WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh, an ed­u­ca­tion ac­tivist, in a two-part se­ries pre­sents a re­search mono­graph on Sik­li­gar Sikhs, amongst whom he has been work­ing for the last eight years pi­o­neer­ing ed­u­ca­tional and train­ing pro­grams for their chil­dren. Sik­li­gars have not for­saken their roots but till re­cently, their ex­is­tence has re­mained eclipsed from the mem­ory and con­scious­ness of the Sikhs.

My search for the Sik­li­gar Sikhs started in 2009 when I vis­ited the Shola­pur dera (habi­tat) of the Sik­li­gar Sikhs in the In­dian state of Ma­ha­rash­tra with Sikh ac­tivist Kul­want Singh from Mum­bai. I have since vis­ited the habi­tats of these tra­di­tional weapon-mak­ers and weapon-pol­ish­ers in Hy­der­abad, Ban­ga­lore, Mysore, Pune, Gwalior, Dabra, Lud­hi­ana, Jaipur, Al­war, Kas­ganj, Agra, Sul­tan­puri area of Delhi and Meerut. Since then, I have never looked back.

Some thirty years ago, I had vis­ited a Sik­li­gar Sikh dera in Nag­pur as a stu­dent vol­un­teer. The im­age that stayed in my mind was that of poor and de­ter­mined Sikhs, with min­i­mal knowl­edge of Guru Nanak, Guru Gob­ind Singh and Guru Granth Sahib, hard­work­ing, tak­ing eas­ily to liquor in the evenings to over­come the fa­tigue due to their rig­or­ous work and the fam­i­lies hav­ing many chil­dren.

Et­y­mo­log­i­cally speak­ing, Sik­li­gar is a Per­sian/​Ara­bic word, com­pris­ing Saiqal + gar mean­ing, ‘pol­isher/​bur­nisher/​fur­bisher of weapons’.  From weapon pol­ish­ers -the Sikal­gars, over the cen­turies turned weapon-mak­ers.   

 “The Sik­li­gar Sikhs liv­ing in the states of Ma­ha­rash­tra, Andhra Pradesh and Kar­nataka know that “our fore­fa­thers were tra­di­tional weapon-mak­ers, so are we and we have come from Nanded.” The one thing that has surely been passed on from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other is “Kesh nahi kaatne hai, chahe jaan chali jaaye.”  ”

Where did they come from? When did the Sik­li­gars be­come Sikhs? I did not get any firm an­swers ei­ther from the Sik­li­gars or from ac­tivists work­ing in the field. Two schools of thought that are in cur­rency are that they came in touch with the Sikhs, first at the time of Guru Har­gob­ind Sahib and then at the time of Guru Gob­ind Singh. Prior to that, they were res­i­dents of the Mar­war area of pre­sent day Ra­jasthan.  An­thro­pol­o­gist Sher Singh Sher, in his mag­num opus, pub­lished in 1966, The Sik­li­gars of Pun­jab, which is the only such study of its kind, as­serts both the the­o­ries.  

It is gen­er­ally sur­mised that the Sik­li­gars may have first come in touch with the House of Guru Nanak when Guru Har­gob­ind Sahib vis­ited Gwalior and the other is that they may have as­so­ci­ated with Gu­rughar when Guru Gob­ind Singh Ji vis­ited Nanded. If ei­ther of this is true, it leads us to the corol­lary which needs his­tor­i­cal study and that is, whether the Sik­li­gar Sikhs came to Pun­jab or did they ac­tu­ally join the path of Sikhism when the re­spec­tive Gu­rus trav­elled through their lands.  

OLYM­PUS DIG­I­TAL CAM­ERAThe Sik­li­gar Sikhs liv­ing in the states of Ma­ha­rash­tra, Andhra Pradesh and Kar­nataka know that “our fore-fa­thers were tra­di­tional weapon-mak­ers, so are we and we have come from Nanded.” The one thing that has surely been passed on from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other is “Kesh nahi kaatne hai, chahe jaan chali jaaye.”  

 “One of the most fas­ci­nat­ing fea­tures of the Sik­li­gar Sikhs is their lan­guage. Across the spec­trum that I vis­ited, I found that they speak mul­ti­ple lan­guages –the lo­cal lan­guage where they have their set­tle­ment, a smat­ter­ing of Hindi, their own lan­guage with­out a script –Sik­li­gari –a mix­ture of Mar­wari, Hindi and Pun­jabi with the Pun­jabi por­tion con­tain­ing Gur­bani words and their pe­cu­liar in­ter­nal se­cret lan­guage, Parsee.”

The Sik­li­gars liv­ing in Mad­hya Pradesh, Ra­jasthan and Delhi trace their ori­gin to Ra­jasthan, though they too are more aware of their pre-British and post-British pasts only.

 

The mo­bil­ity of the Sik­li­gar Sikhs com­bined with their ar­ti­san­ship as weapon mak­ers, made them the cyno­sure of the British. While I have yet to un­der­stand their sta­tus and role dur­ing the reign of Ma­haraja Ran­jit Singh, or even be­fore that dur­ing the times of Baba Banda Singh Ba­hadur, it is quite clear from my in­ter­views with the el­derly Sik­li­gar Sikhs in Lud­hi­ana, Al­war and Sul­tan­puri in Delhi that a large num­ber of them were liv­ing in var­i­ous ar­eas of pre­sent-day Pak­istan, namely Mul­tan and Sindh.

Even to­day, some of the el­derly mi­grants speak flu­ent Sindhi, apart from their own spo­ken lan­guage and di­alects. Ni­hal Singh, the eighty-year-old Granthi of the Gur­d­wara Sahib in Sul­tan­puri, the sev­enty-two-year-old-man from Al­war –Har­gun Singh (who knew the names of his grand­fa­ther and great-grand­fa­ther for 8 gen­er­a­tions, namely Gharib Singh, Hari Singh, Bhauja Singh, Na­gaya Seonh, Chat­tar Seonh, Poohla Seonh, Cha­tru and then Bhartu) both told me the in­ter­est­ing story of their trav­els from Sindh to Karachi to Mum­bai to Jaipur to Jodh­pur, be­fore fi­nally set­tling in Al­war and Delhi.

Ni­hal Singh told me that from Sindh up to their stay in Prem Na­gar, Delhi, they never had pucca houses and were es­sen­tially vagabonds. Though he could not con­firm, he told me that his an­ces­tors had gone from Pun­jab to Ra­jasthan and not the other way around. This as­pect cer­tainly needs more ver­i­fi­ca­tion.  An­other note­wor­thy fact that he proudly nar­rated is that his ma­ter­nal un­cle used to teach him Gur­mukhi and Pun­jabi and his four sons are pro­fi­cient in per­form­ing Kir­tan play­ing the har­mo­nium and tabla, even though they are not pro­fes­sional Kir­taniyas.  

As there have been no cen­sus stud­ies of any kind, all talk of num­bers is ei­ther in the realm of wish­ful think­ing or spec­u­la­tion based on hearsay or state­ments of po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tivists with­out ba­sis.  

It is gen­er­ally said and be­lieved that like the Van­jaras, even the Sik­li­gars were also de­clared a Crim­i­nal Tribe un­der the Crim­i­nal Tribes Act, 1871 by the British, but the fact is oth­er­wise.   

One fas­ci­nat­ing fea­ture of the Sik­li­gar Sikhs is their lan­guage. Across the spec­trum that I vis­ited, I found that they speak mul­ti­ple lan­guages –the lo­cal lan­guage where they have their set­tle­ment, a smat­ter­ing of Hindi, their own lan­guage with­out a script –Sik­li­gari –a mix­ture of Mar­wari, Hindi and Pun­jabi with the Pun­jabi por­tion con­tain­ing Gur­bani words and their pe­cu­liar in­ter­nal se­cret lan­guage, Parsee (not to be mis­un­der­stood with Parsi or Farsi).

Noted au­thor of The Other Sikhs, Dr Hi­madri Baner­jee says that their lan­guage is an in­tel­lec­tual ar­moury and an even an in­ner pro­tec­tion wall. It is my con­sid­ered view that an un­der­stand­ing of Sik­li­gari and Parsee lan­guages can pro­vide us with a to­tally new vista of knowl­edge about the ori­gin, set­tle­ment and his­tory of the Sik­li­gar Sikhs.  

The names of Sik­li­gar men and women, boys and girls are also unique –I have hardly found a name with more than two syl­la­bles, as was the case with most Sikh names of yore. 

The Sik­li­gar Sikhs live in de­ras and each of these de­ras com­prises of ex­tended fam­i­lies of one or two el­derly still liv­ing as heads of the de­ras. The el­derly sit­ting on char­poys ap­pear to be idling but are qui­etly mon­i­tor­ing the af­fairs of every­one and are very fond of say­ing, “Yeh saare mere daade ke pari­var ke log hain.”  Most of them live on en­croached gov­ern­ment land, ly­ing va­cant for decades. Now the gov­ern­ment and the land mafia are pres­sur­ing them to go “else­where.”  

With their heads cov­ered with Du­pat­tas all the time, the Sik­li­gar women work in uni­son with their hus­bands and even go to do me­nial jobs to make a liv­ing.  There is hardly any gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion and in case a fam­ily does not have a daugh­ter by birth, a girl-child is adopted.  Surely, Sikhs in Pun­jab and the Di­as­pora, par­tic­u­larly those com­mit­ting foeti­cide have an ex­am­ple to em­u­late.

Time and tide have snatched from them their ar­moury and am­mu­ni­tion mak­ing skill-set, re­duc­ing them to re­pair­ing drums, buck­ets, mak­ing locks and keys and other agri­cul­tural im­ple­ments, ex­cept amongst those still en­gaged in weapon-mak­ing in parts of Ma­ha­rash­tra. Now with the young tak­ing to ed­u­ca­tion in a small but sure way, I fore­see the dis­ap­pear­ance of their tra­di­tional ar­ti­san­ship, if no ma­jor step to adopt and pa­tro­n­ise the same is taken.   

My as­so­ci­ates and I have re­sponded to the call of the Sik­li­gars, will you?