The Road to Empire: The Political Education of Khalsa Sikhs in the Late 1600s

By: Satnam Singh

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Synopsis: From the late seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century, the Sikh community transformed from a relatively insignificant religious minority to an elevated position of kingship and empire. Under the leadership of Guru Gobind Singh (1661–1708), Sikh elites and peasants began to align themselves with discourses of power and authority, and within a few decades Khalsa Sikh warriors conquered some of the wealthiest provinces of the Mughal and Afghan empires. In this book, Satnam Singh argues that the Sikhs’ increasing self-assertion was not simply a reaction to Mughal persecution but also a result of an active program initiated by the Guru to pursue larger visions of scholarship, conquest, and political sovereignty. Using a vast trove of understudied court literature, Singh shows how Sikhs grappled with Indo-Islamic traditions to forge their own unique ideas of governance and kingship with the aim to establish an independent Sikh polity. The Road to Empire offers an impressive intellectual history of the early modern Sikh world.