Shah Mohammad

Shah Mohammad (1780-1862) was a Punjabi poet who lived during the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and is best known for "Jangnama"— a colossal work that gave an eyewitness account of the First Anglo-Sikh War that took place after the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

Origins

Controversy over native place

It was initially thought that Shah Mohammad was from Batala, a steel town in the Gurdaspur district.It took more than a century to establish that Shah Mohammad actually belonged to the border village of "Wadala Veeram" in the Amritsar district and not Batala.

It was "Maula Baksh Kushta", a famous Punjabi critic, who also hailed from Wadala Veeram, who first pointed out that Shah Mohammad belonged to his own village.

A team of researchers in 1973, led by the then Director of the Punjabi Languages Department, visited this village and with the help of revenue records, discovered an old marble slab fixed on the well of Shah Mohammad’s house thus proving that the poet did indeed belong to this village.

Wadala Veeram was a Muslim-dominated village which witnessed communal frenzy as the country inched towards the Partition, claiming many Sikh and Muslim lives.

Views on Maharaja Ranjit Singh's rule

An ardent admirer of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s rule, Shah Mohammad believed that the king had converted the Punjab – "the land of the five rivers" — from "an abode of sorrow" to "a garden of Paradise."

Shah Mohammad wrote that the Maharaja’s legacy was such that he had created a secular kingdom that was equal to all.

Views on Punjabiyat

Showering praise over the composite Punjabi culture during the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, where Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims lived happily with each other, Shah Mohammad had written that the Punjab was fortunate in having developed and cherished since centuries a long and glorious tradition of such culture.

The mystic songs of Sufi saints and Punjabi poets in particular were the pride of the whole of the Punjab, he had further written. During this reign, all communities reaffirmed their Punjabi roots, he had mentioned.

For him, Punjabi Muslims became a part and parcel of the "Sarkar-e-Khalsa" (the Sikh Kingdom of Ranjit Singh), whereas they had earlier looked towards Afghans, Arabs, Pashtuns, Persians and Turks and were consequently betrayed by them.

The run-up to the Anglo-Sikh Wars

The secular rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh worked well during his lifetime, but with Kharak Singh, his eldest son, becoming the king, things started to change. The new Maharaja turned out to be full of vices and lacked the ability to rule.

Also, after the Maharaja's death, the council of ministers and the nobility at the court became sharply divided. Two major factions emerged.

One consisted of three Dogra brothers, Gulab Singh, Dhyan Singh and Suchet Singh as well as Dhyan Singh's son Hira Singh.

Opposed to the Dogras, were the Sikh aristocracy, of which three families - the "Sandhawalias", the "Attariwalas", and the "Majithias" - were the most prominent. [See the "Majithia Sirdars"]

Due to the inept nature of Kharak Singh, the whole palace soon became awash with intrigues and infighting between the Sikhs, the Dogras and several other smaller factions.

The British, who had been kept at bay by Ranjit Singh, finally got a foothold in the Durbar. They began playing one faction against the other in line with their usual policy in other parts of the Indian subcontinent.

After two abortive Anglo-Sikh Wars, the Punjab was finally annexed to the East India Company in 1849, a decade after the death of Ranjit Singh.

The Jangnama

The famous “Jangnama,” is believed to have been written around 1846. Historians have pointed out that close relatives of Shah Mohammad were employed in Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s army.It was with their help that the poet could piece together a complete picture of the battle between the Sikhs and the British.

The poet had rued that soon after Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s death, the entire edifice of his kingdom collapsed due to internal intrigues and British machinations. He projected, in the most appropriate words, the infighting among the Sikhs and the treachery perpetrated by the Dogras led by Dhyan Singh Dogra, making the descriptions a “primary source” for all historians.

Shah Mohammad's work thus remains the most accurate work on the reasons for the demise of Sikh rule in the Punjab.

The historical facts given in the “Jangnama” are verifiable from the "Roznamacha" (a daily diary), written during the reign Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

Legacy

Shah Mohammad was a great Punjabi patriot, who infused a sense of nationalism among his readers.His poetry is part of the Punjab’s golden heritage and is considered a lighthouse for the generations to come.

References

* [http://www.apnaorg.com/test/new/article_details.php?art_id=217]
*Singh, Khushwant, "A history of the Sikhs Volume II"