The Sikh Confederacy was a confederation of twelve sovereign Sikh states (each known as a Misl, derived from the Arabic word مِثْل meaning 'equal'; sometimes spelt as Misal) which rose during the 18th century in the Punjab region in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. The misls were sovereign Sikh principalities originally formulated to defend the Darbar Sahib complex of Amritsar. It was governed decentrally, being described as decentralized unity that was flexible, with no single ruler being paramount or permanent and instead collective action being used that was based upon organisational discipline and shared legitimacy.
History
Background
In order to withstand the persecution of Shah Jahan and other Mughal emperors, several of the later Sikh Gurus established military forces and fought the Mughal Empire and Pahari Hill rajas in the 17th century and early 18th century. Banda Singh Bahadur continued Sikh resistance to the Mughal Empire until his defeat at the Battle of Gurdas Nangal.
After the death of Banda Singh, the Sikhs were left without a main leader and entered in a period of hardship. The Sikhs (more precisely the Tat Khalsa faction) managed to gain control of Amritsar and established it as their centre after evicting the Bandai Sikhs from it. Bhai Mani Singh was appointed as the custodian of the Darbar Sahib shrine. Other opponents to the Sikhs at the time aside from the Mughals were heretical sects, such as the Gulab Rahis and Gangu Shahis, that continued to follow a lineage of personal gurus, which mainstream Sikhs had stopped practicing after the death of Guru Gobind Singh. Whilst the majority of Sikhs in this period continued to live a civilian life in Mughal society, a proporation of Sikhs continued a rebellion against the Mughal authority, with these Sikhs being known as the Tat Khalsa. According to W. H. McLeod, only Sikhs who kept an outwardly Khalsa Sikh identity, such as by keeping uncut hair, were persecuted by the Mughals while the majority of Sikh laymen went mostly unaffected by the Mughal persecutions. These rebel Sikhs took refuge in inaccessible and hidden away areas and conducted a low-level insurgency against the Mughal Empire, such as by plundering and killing government officials and their supporters. For several years, large gatherings of the Sikhs became a liability, thus the Sikhs remained mobile, and Sikhs found refuge in the forests, jungles (such as the Lakhi Jungle), swamps (such as Kahnuwan Chhamb), deserts (such as the Malwa desert around Bathinda), and the Himalayan foothills (namely the Jammu-Kangra hills) until they organized themselves into guerilla bands known as jathas.
After the death of Mughal emperor Farrukhsiyar in 1719, anti-Sikh persecution decreased in intensity and the Sikhs began congregating at Amritsar again periodically. The Sikhs at the time were split into two main factions, the Tatt Khalsa and the Bandai Khalsa. One of first the prominent Sikh military actions in the post-Banda Singh Bahadur period was of Tara Singh resisting and being killed by the Mughal forces dispatched by Zakaria Khan after he had chastened the faujdar of Patti. Ala Singh, establisher of Patiala, had been conquering territory since around 1730. Rather than fighting through pitched battles, the Sikhs instead employed a cavalry tactic known as Dhai-phat, a type of guerilla warfare.
Arjan Dass Malik, one of the first writers to analyze the 18th century Sikh military resistance using modern military theory, identified the movement as being based upon three fundamentals:
- Moral legitimacy
- Popular support networks
- Adaptive organization
However, by the early part of the 1730s, the Mughal governor Zakaria Khan changed tactics and attempted to make peace with the Sikh rebels by offering them a robe-of-honour, nawabship, and jagir grant from the Mughal emperor to a selected leader of their choosing. The Sikhs decided to pick Nawab Kapur Singh to receive these gifts from the Mughals, with the jagir consisting of villages near Amritsar. During this short-period of official recognition of the Sikhs by the Mughals, there was a brief moment of peace between the two parties, which allowed the Sikhs to formulate their ranks into more concise categorizations. Nawab Kapur Singh decided to organize the large amount of Sikhs into deras (large units) that were led by various heads from Khatri, Jat, and Rangreta backgrounds, with the duties of the communal kitchens (langar), treasury, stores, arsenal, and granery being assigned to specific Sikhs based upon their seniority and merit.
The basis of the Dal Khalsa army was established in 1733–1735 during the period of Sikh nawabship under the Mughals, based upon the numerous pre-existing Jatha militia groups and had two main formations: the Taruna Dal ("youth brigade") and the Budha Dal ("elder brigade"). The Sarbat Khalsa had attempted several times to unite the various, scattered jathas of the Sikhs into more defined institutions or bodies to better-able to defend themselves from Mughal and Afghan attacks.
However, Nawab Kapur Singh's attempts to pacify the Sikhs under him during the period of nawabship did not quell the desires of some of the more rebellious, anti-Mughal Sikhs, with some of them resuming their guerilla war tactics against the Mughal government, consisting of plundering and killing. Therefore, Zakaria Khan took-back the jagir that had been granted upon the Sikhs and restarted his anti-Sikh policies from before with increased intensity. Thus, the Sikhs returned to their jatha lifestyle in the face of government oppression. However, Bhai Mani Singh still controlled Amritsar due to paying a stipulated amount to the Mughal administration, which permitted the Sikhs to gather there on Diwali as long as this remittance was paid. After Mani Singh failed to pay the stipulated amount, he was executed by the Mughals. In 1739, the Sikhs pillaged the army of Nader Shah of Persia who was invading India and this led the Persian leader to warn Zakaria Khan that his rule in Punjab was threatened by the Sikhs. By the 1740s, the anti-Sikh persecution by the Mughals was at its highest levels, with faujdars and zamindars carrying-out Sikh oppression, such as the deaths of Mehtab Singh, Sukha Singh, Taru Singh, and Bota Singh. Zakaria Khan was succeeded by Yahya Khan, who continued the anti-Sikh oppression. During Yahya Khan's tenure, a band of Sikhs under Jassa Singh Ahluwalia killed Jaspat Rai, the Mughal faujdar of Eminabad. Jaspat Rai's brother, Lakhpat Rai, who served as the diwan of Lahore, started massacring thousands of Sikhs in-response, which was a genocide known by the Sikhs as the Chotta Ghallughara.
By 1748, the Sikhs had expelled the Mughal faujdar of Amritsar and constructed a fortress known as Ram Rauni there. On the annual meeting of the Sarbat Khalsa in Amritsar in 1748 during either Diwali or Baisakhi, a Gurmata was passed where the Jathas were reorganized into a new grouping called misls, with eleven misls forming out of the various pre-existing Jathas and a unified army known as the Dal Khalsa Ji. However, some of these misls, or at least their names, were used prior to this event in 1748. Some argue that instead of there being eleven misls, there were actually twelve, with the inclusion of the Phulkia Misl. However, strictly speaking, the Phulkia Misl was not a misl in the true sense of the word, as it had been excluded from the Sarbat Khalsa decision of 1748 to create the confederacy. Ultimate command over the Misls was bestowed to Jassa Singh Ahluwalia.
Afghan invasions of the Mughal Empire in the mid-18th century allowed the Sikhs to consolidate power in the northwest of the subcontinent. Beyond raids, one of their first attempts at administration was the introduction of the Rakhi system, that promised offered protection in exchange for revenue.
Expansion of power
By the early 1750s, the Sikhs had started taking-over territory in the Bari Doab, which was where the capital of the Mughal province was located. By 1750, Jai Singh Kanhaiya started issuing orders to local officials of the Bari Doab. Another Sikh leader, named Hakumat Singh, also started issuing orders in the period. Jassa Singh Ahluwalia conquered Fatehabad in 1753. In 1754, the Sikhs had started obstructing Mughal administrative operations in the Punjab, with them causing issues with the appointments of the faujdars of Eminadbad (Khwaja Mirza Khan) and Patti (Qasim Beg). During the Afghan invasions of India, the Sikhs nearly overpowered the Afghan official Jahan Khan near the end of 1757. The Afghan faujdar of Jalandhar, Sa'adat Khan Afridi, was expelled by the Sikhs in early 1758, with Lahore also being plundered. Ahmad Shah Abadali, who was busy contending with the Marathas (who had their own territorial ambitions in the Punjab), was unable to establish a firm control over the Punjab, as all the Afghan governors of the province were being defeated by the Sikhs, such as the Afghan governor of Lahore province in September 1761. Due to these factors, the Sikhs were able to establish their rule over the Punjab. However, the Durranis massacred around 5,000 Sikhs in an event known as the Vadda Ghallughara, but six months later the Afghans were defeated by the Sikhs at Amritsar and they retreated to Lahore. Eventually, Abdali went back to Kabul and the Afghan appointed faujdars of Bist Jalandhar Doab, Sirhind, Rechna Doab, and Chajj Doab, were removed from their positions by the Sikhs.
After the fall of Sirhind in 1764, the territory located south of the Sutlej river between Karnal and Ferozepore was jointly administered by the Shaheedan (and Nihangs), Bhangis, Ahluwalias, Dallewalias, Ramgarhias, and Karosinghias misls. Aside from the misls, there were also the Phulkian Sikhs, who had established the chiefdoms of Patiala, Nabha, Jind, Faridkot, Ambala, Shahabad, Thanesar, Kaithal, Jagadhri, and Buria. The misls were active in architectural projects, such as the construction of bungas at principal Sikh sites, like at Amritsar's parikrama.
Initially, the most powerful misls were the Ahluwalias, Ramgarhias, and Faizulpurias, but later the Bhangis became hegemonic, especially in the Majha region. According to J. S. Grewal, there were more than sixty Sikh-ruled principalities situated between the Yamuna and Indus rivers by the 1770s. By the 1770s, the leaders of the Sikh misls had started acting independently in their relations, with there being decreasing unity amongst the misls, with rivalries forming based on different alliances. Thus, internal divisions began, with infighting between the Ramgarhias, Ahluwalias, and Kanhaiyas. The Ahluwalias, Sukerchakias, Bhangis, Kanhaiyas, and Ramgarhias started asserting control over the states of the Punjab Hills region, becoming their suzerain. The Bhangis conquered Multan and held it until 1780. The Sikh chiefs located between the Sutlej and Yamuna rivers established the Rakhi tax during their incursions past the Yamuna river rather than seeking territorial acquisitions.
Decline
The flexible nature of the confederacy's governance allowed for powerful, local chiefs, such as the young Ranjit Singh of the Sukerchakias, to emerged. Most of the Sikh principalities established in the 18th century survived until the 19th century, when they were either absorbed or subjugated by the Sukerchakias. The Sukerchakias under Ranjit Singh would finally gain pre-eminence amongst all of its contemporary misls, leading to all of their annexations by the Sukerchakias and the eventual formation of a Sikh Empire in 1799. Ranjit Singh of the Sukerchakia Misl managed to subdue most of the other misls by the end of the 18th century. However, the Phulkian Sikhs and their kingdoms escaped this fate and continued to be independent from the Sukerchakias. In the 19th century, the former misls had lost their political and martial functions, yet their names became caste-markers for certain communities, such as the Thokas adopting the Ramgarhia name and the Kalals adopting the name Ahluwalia.