who were bound together by his vision of a Punjabi nationalism that sought to ward off all foreign invaders from the motherland.
In the book under review, Ranjit Singh comes to life for who he really was, as opposed to being someone seen through the biased accounts of his Muslim or British biographers. He was a despot, who did not take delight in killing; a man of otherwise unrefined tastes, who patronized the best of artists and men of learning at his court; a rough soldier, who had a heart of gold for the women he forced to enter his harem; and a political thinker, who revelled in liquor every night. All in all, a fascinating study in contradictions found in human nature.
Khushwant Singh has collected his material for the biography from an extensive and varied bibliography. This includes accounts of historians, men of learning and foreign travellers in Persian, Punjabi and English. A master manipulator, Ranjit Singh had the French train his army, which became one of the best-equipped and trained forces of his time that kept the Afghans in the northwest and the Raj in the east at bay. He was undoubtedly the strongest of his contemporary rulers in India.
Soon after his death, the empire began to show signs of weakening, necessitating a political settlement between his heirs and the British; the latter finally annexed Punjab in 1849.
The biography in a convenient paperback is a welcome edition to any history student’s library, and should certainly be a required reading for researchers of Sikh history. Khushwant Singh has gone beyond the call of his subject to include a concise historical account of how the Sikh religion came about and what it means to be a Sikh to its followers.
At places, the book reads like an epic, a tour de force of an unfolding historical drama and political intrigue, with wine and women as its indispensable props:
“Why do they call this beautiful garden Shalamar?” he asked one of his courtiers.
“Because, O Noble One, the Persian word Shalamar means ‘pleasing to the heart’.”
“But this is the Punjab, not Persia,” exclaimed Ranjit. “In Punjab the word Shalamar means ‘killer-of-love’ and in this garden love is kindled, not killed. Let it hereafter be called Shalabagh, the garden of the beloved.”
...Here wine flowed like the water of the fountains and the tinkle of dancers’ bells was heard till the late hours of the night. (64p)
True to his mettle, Khushwant Singh has done it yet again.
Ranjit Singh: Maharaja of the Punjab
By Khushwant Singh
Penguin Books, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India.
Website: www.penguinbooksindia.com
237pp. ISBN 0-14-100484-4
Indian Rs200
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