novel direction and form given to it by

Guru Gobind Singh.” 1.

Sikhs alone are the indigenous offspring of the land of Punjab. In this respect the Sikh nation is unique indeed. Neither Hindus (Aryan or Dravidian), nor the faithful of the Prophet of Arabia, nor any other people, who, over the centuries have descended upon the fertile plains of north Western India, can claim the Punjab as their homeland. Only the Sikhs, by their very birth in the land of the five rivers and their rise to power there, are entitled to make this claim. Thus, in historical terms Sikhs and the Punjab are interchangeable elements.

Sikhs are the true sons of this land: the Punjab. On 1ith November 1761, Sikhs defeated and killed the foreign Afghan and conquered Lahore, the capital of Punjab. 2. And the Sikhs thereupon proclaimed their own “Sultan-ul-Qaum”” (King) in 1761.3: On 19th May, 1765, Sikhs re-conquered Lahore. They struck new coins, in the name of the Sikh Gurus. The inscription on the coinage read:

“Guru Gobind Singh received from Nanak the

‘Daig’, the ‘sword’ and swift ‘victory’.

These terms are symbolic of the spirit of Sikhs, that is:

  1. To share with fellow-man;
  2. To assert manliness;
  3. To achieve spiritual and temporal supremacy.

Eventually, a confederation of twelve Sikh bands, or ‘Misels”, each led by its own SIRDAR, joined forces under the Sikh Sovereign, Ranjit Singh. Ranjit Singh occupied Lahore on 7th. July, 1799. Sikhs were thus able to establish a sovereign Sikh Kingdom which they ruled for the next fifty years. The Sikh Kingdom of Punjab stretched right up to the Khyber Pass and included what has been the north western frontier province (now in Pakistan), as well as all of Jammu and Kashmir, in fact all the country generally between the Indus and Sutlej rivers in north western India. The territory across and to the east of Sutlej River was already occupied by smaller Sikh princes and chiefs of the Sikh states, who formed a buffer between the British in Delhi and the Sikh sovereign Kingdom of the Punjab.

In no other period in history have Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs lived together in such amity and peace as they did in the Sikh Kingdom

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  1. Sri Aurobindo Ghosh, Foundation of Indian Culture, Sikh Review.
  2. The period coincides approximately with that of the successful struggle of the American colonists to establish their independence from Britain during the reign of George III.
  3. Jassa Singh Ahluwalia