A History of the Sikhs

About the book

A History of the Sikhs is the classic modern history of the Sikh people by Khushwant Singh (1915–2014), novelist, journalist and historian. Volume 1: 1469–1839 appeared in 1963; Volume 2: 1839–1964 followed in 1966. Later editions updated the story to 2004, covering the demand for a Sikh state, Operation Blue Star and its aftermath, the end of militancy in Punjab, and the community's return to the national mainstream.

The book was written, in the publisher's phrase, 'in Khushwant Singh's trademark style to be accessible to a general, non-scholarly audience, while being based on scholarly archival research.' Singh worked from original documents in Persian, Gurmukhi and English — the three archival languages of Punjab's past.

Plot & themes

Volume 1 traces the social, religious and political background that produced the Sikh faith in the fifteenth century: Guru Nanak's revelation, the succession of the Gurus, the compilation of the Granth Sahib, the transformation — under Guru Gobind Singh — from a pacifist sect into the militant Khalsa, the long struggle with Mughals and Afghans, and the consolidation of Sikh power under Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

Volume 2 takes up the thread at Ranjit Singh's death in 1839: the Anglo-Sikh wars, the Sikhs' loyal service in the British Indian army through two world wars, the rupture of Jallianwala Bagh, the freedom movement, Partition, the Punjabi Suba agitation, the Anandpur Sahib resolution, Blue Star, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the decade of militancy, and the community's recovery. Few histories attempt so long an arc in so readable a form.

Singh's theme throughout is survival as a distinct community: how a small religious minority preserved its identity through empire, partition and the pressures of the modern Indian state. His tone is sympathetic but unsparing — admirers and critics alike note that he does not flatter his subjects.

The author

Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) was born in Hadali (now Pakistan), educated at St Stephen's College, Delhi, Government College, Lahore and King's College London, and served in India's foreign service before becoming the country's most famous columnist ('With Malice Towards One and All'). His novels include Train to Pakistan (1956), I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale (1959) and Delhi (1990); his autobiography was Truth, Love and a Little Malice (2002). He sat in the Rajya Sabha from 1980 to 1986 and died in 2014 at ninety-nine.

Reception & legacy

The Times of India called the volumes 'the indispensable reference point for... a historical and sociological understanding of the Sikh tradition... a tribute to [the] capacity for both a sympathetic and a balanced rendition of Sikh history'; the Sunday Mail praised Singh for 'turning dry history into informed reading.' The book remains the standard one-volume (in two) history assigned to general readers, journalists and students approaching Sikh history for the first time — the starting point from which academic specialists then argue.

Read it if...

you want one book that covers five centuries of Sikh history without drowning you; you are reading Train to Pakistan and want the history behind the novel; or you need the background to everything from Ranjit Singh to 1984 in a single, readable narrative.