The Sikh Empire was a regional power based in the Punjab region of South Asia. It existed from 1799, when Maharaja Ranjit Singh captured Lahore, to 1849, when it was defeated and annexed by the British East India Company following the Second Anglo-Sikh War. At its peak in the mid-19th century, the empire extended from Gilgit and Tibet in the north to the deserts of Sindh in the south and from the Khyber Pass in the west to the Sutlej in the east, and was divided into 8 provinces. Religiously diverse, with an estimated population of 12 million in 1800 (making it the 12th most populous state at the time), it was the last major region of the Indian subcontinent to be conquered by the British Empire.
In 1799, Ranjit Singh of the Sukerchakia Misl captured Lahore from the Sikh triumvirate which had been ruling it since 1765, and was confirmed on the possession of Lahore by the Durrani ruler, Zaman Shah. He was formally crowned on 12 April 1801 by Sahib Singh Bedi, a descendant of Guru Nanak. Ranjit Singh rose to power in a very short period, from a leader of a single misl to finally becoming the Maharaja of Punjab. By 1813 all the remaining Sikh misls had been annexed by Ranjit Singh, and the following years saw progressive expulsion of the Afghans from Punjab; the Afghan influence east of Indus ended after the fall of Multan in 1818. In the subsequent decades Durrani Afghans lost Kashmir and Peshawar to the Sikhs as well. By 1840 Ladakh and Baltistan had been brought under Sikh suzerainty by Gulab Singh. Ranjit Singh modernised his army using the latest training as well as weapons and artillery.
After the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1839, the empire was weakened by the British East India Company stoking internal divisions and political mismanagement. Finally, in 1849, the state was dissolved after its defeat in the Second Anglo-Sikh War.
Terminology
The empire is also referred to as the Lahore State, such as in contemporary British maps. The term Lahore Darbar refers to the Sikh court at Lahore of the empire's ruling government. However, the term "Lahore Darbar" gained currency only around the time of Ranjit Singh's death, and was not found in British sources until then. The empire's own Persian chronicles refers to its ruling government as the Sarkar Khalsaji. According to Priya Atwal, the polity was known in Punjabi as Sarkar-i-Khalsa. The contemporary British and other Europeans referred to the state as the Kingdom of Lahore and its ruling family as the Lahore royal family. The term Sikh Empire came into popular usage in the 20th century, perhaps as an English-language equivalent to the "Sarkar-i-Khalsa" term. The period of Sikh rule was also referred to as Sikha shahi, a term that has survived to the present age with various meanings.
History
Background
Sikhism originated in the 16th-century Punjab with the teachings of Guru Nanak. Initially a pacifist faith, the followers of Sikhism (known as Sikhs) became increasingly militarised owing to their conflicts with the Mughal Empire and the killing of their gurus, Guru Arjan and Guru Tegh Bahadur, on the orders of Mughal emperors. With the decline of Mughal power after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the tenth and last Sikh guru Gobind Singh established a militia known as Khalsa Fauj. The first Sikh state led by Banda Singh Bahadur was short-lived, but by the mid-18th century a confederation of twelve Sikh states, known as misls, was firmly established in central and eastern Punjab. The Dal Khalsa armies of the twelve misls engaged in numerous conflicts with the Mughals as well as the invading Afghan armies, especially those led by Ahmad Shah Abdali. They also fought with the neighbouring hill rajas and among each other.
Ranjit Singh, the founder of Sikh Empire, was born in the ruling family of Sukerchakia Misl in 1780.
Empire
Ranjit Singh succeeded his father Maha Singh at the age of thirteen in 1792. In 1797, Ranjit Singh besieged Rasulnagar, the capital of the Chattha Jats, with whom Sukerchakias had a bitter rivalry. The Chattha chief Jan Muhammad was killed in the siege and Rasulnagar, now renamed Ramnagar, was annexed.
In 1797–98, Zaman Shah Durrani invaded Punjab, but was forced to retreat, following which Ranjit Singh captured Lahore. The local dignitaries and people welcomed him in the city. Ranjit Singh formally moved the capital from Gujranwala, where it had been established in 1763 by his grandfather Charat Singh, to Lahore in 1799. In 1800, the Jammu region was annexed by Ranjit Singh.
The coronation of Ranjit Singh happened at Lahore in 1801, marking the formal beginning of the Sikh Empire. It was followed by a decade-long process of conquest of remaining Sikh misls, starting with Amritsar in 1802, which was largely complete by 1812. All the misl leaders, who were affiliated with the army, were the nobility with usually long and prestigious family backgrounds in Sikh history.
In 1807, forces of Ranjit Singh attacked Kasur and, after a month of fierce fighting, captured it. In the same year he also annexed the Sial-ruled Jhang. In 1813, his general Mohkam Chand fought against the Afghan forces of Shah Mahmud led by Fateh Khan Barakzai, and Attock Fort was captured by Ranjit Singh in that battle.
The Cis-Sutlej states were a group of Sikh states lying between the Sutlej River and the Yamuna River. They had been under the suzerainty of the British East India Company since the second Anglo-Maratha War of 1803–1805. Ranjit Singh occupied one of the states, Faridkot, in 1807. However, the control was restored to Gulab Singh of Faridkot in 1809 after the signing of Amritsar treaty between the Lahore Darbar and the British East India Company, which demarcated eastern borders of Sikh Empire at Sutlej. Friendly relations were established with the British following the signing of the treaty.
Multan was conquered in 1818, which ended Afghan influence in Punjab. In 1819, after the battle of Shopian, Ranjit Singh successfully defeated the Afghans and annexed the Kashmir Valley, expanding his rule towards the north and the Jhelum Valley, beyond the foothills of the Himalayas. The Namgyal dynasty of Ladakh paid regular annual tribute to the Sikh Empire, starting from 1819. The tribute was paid through the local Sikh governors of Kashmir.
His general Hari Singh Nalwa also achieved important victories in Hazara and Peshawar. Peshawar became tributary in 1823. Syed Ahmad Barelvi led his movement against the Sikh Empire from 1826 until his death in the battle of Balakot in 1831. Peshawar was formally annexed in 1834 by the Sikh Empire. In 1835, the Afghans and the Sikhs met again at the Khyber Pass; however, the standoff ended without a battle. In 1837, the Battle of Jamrud became the last confrontation with the Afghans at the western boundaries of the Sikh Empire.
Ranjit Singh had restored Gulab Singh Dogra the estates of his father at Jammu in 1820 as jagir. Gulab Singh, now a tributary noble of Sikh Empire, embarked on an ambitious plan to expand his domains. After occupying neighbouring Muslim principalities of Kishtwar, Poonch and Rajouri, he sent his general Zorawar Singh to conquer the Namgyal kingdom in 1834.
In 1838, Ranjit Singh sent his troops to march into Kabul to take part in the victory parade along with the British after restoring Shah Shoja to the Afghan throne at Kabul. Ranjit Singh died in 1839.
Baltistan, under the rule of Ahmad Shah Maqpon of Skardu, was conquered in 1839–40 by Zorawar Singh, bringing it under suzerainty of the Sikh Empire. During the Sino-Sikh war of 1841, the forces of the empire invaded Tibet, which was then under the control of the Qing dynasty. However, the invasion was short-lived as Zorawar Singh was killed.
The main geographical footprint of the empire was from the Punjab region to Khyber Pass in the west, to Kashmir in the north, Sindh in the south, and Tibet in the east. The frontier policy of Ranjit Singh of holding the Khyber Pass was later used by the British Raj.
Decline
After the death of Ranjit Singh in 1839, the empire was severely weakened by internal divisions and political mismanagement. The leadership of the empire passed through a quick succession of rulers, namely Kharak Singh, Nau Nihal Singh, Chand Kaur, and Sher Singh, who kept being assassinated, with no ruler being able to rule for a sustained period of time, leading to instability. After the murder of Sher Singh, Duleep Singh was appointed as the new ruler by the Panch (Military Council) with Jind Kaur as regnant since Duleep was a child. Due to internal divisions and factionalism (include the British colluding with internal fifth-columnists), Jind Kaur was advised to go to war against the East India Company to distract the Sikh Army and decrease their power and influence in the affairs of the state, leading to the First Anglo-Sikh War. The Sikh army crossed the Sutlej river, violating the terms of an earlier 1809 treaty, starting the war.
The Sikh crossing of the Sutlej, following British militarisation of the border with Punjab (from 2,500 men and six guns in 1838 to 17,612 men and 66 guns in 1844, and 40,523 men and 94 guns in 1845), and plans on using the newly conquered territory of Sindh as a springboard to advance on the Sikh-held region of Multan, eventually resulted in the First Anglo-Sikh War.
In the Battle of Ferozeshah in 1845, the British encountered the Khalsa Army, opening with a gun-duel in which the Sikhs "had the better of the British artillery". As the British made advances, Europeans in their army were specially targeted, as the Sikhs believed if the army "became demoralized, the backbone of the enemy's position would be broken". The fighting continued throughout the night. Nevertheless, the British army emerged victorious. In the following treaty of Lahore which ended hostilities, a huge indemnity of two crore rupees was imposed on the Lahore Darbar. As it could not pay the fine, Lahore Darbar was forced to concede Hazara and Kashmir to the British for the payment of one crore, which were subsequently sold by British to Gulab Singh Dogra in the 1846 treaty of Amritsar. British also recognised his prior conquests in Ladakh and Baltistan, laying foundation of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Following the defeat of the Sikhs in the First Anglo-Sikh War, Lord Dalhousie orchestrated the Sikhs to rebel, with him blaming the court of Lahore and the Maharaja for the rebellion in an effort to legitimize the annexation of the Sikh kingdom, declaring a war on behalf of the British on the Sikh kingdom, starting the second war. Diwan Mulraj, a timid man, found himself being placed as the leader of a rebellion brewing in Multan without much agency of his own after the murders of the British officials Vans Agnew and Lt. Anderson. Rather than immediately quashing the Multani rebellion, Currie, the British Resident in Lahore, decided to let it fester and spread so he could implicate the Sikh Maharaja, the Council of Regency, and the Khalsa army in the turmoil and therefore have cause to get rid of them afterwards. The Attariwalas, namely Chattar Singh and his son Sher Singh, were initially on the British side (as were most of the Sikh leaders initially being loyal to the British Resident), however increasing aggression from the British and betrayals led them to eventually joining the cause of the rebels. Duleep Singh was too young to decide on matters and his mother Jind Kaur who had acted on his behalf had been exiled from the Punjab by this point. Maharaj Singh, a Sikh religious figure, urged the local population of the land and the Sikh Army to side with the Multani rebels and push the British out of the Punjab. Chattar Singh Attariwala promised the Afghan emir the return of Peshawar if they assisted the Sikh cause on expelling the British from the Punjab. Despite the Sikhs surprising the British at the battles of Ram Nagar and Chillianwala, they were decisively defeated in the final engagement at Gujrat. The retreating Sikhs were surrounded on all sides, cut off from any attempt to join forces with their Afghan ally, and Chattar Singh Attariwala and his son Sher Singh Attariwala unconditionally surrendered to the British at their camp near Rawalpindi on 14 March 1849.
After the second war, the British extracted heavy war duties from the Lahore Darbar. On 29 March 1849, a durbar was convened at a fort where Eliot read a proclamation on the ending of the Sikh kingdom, with the proclamation stating: "All the property of the State of whatever description and wheresoever found shall be confiscated to the Honourable East India Company". With this proclamation, Maharaja Duleep Singh forfeited the Koh-i-Noor diamond to the British and stepped-down from his father's throne. The Sikh Empire was formally dissolved at the end of the Second Anglo-Sikh War via a proclamation on 30 March 1849. Formal annexation occurred on 2 April 1849, with a three-man administrative board being established. However, the annexation was conducted by Dalhousie without the home government's authority and against opposition by Henry Lawrence. The last ruler, Duleep Singh, was expelled from the Punjab with a pension of 120,000 rupees annually (£50,000) and his property worth 15 million rupees was confiscated by the British, including the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Duleep eventually settled in Britain. The province of Punjab was formed. Punjab became a Chief Commissionership in 1853. During Henry Lawrence period, Punjab did not experience much rebellion during the 1857 insurrection. A Lieutenant Governorship in Punjab was established in 1858.