Goswami

Rooted in the bhakti movements that swept across North India during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Sikh religion appealed to the hard-working peasants. Guru Nanak Dev born in 1469 was the first Sikh guru. The Sikh khalsa (army of the pure) under tenth Guru – Guru Gobind Singh rose up against the economic and political repressions in Punjab toward the end of Aurangzeb’s rule. By the 1770s, Sikh hegemony extended from the Indus in the west to the Yamuna in the east, from Multan in the south to Jammu in the north. But the Sikhs were a loose, disunited, and quarrelsome conglomerate of twelve kin-groups. Ranjit Singh (1780-1839) became King of Punjab in In his kingdom Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims lived together in comparative equality and increasing prosperity. Ranjit Singh employed European officers and introduced strict military discipline into his army before expanding into Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Ladakh. British signed a peace treaty with him. His rule was called as the ‘golden period of Punjab’. After his death there was a power vacuum and infighting amongst the successors of Ranjit Singh. In 1846, the first Anglo-Sikh war commenced at Mudki where Sikh forces were defeated because of treachery of their generals. There after the British power became dominant in politics of Punjab and in 1849 after another Anglo-Sikh war Punjab was formally annexed to British Empire.