Chapter 6 Religions of South Asia 229Sikhs instantly identifiable ever since: “Five K’s”—kesh (uncut hair), kangra (a
wooden brush for the hair), kirpan (dagger), kacha (distinctive undergarments),
and kara (steel bracelet). The even more distinctive Sikh turban was not one of
the Five K’s but became a unique additional marker of identity. No one dressed
like this could be mistaken for a Hindu. There is a this-worldly asceticism here,
but no renunciation. These symbols were clearly militant, signaling a strongly
masculine culture that would defend its community against the Mughal state.
For Sikhs, it added a sense of military self-discipline to the spiritual one coming
from Guru Nanak, and over the next centuries Sikhs became a powerful and
dominant community in the northwest of India.
Guru Gobind Singh’s sons were killed in the course of fighting against the
Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, and the Tenth Guru himself was killed by a Mus-
lim assassin. Realizing that their spiritual leaders were marked and vulnerable
in the prevailing politics of North India, and that anyway it was not the Gurus
themselves but the collective teachings coming down from Guru Nanak that
was the core of the faith, ultimate Sikh authority was transferred to the sacred
book, the Guru Granth Sahib, which contained the writings of Guru Nanak,
Guru Arjun, Guru Tegh Bahadur, and Guru Gobind Singh. This sacred book is
addressed as a Guru itself: Sri Guru Granth Sahib, always placed on a dais
under a canopy in Sikh gurdwaras, where a living Guru might sit.
These organizational changes had important political consequences. The
Sikhs were far from just a religious sect, followers of a founding sant. Because
of their militancy, the mass conversion of a cohesive caste, the Jats, and the eco-
nomic power of the Jat Sikhs, by the eighteenth century numerous small Sikh
kingdoms dotted the Punjab region, competing with small Rajput and Muslim
states. At the end of the eighteenth century, these kingdoms were united into a
single Sikh Empire by Ranjit Singh, the “Lion of the Punjab” (as a historical
reference point, Ranjit Singh was a contemporary of Napoleon). From a start-
ing point in Lahore (now Pakistan), he led his Khalsa Sikh army in conquests
from Kabul to Kashmir. The Sikh Empire controlled a region covering most of
northern modern Pakistan and the Indian Himalayan states. He was a foe of
the Mughals but made friends with the British, with whom they made an
agreement to consider the Sutlej River a boundary between their competing
interests. After Ranjit Singh’s death, the empire weakened and eventually was
absorbed into British India. The Sikhs were admired by the British for their
many virtues, especially their military discipline, and they became the core of
the British Indian army.
In the 1970s and 1980s a Sikh nationalist movement began agitation for an
independent state known as Khalistan, inspired by the old Sikh Empire, the
creation of Pakistan, and the reorganization of the Indian states along linguistic
lines. The movement received much enthusiastic support from the one million
diaspora Sikhs who lived in the UK, the US, and other parts of Asia. Militant
separatists in the state of Punjab clashed with the Indian government, which
finally, in 1984, raided the Golden Temple, where militants were sheltering and