Brar 1

Ekam Brar

Poli 13D

Final Paper

21 March 2018

The Singh Sabha Movement as Colonial Resistance

The Sikh religion1 was created in the sixteenth century as a small following of the

the spiritual leader Guru Nanak, who preached a singular vision of peace, faith,

acceptance, and justice. By the eighteenth century, the Sikhs had emerged as an

organized religious group with significant political might. When this political power was

seized by the British, the Sikhs risked losing their identity, culture, and traditions to the

British, perhaps destined to end up with a culture dilated and mixed in with Hinduism.

Faced with such an existential risk, the Sikhs rose to resist British colonial power and

Christian proselytisation through the Singh Sabha2 movement (Singh, Karanbir). In the

movement, urban and educated Sikhs sought to reinvigorate and purify Sikhi against

the perceived unjust power of the Christian missionaries and imperialists, and in doing

so breathed new life to a threatened religion (Juergensmeyer).

Challenges to the Sikh faith and rise of Christian proselytization

After the fall of the Sikh empire, the faith faced critical challenges in reclaiming

their heritage and understanding their principles. Writing on the origins of the Singh

1
Some contemporary Sikh scholars have notably disavowed using the word “religion” to describe the Sikh
tradition, arguing somewhat convincingly that the ideology and practices of the Sikhs cannot be reliably
mapped into the conceptual space of “religion,” a term that refers to specific, often Protestant principles
(Grewal 2009, Kaur 2018). However, for the sake of remaining unpretentious and avoiding tenuous
constructions, this author will remain neutral on this topic and will default to using the term “religion.”
2
“Singh Sabha” literally means “Society of the Singhs” (“Singh is a name for a male SIkh but is often
overregularized to mean all religious Sikhs). It is often thought of as a Sikh renaissance.
 Brar 2

Sabha movement, scholar Harbans Singh quotes a note from the Khalsa Akhbar of

Lahore written in 1894 that cautioned, “the Sikhs, who are now, here and there, visible

in their turbans and their other religious forms like wrist-bangles and swords, will be

seen only in pictures in museums” (27). Sikhs increasingly did not understand the

tenants of their own faith and often thought they were Hindus (though the two religions

are almost irreconcilble in terms of ideology). Trends that did not bode well for Sikhs

were commonplace in the late nineteenth century, the culmination of decades of rot that

traced back to pre-colonial times, including to the Sikh ​Raj​ and Maharaja3 Ranjit Singh.

During these times, a contemporary of the maharaja, Baba Dayal, created the ​Nirankari

movement to counter cultural movements that strayed away from what he saw as true

SIkh principles. However, the both the Nirankaris and followers of the similar Namdhari

movement failed to enact substantive change or dramatically alter the SIkh psyche.

Instead, these movements are notable for representing the first responses to the trends

of religious decline that the Singh Sabha movement sought to address and are its first

precursors. Where the Nirankaris and Namdharis failed, the Singh Sabha succeeded,

reversing decline and restoring religious principles J. Singh 63).

While religious decline was present in the time of the Sikh empire (1799-1849)

and faced its own resistance from the Sikh community, the catalyst for the Singh Sabha

movement was the increase of proselytization of Sikhs at the hands of Christians, a

development that threatened the Sikh faith as little had done before. This challenge,

concurrent with the rise of British rule, originated while Ranjit Singh, the tolerant Sikh

3
Maharaja is a Sanskrit word, roughly translating to “mighty king.”
 Brar 3

sovereign, still ruled. Sikh academic Harbans Singh narrates that in 1834, the

Presbyterian minister John C. Lowrie created the first Christian mission near a British

outpost. Lowrie was followed quickly in 1852 by T.H. Fitzpatrick and Robert Clark, the

first missionaries of the Church of England appointed to the Punjab with instructions that

"A few hopeful instances lead us to believe that the Sikhs may prove more accessible to

scriptural truth than the Hindus and Mohammendans” (28). In the same year, the first

recorded case of a Sikh converting to Christianity occurred when Daud Singh was

converted to Christianity by W. H. Perkins in Cawnpore.

In this manner, conversions of Sikhs, initially limited to religious students and

granthis (readers of the Sikh holy scripture), soon climbed the heights of Sikh power,

eventually converting the son of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Maharaja Duleep Singh, who

converted at the age of eight and reverted later in life (​Hesketh-Harvey)​. This was an

incredible show of force by the British empire (who held the young maharaja in tutelage)

and its impact on the Sikh psyche of the time cannot be understated. Maharaja Ranjit

Singh himself had avenged many of the injustices committed against Sikhs by Mughal

emperors and had come to represent the power of Sikhi himself. Seeing his son

perhaps forcibly committed to the religion of the same foreign oppressors that had

seized political power, countless properties, control of the holiest Sikh shrines must

have had a horrific, traumatizing effect on the Sikh community.

To compound this trauma that the Sikh people faced, proselytization was

everywhere, even gnawing into the city of Amritsar, the heart of the Sikh religion. One of

the three political leaders of Punjab in early colonization, John Lawrence, liberally
 Brar 4

funded missionaries himself, wanting to carry out large scale conversions of Sikhs to

Christianity (H. Singh, 139) In ​Singh Sabha Lehar4, Jagjit Singh narrates how after

distortions and unfaithful retellings of Sikh stories and beliefs became widespread, a

group of adherents, including the prominent Sikhs Thakur Singh Santhanwala, Baba

Khem Singh Bedi, and Kanwar Bikram Singh of Kapurdala, assembled in 1873 to

establish the Singh Sabha movement (18).

Countering what they saw as the unjust tentacle of the British empire reaching

into their heartland through conversion, these Sikhs aimed to accomplish several goals;

namely to (1) keep Sikhs in the faith, (2) welcome back into the folds of the religion

those that had previously left or renounced, (3) purify and standardize the way Sikhi

was taught, (4) write Sikh books and newspapers, and (5) integrate and work with the

Englishmen to help curb the assault on Sikh institutions (Jagjit Singh 7). Their main

weapon, however, was using their intellect and spreading knowledge to counteract

conversion efforts. In this way, Sikhs resisted the pressures against their religion

immediately after colonization and modernized the Sikh religion, adding new

dimensions to how it was understood by its adherents and bringing the faith into a new

century.

This resistance to imperial colonization was employed in several strategies.

Firstly, the members of the Singh Sabha created centralized centres where Sikh

schools of thought could be developed and propagated. These reformists dedicated

themselves to discovering the truth about Sikhi that had been obfuscated by

4
Originally written in Punjab, translations mine.
https://ia800501.us.archive.org/13/items/SinghSabhaLehar1873-1902/SinghSabhaLehar1873-1902Jagjit
Singh.pdf
 Brar 5

missionaries and storytellers over the decades. In monthly meetings, the Singh Sabha

members dealt with issues central to Sikh theology, such as determining the legitimacy

and authorship of the Dasam Granth. The subject of endless debates since the Adi

Granth (the spiritual text of the Sikhs) was declared the Guru of the Sikhs, the Dasam

Granth (said to have been written by Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh spiritual leader)

was highly controversial.

This was an important issue for Sikhs because the Dasam Granth is one of the

most important texts in the Sikh faith, but its authorship was unclear and the community

was split on how much authority and respect it commanded. The Singh Sabha helped

resolve this dispute: In 1896, several different copies were assembled and in 1897 an

authoritative texts and analysis was completed. This monumental task of Sikh

scholarship served to also inspire other scholars; as scholar Teja Singh notes, after the

analysis of Dasam Granth was finished, “other works of great importance were

prepared, such as Gyani Gyan Singh’s Panth Parkash and Twarikh Khalsa, Pandit Tara

Singh’s Guru Granth Kosh and Tirath Sangrah, etc” (32). Resolving these massive

issues of controversy in the Sikh community were undoubtedly no small feat and solving

these disputes went a long way in helping Sikhs unite ideologically, representing an

effort to unite and strengthen ideologically as a form of resistance in the face of

repression and organized oppression.

Another strategy of resistance was spreading knowledge of Sikhism to

counteract the misinformation spread by Christian missionaries. Teja Singh continues

explaining that famed Sikh scholar Bhai Vir Singh, along with Bhair Kaur Singh, created
 Brar 6

a monthly Khalsa Tract magazine that went a long way in promoting literacy and helped

rejuvenate the faith of adherents. This effort to double down on education as a form of

resistance led to the formation of a printing press as well. Jarvala Singh Raagi explains

in Singh Sabha Patrika that through the power of publishing, the intellectual Bhai Dit

Singh wielded the influential newspaper ​Khalsa Akhbar​ to promote a singular vision of

Sikhi. Similarly, other scholars in the same school of thought as Bhai Dit Singh found

success as well. Bhai Kahan Singh’s ​Hum Hindu Nahi​, a seminal work that went a long

way in helping uneducated Sikhs realize they were a separate religion from Hindus

(110). Another mammoth achievement of the Singh Sabha was working with Indian civil

servant MA Maucliffe to finally translate the 1,430-page-long Sikh holy scripture Guru

Granth Sahib to the English language. That this incredible work of scholarship was

produced at all, let alone to such a satisfactory degree (the manuscript was presented

to widespread acclaim and Maucliffe is venerated by the Sikh community to this day),

speaks to the influence and scholarship of the Singh Sabha movement (Dhillon).

Through their work, the scholars in the Singh Sabha movement were able to

resist the power of foreign missionaries that posed an existential threat to their religion.

As they were mostly urban intellectuals, they gravitated to using publishing and writing

as a strategy. They could not use other, more forceful, strategies of resistance as the

colonialists were simply too strong and violent resistance would likely have been met

with widespread bloodshed. Instead, by using books and newspapers and the like,

these young Sikh thinkers used the power of the pen to help unify and save their people

and preserve their traditions.

 Brar 7

Perhaps most impressive is that this method of resistance proved effective. As

Jagjit Singh shows in ​Singh Sabha Lehar, ​the Sikh population grew dramatically as the

Singh Sabha movement went on​:

Translation: Population of Sikhs in India by decade, 1881- 1931

1891: 1,907,866

1901:2,195,669

1911: 3,014,466

1921:3,234,403

1931:4,665,771

In this case, I think the numbers really speak for themselves and prove that the

Singh Sabha movement-- designed to preserve the dwindling number of Sikhs against

the unjust encroachment of Christianity on the minds of their brethren at the hands of

the British-- was clearly successful in its goals as the Sikh population in India more than

doubled from 1891 to 1931 when educated, unified, and given resources to practice

their religion. Given the circumstances ( a group of academics trying to help rural,

uneducated folks stick to their religion in the face of religious imperialism), I think that

the people in the Singh Sabha movement absolutely chose the right strategy and were

very effective.

My own experiences as a Sikh can show how effective the Singh Sabha was in

their efforts. Growing up as a Sikh in a medium-sized city where there were no other
 Brar 8

Sikhs outside of my family, I found it really difficult to connect with my religion. As a

Sikh, I kept my hair long and tied it in a cloth on my head. Seeing my faith, people would

often confront me and challenge my faith. I was often sought by white missionaries that

wanted to “enlighten” me about their faith. Through the nearest Gurdwara (the Sikh

place of worship), I found many resources that helped me stay strong in my beliefs and

develop a complex, nuanced understanding of the tenants of my religion. I found

nonfiction books, novels, translations, pictures, and poetry, all complementing a

cohesive, grand Sikh vision of the heavens and cosmos, one that I discovered to be

profound and powerful. These impactful literary works can all be traced back to the

Singh Sabha movement, and plenty of the stuff I read as a kid was written in that era

and I can personally attest to how effective it was in explaining my faith to me and why I

should resist those that would seek to lead me astray from it.

After seeing their community targeted for conversion by religious imperialists, the

Singh Sabha movement was able to revitalize the intellectual fabric of the Sikh religion

and reverse decades of inaction and rot through rigorous intellectual analysis and

powerful publishing work, providing a clear and coherent version of Sikh beliefs and

presenting a united front against the Christian missionaries heavily supported by the

British colonizers. They proved remarkably effective in doing so and the effects of their

efforts reverberate even today in the Sikh community.

 Brar 9

Works Cited

Dhillon, G.S. “The Singh Sabha Movement.” ​The Illustrated Weekly of India​, 11 Nov.

1973.

Grewal, Harjeet Singh. “Moral Languages from Colonial Punjab: the Singh Sabha, Arya

Samaj and Ahmadiyah.” Sikh Formations, vol. 5, no. 1, 2009, pp. 67–72.,

doi:10.1080/17448720902935060.

Hesketh-Harvey, Catherine. “MAHARAJAH DULEEP SINGH, ELVEDEN AND SIKH

PILGRIMAGE.” ​Art, Faith and Place in East Anglia: From Prehistory to the

Present​, edited by T. A. Heslop et al., Boydell and Brewer, 2012, pp. 223–239.

JSTOR​, ​www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt1r2h5k.20​.

Jagjeet Singh. ​Singh Sabha Lehar​.

Juergensmeyer, Mark. “The Journal of Religious Ethics.” ​The Journal of Religious

Ethics​, vol. 20, no. 1, 1992, pp. 210–210. ​JSTOR​, JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/40015148​.

Kaur, Tavleen. “Review: Sikhism. A Very Short Introduction.” ​Sikh Formations​, 2018,

pp. 1–4., doi:10.1080/17448727.2018.1450168.

Raagi, Javala S. ​Singh Sabha Patrika​ . Amritsar, 1986.

Singh, Harbans. ​The Heritage of the Sikhs​. Manohar, 1999.

 Brar 10

Singh, Karanbir. "Socio-Religious and Political Changes in Punjab during the Second

Half of Nineteenth Century." ​IRA-International Journal of Management & Social

Sciences (ISSN 2455-2267)​ [Online], 4.1 (2016): n. pag. Web. 21 Mar. 2018

Singh, Teja, and Harbans Singh. “Singh Sabha and Other Socio-Religious

Movements.”​Punjab Past and Present​. N.d.