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The majority of histories dealing with the Sikh people underscore a Sikh inclination for martyrdom or sahidi, as well as a deep reverence for the Sikh martyr or sahid. Indeed, such profound esteem is featured in the contemporary Sikh prayer, ardas. Similarly, many Sikh histories present the sahid and sahidi ideally, as concepts which have always been understood as they are understood today, concepts encountered and elaborated in the very hymns of Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh tradition. This study interrogates such conclusions by first examining the sources dealing with the putative first martyrdom in Sikhism, and then asking whether there existed within the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Sikh tradition a conceptual system which could accommodate fearless resistance to despotic authority and an agonizing death. Finally, the study examines references to martyrs in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Sikh literature. This paper locates the origins of the Sikh concept of martyrdom not in the period of the first nine Gurus (1469-1675 C.E.) but in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, as a consequence of the social, religious, and political environment. It is this period, moreover, that shapes the definitions of both martyr and martyrdom that we find in the early to late nineteenth century, ones far more inclusive than contemporary definitions of these terms allow.
In the early days of my life I heard much about Shahid Bhagat Singh and Baba Dip Singh in dhadhi gatherings. Wherever there were such gatherings I used to attend. I've always listened to [dhadhi ] songs. Listening to them gave me a lot of strength. Listening to our people's history is important to us.1
IN 1739 NADIR SHAH, the emperor of Persia, was returning to Iran after having sacked Delhi. According to Rattan Singh Bhangu's mid-nineteenth-century Gur-panth Prakas (The History of the Guru's Community), the shah, during his brief stop in Punjab, was greatly annoyed at the losses Punjabi highwaymen were inflicting upon his booty-laden baggage trains. Incensed at their audacity, the shah asked Zakariya Khan, the governor of Lahore, to describe the perpetrators of these daring raids. The governor's answer, according to Bhangu, noted the endurance and rare courage of these bandits; their ability to bear all the punishment he could muster and yet,...