Empire of the Sikhs by Patwant Singh Page B

Lakhpat fell in an expedition against the Chatthas, and with both her rivals removed from the field Sada Kaur had ample scope to pursue her ambitions. The alliance between the Sukerchakias and the Kanhayias, the two most eminent of the twelve
misls,
created by the marriage between her daughter Mehtab Kaur and Ranjit Singh was a formidable starting-point, and Sada Kaur planned to establish her writ over the entire Punjab by drawing on their combined military strength and material resources. But despite her sharp intellect and understanding of the centrality of war and political intrigue in getting what she wanted, she failed to gauge her own limitations with regard to her son-in-law who was already thinking far beyond her vision of the future. He envisioned not only all of Punjab under his control but also territories well beyond India’s boundaries which belonged tothose who had savaged the country for centuries. He was clear in his mind that without first bringing the different
misls
under his control he would lack a sound power base.
    Bikrama Jit Hasrat pinpoints the political situation in the Punjab at the time when Ranjit Singh took over the Sukerchakia
misl
in 1797. ‘The
misl
system born out of a sense of national unity to combat foreign aggression had foundered on the rock of personal ambition and lust for power. The carving out of several principalities by the powerful Bhangis, the Ramgarhias, the Ahluwalias and the Phulkians had struck a blow at the mystic ideal of the Commonwealth of Guru Gobind Singh … The unity of action or concerted will in the name of the Khalsa had become a thing of the past.’ 15 Ranjit Singh’s vision of where and how far he wanted to go to recreate the Commonwealth – although he ended up creating an empire – was beyond Sada Kaur’s powers of conception. And his mother-in-law, able and sharp-witted as she was, could not have been more wrong in believing that she could bring Ranjit Singh under her tutelage.
    In the first years after Raj Kaur’s untimely end, however, and while Ranjit Singh was still coming to grips with running his extended
misl,
he gained a good deal from Sada Kaur’s decisiveness, as when, for example, Zaman Shah appeared in Punjab on his fourth invasion of India in September 1798 and crossed the River Indus at Attock in October. Ranjit Singh prepared to oppose him at Ramnagar on the River Chenab but headed back for the Amritsar-Lahore region when some of the Muslim landlords of the area along with the Afghan governor of Kasur, Nizam-ud-din, prepared to occupy some of the Sikh forts. In the ensuing action a wounded Nizam-ud-din had to be removed along with dead Afghani soldiers who were more than twice the number of Sikh soldiers killed.
    While Sikh contingents under Ranjit Singh continued to attack the Afghans, several Sikh chieftains and their men in Amritsar atthis time were most reluctant to combine forces with him, despite his urging. Sada Kaur, also then in Amritsar, promptly made her presence felt. Addressing the Sardars, she said: ‘If you are disposed to assist Ranjit Singh, advance and join him, if not, throw off that dress and take mine, give me your clothes and I will march against the enemy.’ 16 On 24 November 1798 Zaman Shah, temporarily occupying the city of Lahore, which had been under Bhangi rule since the ousting of the Afghans in 1765, sent a force of 10,000 men to Amritsar to teach the Sikhs a lesson by occupying their holy city, too. Ranjit Singh with 500 horsemen waylaid the advance contingents of Zaman’s army and after particularly intense fighting – in which the Sardars from Amritsar with 2,000 of their men joined in – the Afghans retreated to Lahore. These were the same Sardars who had been addressed by Sada Kaur; her taunts had born fruit.
    The following year provides another example of Sada Kaur’s resourcefulness. The citizens of Lahore had become thoroughly discontented with