A valuable compendium

Roopinder Singh

How does one go about understanding Punjab and Punjabis? If one were to go beyond caricatures, it is an endeavour not to be taken lightly, given the geographical location of the state, its complicated weave of social and cultural streams, and its history. 

Even as the number of scholars of history decreases, the importance of their works increases. The ease of access via the Internet and other cyber technologies has played a role in eclipsing what is not available online. Research from secondary sources is common, and a precious few make the required effort to go to the original sources.

Dr Kirpal Singh is among the last of the historians who shaped our understanding of Punjab history. Dr Ganda Singh and Dr Fauja Singh were among his mentors at Punjabi University, Patiala, where Dr Kirpal Singh spent much of his life researching, teaching and publishing about the history of his state and its people. He has always expressed himself softly, yet what he asserted stood on a firm foundation of scholarship.

Historiography entails writing history after a critical examination of sources. Particular care must be taken to ensure the selection of the authentic material, and within it, in giving weightage to various bits of information. Not everything in every source is correct; this is where discretion, understanding and judgment come in. With this volume, Dr Kirpal Singh presents to us a critical introduction of the various sources that help us in studying Sikh history.

A historian’s perspective can find a source in many things. He would cut through the verbosity of expression and ornate poetry to find historical facts while studying the Janamsakhis for information about Guru Nanak, the Mahima Parkash for the third Guru and the Gurbilas for the sixth and the 10th Gurus. Dr Kirpal Singh compared Sri Gur Panth Parkash with some Persian accounts and found them to be similar. He studied other such accounts too. “We find that many of the sources of Sikh history are based on traditions which form the backbone of Sikh history. No history of the Sikhs could be fairly written without taking into account the Sikh traditions,” he writes. Indeed, the compositions in the Adi Granth, the Vars of Bhai Gurdas, Hukamnamas of the gurus are all mined for information by historians. 

Persian dominated the literary and official records from the time of the Gurus to the establishment of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s empire. Contemporary accounts in Persian can be sources of information. The second part of the book deals with these. Punjabi has been the dominant language of discourse in the region, no matter which script it was written in. Dr Kirpal Singh asserts that when religious persecution of the Sikhs was at its zenith, “Punjabi Hindus wrote in Gurumukhi script even though the language used was either Brij or Sanskrit.” Such accounts are, naturally, a treasure trove for a historian. Punjab State Archives has a collection of such records, and the book enumerates the important ones.

Diwan Amar Nath’s Zafarnama Ranjit Singh is a compilation of events of the Maharaja’s reign (1800-37). Ganesh Das Wadhera’s Char Bagh-i-Punjab, Rattan Singh Bhangu’s Prachin Panth Parkash, Bhai Santokh Singh’s Suraj Parkash and Giani Gian Singh’s Panth Parkash are all important texts, some of which, particularly the Char Bagh, are those on which the author has worked extensively. 

Dr Kirpal Singh is a historian with a long and storied history of scholarship. He has provided a valuable compendium for anyone interested in the Sikhs, something which no aspiring student of Sikh history should be without. Punjabi University, Patiala, published the volume and gave it life, for which it must be commended. However, the print run of 550 books, mentioned on the copyright page, is a strong indicator of how lonely the field is. This makes Dr Kirpal Singh’s lifelong quest all the more significant.