Surgeon’s-eye view of history
Himmat Singh Gill

The History of the Sikhs
by W.L.M’Gregor. Rupa. Pages 376. Rs 595.

Originally written in 1846 by a British army surgeon, who was present in the Anglo-Sikh wars of the time, and incorporating the biographies of the Sikh Gurus and Maharaja Ranjeet Singh, this reprint retains the original, somewhat quaint spellings, which have been reproduced in this review. It traces the geography, history, lineage and martial march of the Sikhs from their inception as humble traders to the heydays of a mighty empire that nearly sent the British colonisers packing after the famous battle of Ferozshuhur. Incisive eyewitness accounts of battle, a close appraisal of the rise in (Ranjeet’s) time and fall (after Khurruk Singh and Shere Singh) of the Sikh kingdom, a litany of intrigue and behind the throne palace plots and by and large a fair reading of the young Khalsa psyche in its formulative years are some of the highlights of this very absorbing account. It leaves one wondering as to how many of our present-day civilian or Army doctors, in addition to their normal duties, have the ability or the desire to pen similar momentous accounts of their time.

The first part of the book is as an engrossing as the second, and coming from a foreigner who had no affiliations of any kind, the observations made could be read with some interest. The author writes of the Sikh faith, "On the whole, Nanuk’s tenets evince a zealous desire to remove all the abuses and idolatries of the Hindoos, and the intolerance of the Mussulmans." About the direction and strategy of the Sikhs around the time of their inception, he writes, "(they) had their origin, like other nations, in small beginnings; but unlike those of Europe, instead of making conquest their first object, the Sikhs began by uniting themselves into a distinct religious sect, or offset from the Hindoos, having religious tenets of their own, and obeying, as their head, a teacher, or Gooroo."

On Banda Bahadur’s reprisals, he opines: "Seldom in the annals of the most barbarous nations do we find traces of such savage slaughter and devastation, as marked the progress of this Byragee," and then goes on to describe the near annihilation and hunting down of the Sikhs that followed his death.

The accounts of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh’s long reign and the battles that the Khalsa army fought with the British are of course a treat for any reader, especially those hailing from the armed forces. The marked superiority of the Sikh heavy artillery, the havoc caused by the European infantry with their bayonets in a close hand-to-hand battle, the operational blunder on part of the Sikhs in taking up defences on both sides of the Sutlej river, the bravery in the battle of Sardar Sham Singh Attareewala who rode to certain death but all in vain, and some from the Khalsa and Jummoo leadership who sat on the fence in the crucial hours when a Sikh victory was well within reach, point to the taut and precise mind of a surgeon who would one day become a military historian of some repute.

In spite of all the good that Ranjeet Singh did for the Khalsa empire during his enlightened reign of cordiality with the British, he will certainly need to be faulted for not having had the vision to nurture and train his successor in diplomacy and leadership. Those who came after him either killed each other or launched a senseless and ill-conceived campaign to oust a well-disciplined and organised force that had been their former ally. The "wily policy" of (Raja) Goolab Singh (of Jummoo), the ineptitude of the Ranee of the Lahore kingdom, and more importantly the infighting within the Sikh chiefs, had made the takeover of Ranjeet Singh’s Raj more or less certain at the outset itself. Dhuleep Singh and others are mere inconsequential footnotes in the Sikh history. In these modern times, the Sikhs will need to draw upon some lessons from their past, and what better way than to read a detailed and well-documented account by a foreigner who wrote what he saw, virtually from the saddle of his horse.

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