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Lepel Henry Griffen postulated that Hinduism had always been hostile to Sikhism and even socially the two had been anta- gonistic. One Max Arthur Macauliffe, a highly placed Brit- ish administrator, became the loudest spokesman of this thesis. He told the Sikhs that Hinduism was like a "boa con- strictor of the Indian forests," which "winds its opponent and finally causes it to disappear in its capacious interior." The Sikhs "may go that way," he warned. He was pained to see that the Sikhs regarded themselves as Hindus which was, "in direct opposition to the teachings of the Gurus." He put words into the mouth of the Gurus and invented prophecies by them which anticipated the advent of the white race to whom the Sikhs would be loyal. He described "the pernicious effects of the up-bringing of Sikh youths in a Hindu atmosphere." These youths, he said, "are ignorant of the Sikh religion and of itsprophecies in favour of the English and contract exclusive customs and prejudices to the extent of calling us Malechhas or persons of impure desires, and inspire disgust for the customs and habits of Christians."
It was a concerted effort in which the officials, the scho- lars and the missionaries all joined. In order to separate the Sikhs, they were even made into a sect of Islam. For example, one Thomas Patrick Hughes, who had worked as missionary for twen- ty years in Peshawar, edited the Dictionary of Islam. The work itself is scholarly but, like most European scholarship, it had a colonial inspiration. The third biggest article in this work, after Muhammad and the Quran, is on Sikhism. It devotes one-fourth of a page to the Sunnis and, somewhat more justly, seven pages to the Shias, but devotes eleven and a half pages to the Sikhs! Probably, the editor himself thought it rather exces- sive; for he offers an explanation to the Orientalists who "may, perhaps be suprised to find that Sikhism has been treated as a sect of Islam." Indded, it is surprising to the non-Orientalists too. For it must be a strange sect of Islam where the word 'Muhammad' does not occur even once in the writings of its found- er, Nanak. But the inclusion of such an article "in the present work seemd to be most desirable." It was apolicy matter.
Macauliffe and others provided categories which became the thought equipment of subsequent Sikh intellectuals. But the British Government did not neglect the quicker administra- tive and political measures. They developed a special Army Policy which gave results even in the short run. While they disarmed the nattion as whole, they created privileged enclaves of what they called martial races.
The British had conquered the Punjab with the help of Poora- biya soldiers, many of them Brahmins, but they played a rebel- lious role in 1857. So the British dropped them and sought other elements. The Sikhs were chosen. In 1855, there were only 1500 Sikh soldiers, mostly Mazhabis. In 1910, there were 33 thousands out of a total of 174 thousands, this time mostly Jats--just a little less than one-fifth of the total army strength. Their very recruitment was calculated to give them a sense of separateness and exclusiveness. Only such Sikhs were re- cruited who observed the marks of the Khalsa. They were sent to receive baptism according to the rites prescribed by Guru Govind Singh. Each regiment had its own granthis. The greetings ex- changed between the British officers and the Sikh soldiers were Wahguruji ka Khalsa ! Wahguruji ki Fateh. A secret C I.D. Memorandum, prepared by D. Patfie, Assistant Director, Criminal Intellegence, Government of India (1911), says that "every en- deavour has been made to preserve them (Sikh soldiers) from the contagion of idolatory," a name the colonial-missionaries gave to Hinduism. Thanks to these measures, the "Sikhs in the Indian Army have been studiously nationalized," Macaulille observed. About the meaning of this "nationalization", we are left in no doubt. Petrie explains that it means that the Sikhs were "en- couraged to regard themselves as a totally distinct and separate nation." No wonder, the British congratulated themselves and held that the "preservation of Sikhism as a separate religion was largely due to the action of the British officers," as a British administrator put it.
The British also worked on a more political level. Singh Sabhas were started, manned mostly by ex-soldiers. These worked under Khalsa Diwans established at Lahore and Amritsar. Later on, in 1902, the two Diwans were amalgamated into one body--the Chief Khalsa Diwan, providing political leadership to the Sikhs. They all wore the badge of loyalty to the British. As early as 1872, the loyal Sikhs supported the cruel suppression of the Namdhari Sikhs who had started a Swadeshi movement. They were described as a "wicked and misguided sect." The same forces described the Ghadarites in 1914 as "rebels" who should be dealt with mercilessly.
These organisations also spearheaded the movement for the de-Hinduization of the Sikhs and preached that the Sikhs were distinct from the Hindus. Anticipating the Muslims, they repre- sented to the British Government as far back as 1888 that they be recognized as a separate community. They expelled the Brahmins from the Har Mandir, where the latter had worked as priests. They also threw out the idols of "Hindu" Gods from this temple which were installed there. We do not know what these Gods were and how "Hindu" they were, but most of them are adoringly mentioned in the poems of Guru Nanak. At any rate, more often than not, iconoclasm has hardly much spiritual content; on the other hand, it is a misanthropic idea and is meant to show one's ha- tred for one's neighbour. In this particular case, it was also meant to impress the British with one's loyalty. Hitherto, the Brahmins had presided over different Sikh ceremonies which were the same as those of the Hindus. There was now a tendency to have separate rituals. In 1909, the Ananda Marriage Act was passed.
Thus the seed sown by the British began to bear fruit. In 1898, Kahan Singh, the Chief Minister of Nabha and a pacca loyal- ist wrote a pamplet: Hum Hindu Nahin Hain (We are not Hindus). This note, first struck by the British and then picked up by the collaboratonists, has not lacked a place in subsequent Sikh writings and politics, leading eventually in our own time to an intransigent politics and terroristic activities. But that the Sikhs learn their history from the British is not peculiar to them. We all do it. With the British, we all believe that India is merely a land where successive invaders made good, and that this country is only a miscellany of ideas and peoples-- in short, a nation withour a nomos or personality or vision of its own.
The British played their game as best as they could, but they did not possess all the cards. The Hindu-Sikh ties were too inti- mate and numerous and these continued without much strain at the grass-root level. Only a small section maintained that there was a "distinct line of cleavage between Hinduism and Sikhism"; but a large section, as the British found, "favours, or at any rate views with indifference the re-absorption of the Sikhs into Hin- duism." They found it sad to think that very important classes of Sikhs like Nanak Panthis or Sahajdahris did not even think it "in- cumbent on them to adopt the ceremonial and social obser- vances of Govind Singh," and did not "even in theory, reject the authority of the Brahmins."
The glorification of the Sikhs was welcome to the British to the extent it separated them from the Hindus, but it had its disadvantages too. Mr. Petrie found it a "constant source of danger," something which tended to give the Sikhs a "wind in the head." Sikh nationalism once stimulated refused British guidance and developed its own ambitions. The neo-nationalist Sikhs thought of a glorious past and had dreams of a glorious future, but neither in his past nor in his future' "was there a place for the British Officer," as a British administrator complained. Any worthwhile Sikh nationalism was incompatible with loyalty to the British. When neo-nationalists like Labh Singh spoke of the past "sufferings of the Sikhs at the hands of the Muhammadans," the British found in the statement a covert reference to them- selves. When they admired the Gurus for "their devotion to reli- gion and their disregard for life," the British heard in it a call to sedition.
Sikh nationalism was meant to hurt the Hindus, but in fact it hurt the British. For what nourished Sikh nationalism also nour- ished Hindu nationalism. The glories of Sikh Gurus are part of the glories of the Hindus, and these have been sung by poets like Tagore and others. On the other hand, as Christians and as rulers, the British could not go very far in this direction. In fact, in their more private consultations, they spoke contemp- tuously of the Gurus. Mr. Petrie considered Guru Arjun Dev as "essentially a mercenary," who was "prepared to fight for or against the Mughul as convenience or profit dictated;" he tells us how "Tegh Bahadur, as an infidel, a robber and a rebel, was executed at Delhi by the Moghul authorities." As imperialists, they naturally sympathised with the Moghuls and shared their view-point.
