Abstract
Rajasthan was not unknown to Sikhs, owing to its territorial proximity to Punjab. Beginning with Guru Nanak’s early sixteenth-century udasi, Sikhism’s connection with the region widened through Guru Gobind Singh’s last journey to Nander (now in Maharashtra) via Ajmer and Jodhpur in the early eighteenth century. As the Khalsa was up in arms against the declining Mughals, its footprints were traced as far as Bikaner in the west to Bharatpur in the east. Inauguration of the Gang Canal (1927) sent fresh signals of Sikh dispersal under British rule. The Partition of the Indian subcontinent (1947) brought a significant number of Sikh refugees to different urban locations of Rajasthan. Introduction of multipurpose Bhakra Nangal Project of the post-Independence years (1955) gave fresh stimulus to Sikh journeys and settlements in the northern districts of Ganganagar and Hanumangarh from adjoining Punjab sites. At the threshold of the twenty-first century, these dissimilar forms of Sikh passages made the provincial Sikh population the second highest outside Punjab in India.
One of Dhillon’s essays had earlier focused on some of these issues; otherwise Rajasthan represents a neglected area of Punjab-centric Sikh Studies. The present volume widens the scope of research on the Sikh past beyond Punjab and emphasises the significance of Rajasthani sources in reconstructing the community’s history. Preserved in the archives of Bikaner, these materials represent a small part of the records of the Kachwaha Rajput princes of Jaipur who took special interest in preserving their family resources over the last few centuries.
The study is divided into six chapters and includes other related details such as select biographical information of a number of important personalities of the period, specimens of a few vakils’ letters and a brief bibliography. Dhillon’s rigorous scrutiny and evaluation of sixty-seven documents (December 1710–August 1715) written by ‘a rare breed’ of Jaipur vakils posted at Mughal court constitute the central theme of the volume. The researcher translated these documents into English with a long list of glossary and endeavoured to situate these materials in their larger historical context. He finds these letters important not only for detailing the bloody passage of Sikh rebellion under Banda Singh Bahadur but also for underlining ‘the Rajasthani perspective’ of the Sikh rebellion against Mughals. In Dhillon’s opinion, these sources offer ‘eyewitness accounts’ of growing military crisis in the ranks of imperial army and ‘divulge’ wide-ranging ruinous implications intensified by bitter ‘parties and politics’ in the courts of weak successors of the Great Mughals. Drafted ‘in pre-modern Devanagari scripts’, language of these records represent medieval Marwari sprinkled with vocabulary incorporated from Persian and local dialects. Their style of writing is at times complicated by the vakil’s use of coded language generally known for missing vowels. Dhillon claims that these raw materials of the Sikh past ‘betray influence of Dhundhari, the language of eastern Rajasthani’ which is also known as kamdari for their wider circulation in serious business transactions.
In spite of the absence of the last one year period of Banda’s resistance (September 1715 to June 1716) in the collection of documents, the scholar agrees that these sources offer an ‘eyewitness’ account of growing Mughal ineptness in curbing Sikh political resurgence. It affected rural peace over a vast area extended from the plains to the foothills of Punjab. As rebels were ‘recruited chiefly from the countryside and lower strata of society’, they received support from the oppressed local peasantry and grain dealers (banjaras) who could not recover their dues from central exchequer but time and again forced to send supplies to Mughals. With their combined support, Sikhs under Banda could pull down some important symbols of Mughal power lying between Panipat to Pathankot in 1710. Rapid Sikh dispersal after successful military engagement followed by aggressive counter-offensive in another location generated widespread anxiety in Mughal camp. Such interventions prevented Mughals from drawing any useful blueprint in resisting Sikh rebels.
Matters were made worse by deferred marches of the rulers of Jaipur and Jodhpur against Banda Singh Bahadur. It alarmed their vakils, prompted them to draft letters of repeated appeal, requesting masters to come out in the open in favour of Mughals so that the latter could have enough confidence in times of military crisis. But Banda Singh’s varying military strategies would often batter the long supply lines of the imperialists and thwarted attempts to crush him. In spite of repeated Mughal claims of capturing Banda and carrying him in a cage to Delhi for punishment, it remained an elusive goal until August 1715, when the anthology of Bikaner records abruptly ends.
As military crisis was deepened following Aurangzeb’s death (1707), there were certain important Mughal diplomatic initiatives during Emperor Bahadur Shah and his successors’ fight to win over the support of estranged Rajput rulers of Mewar and Marwar to their side. Accordingly, both were restored to their watan jagirs. They were repeatedly requested to forget the past wrongs done to them and rally under Mughal flag against Sikh rebels. These imperial interventions could not ease tension between them but continued to generate anxiety among a section of senior Mughal officials. The growing divide between Rajput rulers and Mughals did not miss the attention of Rajasthani vakils in their several letters sent to the Kachhwa ruler of Jaipur. On the other hand, the same sources point to an interesting attempt of Banda Singh ‘to establish a Sikh–Rajput axis’ but could not be materialised owing to short time span of the first phase of Sikh revolt of the early eighteenth century.
Dhillon’s engagement with these vakils’ reports receives corroboration from a few other scholarly works published over the last few decades. His position reinforces Bayle’s assertion that there was an incessant ‘search for information’ among a significant number of pre-colonial Indian rulers irrespective of their divisions along territorial and religious lines. The volume buttresses relevance of non-Punjabi sources in reconstructing the regional Sikh past and emphasises how provincial royal heads of Jaipur and Jodhpur were watchful of changing political developments of the period through their vakils. It is nothing unlikely that prospect of rapidly declining employment opportunity owing to shrinking size of imperial domain might have made rulers of Rajputana lukewarm to rally under the Mughal flag.
The study, however, raises doubt whether ‘contemporary Mughal chronicles’ invariably suffer from ‘sectarian bias’ while those of Sikhs took special care to get rid of it. Dhillon’s interventions seeking to redesign the image of the Sikh rebel with refreshed Khalsa identity ignore the history of its bitter struggle that had long been going between Hindus and Sikhs since the early years of the twentieth century. Similarly, the scholar is silent regarding the nature and extent of diplomatic autonomy/immunity enjoyed by Rajasthani vakils in Mughal court. As a result, the volume generally misses related issues like how these vakils were trained in the art of political negotiations and performed their duties while they were away from political headquarters. Again, the wider world of exchange of information in distant parts of the country is ignored in this otherwise interesting work. There are a few scholarly writings of Habib and Sabauddin delineating varied channels of sending official/private letters as well as how news and other varieties of secret information were efficiently carried out by men from one part of the country to another, if necessary, by changing their routes and directions as per the needs of the hour. These are known to researchers engaged in reconstructing the history of pre-colonial India focusing on how one could become a vakil or a munshi after undergoing certain training. It is already in circulation how different intelligence and counter-surveillance groups were anxious to gather information about emerging regional political apparatus of the period as well as their strategies of forwarding these materials within a specified period of time. Such initiatives necessitated long journeys extended over a number of days to reach their destinations situated in faraway locations. Were these writers coming from the castes of Kayasthas and Khatris or were they also representing other castes and religions? Dhillon’s research encourages raising such questions but declines answers to them. Their inclusions would have provided a better understanding of the text of the scholarly study. Finally, Banda Singh had invariably been portrayed as Guru in these records. But Dhillon’s scrupulous enthusiasm in correcting this piece of information is significant and raises questions whether he was not swayed by the Singh Sabha narrative of Sikh identity.
The importance of the study, however, lies in its attempt to decenter Sikh Studies from its overwhelming bias in favour of Punjab. Dhillon breaks fresh ground to contextualise these Rajasthani records in their wider historical setting of the early eighteenth century. It opens a new frontier of historical enquiry on Sikh past lying beyond Punjab. His intimate interfacing with these non-Punjabi sources points out how complex representations of Sikh rebellion were reaching out to neighbouring regions of northern-western India. The scholar deserves congratulations for looking beyond Punjab and seeking to contextualise the studying of Sikhs in their Indian diaspora. Here is the great merit of the study.