The story
In July 1799 Ranjit Singh, a 19-year-old chief of the Sukerchakia misl, one of the Sikh war bands of the Punjab, takes Lahore from rival Sikh chiefs, and he is proclaimed maharaja in 1801. Over the next 40 years he builds a state that covers the Punjab, Multan, Kashmir and Peshawar, ruling from Lahore until his death in 1839.
After the death of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1707, Mughal power in the Punjab weakened, and was battered by invasions from Persia and Afghanistan. The Sikh Khalsa, founded in 1699, formed into misls, which grew into a loose confederacy. Ranjit Singh united them under one monarchy, kept the Khalsa army but modernized it with French and Italian officers, and drove back the Afghans, taking Multan in 1818, Kashmir in 1819 and Peshawar in 1834. He signed the Treaty of Amritsar with the British in 1809, which fixed the Sutlej as the boundary between them. He gilded the Golden Temple in Amritsar and kept Muslims and Hindus in high office. After his death, courtiers and the army fought for power. Two Anglo-Sikh wars followed, in 1845 to 1846 and 1848 to 1849, and Britain annexed the Punjab in March 1849, taking the Koh-i-Noor diamond. It was one of the last major Indian states to fall to British control.
Why it mattered
- It created the one Sikh state, a point of pride for Sikh identity and political memory.
- Its annexation in 1849 completed British control of the Indian subcontinent and brought the Punjab into British India.
- It prompted the British to recruit Sikhs in large numbers into the Indian army.
- It stopped Afghan expansion and fixed the frontier at the Khyber Pass for decades.
Sources
- Ranjit Singh Britannica
- Sikh Wars Britannica
- Ranjit Singh EBSCO Research Starters
Community notes
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