Empire of the Sikhs by Patwant Singh

and fateful events which will be related later.

    It may be asked at this point what help and guidance was available to Ranjit Singh during his formative years, who was close to him and may have influenced him. One friend in particular deserves mention: Gurmukh Singh, eight years older than Ranjit Singh, who came into the family around the time Ranjit was born. The story goes that ‘In the summer of 1780, as Sardar Mahan Singh was passing through the little town of Kheora on his return from an expedition in the neighbourhood of Pind Dadan Khan, Gurmukh Singh, then a boy of eight years, was presented to him by his uncle Basti Ram, the Toshakhania [Treasurer]. The Sardar was pleased with the bright eyes and intelligent looks of the boy and kept him with himself. Later in the same year Ranjit Singh was born, and Gurmukh was appointed his companion.’ 9 An enduring friendship developed between Ranjit Singh and Gurmukh Singh,who was to be by his side when he captured Lahore in 1799. Because of his trust in him the Sukerchakia chief not only put him in charge of all the treasures of Lahore that fell into his hands but made him paymaster of his victorious army.
    Ranjit Singh’s learning of Gurmukhi and his grounding in the beliefs, ethics and tenets of the Sikh faith at a very early age played a key role in the shaping of his humane character and of the state’s even-handed policies under his rule. The extent of his commitment from a very young age to secular ideals, that is, his open-mindedness to other religions and cultures besides his own, 10 is borne out by the fact that while he loved composing verses in Punjabi, which was an integral part of his being, he made Persian the official language of the Lahore Durbar. Although he did not know it at this age – the only other language he knew besides his own was Gurmukhi – he was as attracted to Persian as he was to Urdu, Kashmiri, Sindhi and many other regional languages.
    While there is no denying his fascination throughout his early years with horsemanship, hunting, shooting and swordsmanship, another side of him drew inspiration from the spiritual under-pinnings of his faith; an inspiration that could have come only from the environment of the household in which he grew up. He was, after all, a great-great-grandson of the legendary Desu (Budha Singh), who had gone to Guru Gobind Singh at the age of fifty to be baptized into the Khalsa at Anandpur and who had died at Gurdas Nangal in 1715 fighting by the side of Banda Singh Bahadur. There can be little doubt that having the blood of this larger-than-life figure in his veins must have been more influential in shaping his leaderly qualities than any formal education could have been and that in his formative years there was more going for him than even he could have realized.
    Among other influences working on Ranjit Singh in those years up to early adulthood were two strong-willed women – his motherRaj Kaur (also known as Mai Malwain) and his mother-in-law Sada Kaur. His marriage to her daughter Mehtab Kaur was a complete failure, not only because of his abiding interest in other women – he was ultimately to have twenty wives in all besides a very sizeable harem – but because of Mehtab Kaur’s deep and continuing conviction that Ranjit Singh’s father Mahan Singh had had a hand in her father Gurbaksh Singh Kanhayia’s death in battle, although he had died in a clash with the Ramgarhias. Sada Kaur’s view was more pragmatic. She hoped to repair the rift between the two
misls
through this marriage, with the aim of creating a grand alliance with far bigger goals in mind.
    Sada Kaur played a major role in Ranjit Singh’s life. It was, however, preceded by his mother Raj Kaur’s more modest but nevertheless significant contribution. She was only twenty-four years old when Mahan Singh died in 1790, but despite her young age she was of considerable help in holding