L - Gurmat Veechar

Sarkar-i-Khalsa because of the debt he owed to the Khalsa and
the Guru whose century-old struggle and vision had catapulted
him to the position of a sovereign ruler of the Punjab. Shah
Mohammed himself takes note of the Sikh identity by using the
word Singh frequently. His laudatory references to the Khalsa
leave no doubt that Khalsa had come to symbolise the Punjabi
pride during his period. His general reference to the existence
of two communites in Punjab Le. Hindu and Muslim in no way
merges the Sikhs within the Hindu social order. We fmd
references by the British chroniclers also wherein Sarkar-i­
Khalsa is described as a Hindu state. Such references are casual
and reflect only lack of knowledge about ground realities and
unique position of the Sikhs in the Indian sub-continent. We need
not refer to such things while looking around in search of a
Punjabi identity as compared to Bengali, Tamil, Gujrati or Oriya
identities. The only comparison that one can think of and that
can sustain with the Punjabi-Sikh identity is Maharashtra-Maratha,
Rajasthan-Rajput identities. Here also the presence of the Sikhs
in Punjab as a distinct community, with an independent religious
system of their own in their own right and identification of the
Hindus with their majority co-religionists in the rest of India and
the Muslims with the erstwhile ruling class makes the question
of Punjabi regional identity altogether different and more
complex.
However, the project of rendition ofjangnamah into Hindi
and English undertaken by Mr. P.K. Nijhawan more as a mission,
is unique in another respect also. Shah Mohammed represents
the ethos of post-Ranjit Singh Punjab and the impact of Ranjit
Singh's rule on Punjabi society is well brought out by him in
the jangnamah. No doubt, Shah Mohammed's jangnamah
describes the elan of the masses of the Punjab as a whole, who
had then come to identify themselves with Khalsa-]i-Ke-Bol-Bale.
He looks unto Ranjit Singh and the Khalsa as symbols of Punjabi
glory, condemns traitors like Gulab Singh and also does not
spare the Sikh Sardars like Lehna Singh Majithia, who despite
their capabilities, did not rise to the occasion and preferred to
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