People & Histories
1845–1918

The Anglo-Sikh Wars and Sikhs in the British Empire

Britain defeats the Sikh kingdom in two hard-fought wars and annexes Punjab in 1849; within a generation Sikhs become a mainstay of the British Indian Army, from Saragarhi to the trenches of the First World War.

  • Sikh Wars — Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)
  • A History of the Sikhs (2 vols, 2nd edition) — Khushwant Singh, Oxford University Press (2004)
  • Empire, Faith & War: The Sikhs and World War One — UK Punjab Heritage Association (2014)
  • The Voyage of the Komagata Maru: The Sikh Challenge to Canada's Colour Bar (expanded edition) — Hugh Johnston, UBC Press (2014)
  • The Sikh Diaspora: The Search for Statehood — Darshan Singh Tatla, UCL Press (1999)

Well established warcolonialismempiremigration

Two wars and an annexation

After Ranjit Singh’s death the Sikh army, the Khalsa army, dominated a weakened court in Lahore. In December 1845 it crossed the Sutlej and fought the British East India Company in the First Anglo-Sikh War. The battles of Mudki, Ferozeshah and Sobraon were among the bloodiest the British fought in India, and Sikhs have long believed they were lost through the treachery of their own commanders, a view many historians share at least in part.

  • Sikh Wars — Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)
  • A History of the Sikhs (2 vols, 2nd edition) — Khushwant Singh, Oxford University Press (2004)
A second war in 1848–49, including the battle of Chillianwala, ended in British victory at Gujrat, and Punjab was annexed on 29 March 1849.
The boy Maharaja, Duleep Singh, aged ten, was deposed, separated from his mother Rani Jind Kaur, converted to Christianity and taken to England; the Koh-i-Noor went to Queen Victoria. Later in life he reconverted to Sikhism and tried in vain to return.
  • A History of the Sikhs (2 vols, 2nd edition) — Khushwant Singh, Oxford University Press (2004)
  • The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)

The soldiers of the Raj

Many Sikh soldiers sided with the British in the uprising of 1857, and afterwards the British came to favour Sikhs, along with Punjabi Muslims, Gurkhas and others, as a so-called “martial race”. Recruits were required to keep the Khalsa form, so army service reinforced the turban and uncut hair.

  • The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)
  • The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition — Harjot Oberoi, University of Chicago Press (1994)
At Saragarhi on the North-West Frontier, on 12 September 1897, 21 soldiers of the 36th Sikhs held a signal post against thousands of tribesmen until all were killed; the day is still commemorated in the Indian Army and in Britain.
In the First World War, Sikhs, about 2% of India’s population, made up roughly a fifth of the British Indian Army; some 100,000 or more served in France, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia and East Africa.

Out into the world

Soldiers and ex-soldiers also began to travel, to Malaya, Hong Kong, East Africa and North America. In 1914 the Komagata Maru carried 376 passengers from Punjab, most of them Sikhs, to Vancouver, challenging Canada’s rule that immigrants must arrive by “continuous journey” from their homeland. Only about 20 were allowed to land; after two months the ship was forced back to India, where at Budge Budge near Calcutta police opened fire and about 20 passengers were killed. Canada’s prime minister formally apologised in Parliament in 2016.

  • The Voyage of the Komagata Maru: The Sikh Challenge to Canada's Colour Bar (expanded edition) — Hugh Johnston, UBC Press (2014)
  • Prime Minister delivers apology in House of Commons for the Komagata Maru incident — Prime Minister of Canada (2016)
  • The Sikh Diaspora: The Search for Statehood — Darshan Singh Tatla, UCL Press (1999)

Why it matters today

Sikhism

The British era explains a great deal about Sikhs today: their pride in military service and the Saragarhi story; the turbaned Sikh soldier remembered on Western Front memorials; the poignant story of the last Maharaja, Duleep Singh, exiled to England; and the first journeys abroad that seeded the diaspora, along with the racism they met, as in the Komagata Maru affair of 1914.