Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji , Part - I

Maharaja Ranjit Singh ji, Portrait painted by G T Vigne in 1837.

"On the 1st of Baisakh (April 12) 1801, Sahib Singh Bedi daubed Ranjit Singh's forehead with saffron paste and proclaimed him Maharajah of the Punjab". A royal salute was fired from the fort. In the afternoon the young Maharajah rode on his elephant, showering gold and silver coins on jubilant crowds of his subjects. In the evening, all the homes of the city were illumined.

Ranjit Singh's political acumen is well illustrated in the compromise that he made between becoming a Maharajah and remaining a peasant leader. Although crowned King of the Punjab, he refused to wear the emblem of royalty in his simple turban. He refused to sit on a throne.

"The most important consequence of taking on the title of "Maharajah of the Punjab" was that thereby Ranjit Singh assumed the rights of sovereignty not only over all Sikhs (the government itself being Sarkar Khalsaji) but over all people who lived within the ill-defined geographical limits of the Punjab."

— Extracted from A History of the Sikhs by Khushwant Singh.

Eighteenth century India was an age of troubles, generally called a gardi ka waqt (bad times). It was probably the worst of times in India, a period of greater misery and adversity than anything that Europe had witnessed since the Dark Age, not excluding the horrors of the Thirty Years War. India was drifting into chaos. Mughal rule had tumbled; the Mughal emperor was a prisoner; and his authority was confined steadily shrinking around Delhi.

Ahmad Shah Abdali Looted India 9 Times

In Northern India, atrocities committed by Nadir Shah in 1738-39, and later by Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1748, 1749 and 1752, had brought untold suffering to people who had no breath of peace. In 1761 on the historic battlefield of Panipat, the death toll has been estimated at nearly 200,000.

By the end of the 18th century all political unity in India had disappeared and everywhere local magnates, heads of old tribal communities or ambitious upstarts, were scrambling for power and territory. The great mass of people had everything to lose as the framework of law and order had broken. The whole area was the prey of the strongest and most audacious free booter of the day. In fact, there was no government that could govern. Every adventurer who could muster a troop of horses might aspire to a throne.

The historical process works inexorably in human affairs in which an element of contingency operates. The rise of Sikh power in Punjab in the 18th century was a unique phenomenon. The forces of religious fervour unleashed by Guru Gobind Singh, the awakener of consciousness, his trials and tribulations, and his tearing spirit, inspired his followers who were to transform with a passionate zeal a purely religious sect into a great military confederacy in the early part of the 18th century. It was Ranjit Singh's genius that in the turbulent period he succeeded in galvanizing these forces of theocratic confederacy into establishing a Sikh Kingdom that was to last for half a century, until its collapse at Sobroan.

to be continued...

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