(This write-up of mine about Sardar Thakur Singh Sandhawalia he founder – President of the Singh Sabha, was published in The Tribune dated July 28, 1991.)
During the regime of Maharaja Ranjit Singh the number of the Sikhs, estimated at 10 millions, dwindled to merely 1,141,848 in Punjab 1868. The English rulers guessed that with the passage of time the Sikh symbols would slowly disappear and the community would eventually relapse into Hinduism. New cultural factors entered Punjabi life with the coming of the British to the Indian scene. These factors, English education, the knowledge of western sciences and Christian proselytization initiated a far-reaching process o interaction. The following excerpt from the Punjab administration report for 1851-1852 is of great relevance:
“The Sikh faith and ecclesiastical polity is rapidly going where the Sikh political ascendancy has already gone. Of the two elements in the old Khalsa, namely the followers of Nanuck, the first prophet and the followers of Guru Gobind Singh, the second great religious leader, the former will hold their ground and the latter will lose it.
Sardar Thakur Singh Sandhawalia
The Sikhs of Nanuck, a comparatively small body of peaceful habits and old family, will perhaps cling to the faith of their fathers; but the Sikhs of Govind Singh who are of more recent origin, who are more specially styled the Singhs or ‘lions’, and who embraced the faith as being the religion of warfare and conquest, no longer regard the Khalsa now that the prestige has departed from it. These men joined the thousands, and they now desert in equal numbers. They rejoin the ranks of Hinduism whence they originally came, and they bring up their children as Hindus. The sacred tank at Amritsar is less thronged than formerly, and the attendance at the annual festivals is diminishing yearly. The initiatory ceremony for adult persons is now rarely performed.”
The conversion of Maharaja Dalip Singh to Christianity in 1853 gave grievous shock to the Sikhs. Initially, most of the early Sikh converts to Christianity were from the lower strata of society, but later on many well-to-do (Jats and Kshatriyas) Sikhs accepted Christianity. Moreover, there was also a Challenge from the Arya Samaj. The fall in numbers supported the dismal prognostications about the final eclipse of the Sikh faith. A demographical detail was worked out by the British in 1855 in respect of Lahore division. There were only about 200,000 Sikhs to an aggregate population of about three million. These figures related to the Majha region, known as the central home of the Sikhs. The following comment on this point is from the Punjab administration report for 1855-1856:
“This circumstance strongly corroborates what is commonly believed namely that the ‘Sikh tribe’ is losing its number rapidly. Modern Sikhism was little more than a political association (formed exclusively from among Hindus), which men would join or quit according to the circumstances of the day. A person is not born a Sikh, as he might be born a Muhammadan or born a Hindu; but he must be specially initiated into Sikhism.
Now that the Sikh commonwealth is broken up, people cease to be initiated into Sikhism and revert to Hinduism. Such s the undoubted explanation of a statistical fact, which might otherwise appear to be hardly credible.”
In the beginning of 1873 four students of the Mission School at Amritsar – Aya Singh, Attar Singh, Sadhu Singh and Santokh Singh – dicided to embrace Christianity. At this, the Sikhs falt jolted and called a meeting at Amritsar the same year to devise ways and means to check such occurrences. The meeting was presided over by Sardar Thakur Singh Sandhawalia. Among the others present were Baba Khem Singh Bedi and Kanwar Bikram Singh Ahluwalia of Kapurthala. Several Sikh theologians, including Gyani Gyan Singh, also took part in its deliberations. As a result, a society named Sri Guru Singh Sabha was formed with S. Thakur ingh Sandhawalia and Gyani Gyan Singh as its President ad Secretary respectively.
Accordingly to Prof. Harbans Singh, an eminent Sikh scholar and the Editor – in – Chief of the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, Sardar Sandhawalia was the main force behind the Singh Sabha movement for modern education among the Sikhs. Sardar sandhanwalia (1837 – 1887) was a noted scholar and was one of the few men of his time who knew both the classical languages of the East – Sanskrit and Arabic. He started a monumental work on the history of Punjab and wrote a treatise on diabetes.
Apart from his role in the Sikh renaissance, Thakur Singh Sandhawalia was the brain behind the movement for the restoration of Maharaja Daleep Singh, the deposed Sikh sovereign. To avoid arrest by British, he escaped to the French territory of Pondichery where he received from Maharaja Duleep Singh, then in Moscow, the title and seal of the Prime Minister of the émigré Sikh Government.
On January 9, 1908, Sardar Sunder Singh Majithia (1872 – 1941) called the first meeting of Sikh leaders which led to the formation o the Sikh Educational Conference. It was attended by Sardar Majithia, Bhai Vir Singh, S. Gurcharan Singh, S. Tarlochan Singh, S. Takhat Singh, S. Jogendra Singh, and others. The aims and objectives of the Sikh Educational Conference were the creation of love for education, the establishment of educational institutions on modern lines and modernization of the existing institutions. It also aimed at the encouragement of education among women, the promotion of religious education, the encouragement o the Punjabi language in Gurumukhi script, the promotion of Sikh literature and Gurbani, the spread of modern sciences and technology, the award of scholarships and stipends to poor and intelligent Sikh students, etc.
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