The Quest for the Past: Retracing the History of Seventeenth-Century Sikh Warrior

By Iqbal Singh

The book attempts to trace the journey of a more than three centuries old family whose ancestors were not only close to Guru Gobind Singh and fought in almost all battles by his side and Banda Singh Bahadur but also contributed to the freedom of the region of Punjab, India from the reins of Islamic (Mughal and Afghan) rulers. To compose this wor

• Language: English
• Publisher: Iqbal Singh Publishing
• Release date: Mar 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781954168633

Book preview

The Quest for the Past

Copyright © 2021 by Iqbal Singh

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN

978-1-954168-65-7 (Hardcover)

978-1-954168-64-0 (Paperback)

978-1-954168-63-3 (eBook)

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Prologue

List of Sikh Gurus (Prophets)

List of Important Mughal Rulers

Genealogical Tree

General Areas of Operations NW India

Timeline - Select Events

Hardas Singh

Bhagwan Singh

Jassa Singh

Tara Singh

Jodh Singh

Diwan Singh

Mangal Singh, CSI

Gurdit Singh

Sardar Sahib Bishan Singh

Sardar Sahib Trilochan Singh

Lieutenant Ripudaman Singh

Bunga Sardar Mangal Singh, CSI

The Ramgarh Fort

Reconnecting Old Dots

Conclusion

Preface

I was a young lieutenant in the Indian Army back then, and my father, the late Sardar Sahib Trilochan Singh, an honorary magistrate and landlord, was enjoying his semi-retired stay at home in the Bunga at Amritsar. I will tell you more about the Bunga in the pages to come. The year was 1972, and I had gone to Amritsar to meet my parents. It was the same year when the Bunga complex and some other family properties close to the Golden Temple were handed over to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), Amritsar. SGPC is an elected body that apart from the management of Sikh Gurdwaras, runs some educational institutions, hospitals, and many charitable trusts for the community.

It was then that my father handed over to me a small wooden box (called sandhukhri in Punjabi), the treasure chest, as I named it, containing some old documents and family possessions. I tried to glance through some of them, but it was not easy for me to assimilate the contents. It seemed like a whole lot of old papers, some dating back to as old as being relevant to the seventeenth century.

It soon became evident that the responsibility of preserving these possessions was on my shoulders, despite the fact that I was the youngest in the family.

I kept the box in safe custody with me and preserved it. I would go through the contents whenever I was back on leave, and I realized every single time how blessed I was to be a part of this family. Subsequently, in the year 2001, I decided to take premature retirement from the army to help my children get an education abroad. Once those things were settled, I had ample time to start decoding the family material.

I already knew quite a bit about my family’s past, thanks to word-of- mouth stories from my parents, family friends, and relatives, among others. But after some research, I realized that my knowledge was neither holistic nor adequate. Even today I feel that there is much more that I may have missed.

After going through some of the documents, I was able to attain a better understanding of the past years. The material provided a lot of leads. I also felt I needed someone to help me put things in perspective to understand the holistic view of Sikh history post- seventeenth century. So I consulted my uncle, late Principal Joginder Singh Bhullar, who was very knowledgeable about Sikh history and had been helping the Punjab government for many years, in some way or the other.

He helped me understand the bigger picture. After further probing, I realized there are many scholars on the subject of Punjab history, both from India and abroad, who have contributed immensely toward our family’s past over time.

When I correlated some of the old documents with the work of some notable scholars’ writings on Sikh history, I found that some of them had already incorporated quite a few inputs in their work. At the same time, I also found additional inputs in their work that were new to me. However, whenever I was approached by any researcher for inputs or information, I shared some of the documents in my possession for the larger benefit of the community.

It is noteworthy, as I learned from Dr. Purnima Dhavan (University of Washington, Seattle, USA), that a lot of material pertaining to Punjab history, including ours, was mainly available in Persian literature due to their invasions in India and that very little was left by the misl/Sikh Sardars. There is a common belief that people who make history have no time to write it, but there is also an African proverb: Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunters.

It is interesting to know that while Sikhs of the eighteenth/ nineteenth century wrote very little or nothing of their versions of various battles and episodes, there are various others who wrote stories of their bravery. In view of this, I felt it to be my duty to preserve the contributions of our elders.

After the British defeated the Sikhs during the second Anglo-Sikh war in 1849, Sir Lepel H. Griffin, KCSI, was one of the authors to have compiled a brief history of notable Sikh chiefs of the eighteenth century in his book Chiefs and Families of Note in the Punjab in 1865. There is one chapter pertaining to our family as well.

In the recent past, Dr. Bhagat Singh and Harbans Singh from Patiala, Punjab, carried out the research on Sikh history through the prism of Persian manuscripts and other rare materials relating to the eighteenth century. Even prominent scholars like Dr. Purnima Dhavan, an associate professor from the University of Washington in USA, and Dr. Gurinder Singh Mann from the United Kingdom carried out an in-depth analysis and investigation of Sikh history. They also provided some valuable insight about Sikh affairs and our ancestors. Once I realized the importance of these family inputs, I decided to write and compile the same for the benefit of coming generations—both from my family and the general readership.

Because I am neither a scholar nor an academic, I am not writing this book as a historian but simply compiling the historical records and, in some places, I admit, reproducing from the works of celebrated scholars and other inputs from my father.

The Quest for the Past: Retracing the History of Seventeenth-Century Sikh Warrior is therefore not a traditional book but an attempt to extract family information from the work of some renowned and credible historians, lest it disappear into the trash of history.

I only collected, collated, processed, formatted, analyzed, and at certain places, elaborated the inputs gathered from various other sources that are relevant to this book to provide an overall perspective. This book provides a snapshot of our family’s past spread over almost 350 years. It is our family journey through the history of Sikhs. Even though I spent plenty of time in the compilation of inputs, many useful ones may still be missing. I am sure a lot of information may still be hiding in some archives or private possessions. I may also have made some mistakes, and if so, they were neither intentional nor aimed at hurting anyone’s sentiments. But while I am writing and compiling this work, I cannot move ahead without acknowledging the fact that the research of Sikh history carried out by scholars like the late Sir Lepel H. Griffin, KCSI (1865); late Sardar Sunder Singh Ramgarhia (1902); Dr. Bhagat Singh from Patiala (2004); Harbans Singh and his team; Dr. Purnima Dhavan from Seattle, USA (2011); Dr. Gurinder Singh Mann from the United Kingdom; and many others were of immense help to this project.

In many areas, it was their hard work of translation and interpretation of rare Persian and Urdu literature, including ancient works obtained from various libraries, archives, and other private possessions from various countries. Persian was the official language during Mughal/Aurangzeb time and hence it is felt a lot of material pertaining to the Sikh history may still be hidden in the Persian literature.

I owe special thanks to all of them and many others who made my work of compiling this book easier. The work of Dr. Purnima Dhavan was very informative, and it provided a thorough understanding of the eighteenth century.

It will also be inappropriate for me not to mention my daughter-in- law, Anjoo L. Singh; Mr. Karanvir Singh Sibia, an erstwhile associate of Jind Estate Chandigarh; Mr. Rajdeep Singh Gill, IPS, ex-DGP, Punjab; Captain BS Sidhu, Merchant Navy; and Ms. Gurveen Kaur Khurana, who was carrying out her research on certain Sikh affairs and pursuing her PhD in the USA. They all encouraged and helped me take on this project. Additionally, Karanvir Singh Sibia has been helping me procure more and more details that I found to be useful for this project.

I gathered the inputs from various sources, but major sources of information pertaining to this write-up are Chiefs and Families of Note in the Punjab (1865 edition) by Sir Lepel H. Griffin; A History of the Sikh Misls by Dr Bhagat Singh, PhD, from Patiala; Encyclopedia of Sikhism (2004) by Harbans Singh; The Annals of Ramgarhia Sardars by Sardar Sunder Singh Ramgarhia (1902); Sikh Warrior: Hari Singh Nalwa by Surinder Singh Johar; When Sparrows Became Hawks by Dr. Purnima Dhavan (2011); The Eighteenth Century in Sikh History by Karamjit K. Malhotra; Catalogue of Paintings in the Central Museum, Lahore; Exploring Sikhism by W. H. McLeod; Ramgarhia Ashvarya Diaa Jhalkaan (in Punjabi) by Giani Hazara Singh (1951); and A History of the Sikhs (Second Edition) by Khushwant Singh. It was my desire to visit Pakistan to gather more inputs where my elders left their historical footprints. But considering strained relations between India and Pakistan and with my background from the Indian Army, I was advised not to visit Pakistan for this venture.

I would also like to mention late Mr. Onkar Singh Sandhu from Amritsar who had been very helpful in providing information regarding some old monuments pertaining to our family.

Lest the family history is lost in the transition of time, The Quest for the Past: Retracing the History of Seventeenth-Century Sikh Warrior is an attempt to connect the posterity with their past. It is not only the journey of our family; in many ways, it is part of the history of Punjab/Sikhs as well. It is also a tribute to my father, Sardar Sahib Trilochan Singh, honorary magistrate, and other celebrated family elders who added glory not only to our past but to that of the community as well. The book was first published in 2017. I received encouraging feedbacks from those who read it and then decided to update it with some additional inputs.

Colonel Iqbal Singh (Retd)

(Former) Commander, 16 Corps Intelligence Group /

Northern Command Liaison Unit, Indian Army

(Ex-20th Battalion, the Punjab Regiment)

[e-mail]

Introduction

My interest in the Ramgarhia family began when I started researching for my first book, When Sparrows Became Hawks. Many of the fascinating details picked up in the course of fieldwork in multiple archives never made it into that book, but they remained in my thoughts nonetheless. So when Colonel Iqbal Singh first contacted me, I responded to his email with equal parts excitement and trepidation. Academic history is not always a very palatable genre. In addition to this, the politics of Sikh history is complicated enough to make any first-time author cautious in responding to inquiries about their research. I wondered what he would make of my own work.

To my delight, our conversations over the last three years have been the kind that any historian would treasure. Colonel Iqbal Singh has always been supportive and responsive of research-oriented history. He asks tough questions, which shows his interest and command of the material; it also reflects an open mind. I have learned much from him. It is with as much humility as pleasure that I write the introduction for this book.

This book represents a labor of love and is a strong step forward in preserving a strand of memory and history for another generation. In South Asia, family history and personal memory remain somewhat neglected traditions of writing. All too often, the conversations had with elders in the family languish unrecorded and are often not passed on to a new generation. In Punjab specifically, traumatic events such as the partition of India in 1947 and everyday events such as immigration have also shaped this process. By the time we realize our interest in this venture, the stories have already been silenced and forgotten. For Colonel Singh, as one of the last members of a generation in his family that still recalls the days when the Ramgarhia Bunga was still a family home, the conversations and memories he holds are indeed a treasured inheritance. I hope this book will find a place not only within his family but also with those for whom the local histories of Amritsar and its old families and neighborhoods continue to be of interest.

For everyday readers, it might be hard to appreciate the dramatic social changes this book recounts against the greater backdrop of Indian history. By the mid-seventeenth century, the expanding agrarian economy of the Mughal period had enabled large numbers of rural and peasant group’s access to land ownership, literary skills, and markets for the first time in generations. The political and social structures of the time, however, gave them little voice in governance at the imperial level. In small towns and rural areas, by contrast, their leadership was critical in creating new settlements and institutions. Their entrepreneurial drive and intellectual curiosity drove them to new forms of social and religious experimentation. In Punjab, the specific form of this upward mobility also engaged with the growing popularity of Sikhism in rural areas. All too often, the agency and achievements of this generation, of which Sardar Hardas Singh is a notable representative, is forgotten. Thus, it is with great interest that I have learned more from Colonel Singh’s efforts to piece together the parts of his own family history.

The odds against which Sardar Hardas Singh and his generation of Guru Gobind Singh’s followers struggled are also perhaps under appreciated. Popular memory still recalls daily in devout Sikh homes and religious sites the battles of the Tenth Master and well-known Sikh martyrs of the eighteenth century. On the other hand, the countless sacrifices and efforts of unnamed Sikhs and Punjabis to forge a community claim a place in a political system that had no place for them and to create safe havens during this difficult period are often forgotten. What is remarkable is that Sardar Hardas Singh and his descendants continue in the face of numerous such odds, not for their respective generation alone, but for several more to come. So much so, Colonel Singh’s words and images demonstrate this process down to his own generation.

Thus, the family history in these pages could also be read as a history of community building and institution building. Several times in this book, the author demonstrates the donation of land, self-sacrifice, and shrewd negotiation that allowed the Harmandir to emerge as a sanctuary for Sikhs. Amritsar itself could develop into a well-known place of commerce and learning in the nineteenth century due to the continued efforts by