REDEMPTIVE PASTS AND IMPERILED FUTURES: THE WRITING OF A SIKH HISTORY

Abstract

This article examines the narrative frameworks of the Persian histories of the Sikhs commissioned by the East India Company. These texts are important sources for understanding the development of individual Sikh states in the late eighteenth century, however, very little is known about the information networks and scholarly practices of the authors of such texts. Using the Tarikh-i Ahwal-i Sikhan of Khushwaqt Rai, I examine the ways in which Rai created a narrative that emphasized the heroism of the Sikh chiefs in a way that departed from earlier Punjabi and Persian accounts of the Sikhs. Although the narrative voice of the text preserves a deliberate neutrality; in re-interpreting his Punjabi sources and silencing the negative portrayals of Sikhs from earlier Persian works, Khushwaqt Rai created a text that emphasized the individual agency and sovereignty of Sikh chiefs. The masked partiality of authors such as Rai, I argue, must be understood in terms of the location of the authors at the intersection of multiple intellectual, linguistic, and political communities.