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Ranjit Singh had not many such precedents to draw upon<br />
except form what had happened under Ahmed Shah Abdali only<br />
a few decades earlier. On two separate occasions, the leading<br />
citizens of Lahore had come together and surrendered<br />
voluntarily, so to speak, to the Sikh Misals. On both occasions,<br />
the issue was whether to fight the Misals or agree to their<br />
takeover. While in the first round, it might have been a gamble,<br />
when it came to the second round, the citizens had had the<br />
experience of how the Khalsa Misals had run the city during the<br />
brief period that they had at their disposal. They were absolutely<br />
fair and firm. Strict law and order was maintained and no highhandedness<br />
of any kind was permitted or perpetrated. To put<br />
it no more strongly, this was exactly in accordance with the<br />
teachings of the tenth guru. It was this tradition which Ranjit<br />
Singh decided to carry forward. Also, his own political astuteness<br />
persuaded him to learn from the past experience and evolve a<br />
model of governance in which the Muslims who constituted the<br />
overwhelming majority, came to look upon him as their well<br />
wisher and benefactor. Even today, one of the Punjabi heroes<br />
recalled from time to time in Pakistan, is Ranjit Singh. No one<br />
thinks of him as having been hostile or adverse in any way. There<br />
was complete identification between him and the people he<br />
ruled. Shah Mohammed's poem is a testimony to what happened.<br />
That he continued to be remembered and revered even several<br />
years after he had been dead and his successors had messed<br />
up the governance of the state, was a tribute to his administration<br />
and the legacy that he had left behind.<br />
It is generally conceded that, apart from direct historical<br />
evidence, literature is a rich source ofsocial history. This poem by<br />
Shah Mohammed makes it abundantly clear that there was no lack<br />
of trust between the way Ranjit Singh governed and those who<br />
were governed. The norms of how people were governed in<br />
medieval times were very different from what they are today.<br />
During those days, no one expected it to function like a<br />
contemporary welfare state as is the general expectation today. In<br />
those lawless days, Ranjit Singh seems to have treated his subjects<br />
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