Jackson Lennock
Well-known member
So this is what the Sikh empire would look like?
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WI: Sikh Empire conquers Sindh
- Thread starter SinghSong
- Start date
Pretty much. Though in this scenario, Bahawalpur would almost certainly be butterflied away from becoming a British princely state in this scenario, and remain a vassal state of the Sikh Empire instead, unless the British were willing to fight an early Anglo-Sikh War to 'liberate it', along with the portion of Sindh east of Indus; all of which, south of Khairpur, was ruled over by the Mankani branch of the Talpur dynasty, whose ruler was a vocal ally of Maharajah Ranjit Singh and the Sukerchakia dynasty.
So that's pretty much what the Sikh Empire would be most likely to look like immediately prior to the 1857 Great Mutiny, or its equivalent ITTL, in the event that British East India Company refused to take the changes to the status quo caused by the POD lying down, and having subsequently fought alternate Anglo-Sikh War/s, or initiated conflicts between (or within, if one counts coups and civil wars) its proxies and those of the Sikh Empire by then, in order to 'liberate' Bahawalpur and Khairpur, and with Mir Sher Muhammad Talpur in Mirpur Khas having either been forced to withdraw with his troops to take sanctuary in the Sikh Empire or still leading an active counter-insurgency effort. Or, if the red border's still the border of British India, with the two states in-between still deemed to be nominally independent in spite of their 'Sikh princely state' status.
In the case of Khairpur, if Mir Ali Murad does successfully escape across the border to seek refuge with the British after the initial POD, restoring him to power in (Eastern) Sindh's likely to effectively take precedence for the BEIC, especially for individuals within its administration such as Napier, over restoring Shah Shuja Durrani to the throne of Afghanistan ITTL. Since, with both the Bolan and Khyber Passes firmly under the control of the Sikhs, any plans to do so would either be forced to be indefinitely placed on hold (and thus butterfly away the First Anglo-Afghan War), or would necessitate maintaining a friendlier, closer alliance with the Sikh Empire in order to carry it out. How much might the butterflies of the Sikhs' expansion into Sindh affect other events following on from it, in the wider region and the 'Great Game'?
IOTL, the British chose to pursue the 1st Anglo-Afghan War primarily out of fear that the ruler of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammed Khan, and the Qajar Ruler of Iran, would form an alliance, with one another and with Russia, to invade and extinguish Sikh rule in Punjab, with the over-riding fear that an invading Islamic army would kick off an uprising in India by the people and the princely states. Dost Mohammad had recently lost Peshawar to the Sikh Empire, and was willing to form an alliance with Britain if they gave support to retake it, but the British were unwilling to do so. Considering the Dal Khalsa Sikh army to be a far more formidable threat than the Afghans who did not have a well-disciplined army, Lord Auckland preferred an alliance with the Sikhs over an alliance with Afghanistan, with far too much mutual enmity between the two to ally with both at the same time; and after Dost Mohammed Khan invited Count Witkiewicz to Kabul (as a way to frighten the British into making an alliance with him against his archenemy Ranjit Singh, not because he really wanted an alliance with Russia- believing that only the British had the power to compel Singh to return the former Afghan territories he had conquered, whereas the Russians did not), his political advisers exaggerated the threat, with the resulting diplomatic fallout ultimately resulting in the issuing of the Simla Declaration, which condemned Dost Mohammed Khan for making "an unprovoked attack on the empire of our ancient ally, Maharaja Ranjit Singh", and effectively declared war on the Sikhs' behalf.
ITTL, relations between the Sikhs and British would likely take a bit of a hit initially, but the Dal Khalsa would most likely be perceived as being even more formidable in the eyes of Lord Auckland and the British, with the BEIC even less likely to favor an alliance with Afghanistan over an alliance with the Sikhs after having been deprived of a direct border between Afghanistan's territories and its own by the Sikhs' acquisition of Shikarpur and control over access to the Bolan Pass ITTL. The British envoy, Alexander Burnes, was only dispatched by the company to Kabul on their political mission to form an alliance with Amir Dost Mohammad Khan against Russia in 1836 IOTL, after having successfully coordinated the Rupur Summit (the first meeting of Maharaja Ranjit Singh with a sitting commander of British forces in India, Governor General Lord William Bentinck) in Oct 1831, with his and Henry Pottinger's surveys of the Indus river on that visit having prepared the way for a future assault on the Sindh to clear a path towards Central Asia. ITTL though, any attempts to clear said path via the Sindh have been stymied by the Sikhs getting there first; would he still even be granted permission at Ludhiana to proceed on his political mission to Dost Mohammed Khan at Kabul ITTL? And even if he is, Burnes advised Lord Auckland to support Dost Mohammed on the throne of Kabul, but the viceroy preferred to follow the opinion of Sir William Hay Macnaghten and attempt to reinstate Shah Shuja instead IOTL; ITTL, without the pivotal role he played in facilitating the British conquest of Sindh, wouldn't Auckland be even less likely to listen to his advice, and support the reinstatement of Shah Shuja over Dost Mohammed Khan?
And without Sindh in British hands, Eldred Pottinger (John Pottinger's nephew) probably never makes it into Herat, via the Bolan Pass as he did IOTL, in time to be in the city and appointed in a full advisory role prior to the Siege of Herat. Without him there to assist in shoring up its defences, Herat's a lot more likely to fall to the Russian-backed Qajar Dynasty of Persia in the months prior to the lifting of said siege IOTL (with Polish General Isidor Borowski, who'd played a pivotal role in the modernization of the Iranian army, also markedly likelier to survive his assault on the markedly weaker fortifications there). And if Herat does fall, and 'Eastern Khorasan' is recaptured by Qajar Iran at this juncture, then the Sikh Empire'd basically be the BEIC's last remaining meaningful buffer state against a potentially imminent Persian and/or Russian invasion of India. Would the British be willing to risk jeopardizing that, and undermining the Sikh Empire's integrity, after that point?
Jackson Lennock
Well-known member
Does Herat falling necessarily mean that Kabul falls as well?
A map like this seems plenty possible. Qajar Persia controls most of Balochistan and Herat, but the Emirate of Afghanistan would still stand.
Looking at a topographical map - it seems plenty possible that Herat and Afghan Balochistan would be the extent of Qajar Persia's advance. I suppose Kandahar and Quetta would be areas the Qajar dynasty could try for though.
A map like this seems plenty possible. Qajar Persia controls most of Balochistan and Herat, but the Emirate of Afghanistan would still stand.
Looking at a topographical map - it seems plenty possible that Herat and Afghan Balochistan would be the extent of Qajar Persia's advance. I suppose Kandahar and Quetta would be areas the Qajar dynasty could try for though.
In this sort of scenario though, you wouldn't expect the British to be happy about Qajar Persia, especially one that's more closely aligned with the Russians than IOTL, controlling as much of Balochistan as it does on that map; no way they'd be content settling for just the port city of Gwadar, as an isolated enclave on its own, when they have clear naval superiority, when Oman's been its de-facto vassal state since 1800, and when the map of the Sultanate of Oman's control at the time looked like this, thanks to a lease agreement with Persia whereby they controlled the coastal stretch of some 100 miles from Sadij to Khamir, and inland about 30 miles, as far as Shamil, as well as controlling the islands of Hormuz and Qeshm.
The Persians attempted to oust the Omanis in 1823, but the sultan managed to keep his hold on Bandar through bribery and tribute of the governor of Shiraz; whilst in 1845–46, an army under the governor-general of Fars menaced Bandar to extort tribute, while another army under the governor of Kerman besieged Minab. The Omanis threatened to blockade Persia, but the British resident at Bushir convinced them to back down. The Persians recovered the city of Bandar Abbas in 1854, while the sultan was in Zanzibar; but under British pressure following the Anglo-Persian War in 1856, Persia renewed Oman's lease on favorable terms, before they finally revoked it in 1868, citing a clause which permitted its termination if the sultan of Oman were overthrown.
IOTL, when the British received word of the Siege of Herat, realising the impracticality of sending a force across Afghanistan (which would be entirely impossible ITTL), they sent a naval expedition to the Persian Gulf and on June 19, 1838 occupied Kharg Island, only returning it after the Persians backed down and lifted the siege. If the Persians have already taken Herat though, and refuse to return it, would the British return Kharg Island, or retain it? And what of the rest of the strip under Oman's nominal authority, whose foreign affairs are controlled entirely by the British? A map like that does seem possible, but it'd have to involve the British screwing up badly enough to lose all of that (whilst still somehow managing to hold onto Gwadar alone), or agreeing to let it all go back to Persia. And rather than the Khanate of Kalat being conquered in its entirety by Qajar Persia, I think you'd most likely see a divide similar to this, with a reduced Kalat actively seeking protectorate status either from the British or its new eastern neighbor after receiving word of the losses of Makran, Kharan and the Chagai regions, and being more likely than not to get it (with all of its territory being too vast, inhospitable and lacking in transport infrastructure for the Persians, or anyone else, to have a chance of conquering it all in a single campaign):
So a map like that first one does seem fairly possible, though if it were my TL, I'd change the colors of Bahawalpur, rump-remnant Kalat (as shown above), and Eastern Sindh as well, to pale lavender, reflecting their status. IMHO though, the British'd really have to drop the ball not to at least attempt to hold onto and reinforce at least the most strategically important of the Sultanate of Oman's pre-existing holdings north of the Strait of Hormuz in this scenario, centered around Bandar Abbas. At least, that's how I reckon the map'd look like c.1850 ITTL. Though there'd be plenty of time and room for plenty of changes to the map after that point...
BTW, another thing worth mentioning, with regards to what a Sikh Empire with access to a deep sea port and marine trade would do with it; Maharajah Ranjit Singh prioritized the development of the river trade network, which became increasingly important over the course of his reign, to the detriment of modernizing and developing the road network. Having inherited the Mughal-era Karkhana system, which years of Afghan terror had brought to a halt, he immediately handed all state-owned Karkhanas ('workshops' or 'store houses') over to Fakir Azizuddin for management; who set about attempting to modernize them. Those Karkhanas deemed to be critical establishments, connected to the military, remained in state control, and each had a European entasked with managing it, as its 'Darogah', with the goal of disseminating their skills to their employees, whilst those in sectors such as textiles, leather, wooden goods, pottery and paper-making remained in private hands (typically, those of members of the newly-emerging Sikh aristocracy, paralleling the founding and growth of Zaibatsu conglomerates in Japan). And new Karkhanas being established as required, the largest of which were created in Lahore, Multan, Amritsar, Leiah (Layyah) and Shujabad, with political stability and security playing a crucial role in providing an enabling environment.
All officials were strictly instructed to assist traders and manufacturers, with the major port of Lahore further transporting goods onto the rivers from the inland portions of the Sikh Empire's heartland, the Bari Doab. And one of the primary reasons for General Ventura's rapid accumulation of power and influence, to the extent that he swiftly overtook his formal senior and leader General Allard as the unofficial leader of the Fauj-i-Khas and of the 'French Brigade' in the Sikh Court, was the wealth which he garnered after being installed as the Darogah of a shipping Karkhana in the early 1830s, on account of his prior experience as a ship-broker in Constantinople (where he'd been forced to change his name from Rubino to Jean-Baptiste to hide his Jewish origins)- assigned to manufacture steam boats to carry goods and products up and down the rivers, as well as to negotiate deals with the buyers and charterers of these boats. And with this Karkana under his effective control, Ventura rapidly became the richest and most influential European in the Sikh Empire.
He lived in style in a modest residence known as Anarkali House, combining European and Persian architectural elements, and decorated with Persian and Kashmiri rugs of great beauty strewn on the floors, which he built on the ruins of a Mughal palace, in close proximity to the Tomb of Anarkali (which was itself converted into a residence for his Armenian wife Anna Moses, whom he'd married in Ludhiana, and their only child, his daughter Victorine Ventura), surrounded by a garden known as Anarkali Garden, where he was typically given the honour of receiving foreign dignitaries, especially Europeans, visiting the Sikh court; with the traveler Baron Charles von Hügel, upon his visit to Lahore in 1836, remarking that "General Ventura's house, built by himself, though of no great size, combines the splendor of the east with the comforts of European residence". And this is still in use today, largely unchanged- acquired from Ventura (who'd by that stage abandoned the Punjab, along with the rest of the 'French Brigade', after Maharajah Sher Singh's assassination; returning to Europe and taking up residence in Paris, where he subsequently lost most of the fortune he'd amassed in unsuccessful commercial enterprises) by the British, his residence became the British Residency after the First Anglo-Sikh War, being moderately extended and becoming the Secretariat of the Government of the Punjab in 1871, with the building still serving as the office of the Chief Secretary of the Punjab in Pakistan to this day.
Kashmiri shawls and textiles were very much in vogue back in Europe, and whilst William Moorcroft's study of their manufacture, during his year-long stay there in 1822, had disseminated many of their patterns such as the 'Paisley' design back to Europe to be manufactured there, they were still very much the height of fashion culture there, in France and in Paris in particular. And whilst the British East India Company dominated the maritime trade between India and Europe, Ventura's Karkhana granted him a near-monopoly over the river trade in Kashmir shawls, and all other Punjabi exports of note, from the Sikh Empire to the British East India Company via Ludhiana and the European export market- earning the title/nickname of 'Count de Mandi', by which he was generally known in France and the UK after going on a diplomatic mission to Paris and London in 1837 (but being recalled to Lahore in 1838 before he had time to visit his family back in Italy), not after the eponymous Rajahnate of Mandi (with Ventura only commanding a campaign in the Simla Hill States several years later, in 1841) but as a pun to reflect his role as a trade broker, with Mandi translating as 'Market'.
And Ventura also sought to remedy Maharajah Ranjit Singh's blind spot, with regard to building better roads and increasing returns on investment by improving labor mobility; employing a fellow Italian, Jules Bianchi, in 1835 as a road engineer, who proved himself by constructing a road from General Ventura's house to the Fort in Lahore (Lahore's famous Mall Road, which the British would later establish Lahore's most prominent government institutions and commercial enterprises along the flanks of under their rule, and still serves as the epicentre of Lahore's civil administration, as well as one of its most fashionable commercial areas, to this day). Bianchi was then entrusted with the task of building a ring road encircling the walled city of Lahore, with a purview to carrying out other road-laying projects- but was struck down with a severe illness which rendered him incapable of carrying out this task, and killed him before he could return to Italy. The next skilled road engineer who arrived at the Sikh Court would be Rossaix, a Frenchman whom he had served alongside in Napoleon's army, but he only came to the Punjab to take up service under the Sikh Maharaja Sher Singh in 1843, having declined Ventura's earlier invites due to the ongoing political strife and intrigues in Lahore. His main charge was the construction of bridges and laying out of roads; but as with Ventura, Court and the other Europeans of the 'French Brigade', he left after Sher Singh's assassination, leaving his assigned task largely untouched, and died in 1844, less than a year later.
So then, one does have to wonder just how much more wealth, power and influence Ventura would have wound up amassing in this timeline, with Sindh falling into Sikh hands, thereby giving the Sikh Imperial state-owned shipping Karkhana that'd been placed under his management free access directly to the European market, via the seaports of Thatta and Karachi, without needing to go through the BEIC as intermediaries? Could it have the potential to be expanded into an international merchant shipping/trading company, analogous to, and potentially markedly more powerful and impactful than, the Mitsubishi Group's Nippon Yusen; but remaining under state ownership of the Sikh Empire, and well-placed to expand its operations and go international a full 50 years earlier than the Japanese Nippon Yusen company (which only expanded its operations beyond the Sea of Japan to go international in the 1890s IOTL)? Or even failing that, to provide the catalyst for private steamship companies to be established in the Sikh Empire in the following decades, paralleling the formation of Nippon Yusen in Imperial Meiji-era Japan? Could we even see a Sikh Trading Company, or Companies, emerging, and embarking upon colonial ventures of their own...?
All officials were strictly instructed to assist traders and manufacturers, with the major port of Lahore further transporting goods onto the rivers from the inland portions of the Sikh Empire's heartland, the Bari Doab. And one of the primary reasons for General Ventura's rapid accumulation of power and influence, to the extent that he swiftly overtook his formal senior and leader General Allard as the unofficial leader of the Fauj-i-Khas and of the 'French Brigade' in the Sikh Court, was the wealth which he garnered after being installed as the Darogah of a shipping Karkhana in the early 1830s, on account of his prior experience as a ship-broker in Constantinople (where he'd been forced to change his name from Rubino to Jean-Baptiste to hide his Jewish origins)- assigned to manufacture steam boats to carry goods and products up and down the rivers, as well as to negotiate deals with the buyers and charterers of these boats. And with this Karkana under his effective control, Ventura rapidly became the richest and most influential European in the Sikh Empire.
He lived in style in a modest residence known as Anarkali House, combining European and Persian architectural elements, and decorated with Persian and Kashmiri rugs of great beauty strewn on the floors, which he built on the ruins of a Mughal palace, in close proximity to the Tomb of Anarkali (which was itself converted into a residence for his Armenian wife Anna Moses, whom he'd married in Ludhiana, and their only child, his daughter Victorine Ventura), surrounded by a garden known as Anarkali Garden, where he was typically given the honour of receiving foreign dignitaries, especially Europeans, visiting the Sikh court; with the traveler Baron Charles von Hügel, upon his visit to Lahore in 1836, remarking that "General Ventura's house, built by himself, though of no great size, combines the splendor of the east with the comforts of European residence". And this is still in use today, largely unchanged- acquired from Ventura (who'd by that stage abandoned the Punjab, along with the rest of the 'French Brigade', after Maharajah Sher Singh's assassination; returning to Europe and taking up residence in Paris, where he subsequently lost most of the fortune he'd amassed in unsuccessful commercial enterprises) by the British, his residence became the British Residency after the First Anglo-Sikh War, being moderately extended and becoming the Secretariat of the Government of the Punjab in 1871, with the building still serving as the office of the Chief Secretary of the Punjab in Pakistan to this day.
Kashmiri shawls and textiles were very much in vogue back in Europe, and whilst William Moorcroft's study of their manufacture, during his year-long stay there in 1822, had disseminated many of their patterns such as the 'Paisley' design back to Europe to be manufactured there, they were still very much the height of fashion culture there, in France and in Paris in particular. And whilst the British East India Company dominated the maritime trade between India and Europe, Ventura's Karkhana granted him a near-monopoly over the river trade in Kashmir shawls, and all other Punjabi exports of note, from the Sikh Empire to the British East India Company via Ludhiana and the European export market- earning the title/nickname of 'Count de Mandi', by which he was generally known in France and the UK after going on a diplomatic mission to Paris and London in 1837 (but being recalled to Lahore in 1838 before he had time to visit his family back in Italy), not after the eponymous Rajahnate of Mandi (with Ventura only commanding a campaign in the Simla Hill States several years later, in 1841) but as a pun to reflect his role as a trade broker, with Mandi translating as 'Market'.
And Ventura also sought to remedy Maharajah Ranjit Singh's blind spot, with regard to building better roads and increasing returns on investment by improving labor mobility; employing a fellow Italian, Jules Bianchi, in 1835 as a road engineer, who proved himself by constructing a road from General Ventura's house to the Fort in Lahore (Lahore's famous Mall Road, which the British would later establish Lahore's most prominent government institutions and commercial enterprises along the flanks of under their rule, and still serves as the epicentre of Lahore's civil administration, as well as one of its most fashionable commercial areas, to this day). Bianchi was then entrusted with the task of building a ring road encircling the walled city of Lahore, with a purview to carrying out other road-laying projects- but was struck down with a severe illness which rendered him incapable of carrying out this task, and killed him before he could return to Italy. The next skilled road engineer who arrived at the Sikh Court would be Rossaix, a Frenchman whom he had served alongside in Napoleon's army, but he only came to the Punjab to take up service under the Sikh Maharaja Sher Singh in 1843, having declined Ventura's earlier invites due to the ongoing political strife and intrigues in Lahore. His main charge was the construction of bridges and laying out of roads; but as with Ventura, Court and the other Europeans of the 'French Brigade', he left after Sher Singh's assassination, leaving his assigned task largely untouched, and died in 1844, less than a year later.
So then, one does have to wonder just how much more wealth, power and influence Ventura would have wound up amassing in this timeline, with Sindh falling into Sikh hands, thereby giving the Sikh Imperial state-owned shipping Karkhana that'd been placed under his management free access directly to the European market, via the seaports of Thatta and Karachi, without needing to go through the BEIC as intermediaries? Could it have the potential to be expanded into an international merchant shipping/trading company, analogous to, and potentially markedly more powerful and impactful than, the Mitsubishi Group's Nippon Yusen; but remaining under state ownership of the Sikh Empire, and well-placed to expand its operations and go international a full 50 years earlier than the Japanese Nippon Yusen company (which only expanded its operations beyond the Sea of Japan to go international in the 1890s IOTL)? Or even failing that, to provide the catalyst for private steamship companies to be established in the Sikh Empire in the following decades, paralleling the formation of Nippon Yusen in Imperial Meiji-era Japan? Could we even see a Sikh Trading Company, or Companies, emerging, and embarking upon colonial ventures of their own...?
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BTW, I'm planning on expanding upon this WI Scenario to write a proper ATL (albeit in more of a TLIAW, alternate historical textbook sort of format than as a proper character-orientated AH novel); thanks to some of the feedback earlier in this thread, I've more or less got the events of the 'first phase' plotted out, from the POD in late 1830 up until roughly the mid-1840's. I was wondering though, how much of an impact might a seafaring Sikh Empire, and the start of the dissemination of Sikh cultural, religious and social practices to the rest of the world, have elsewhere?
In addition to the Imperial Sikh steamboat manufacturing Karkhana, the Sikh Labanas/Banjaras would almost certainly be set to play a major role, perhaps even the leading role, in the Sikh Empire's maritime trade activities. IOTL, they were stripped of their livelihoods and forced into poverty by the BEIC cornering them out of the market, as had already happened across the rest of British-controlled India (with the Company and the British ships contracted by them given a monopoly on all international trade routes, and duties imposed upon any Indian merchant ships moving to and from ports in British India as well as foreign ones, and an act imposed in Parliament to ban any Indian-built or Indian-crewed ships from being deemed 'British-registered vessels', thus blocking them from foreign ports). Forced to settle down as agriculturalists under British rule, having been condemned as a 'criminal tribe' for their resemblance to the Romani Gypsies (with evidence now indicating that this does have a basis in fact, with genomic studies confirming that the Romani peoples have the closest affinity to the Labana of Punjab, and linguistic studies identifying Lubanki as the likeliest 'sister language' of Romani), they were effectively driven to cultural extinction IOTL, to the extent that their creole language, Lubanki, was rendered extinct before the turn of the 20th century (with the Rajasthani dialect/language of Lambadi being the closest to have survived, and the Gor-boli macrolanguage, like Romani, having had several varieties divergent enough to be considered languages of their own).
However, the Labana of the Punjab region, were among the earliest, most evangelical and enthusiastic groups to have been mass-converted to Sikhism, having become almost universally Sikh even before the foundation of the Khalsa; with Bhai Dasa Labana having purportedly been appointed as the Masand (Sikh community leaders who lived far from the Guru, but acted to lead the distant congregations, their mutual interactions and collect revenue for Sikh activities and temple building- with the Manji system being conceptually similar in its aims, and similarly important in Sikh missionary activity, to the diocese system in Christianity) for the entirety of Africa by Guru Ram Das (the 4th Guru). The position of Masand was effectively hereditary and patrilineal (though and in an attempt to reform the Manji system and promote gender equality by Guru Har Rai (the 7th Guru), the system was also created to teaching Sikh religion to women, via an equivalent hereditary matrilineal position of Pirii), and Bhai Dasa's direct lineage and familial relatives (which also included Bhai Lakhi Rai Banjara, via marital ties, and his descendants) played pivotal roles in the history of Sikhism and the Sikh Confederacy. His son, Makhan Shah Labana, possessed a significant merchant fleet, trading in spices, Bengali silk, Kashmiri shawls and other commodities beyond Egypt into the Mediterranean as far afield as Portugal, and after having identified and proclaimed Guru Tegh Bahadur as the ninth Guru of Sikhism, had been the first major preacher of Sikhism abroad, beyond India.
In the era of Sikh rule, the Labana were counted among the highest echelons of society, with close ties between them and several of the Sikh misls (the Bhangi Misl in particular, with Bhai Lakhi Rai Banjara's grandsons having been closely involved with and fought alongside its founder, Banda Singh Bahadur's appointed successor Sardar Chhajja Singh, along with the Sukerchakia and Nakai Misls) with their largest and most populous Tanda (literally 'place of settlement', where the otherwise nomadic Labana would settle each year in fixed village accommodations during the monsoon months, and where their elderly would settle down permanently after retirement) situated at Gujrat, along the banks of the Chenab River, where it formed the point where the Sukerchakia and Bhangi Misls bordered one another. The Sikh Labanas of Punjab were by far the best educated and most literate of the Banjara groups in India as well, as well as the most progressive when it came to women's rights. And in the case of a surviving Sikh Empire, giving the Labana (along with any members of the other Banjara communities from all the other coastal provinces of British India- the majority of whom had already been, and could to this day still be considered, 'Nanakpathis'- if they want to escape the BEIC's draconian restrictions, persecution and social stigmatization, avoid inevitable bankruptcy, and continue their way of life, by emigrating over to the Indus River Delta instead) the freedom and capacity to manage and conduct their own maritime trade with the rest of the world via Sindh including even Europe itself, one can only speculate on the potential repercussions farther afield.
Particularly given that the Sikh Labanas also had their sworn mission, which their most influential and respected family clan in the Punjab been entasked with carrying out by Guru Ram Das personally over 150yrs prior to the POD (in the late 16th century), to spread the word of Sikhism abroad, and to the peoples of Africa in particular. As well as the fact that their language, which would almost certainly be written and see continued use ITTL (with an outside chance of Lubanki even becoming the lingua franca for late Indian maritime trade), was also the closest to the Romani language group, to the extent that there's a better than 50-50 chance that Lubanki and Romani speakers would've been borderline mutually intelligible to one another. Might we even see the Sikhs emerging as a dark horse ITTL in the 'Scramble for Africa', and/or Romani people in the rest of the world converting to Sikhi (or adopting elements of Sikh culture) after reconnecting with the Labana merchants of the Sikh Empire, in enough numbers to become significant and start affecting the religious landscape over in the New World and Europe in the early 20th century, even without factoring in the possibility of large-scale emigration from the Sikh Empire's (contiguous) territories?
In addition to the Imperial Sikh steamboat manufacturing Karkhana, the Sikh Labanas/Banjaras would almost certainly be set to play a major role, perhaps even the leading role, in the Sikh Empire's maritime trade activities. IOTL, they were stripped of their livelihoods and forced into poverty by the BEIC cornering them out of the market, as had already happened across the rest of British-controlled India (with the Company and the British ships contracted by them given a monopoly on all international trade routes, and duties imposed upon any Indian merchant ships moving to and from ports in British India as well as foreign ones, and an act imposed in Parliament to ban any Indian-built or Indian-crewed ships from being deemed 'British-registered vessels', thus blocking them from foreign ports). Forced to settle down as agriculturalists under British rule, having been condemned as a 'criminal tribe' for their resemblance to the Romani Gypsies (with evidence now indicating that this does have a basis in fact, with genomic studies confirming that the Romani peoples have the closest affinity to the Labana of Punjab, and linguistic studies identifying Lubanki as the likeliest 'sister language' of Romani), they were effectively driven to cultural extinction IOTL, to the extent that their creole language, Lubanki, was rendered extinct before the turn of the 20th century (with the Rajasthani dialect/language of Lambadi being the closest to have survived, and the Gor-boli macrolanguage, like Romani, having had several varieties divergent enough to be considered languages of their own).
However, the Labana of the Punjab region, were among the earliest, most evangelical and enthusiastic groups to have been mass-converted to Sikhism, having become almost universally Sikh even before the foundation of the Khalsa; with Bhai Dasa Labana having purportedly been appointed as the Masand (Sikh community leaders who lived far from the Guru, but acted to lead the distant congregations, their mutual interactions and collect revenue for Sikh activities and temple building- with the Manji system being conceptually similar in its aims, and similarly important in Sikh missionary activity, to the diocese system in Christianity) for the entirety of Africa by Guru Ram Das (the 4th Guru). The position of Masand was effectively hereditary and patrilineal (though and in an attempt to reform the Manji system and promote gender equality by Guru Har Rai (the 7th Guru), the system was also created to teaching Sikh religion to women, via an equivalent hereditary matrilineal position of Pirii), and Bhai Dasa's direct lineage and familial relatives (which also included Bhai Lakhi Rai Banjara, via marital ties, and his descendants) played pivotal roles in the history of Sikhism and the Sikh Confederacy. His son, Makhan Shah Labana, possessed a significant merchant fleet, trading in spices, Bengali silk, Kashmiri shawls and other commodities beyond Egypt into the Mediterranean as far afield as Portugal, and after having identified and proclaimed Guru Tegh Bahadur as the ninth Guru of Sikhism, had been the first major preacher of Sikhism abroad, beyond India.
In the era of Sikh rule, the Labana were counted among the highest echelons of society, with close ties between them and several of the Sikh misls (the Bhangi Misl in particular, with Bhai Lakhi Rai Banjara's grandsons having been closely involved with and fought alongside its founder, Banda Singh Bahadur's appointed successor Sardar Chhajja Singh, along with the Sukerchakia and Nakai Misls) with their largest and most populous Tanda (literally 'place of settlement', where the otherwise nomadic Labana would settle each year in fixed village accommodations during the monsoon months, and where their elderly would settle down permanently after retirement) situated at Gujrat, along the banks of the Chenab River, where it formed the point where the Sukerchakia and Bhangi Misls bordered one another. The Sikh Labanas of Punjab were by far the best educated and most literate of the Banjara groups in India as well, as well as the most progressive when it came to women's rights. And in the case of a surviving Sikh Empire, giving the Labana (along with any members of the other Banjara communities from all the other coastal provinces of British India- the majority of whom had already been, and could to this day still be considered, 'Nanakpathis'- if they want to escape the BEIC's draconian restrictions, persecution and social stigmatization, avoid inevitable bankruptcy, and continue their way of life, by emigrating over to the Indus River Delta instead) the freedom and capacity to manage and conduct their own maritime trade with the rest of the world via Sindh including even Europe itself, one can only speculate on the potential repercussions farther afield.
Particularly given that the Sikh Labanas also had their sworn mission, which their most influential and respected family clan in the Punjab been entasked with carrying out by Guru Ram Das personally over 150yrs prior to the POD (in the late 16th century), to spread the word of Sikhism abroad, and to the peoples of Africa in particular. As well as the fact that their language, which would almost certainly be written and see continued use ITTL (with an outside chance of Lubanki even becoming the lingua franca for late Indian maritime trade), was also the closest to the Romani language group, to the extent that there's a better than 50-50 chance that Lubanki and Romani speakers would've been borderline mutually intelligible to one another. Might we even see the Sikhs emerging as a dark horse ITTL in the 'Scramble for Africa', and/or Romani people in the rest of the world converting to Sikhi (or adopting elements of Sikh culture) after reconnecting with the Labana merchants of the Sikh Empire, in enough numbers to become significant and start affecting the religious landscape over in the New World and Europe in the early 20th century, even without factoring in the possibility of large-scale emigration from the Sikh Empire's (contiguous) territories?
Jackson Lennock
Well-known member
Perhaps this map?
The Qajars conquer Herat, but the British refuse to leave Bandar Abbas, Kharga, or Gwadar. The Balochi Khanates seek British protection, and Britain later takes the bulk of Qajar Balochistan.
The Qajars conquer Herat, but the British refuse to leave Bandar Abbas, Kharga, or Gwadar. The Balochi Khanates seek British protection, and Britain later takes the bulk of Qajar Balochistan.
Certainly one of the more plausible outcomes; especially if Maharajah Ranjit Singh's successors decide to maintain amiable relations with the British, favoring consolidation over conducting any further wars with its neighbors. Maharajah Kharak Singh, in particular, was purportedly thus inclined (being a supporter and follower of the most pacifistic sect of Sikhism), and sought to maintain good relations with the British. Nau Nihal Singh, though, was markedly more jingoistic, as were the majority of the senior generals in the Sikh Army. And the Commander-in-chief of the Sikh Army especially, Hari Singh Nalwa, certainly wouldn't be content with those north-western borders- they'd mean that his own efforts to conquer Hazara had all been in vain, and that Afghanistan had been freely allowed to reunify, in spite of the weakening of Afghan rule in Kabul having already seen the majority of its governors declare their own independence, and the Afghan state having already effectively been balkanized before reunification and consolidation under Dost Mohammad Khan's rule IOTL.
During the early years of his first reign though, Dost Mohammad Khan's influence was generally confined to Kabul and Ghazni. In the 1820s, the Kabul realm under the Barakzais' authority ended just twenty miles south of Kabul, whilst the base of the Hindu Kush formed the northern boundary of his realm until 1826, when a rebellious brother of his, named Habibullah, controlled Parwan with a force of Uzbeks and Hazaras. Although Dost Mohammad controlled Bamyan, the routes leading there were controlled by independent Hazara chiefdoms. In the east of his realm, the extent of his rule ended at Jagdalak pass, while Jalalabad and Laghman remained under the control of Muhammad Zaman Khan and Abd-Al-Jabbar Khan respectively. And despite Ghazni being a part of Dost Mohammad's sphere of influence, Amir Muhammad exercised direct control over the city, with it being unknown if he ever submitted revenue payments to Dost Mohammad. All these combined made the early Muhammadzai Kingdom surely possibly doomed to fail, having been isolated directly by most of the other powers of Afghanistan, and drawn into conflict with others occasionally, alongside nominal discontent- including amongst his brothers, who were seeking to fight for rule over Kabul- the early Muhammadzai Kingdom appeared as if it would not fare well.
But that all began to change in early 1834, when Shah Shuja, the former Durrani ruler of Afghanistan, began approaching Kandahar, as the Dil brothers appeased to Dost Mohammad for assistance against Shah Shuja. Rather than mobilizing his forces toward Kandahar as promised though, Dost Mohammad led his forces eastwards to Siyahsang instead, with his sons Mohammad Akram Khan and Muhammad Akbar Khan sent to Jalalabad, where they "scattered" the army of Muhammad Zaman Khan, on an attack which was justified under the claimed pretext of raising an army to combat Shah Shuja. Following this, Dost lead his forces to Jagdalak (controlling the Lataband Pass), which was ruled by Muhammad Usman Khan under Zaman Khan. Immediately as Dost Mohammad fielded his armies outside the city, Usman Khan surrendered the city to Dost, under the condition that the city would be spared from a military attack. With Dost Mohammad having now attempted to seize Jalalabad, Zaman Khan entered negotiations with Sultan Mohammad Khan to support him in case of another attack from Dost in Kabul. However, Sultan Mohammad Khan was unable to provide any aid to Zaman, since Peshawar had been weakened far too much in the past few years (both under the rule of Barelvi's 'Islamic State', and in its subsequent re-pacification by the Sikhs).
Only supported by local chiefs, Zaman Khan found himself unable to field a proper army to contest Dost Mohammad as he marched on Jalalabad. Dost Mohammad seized the city, but offered generous and honorable peace terms, one of which was that he'd compensate Zaman Khan with over 150,000 rupees per year for his annexed territories. Having now secured Jalalabad, Dost Mohammad appointed Muhammad Akram Khan and Amir Muhammad Khan as governors of the city. The Province of Jalalabad under Dost's rule extended as far as Dakka in Mohmand territory from the Jagdalak pass. The province of Jalalabad alone and the villages of Lagman fielded over 400,000 rupees of revenue, and following Dost Mohammad's conquest, it raised to around 465,000 rupees. Followed by this conquest, many new regions became subject to Dost Mohammad, including the valley of Kunar, where the governor was appointed by Dost Mohammad Khan in exchange for tribute. Dost Mohammad then marched on Kandahar in 1834, having exploited the situation at hand to gain more influence over Kandahar. Shah Shuja set out in the summer of 1834 to Kandahar, having already routed the armies of the Talpurs of Sindh and reclaimed Shikarpur for himself; but this expedition was a failure, as Shah Shuja's siege ended in only 54 days, with Shah Shuja's army being defeated in early July by the joint coalition between Dost Mohammad Khan and the rulers of Kandahar.
In this scenario though, how much would all of that change? Haven't quite got round to posting the pertinent part of the TL I started working on (which would be Chapter 6, with at least one or two interludes to go between the point I've gotten to and that point), but gave up on posting due to lack of interest. But in my take on it, the repercussions of Barelvi's earlier death, and the completed conquest of Shikarpur by the Sikhs already by 1831, were also set to have pretty significant cascade effects on Shah Shuja's pending expedition, which would in turn also greatly alter how things pan out in the ongoing 'Barakzai Civil War'.
After all, ITTL, the army of Peshawar, under the command of ʿAbd al-Rasul Khan (son of Sardar Rahimdad Khan, and husband to Sardar Dost Muhammad Khan’s sister) and trained by the Russian adventurer Vieskenawitch (who'd previously been employed by Shah Abbas Mirza)- which Sultan Muhammad Khan had sent out to do battle with Barelvi's Muhammadiyan Order IOTL, only for them to be routed after ʿAbd al-Rasul was killed in the resulting battle, with Sultan Muhammad Khan subsequently fleeing the city with his retinue, being granted sanctuary by the Sikhs (though he continued to govern the southern portion of the province of Peshawar, from the city of Kohat instead), whilst Barelvi and the Muhammadiyans' forces subsequently marched into and conquered the city of Peshawar largely unopposed in early 1830, filling the power vacuum left behind after Sultan Muhammad Khan's flight to establish their short-lived 'Islamic Caliphate of the Peshawar'- is still very much intact, leaving Sultan Muhammad Khan's grasp on power as the ruler of Peshawar no less tenuous than those of the Nawab of Bahawalpur, or the fellow Barakzai rulers of Jalalabad and Kandahar.
Shah Shuja has no choice but to go through the passages now controlled by the Sikhs, unless he's willing to wait until the British consolidate their own control further long enough to think about going in to seize Kandahar for himself via the Balochi Khanates. If Dost Mohammad Khan still follows the course of action he did IOTL, leading his forces eastwards to Jalalabad to conquer Muhammad Zaman Khan's territories first,with Zaman Khan even likelier to enter negotiations with Sultan Mohammad Khan to support him against Dost Mohammad Khan's forces, Sultan Mohammad Khan WOULD be able to provide that support, and dispatch a proper army against Dost Mohammad's march on Jalalabad. And if said coalition's army met the same fate it did against Barelvi's forces regardless, then the Sikhs'd likely obtain Muhammad Zaman Khan's vassalage as well, with the Province of Jalalabad a lot more likely to then also fall under the Sikhs' sphere of influence in the same manner.
Especially if Shah Shuja and his mercenary force is still allowed free passage via Sikh territory and the Bolan Pass to march against Kandahar (a route which he only chose IOTL because Maharajah Ranjit Singh's demands in return for offering Shah Shuja passage through the Sikh Empire were too steep; refusing to let them through unless not only Peshawar, but Shikarpur and Jalalabad as well, were ceded in perpetuity to the Sikhs in exchange), with none of its own manpower, supplies or funds expended on their efforts to conquer and impose his dominion over the Talpurs or the territory of Shikarpur along the way. TBH, having only gotten about 5yrs or so into this TL from the original POD, I'm still not even sure if the Kingdom of Afghanistan's ultimately still going to exist 10yrs later ITTL. An awful lot of things just so happened to fall perfectly into place for Dost Mohammad Khan's kingdom to ultimately succeed in its reunification and consolidation IOTL. But since a bunch of those things have already unavoidably fallen out of place due to the POD in the adjacent territories, I don't know if it'd still be plausible for him to pull it off any more...
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Ricardolindo
Well-known member
- Location
- Portugal
Great post.
Without British colonialism, how far do you think the Sikhs would be able to advance into Afghan territory? Most of what became the North-West Frontier Province was already under Sikh control when the British arrived. On the other hand, the British were never able to pacify the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and even Pakistan had minimal control there until the Afghan-Soviet War.
Jackson Lennock
Well-known member
So this? Assuming the Khan of Kalat becomes a vassal of the Sikhs and the Sikhs take Kandahar
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Perhaps. Though I wasn't going to go for quite so much of a Sikh-wank (not for several decades after the POD, at any rate), on the grounds that attempting to consolidate and pacify all of that in one go would almost certainly leave the Sikh Empire over-extended, and make them far likelier to crumble if/when the British decide to try seizing their territories for their own. Afghanistan, in the 1820's to early '30s, was a patchwork quilt of petty chiefdoms and independent emirates, each governed by rulers who were constantly at war with one another. In this scenario, then Jalalabad becomes a lot more likely than not to fall into the Sikhs' possession too. After all, suzerainty over Jalalabad was the bare minimum which was demanded by Maharajah Ranjit Singh in exchange for granting Shah Shuja's passage to try and reclaim the throne of Afghanistan for his Durrani dynasty (having already ceded Peshawar in exchange for free passage for his previous attempt, which had already failed), and with Shikarpur and the access route via the Bolan Pass having already been seized for themselves by the Sikh Empire, Shah Shuja'd no longer have any choice but to accept those terms.
Even without any of the losses incurred en route though, based upon his forces' strength and his distinctly inept, overly brutal leadership, even if Shah Shuja's likely capable of succeeding in besieging and restoring his dominion over the Principality of Qandahar's territories (minus those tributaries and dependencies that've already either broken away or been reduced to tributaries of the Sikhs, of course) at this attempt, I don't see him progressing much further into Afghanistan than that- with the most realistic end result at that point (in the mid-1830's) leaving Shah Shuja's Emirate of Kandahar, his nephew Kamran Shah's Emirate of Herat (if the Iranians haven't conquered it yet themselves, as they may well might ITTL, especially if Kamran Shah and Shah Shuja whittle down their forces' respective strength trying to conquer each other straight afterwards, as both had made no secret of their intentions to), and Dost Mohammad Khan's Emirate of Kabul as the primary powers of a permanently balkanized and divided Afghanistan (/or the 'Balkh' region of Greater Khorasan, if it does ultimately mostly fall back under Persian dominion).
But even so, I didn't see the Sikhs feasibly expanding any farther than Jalalabad in one go. And Jalalabad's about as far into Afghanistan as it'd be worthwhile for the Sikhs to advance into Afghan territory, and as they'd have a pretty good chance of placing under their control. Markedly more so, since the entirety of the watershed of the Chitral/Kunar River's ultimately accessible and controllable via this city- including Kunar and Nuristan, which was still known at this time as 'Kafiristan', with Walter Hamilton having reported in 1828 that the padishah of 'Cooner', who purportedly claimed direct descent from the Turk Shahis, was at the time joined in an alliance with the neighboring Kafirs (non Muslims) of Nuristan in an unending existential conflict against the Muslim invaders. Ultimately, this resistance eventually failed IOTL; 'Cooner'/Kunar fell in the late 1850's, with the 'Kafirs' who remained in Kafiristan being forcibly converted to Islam, on pain of death (in what undoubtedly consitituted an act of genocide) by Abdur Rahman Khan in the 1890's.
But one can imagine that, upon the Sikhs' entry to the region, both the Padishah of Kunar and the predominantly Hindu/Animist, still almost entirely non-Muslim 'Kafirs' would be pretty content and enthusiastic about the prospect of being brought under the protection of the Sikh Empire, and accepting the Maharajah of Lahore's suzerainty (rather than being forced to settle for the suzerainty of the similarly multi-ethnic and multi-religious, but far smaller and weaker state of Chitral, as they wound up being forced to settle for after Kunar and the Sikh Empire had both fallen IOTL- only to be ceded to the Amir of Afghanistan anyway, and freely allowed to be practically genocided out of existence, 40yrs later anyway). And this would making this particular region of 'Greater Kafiristan' by far the easiest part of Afghanistan in this era to permanently integrate into the Sikh Empire, with little to no enmity, violence or turmoil involved; very much improved from their fate IOTL, which is still pretty bad right now, especially since the Taliban's been operating in the region.
With Chitral itself also being a distinct possibility, perhaps even more likely than not. After all, IOTL, it was only under Aman ul-Mulk's predecessor as Mehtar of Chitral, Muhtarram Shah Kator III (1853-58), that it entered into treaty relations with the King of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammad Khan, and agreed to pay tribute to Afghanistan (in the form of providing an annual quota of Kafir slaves), before he could be overthrown for his tyranny; having previously been far more closely aligned with Kashmir. And ITTL, with Afghanistan likely to be far weaker in this region, and the Sikhs enduring as the chief power there, Chitral'd almost certainly be entering into treaty negotiations with, and becoming a tributary/vassal state of, the Sikh Empire instead, either earlier on or under Aman ul-Mulk's rule at the latest. But speaking for myself personally, that's as far as I was going to take the Sikhs' expansion into Afghanistan ITTL (along with Greater Badakhshan, as the NW-most extent of the Sikh Empire, maybe but not necessarily Laghman since it was also a breakaway province outside of Kabul's influence like Jalalabad, and possibly the region of Loya Paktia, since it used to be Kohat, not Khost, which was the 'capital' of this region/province before its partial conquest by the Sikhs cut off Kohat from the rest of the upper Kurram River valley IOTL, on the other side of the Peiwar Pass- even then though, only if the Sikhs/Sultan Mohammad Khan win their own equivalent/s of the Battle of Peiwar Kotal, which is far from a given).
From there though, looking farther afield, who can say how far the Sikhs'd go? IOTL, it's worth mentioning that one of the reasons the Sikhs were so jingoistic towards the Afghans, and to a lesser extent the Pashtuns of Baluchistan (i.e, the 'Derajat' region, which ultimately wound up being included as part of the Punjab by the British since the Sikhs had already conquered it) was the extent to which they were responsible for the slave trade across Central and Western Asia; with Barelvi's Jihadi movement, and the dissemination of the 'Sikha Shahi' narrative, having seen the Sikhs' border settlements deliberately targeted by Islamic fundamentalist slave raiders. Along with Barelvi, and those who supported his Jihadi campaign against the Sikhs, having been personally responsible for introducing the custom (which swiftly became endemic, and continued well into the early 20th century) of completely shaving the heads of all 'kafirs' taken in these slaving raids against the frontier territories' settlements, especially women, then chemically burning their scalps with quicklime so that their hair'd never regrow, rendering them easily recognizable, and preventing them from re-integrating with Sikh society.
And these easily identifiable slaves were predominantly sent via Afghanistan and Baluchistan, to Persian territory as well as to Arabia and the Central Asian Khanates' slave markets; with the British and other European observers estimating that these chemically de-haired slaves comprised over 10% of the slave chattel slaves being sold in the slave markets of Zanzibar, and over 20% of those in Afghanistan and Central Asia (such as Bukhara and Samarkhand) for decades, starting from this period and continuing long after the Sikh Empire fell IOTL. And the Omani dynasty was noted as being especially culpable in faciliting this, since they heavily employed the Baluchs as mercenary troops and later as traders, and generally controlled the naval routes via which this slave trade in Sikhs took place, via the possessions of the al-Bu Sa’id including the island of Bahrain, the Makran coast with its important strategic-commercial enclave of Gwadar, certain sites along the Persian coast such as Chabahar, the island of Socotra, the Curia Muria isles, Zanzibar, and nearby ports on the sub-Saharan African coast.
How long will the Sikhs let these atrocities against their people, their culture and their religion stand if/when they can do something about it? And why wouldn't they continue to go after the guilty parties, to attempt to stamp this out and protect their people, until the Central Asian and Indian Ocean slave trade's been ended once and for all?
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Jackson Lennock
Well-known member
Would there be much conversion to Sikhism? Sikhs were at most 12% of the Sikh Empire historically. Even if the Balochis of Sindh convert, or perhaps the people of Nuristan as well, the Sikhs are still a significant minority group ruling over a predominately Muslim population (some 65 to 70 percent of the Empire's population historically).
I'm not confident the Sikhs would engage in overseas colonialism. Colonialism is costly, and they'd need to be ever-present of the threats to their north and west.
I doubt Britain moves the capital from Calcutta to New Delhi in a world where New Delhi is close to an international border.
I wonder how the prospect of at least two successful non-white countries emerging in the nineteenth century (Sikh Empire and Japan) impacts European racist attitudes.
I'm not confident the Sikhs would engage in overseas colonialism. Colonialism is costly, and they'd need to be ever-present of the threats to their north and west.
I doubt Britain moves the capital from Calcutta to New Delhi in a world where New Delhi is close to an international border.
I wonder how the prospect of at least two successful non-white countries emerging in the nineteenth century (Sikh Empire and Japan) impacts European racist attitudes.
Like I cited earlier in this thread, plenty of others historically converted, or were already deemed 'close enough' to self-identify as Sikhs even if the mainstream Sikhs at Amritsar would later exclude them as 'Nanakpanthis, not real Sikhs'. And the method via which so many so readily and swiftly converted to Sikhism was practically identical to that via which so many had converted to Islam in the first place. One of the primary reasons why Islam became more favorable in India was due to the establishment of Khanqah- commonly defined as a hospice, lodge, community center, or dormitory ran by Sufis. Khanqahs were also known as Jama'at Khana, large gathering halls. Structurally, a khanqah could be one large room or have additional dwelling space. Although some khanqah establishments were independent of royal funding or patronage, many received fiscal grants (waqf) and donations from benefactors for continuing services. Over time, the function of traditional Sufi khanqahs evolved as Sufism solidified in India.
Initially, the Sufi khanqah life emphasized a close and fruitful relationship between the master-teacher (sheikh) and their students. For example, students in khanqahs would pray, worship, study, and read works together. But the other major function of a khanqah was of a community shelter, with many of these facilities being built in low caste, rural, Hindu vicinities, and the Chishti Order Sufis especially establishing khanqahs with the highest form of modest hospitality and generosity. Keeping a "visitors welcome" policy, khanqahs in India offered spiritual guidance, psychological support, and counseling that was free and open to all people. The spiritually hungry and depressed caste members were both fed with a free kitchen service and provided basic education. By creating egalitarian communities within stratified caste systems, Sufis successfully spread their teachings, and it was this example of Sufi brotherhood and equity that drew people to the religion of Islam. Soon these khanqahs became social, cultural, and theological epicenters for people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds and genders. Through a khanqah's services, Sufis presented a form of Islam that forged a way for voluntary large scale conversions of lower class Hindus.
And perhaps the primary reason for Sikhism's rapid expansion in this period was that their Sikh Gurdwaras (and to a lesser extent, nominally 'Sikh' Mandirs and Havelis) took over from the Sufi Khanqahs, providing the same community shelter, free kitchen, basic education and counselling services that the Sufis had, to create egalitarian communities within the stratified caste systems. But to an even greater extent, and thus drawing people to Sikhism predominantly from the lower strata of the society as well, utilizing the same pre-established methodology which had converted them and their ancestors to Islam in the first place, aided greatly by the Sikh Empire allocating a markedly greater portion of its funds towards providing them with fiscal grants (which supported the continuation and expansion of these Gurdwaras' services) than those rulers who'd previously patronized the Sufi khanqahs had. Tthough Kharak Singh was noted for having personally provided equal patronage to the Sufi khanqahs and Bhakti mandirs as well, on the grounds of impartiality and true religious egalitarianism- mostly with disapproval, with this cited as one of the primary justifications for his contemporary characterization by the Sikh nobility in the Lahore Darbar as a 'naive, idealistic imbecile'.
With this trend having been exacerbated, and the pace of conversion from both Hinduism and Sufism to Sikhism increased, as mainstream Islam itself in the 19th century increasingly decried and persecuted Sufism as a heretical, with the rise of state-sponsored extremist Shi'ite clericalism having led to the widespread destruction of Sufi khanqahs and shrines on the part of hardline clerics across all the lands controlled by Shi'ite rulers (including the late Mughal, Durrani and Safavid Empires), leaving behind an increasing vacuum which was mostly filled by the establishment of Sikh Gurdwaras instead, across the lands controlled by the Sikhs. And examples of their efficacy in converting peoples to Sikhism can be seen by looking at the Bugtis of Dera Bugti (which may look relatively unimportant and barren at first glance, but which also happens to be where the overwhelming majority of natural gas reserves in the wider region are located, with its gas fields estimated to have larger reserves than the entirety of the UK and Mexico combined) and Khetrans of Barkhan as case studies.
Both were cited as being c.5-7% Sikh IOTL well into the 20th century; with this large Sikh minority almost exclusively attributable to the brief period in 1845-1847 when Sir Charles James Napier's force of over 7,000 men attacked the Bugtis, having declared the defiant Bugti tribe a 'criminal tribe' and placed a bounty of ten rupees on every man’s head, dead or alive. This was in spite of the British having had nothing but praise for their chivalry, asserting that they 'refused to surrender against heavy odds, preferred to fight hand to hand, never took advantage of the terrain, and never shot their enemies in the back', and their qualities as the 'most laborious and desirable peasantry among the turbulent and predatory Balouchs'. Instead, Napier's campaign was motivated seemingly almost entirely on the basis of spite and exasperation, having finally been forced to cede defeat in his efforts to attract them as recruits to the Company's armed forces on account of the Bugtis' point-blank refusal to give up their tribal attire (wearing traditionally all-white robes and turbans) or to contemplate cutting their hair or beards.
This forced thousands of Bugtis (along with hundreds of Khetrans, when the Marri then seized the opportunity to also attack both the greatly weakened Bugtis and the Khetrans, mounting heavy slaving raids against their settlements and seizing much of their lands for themselves), to flee across the border and take temporary refuge in the Derajat region of the Sikh Empire. And with these refugees having predominantly been granted refuge in the dormitories of Sikh Gurdwaras, almost the entirety of these refugees adopted Sikhism within that short 2-3 year period of time, with almost all of their descendants continuing to practice Sikhism from then onwards up until General Musharraf's progroms to islamicize Balochistan (in an attempt to stamp out support for the Baloch nationalist insurgency movement). Sikhism succeeded, and achieved its greatest period of growth during this period, primarily because it offered this social support network to its citizens, with the Sikh Empire implementing its basal version of the welfare state in this manner, and the Sikhs' Gurdwaras also serving the function of religiously institutionalized social welfare hubs (much like the Freedom Arches in Eric Flint's 1632 series, which can be summarized as 'Temples to spread the faith of American Exceptionalism across downtime Europe, just like Gurdwaras spread the faith of Sikhism, Bhakti Mandirs spread the faith of Bhakti Hinduism, and Khanqahs spread the faith of Sufism across India and Persia') to a markedly greater extent than they do today.
However, this trend was swiftly brought to a halt under British rule, as the British East India Company and its successor the British Raj effectively ended all state-sponsored revenue streams for these long-established traditional pre-existing theological welfare networks across British India, as well as enacting social engineering policies which saw the racial categorization of all groups and castes as "agricultural", "martial" (including the Sikhs), "criminal" and so on. The mid-19th century concept that behavior was hereditary rather than learned, which had been popularized by social reformers back in England such as Mary Carpenter (who'd coined the term "dangerous classes"), was applied across British India, thus racializing crime, with what was merely social determinism till then becoming entrenched as biological determinism, and with the Sikhs' new categorization as merely a "martial race of Hindus" thus all but ending any further conversions to Sikhism from other faiths. In an enduring Sikh Empire though, where these English philosophies of biological determinism would be extremely unlikely to be adopted, then this would've continued; and if people had continued to convert to Sikhism from other faiths at the same rate that they'd done on average over the course of Maharajah Ranjit Singh's rule, the percentage of its population who identified as Sikh would've been projected to surpass 25% by the 1870's, and become an absolute majority well before the outbreak of OTL's WW1.
Of course, that'd be with the assumption of continued, unchecked exponential growth, which doesn't often happen IRL, and isn't likely to in this instance. But IMHO, the incentives and motivations which drove these religious conversions would've only been increased further (counter-acting the inevitable increases in reactionary opposition to Sikhism which you'd get from other religious communities as it continues to grow) as the Sikh Empire enters the industrial era. Socialism emerged as a response to the expanding capitalist system, presenting an alternative aimed at improving the lot of the working class and creating a more egalitarian society; Sikhism also emerged as a response to the expanding capitalist system (particularly the Jizya taxes upon all non-Muslims, after its reimposition by Aurangzeb), presenting an alternative aimed at improving the lot of the working class and creating a more egalitarian society. As such, Sikhism can essentially be summarized as an overtly religious, Pandeist Dharmic socialist utopian movement. Though one could also imagine that this could well make the political landscape of a surviving Sikh Empire at this stage in its history extremely interesting, since the increased class/caste struggles engendered by industrialization could well see the rise of a Sikh religious equivalent to the Chartist movement at the very least, potentially escalating to an outright pseudo-Communist, Marxist or Bolshevist movement the longer that the reforms advocated by them go unimplemented...
Regarding colonialism; it may well be costly, and they'd need to be vigilant of the ever-present threats to their north and west, but the Omanis' slave trade in their own citizens also presents a distinct threat. Which had been purposefully engineered at this stage to be as insulting and disrespectful towards the Sikhs in particular as it possibly could be, with two out of every three slaves being shipped out across the Straits of Hormuz being women to boot, will certainly invoke a lot of jingoism and adventurism from the Sikhs, who'd want to snuff it out and punish the Sultanate of Oman for it ASAP. And rather than such efforts actually being conceived and setting sail as colonialist endeavors to establish settlements, I was thinking more along the lines of the Sikhs' fledgling naval presence being initially employed to assemble its own equivalent of the USA's African Slave Trade Patrol, and thus tolerated by the British insofar as it aligns with their own goals and lightens the load for its own Royal Navy operations as they begin interdicting slave trading in the Middle East and the Indian Ocean; with supply bases in the Middle East and Africa itself then established to better facilitate this themselves, before these bases then grow into trading posts, amass settler populations (incl. freed slaves) and form the cores of colonial territories of their own accord, in a manner vaguely resembling the inception of Freetown and the first iteration of British West Africa IOTL.
As for how the prospect of at least two successful non-white countries emerging in the nineteenth century (Sikh Empire and Japan) would impact European racist attitudes- the problem with that is that it'd be trivially easy for the Europeans to say that "oh, we already know that Alexander the Great expanded Europe all the way to the Indus river, these Kalash subjects of the Sikhs themselves claim that they're direct descendants of Alexander the Great's troops who settled in the area over 2 millennia ago (with more than enough of them having the pale skin, fair hair, and Aryan eye colors to back it up); clearly the Sikhs, being Indo-Aryans, are as successful as they are because they're actually White Europeans- albeit greatly diluted with non-Whites in a similar fashion to Mexicans (and/or our Gypsies, whose Romani language we know realize is a variant of their 'Saraiki/Multani' tongue, and who we know realize basically belong to the same Punjabi race as the Sikhs anyway), and similarly racially inferior to ourselves". As such, it's extremely likely that a successful Sikh Empire'd have no greater impact upon European racist attitudes than the existence of the successful Ottoman Empire did- with both falling to the circular logic that "they're successful, so they're Europeans/Aryans. Ish. Kind of. Enough for them not to debunk our European supremacism, anyway. But still nowhere near enough for us to accept them as racial equals, of course..."
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I think you’re right that there’d be conversion to Sikhism, and much of this would be driven by the langar system. But you’re wrong to assume the trend of conversion would last forever. For one a large portion of the elite and bureaucracy was Hindu and Muslim - they wouldn’t look positively upon religious conversion (reverence for the Gurus among Punjabi Hindus might make them more okay with it - but that’s different from conversion, and not all Hindus in the Sikh Empire were Punjabi). State-sponsored religious conversion would make them deeply suspicious of the state, and also it might result in escalation as Hindus and Muslims engage in combative “reconversion” - as indeed occurred in OTL Punjab in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Not a good climate for stability. Eventually, the Sikh Empire will have to cool it with the state-sponsored conversion, or risk alienating much of its population.
On a related note, the religious demographic estimates I’ve seen for the Sikh Empire vary wildly. Sometimes they say it was 80% Muslim, other times it’s less than 50% Muslim - an error bar exceeding 30%! I’m guessing this might be because some estimates include the Himachali vassal states and others do not, but I’m not really sure. Do you have any idea why this is the case?
I'm certainly not assuming that the trend of conversion would last forever, or maintain the same exponential growth rate; it'll definitely slow down over time, until it reaches a point where it plateaus out and the Sikh's share of the total population stabilizes. But it's a question of when, and where that increasing share of the total population would level out. And it wasn't just driven by the langar system- the langar system's merely the most enduring and universal of the services provided to the general population by the Gurdwaras, but during the Sikh Imperial period, they offered an awful lot more to the general populace as well. You wanted to learn how to read and write, and become literate? In a (short-lived, IOTL) state-subsidized initiative which was personally championed by Prince Kharak Singh's wife Chand Kaur (Nau Nihal Singh's mother), you could go to any gurdwara in the Sikh Empire and pick up a free alphabet book, regardless of whether you were a man or woman, with it being mandatory to provide these to the bride and groom whenever any weddings took place in them, as well as providing them to any mothers whenever a naming/christening ceremony for a newborn baby was conducted there. Want to put those literacy skills to good use? The majority of Gurdwaras also provided public libraries, not only consisting of Sikh literature, but of other religious texts, secular texts and even works of fiction as well; where people weren't permitted to check out books, but where anyone could come in and read freely, provided they respected Sikh customs (e.g, covered head, no substance abuse) within the temple grounds. And the same went for a bunch of other social services, including clerical work, homeless shelters, and sometimes even basic medical care. I wouldn't have bothered to bring it up if it were just the langar system that they provided; but it was so much more than that.
Was it state sponsored conversion? No more so than state-sponsored social welfare systems should be considered as 'state-sponsored conversion to socialism'. Which isn't to say that reactionaries wouldn't, and didn't, paint it that way- of course they did, and would do so. But those who benefit from such initiatives- who'll always be the 'silent majority' of people, due to inescapable inequalities in wealth distribution- won't ever see it that way. And when the alternatives are either 'we'll provide support, but only if you're from a sufficiently high caste, otherwise begone inferior filth'; 'we'll provide support, but only if you renounce all your heathen cultural and religious practices and convert to Islam first, otherwise we're religiously obligated to enslave you or kill you, seeing as how you're a kafir and all', or 'we'll offer our support to everyone irrespective of their culture, religion or gender, so long as you respect our faith and others' whilst you're under our roof, and you're definitely not obligated to convert to Sikhism if you partake of our aid, but it'd be polite to at least consider it, and we'd be really happy if you did convert', it's pretty obvious and self-explanatory why the latter held the most appeal.
On that related note though, those religious demographic estimates for the Sikh Empire do indeed vary wildly. And this can primarily be attributed to the fact that the different BEIC employees who conducted and/or compiled the scouting surveys which came up with these estimates- predominantly Charles Metcalfe, Alexander Burnes, William Moorcroft and Lt. Wade- all supported different interest groups, and thus submitted their own religious demographic estimates based upon differing definitions of what constituted 'Sikhs', 'Muslims' and 'Hindus'.
Those highest Muslim estimates, of 80%, which can be sourced back to the findings of William Moorcroft's expedition to Bukhara in 1821- with Moorcroft having had his own blatantly evident jingoist agenda, and submitted said estimates in an 'engagement' to the British Resident in Delhi, along with a letter to the Governor-General from the Raja of Ladakh offering formal allegiance to the Company (on the grounds that "it used to pay tribute to Delhi under Mughal rule, BRITAIN owns Delhi now, so BRITAIN owns ALL of the Mughals' former vassal states by way of inheritance"); in which he extensively boasted about how "On the one hand I averted from an amiable and harmless people the oppressive weight of Sikh exaction and insolence, and on the other I secured for my country an influence over a state (Ladakh) which, lying on the British frontier, offered a central mart for the extension of her commerce to Turkestan and China, and a strong network against an enemy from the north, should such a foe ever occur in the autocrat of the Russians".
The highest Sikh estimates for its population (exceeding 20-25%) came from Charles Metcalfe, who when serving in the post of envoy to the court of Ranjit Singh in Lahore in 1808-09, began a romantic relationship with a Punjabi Sikh woman; which he continued to openly maintain throughout his tenure in India, but was deemed 'illegitimate' in the BEIC's official records, along with the three sons she bore him (all of whom were sent back to England to receive formal educations), solely on the grounds that the couple were only ever formally wed in a Sikh marriage ceremony. These came directly from the Lahore Darbar itself (but were only really reliable and trustworthy with regards to the Majha region, which constitutes the Sikh heartland); with Metcalfe having only retired from service with the East India Company in 1838 and returned in England afterwards, since his Sikh Punjabi wife had died in that year.
And the lowest Muslim estimates (50%), along with some of the highest Sikh (20%) and Hindu (30%) estimates, came from Alexander Burnes, collected in the course of his expedition up the valley of the Indus River in 1829 and further travels in the Sikh Empire and surrounding territories up until the Ropar Summit in Oct 1831; with this being attributable to his differing methodology (which he chose since it was the prevailing view among those local commonfolk, leaders and governors whom he'd spoken to on his travels through the region, accompanied only by Ensign J.D. Leckie, with members of native local communities periodically enlisted to man and navigate his convoy). Alexander Burnes categorized all Nanakpanthis as being 'Sikhs', rather than Hindus (hence his estimation of Shikarpur/Upper Sindh's population being 50% Sikh already at that time), as did most people in the Sikh Empire, and those farther down the Indus in Talpur Sindh at this time; with the Sikh Empire's success having greatly increased the associated prestige of identifying as a Sikh rather than a Hindu. And he also categorized all Sufis as being 'Hindus'; since they were popularly decried as such, and thereby excluded from the definition of 'Muslim' in the eyes of Sunni and Sh'ia Muslims, who themselves collectively comprised the majority of the Muslim population.
As such, it's ironically the last of these religious demographic estimates that'll probably have been the most relevant and important in a 'Sikh Imperial' TL, since it was how the general public typically broke things down and divided them up themselves at the time (even if the respective clergies, and the aristocracy at the Lahore Darbar, greatly disagreed), and thus represents the bar for how plausible it'd be to maintain religious stability and prevent civil unrest on sectarian religious grounds.
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Ricardolindo
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Thanks for the detailed reply. In your opinion, why was it that by the time of the Partition of India, Sikhs were not a majority in any district of British India? They were spread from Peshawar to Delhi with the highest population being in Amritsar, a religious center for them, but even Amritsar had a Muslim plurality.
Because the 'Martial Tribes' edict changed them from a religious to a racial/ethnic group when they'd never been one previously, thereby plateauing out their growth rate relative to the general population at that early juncture (with the Sikhs' markedly higher-than-average literacy and education levels subsequently reducing their relative share of the population from then onwards, on account of their birth rates being lower than the average for the general population). And also because the main religious body of the Sikh Khalsa at Amritsar became increasingly exclusionist, racist and elitist under the rule of the British Raj as a result, to the extent where the official Sikh clergy of the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) in Amritsar conferred upon Colonel Dyer the Saropa (robe of honor, the mark of distinguished service to the Sikh faith, or to humanity in general) as a reward for having perpetrated the Amritsar Massacre, as well as formally proclaiming him and Capt. Briggs to have been invested into the brotherhood of the Khalsa with a 'special exemption' from having to follow any of the 5 K’s.
Governor O'Dwyer was also awarded with a reward fund of 1.75 lakh rupees by Sikh & Hindu members of the Punjabi aristocracy for his part in the massacre, and Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala actually openly supported it as well. Why? On account of the Jallianwala Bagh (garden) having been the nearest place where those of 'lower castes', such as untouchables, were still permitted to congregate and pray by that stage in history IOTL, having been barred from entering the grounds of the Golden Temple itself; with the governors of the Akal Takht, upon hearing of the massacre, having immediately summoned General Dyer to the Golden Temple and conferred these honors upon him for having purportedly 'taught them a lesson' and 'cleansed them from these sacred, hallowed grounds'. During the Colonial Raj, Sikhism was explicitly typecast and entrenched as members of an upper caste/class racial/ethnic group, rather than the explicitly anti-caste egalitarianist movement it'd been prior to this.
But how could an exclusionist, upper caste/class social group ever have constituted the majority of the population, in any society, especially one where inter-generational social mobility had effectively been stripped away? Since if you're in the majority, you're no longer upper class/caste, by its very definition it becomes impossible...
I’ve come across this claim - that the Sikh Empire had this massive bottom-up literary culture - before, and I have to admit, I just don’t believe it. Punjab in the 19th to late 20th centuries was a place where the elite almost exclusively used Urdu as a literary language and Gurmukhi script was shunted to the side as a Sikh liturgical language. Indeed, many people did not even view Punjabi as a language separate from Hindi/Urdu, and due to its Sikh liturgical usage it got a sectarian cast. Within India, it only gained its position as the leading language in Punjab in the 1960s, and within Pakistan, it still hasn’t.
Now, the way I’ve seen the line crossed between these two very different Punjabs is that the Britishers destroyed all these libraries, books, qaidas etc. and left nothing in its wake. But if this is true, then surely they would have passed some trace of this literary culture to their kids, and it would have been quite impossible for Urdu to gain its position as the predominant script of Punjab. As such, I find it hard to believe that Punjab had this massive literary culture. Which isn’t to say that it didn’t have some sort of one, but it looks to me like it has been exaggerated.
But this is the thing - it’s a state-sponsored initiative tied to religion. Socialism can become quasi-religious in nature, but it’s not a religion. With state aid being tied to religion in this manner, it is cast as religion, and that can only result in competing religious escalation. Not a recipe for social stability.
Thanks, that’s very helpful. The last one does seem the most accurate, though I do still wonder about the precise boundaries between Sikhism and Hinduism. On the other hand, Ranjit Singh may have celebrated Navratri (or was he doing so for his Hindu subjects’ benefit), the Dasam Granth which today is deemphasized because too much of it seems Hindu (including an account of Durga killing Mahishasura) was widely read, and many Sikhs of the era read the Ramcharitmanas that serves as the main holy book among Hindus in much of the Hindi belt, so perhaps “normative” Sikhism would be Hindu-tinted relative to OTL, which would allow for broader definitions of Sikhism.
This is not true. Sikhism has always been led by upper-caste people, despite its lofty egalitarian ideals. All of the human Gurus belonged to the merchant and administrative Khatri caste, and similarly you can see that pattern of dominance of leadership up to the 18th century. What changed then was which caste was on the top, as over the 18th and 19th centuries the landowning Jat caste converted to Sikhism and gradually came to hold a position of leadership. But Khatris were able to maintain a position of substantive but not uncontested leadership up until after Partition, which devastated them and dispersed them across India and in its wake the Jat caste became dominant, with their form of Sikhism becoming normative.
Now, a lot of things did change with this change of caste leadership, as Khatris are urban and merchant/administrative, while Jats are rural and landowning. So the nature of caste dominance changed a lot. But Sikh history shouldn’t be viewed in this rose-tinted lens.
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Ricardolindo
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Great reply.
Here is a relevant piece of information:
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jats: The Jats were originally pastoralists in the lower Indus Valley of Sindh and then migrated to Punjab where they took up agriculture and gradually converted to Islam, Sikhism or Hinduism depending on the area.
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It's not so much that the Sikh Empire didn't have these policies, since efforts certainly were made to implement them. It's more about the fact that said efforts to establish this 'massive bottom-up literary culture' were in reality extremely limited in their extent, funding, distribution, implementation (with corruption in the Gurdwaras' operations, greatly exacerbated by the fact that the overwhelming majority of them were still being run by Mahants who'd inherited said positions from their parents, having been fairly rife in this era; to the extent that several relatively prominent Gurdwaras in this era were also noted for openly operating as brothels, as well selling liquor and drugs such as opiates and hemp), and perhaps most importantly, duration, as well as being explicitly opposed rather than supported by the majority of the elites in the Lahore Darbar. The aforementioned Gurmukhi alphabet book production and dissemination program certainly did happen, being the most clear and overt case of this which actually happened (ish) in the Sikh Empire IOTL.
But with Maharajah Ranjit Singh himself having been largely illiterate and having no interest whatsoever in literary or education schemes, this was the brainchild of the faction led by then Crown Princess Chand Kaur, her uncle Chet Singh Bajwa, and the 'French Brigade' of the Fauj-i-Khas. The first efforts to enact this, even as a trial scheme, were only carried out after Maharajah Ranjit Singh'd had already been struck by the stroke which had affected his left leg and his face, and from which he'd never recovered completely (late 1835 at the earliest)- but his trial scheme was explicitly opposed and obstructed by the Dogras' faction, which provided the greatest patronage of all to the Sanatan Mahants of Sikhism's most prominent Gurdwaras and holy sites, thus granting them the influence needed to prevent these Gurdwaras from actually carrying out in the program (instead, simply pocketing the funds provided to facilitate it without actually doing so).
Thus, this scheme was in practice only universally implemented in the Majha region, by those Gurdwaras (which were more commonly known and referred to as Tikanas, Ashrams, Dera, or Dharamsalae) in the Sikh Empire which were run by the Sevapanthi (aka Addanshahi in Amritsar and the Majha region, after Adan Shah, a wealthy banker who'd devoted his wealth and leisure to the propagation of their doctrines in the early years of the Sikh Confederacy) order/sect of the Sikhs, which Kanwar Kharak Singh himself patronized and professed membership of; along with those others which weren't patronized by the Dogras (overwhelmingly, those which catered to lower caste congregations). And with the decline of the Sikh empire after Singh's death owing much to the continuation of the jagir-based economic and taxation system which he'd inherited from the Mughals and retained, and the fight to control the tax spoils which emerged in the immediate aftermath, leading to a power struggle among the nobles and his family from different wives, this program was extremely short-lived.
Chet Singh Bajwa sought to expand this trial program and implement it across the Sikh Empire, and made this official government policy shortly after Maharajah Kharak Singh's ascension to the throne on the 1st September 1839. But this never really had the chance to actually be put into practice, with any hopes of universalizing basic literacy skills across the Sikh Empire dying with Bajwa's assassination only five weeks after Kharak Singh's coronation. Thereafter installed as de-facto ruler in a coup by Dhian Singh Dogra, who greatly opposed the scheme, Nau Nihal Singh was relatively uninterested in it, and thus made no effort to restore it as official government policy (and even if he had, Dhian Singh Dogra led the Sikh Empire's actual governance, and wouldn't have allowed it to be implemented anyway). Maharani Chand Kaur, during her extremely brief 2 month reign as Maharani of the Sikh Empire after the death of her son (formally, only 1 month after her coronation as 'Malika Muqaddasa', Empress Immaculate), before Sher Singh marched on Lahore and placed the city under siege, did issue proclamations to revive her uncle's proposed program, and implement it across the Sikh Empire; but she never had the upper hand in the power struggle which ensued, and was forced to relinquish her claim to the throne, with the state-subsidized literacy program she'd hoped to implement immediately being scrapped thereafter.
The Kingdom of the Punjab/Sikh Empire's 'massive literary culture', insofar as it actually came into existence and became a thing historically IRL, has indeed been greatly exaggerated. But some semblance of the base upon which such a literary culture could, and would, have come into existence had already been formed. And in an ATL where the Sikh Empire had endured, and remained under the leadership of those who patronized such literacy programs IOTL, this Gurmurkhi literary culture would have almost certainly come to fruition. As it was though, the factors that these programs were effectively only limited to the Majha region of the Punjab, only to those of lower castes, and only implemented for a brief spell of no more than a few years at most, all took their toll.
Whilst this program did ultimately succeed in significantly increasing the base rates of basic literacy among the general population as a whole, it also increased Gurmukhi Punjabi's associations with either being 'common' and 'low-caste' (among the non-Sikh population), or exclusively as a Sikh liturgical language, thus increasing the impetus for the Punjabi elites themselves to adopt Persian and/or Urdu as literary/'learned' languages instead, in a manner vaguely echoing how the Ragged Schools movement in England's primary focus upon basic literacy had also greatly increased the British elites' desire for 'Anglo-Latin' to be taught and learned, and thus led to the 'Grammar Schools' (which had originally existed to teach Latin, and were officially defined in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary as 'a school in which the learned languages are grammatically taught', from which the 'unlearned' language of English was explicitly excluded) amassing greater prestige to become the 'upper-class educational institutions' they remain to the present day.
In the Dharmic/Indic tradition, there was no distinction between religious and secular philosophy; 'Dharma', commonly translated as 'righteousness', 'merit' or 'religious and moral duties' governs individual conduct in all walks of life, and encompasses social duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and the 'right way of living'. And whilst in contemporary mainstream Sikhism, 'Dharma' or 'Dharam' is typically defined as the path of righteousness and proper religious practice, and one's own moral duties toward God, it's important to note that, in pre-colonial era India, 'Dharma' was essentially a catch-all term, encompassing the more religious/spiritualist Indic equivalents of those basic Confucian ethical concepts and practices focusing upon the cultivation of virtue in a morally organised world; with its antonym, 'adharma' (tl: that which is 'not dharma'), pertaining to all of that which is against nature, immoral, unethical, wrong or unlawful. Western philosophical traditions had far stricter definitions of 'religion', and distinguished between religions, ethical systems, and moral sciences of philosophies.
In Indian philosophical traditions though, the definition of 'religion' is far broader; any system or doctrine which codifies ethics or morality is classified as being intrinsically 'Dharmic' in nature, and thus inherently religious by default. But this doesn't necessarily make competing religious escalation, and social instability, predestined. Provided that the social duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and 'right way of living' advocated by the different religious groups in any society are sufficiently compatible, tolerant, and tolerable to one another, they can, have, and will continue to co-exist with one another in relative inter-communal harmony.
And it's also worth remembering that, prior to the nineteenth century, almost all schools in England were run by church authorities and stressed religious education, with the Church of England resisted all early attempts for the state to provide secular education, and with the rights of parents to withdraw their children from religious instruction only being established with William Forster's Elementary Education Act as late as 1870 (but with state payments of school fees flowing into the coffers of the CoE and the Catholic Church, from the Balfour Act of 1902 all the way up until the church schools' effective nationalisation in 1944). Sure, it'll lead to some short-term stability issues, and religious tensions- any societal change and progress always will. But it has to start somewhere, and in the medium to long-term, societal progressiveness always pays dividends.
When the boundaries between them, along with those between several other doctrines, were as subjective and open to personal interpretation as they were, there's a pretty low limit on how precise and accurate one's estimations can be. The precise line between Sufism and Hinduism were similarly blurred- as, indeed, was that between Sufism and Sikhism, with the followers of both branches of the Chishti Order of Sufism (the successors of Farīduddīn Mas'ūd aka "Baba Farid", the Sufi saint whose teachings and verses are included in the Guru Granth Sahib) also being commonly cited as Sikhs rather than Muslims or Hindus in this period. And pertaining to the 'competing religious escalation'; the Nizami branch in particular, especially in its core cities of Pakpattan and Hoshiarpur, had also adopted the controversial practice of also accepting seekers of all faiths without demanding conversion to formal Islam in the early 1700s, with it having become customary for Nizami Sufis under the Sikh Imperial rule to start adding 'Nizami' after their names in the same manner that the Sikhs added 'Singh' after theirs.
I'm certainly not viewing Sikh history through this rose-tinted lens, even if it is my own faith and native culture; perhaps it would've been more accurate to say that "During the Colonial Raj, Sikhism was explicitly typecast and entrenched as members of an upper caste/class racial/ethnic group, rather than the nominally anti-caste egalitarianist movement it'd been prior to this.' Far too often in all cultures' and religious faiths' histories, those actually in power haven't practiced what their faiths actually preached; Sikhism's no exception to that. And you're always going to get those people who rise to the top, gaining those positions of dominance and leadership, making efforts to 'pull up the ladder behind them'.
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