Ramblings of a Sikh

If you want a brief but thorough, colour illustrated introduction to the Anglo-Sikh Wars, from the commanders to the battle tactics and more, this is a book you may just wish to consider. Comment WAR and we’ll send you a link via DM to grab your copy! #history #anglosikh #britishempire #panjab #punjab

Comment TURBAN for the full substack article #history #sikh #turban #bus #law

ABCDEFG, Baa Baa Black Sheep and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star are all the same melody. An 18th-century French folk tune, three different sets of lyrics, one piece of music. Nobody calls it copying. We call it folk tradition. Now apply that to Heer. Damodar Gulati wrote his version in 1605. Hafiz Barkhurdar wrote his. Muqbal wrote his. Ahmad Yar wrote his. Waris Shah wrote his in 1766 and that one became canonical. Then Reshma sang her version. Nusrat sang his. Gurdas Maan recorded his in 2004 and again in 2024 for Shahkot. Coke Studio’s done it more than once. Diljit’s done it. That’s sample culture. Punjab’s been doing it since before America was a country. Hip hop didn’t invent this. It just gave it a name, a new piece of equipment and has dominated popular culture since. A.S. Kullar made this point on the latest podcast and it’s been stuck in my head since and was what sparked me to write this article. Comment NAMESAKE for the full podcast. Comment ARTICLE for the full Substack breakdown.

This should be the law at all ruins, no matter where they are in the world. The last three are real world examples and the first two are examples I got AI to help me put together, what do you think of the conceptual mock ups? This has got to be one of the simplest and most effective ways to provide a window into the past for swathes of historical buildings in South Asia? #history #restoration #preservation

This is a beautiful watercolour of a Sikh regimental granthi (a reader of the Guru Granth Sahib) painted in Punjab between 1890 and 1900 by Lt. Col. Alfred Crowdy Lovett, a British officer of the Gloucestershire Regiment. These Granthis were permanently attached to Sikh regiments of the Indian Army, paid by the British and conducted the daily religious life of the unit. The earliest, with the 14th Sikhs (Regiment of Ferozepur), was authorised in 1847 at fifteen rupees a month. Lovett went on to command the 1st Gloucestershire Regiment, fought at Mons, the Aisne and the First Battle of Ypres and was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1914. #GranthiSahibGotSwag #History

Darkness Defied by Ajmer Singh. The true story of Jaswant Singh Khalra. Between 1984 and 1994, thousands of Sikhs were secretly killed by Punjab Police and cremated as unidentified bodies. Their names were erased from the record. Khalra found them. He uncovered over 25,000 illegal cremations, exposed it to the world, and was kidnapped and murdered by the same police force he’d spent years investigating. Originally published in Punjabi to over 20,000 copies sold. This is the English edition. £9 + postage. Only 60 copies in stock. Comment KHALRA below and we’ll DM you the link to get your copy today! #JaswantSinghKhalra #DarknessDefied #PunjabHistory #SikhHistory #ReadMoreHistory

In the 17th century, from Damascus to Isfahan, the Islamic world was covered in colour. These tiles come from two of the great powers of the age. The Syrian tiles are from Damascus, painted in cobalt blue and turquoise with a vase issuing floral sprays inside a lobed cartouche, a signature of Damascus tilework. The Persian tiles are Safavid, made using a technique called cuerda seca, Spanish for “dry cord.” This technique involves multiple coloured glazes being painted onto a single tile, each colour separated by a greasy line mixed with manganese to stop them bleeding together during firing. The result is these vivid blues, turquoises, greens and yellows, all outlined in dark manganese lines, fired in one pass. The Persians called their version haft rang, meaning “seven colours.” It replaced the older, painstaking mosaic technique where each colour was a separate cut piece fitted together like a jigsaw. This particular technique is partly the result of when Shah Abbas I moved his capital to Isfahan in 1598 and demanded his great Shah Mosque be finished in his lifetime. As speed mattered, artists adapted and the result covered every wall, dome and iwan of some of Isfahan’s greatest buildings. Although different empires and cities, the obsession to decorate in such vivid, intricate detail and colour was the same. All of these tiles come from a single private collection in London, now at auction through Bonhams on 21st May. Each one of these tiles is estimated at £1,500 to £3,000 each. These fragments of lost empires are still changing hands four centuries later and the colours have barely faded. #history #tiles #auction #materialheritage

While the Khalsa Army bled at Mudki, Ferozeshah and Aliwal, Gulab Singh was already communicating secretly with British officers. By February 1846 he had positioned himself as the only man the British would negotiate with and when Punjab couldn’t pay the indemnity, he bought Kashmir for himself. I’ve been looking at Satinder Singh’s study of Gulab Singh’s wartime conduct and what the archive actually says versus the popular narrative. Was he a traitor? A pragmatist? Or the most Machiavellian figure in the Sikh Empire? I’ve written it all up if you want to read the full thing comment GULAB for the link. #history

In 1943, a British officer called Captain G. William Dale of the Royal Engineers was posted to India. Over the next three years, Dale painted along his journey and once he had reached India. He started at Freetown Harbour in Sierra Leone, crossed the Indian Ocean and landed in Bombay. From there he was stationed in Lahore, where he painted the Shalimar Gardens, the Lohari Gate, plasterers at work, a man selling goats, soldiers making chapatis and the tomb of Maharajah Ranjit Singh. Amongst the landscapes, Dale also painted portraits. There is one of Havildar Major Harbans Singh in Lahore, February 1944. A Sikh soldier serving in the British Indian Army during the war, painted by the British officer he served alongside. There is another of a woman called Lachhia in Saugor, another of dancers and musicians. Amongst this album is a portrait of the artist himself. At Chandernagore School of Art, an Indian artist called G. Dass drew Dale’s portrait in pencil. The British officer who spent three years painting India, painted by India in return. The whole album, 32 watercolours is at Bonhams on 21st May and estimated at £2,000 to £3,000, although I expect it will sell for much more. #history #art

A sword with Guru Nanak Dev Ji on the blade. Gold on watered steel, made in Lahore or Kashmir in the second half of the 19th century. The blade is a single edged curve of watered Damascus steel, chiselled along its entire length on both sides with figures set within cusped arches. Alongside Guru Nanak Dev Ji are a number of Hindu deities, inlaid in gold across the steel. The hilt is classical Mughal form, chiselled in relief with arabesque motifs and overlaid in gold. The knuckle guard ends in a lion head and the scabbard is the original. I could be wrong but I don’t think a sword like this was ever meant to be used in battle. The gold work alone would have taken months and the embellishments on the blade itself indicate that this was almost certainly a ceremonial piece or a gift, commissioned by or for someone of serious status in the Punjab. This was the kind of sword that moved between courts rather than battlefields. The technique is koftgari, Persian for “beaten work.” The technique ensures that gold wire is hammered into cross hatched grooves cut into the steel surface. It was the signature craft of Punjab’s armourers, with Sialkot and Gujrat as major centres and between the 16th and 19th centuries, it was used on everything from sword hilts to helmets to elephant goads. Guru Nanak is depicted in his distinctive iconography. He rests on a dervish crutch, wears padukas, the traditional wooden clogs of saints and ascetics, and the seli topi, a headpiece that drew from both Hindu and Muslim traditions, reflecting his message of unity. There is only one other sword with comparable iconography is known to exist. It sits in the Royal Collection, likely presented to Edward VII during his tour of India in 1875-76. This one is currently up for auction at Bonhams on 21st May and it’s estimated at £80,000 to £120,000. It was formerly part of the private collection Robert Hales. An exceptional interesting piece of history, a sword where Mughal craft, Sikh and Hindu devotion and Punjabi martial tradition all met on a single blade. #history #heritage

Two of the most important academics working in Sikh and Punjabi studies. One stage. One night. Birmingham. From Bards to Brushstrokes, 8 October, 1 Colmore Square, Birmingham. Join me for our second live event, this time with guests, Professor Eleanor Nesbitt and Dr Radha Kapuria. In Sikh: Two Centuries of Western Women’s Art and Writing, Professor Nesbitt catalogues the 170 or so women who painted Sikh rulers, wrote accounts of Punjabi life that male travellers overlooked, and whose work has been scattered across archives and private collections ever since. Radha’s Punjab Sounds: In and Beyond the Region expands on the world she began uncovering in Music in Colonial Punjab the tawa’ifs and kanjris whose artistic traditions were being actively suppressed in the same period those Western women were picking up their paintbrushes. The overlap between those two stories is where the evening gets interesting and between them: over 200 years of Punjab’s cultural, religious and social history. In person with you in the room. Here’s what the evening looks like: 🎙️ 45 minutes of live conversation with both authors 🙋 Audience Q&A, your questions, directly to them 📚 Books available to buy and get signed 🥟 Food. Obviously. Doors open 5:30pm. Event runs 6–9pm. Early bird tickets are £30 + fees. General tickets are £40 + fees. Every penny goes to the guests, the caterer, and the sound setup ensuring it’s about making something worth showing up for. Early bird tickets are £30 + fees, 22% already gone! General tickets are £40 + fees. 10% of the room is already filled. 💬 Seats are limited so comment BARDS and I’ll send you the link to secure your seats today or scan the QR code. #history #event

Raghu Rai. 1942–2026. A civil engineer who borrowed his brother’s camera once and ended up being personally nominated to Magnum Photos by Henri Cartier-Bresson. He photographed the Bhopal gas disaster, the turbulent 80s in Punjab, Indira Gandhi’s funeral pyre and then he went back to Bhopal. Again and again, for twenty years, because some stories don’t end when the cameras leave. His work has contributed to an incredible visual record of history and a number of books from Amritsar: A City in Remembrance to The Sikhs with Khushwant Singh, and over another 40 others. He said his aim was to capture “life’s longing for itself,” and his photographs, spanning over six decades, are a testament to that.