The Eighteenth Century in Sikh History: Political Resurgence, Religious and Social Life, and Cultural Articulation, by Karamjit K. Malhotra

Abstract

Born in 1469, Guru Nanak’s teachings and perambulations were in many ways typical of those Sufi and bhakti mystics active across late medieval central and south Asia who sought to connect believers more directly with Islam and Hinduism, respectively. Nanak amassed a significant following, but his life as a devotional teacher (or guru) differed from that of his contemporaries (and competitors?) in at least one significant respect, namely that his ideas and disciples constituted the core of what would develop as Sikhism—a new religion, whose adherents today number almost 30 million worldwide. Nanak was succeeded by nine living gurus whose lives were roughly coterminous with the establishment, in 1526, and subsequent expansion of the Mughal Empire in south Asia. The latter gurus–and the tenth and last living guru, Gobind, in particular—came into conflict with Mughal authority from the late seventeenth century. Following Gobind’s death in 1708, the history of Sikhism’s evolution and expansion as a religion—and as the religio-ethical and, thus, legitimating framework for Sikh rulers carving niches for themselves in north India—is a story set against the backdrop of the decline of Mughal territorial power and political hegemony after c.1707. The eighteenth century was not only a turning-point in the history of Sikhism, as Sikhs became major political players, but the dynamics and exigencies of eighteenth-century north Indian politics within which the Sikhs were enmeshed also, unsurprisingly, transformed Sikhism as a religion in turn.