Ranjit Singh a Secular Sikh Sovereign Afterword Mulk Raj
Anand/K.S. Duggal.
New Delhi, Abhinav, 143 p., Illus., ISBN 81-7017-244-6.
Ranjit Singh a Secular Sikh Sovereign Afterword Mulk Raj
Anand/K.S. Duggal.
New Delhi, Abhinav, 143 p., Illus., ISBN 81-7017-244-6.
Contents: Foreword. 1. His heritage. 2. The Sikhs in ferment. 3. The Sukarchakia Misl. 4. The Maharaja. 5. Punjab under a sovereign Punjabi ruler. 6. The first round of conquests. 7. The affairs of heart. 8. The British connection. 9. The fruits of alliance. 10. Koh-i-nu. 11. Multan conquered. 12. Foreigners at the Lahore Durbar. 13. Peshawar occupied.14. Leili. 15. A summit on the field of the cloth of gold. 16. Kashmir captured. 17. The last battle. 18. A patron of arts. 19. Writing in Ranjit Singh's Singh's Times. 20. Maharaja Ranjit Singh's secularism. Afterword. Chronology. Select bibliography. Index.
"Maharaja Ranjit Singh was the first Punjabi to rule over the Punjab in the recorded history. His kingdom extended from Tibet to Sind and from Kabul to Sutlej. At least 80 percent of population of the territory he ruled was Muslim, 10 percent were Hindus and the remaining 10 percent were Sikhs. A devout follower of Guru Nanak, he never discriminated against any faith. Once he told his foreign minister Fakir Azizuddin, `God intended my looking upon all religions with one eye, that is why I was I was deprived of the other eye.’ This is the story of a truly secular monarch told by a leading storyteller in the country today at a time when the social fabric is under severe strains of religious fanaticism."