L - Gurmat Veechar

Ranjit Singh had not many such precedents to draw upon
except form what had happened under Ahmed Shah Abdali only
a few decades earlier. On two separate occasions, the leading
citizens of Lahore had come together and surrendered
voluntarily, so to speak, to the Sikh Misals. On both occasions,
the issue was whether to fight the Misals or agree to their
takeover. While in the first round, it might have been a gamble,
when it came to the second round, the citizens had had the
experience of how the Khalsa Misals had run the city during the
brief period that they had at their disposal. They were absolutely
fair and firm. Strict law and order was maintained and no highhandedness
of any kind was permitted or perpetrated. To put
it no more strongly, this was exactly in accordance with the
teachings of the tenth guru. It was this tradition which Ranjit
Singh decided to carry forward. Also, his own political astuteness
persuaded him to learn from the past experience and evolve a
model of governance in which the Muslims who constituted the
overwhelming majority, came to look upon him as their well
wisher and benefactor. Even today, one of the Punjabi heroes
recalled from time to time in Pakistan, is Ranjit Singh. No one
thinks of him as having been hostile or adverse in any way. There
was complete identification between him and the people he
ruled. Shah Mohammed's poem is a testimony to what happened.
That he continued to be remembered and revered even several
years after he had been dead and his successors had messed
up the governance of the state, was a tribute to his administration
and the legacy that he had left behind.
It is generally conceded that, apart from direct historical
evidence, literature is a rich source ofsocial history. This poem by
Shah Mohammed makes it abundantly clear that there was no lack
of trust between the way Ranjit Singh governed and those who
were governed. The norms of how people were governed in
medieval times were very different from what they are today.
During those days, no one expected it to function like a
contemporary welfare state as is the general expectation today. In
those lawless days, Ranjit Singh seems to have treated his subjects
(3)