Martyrdom and the Sikh Tradition

The majority of histories dealing with the Sikh people underscore a Sikh inclination for martyrdom or śahīdī, as well as a deep reverence for the Sikh martyr or śahīd. Indeed, such profound esteem is featured in the contemporary Sikh prayer, ardās. Similarly, many Sikh histories present the śahīd and śahīdī ideally, as concepts which have always been understood as they are understood today, concepts encountered and elaborated in the very hymns of Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh tradition. This study interrogates such conclusions by first examining the sources dealing with the putative first martyrdom in Sikhism, and then asking whether there existed within the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Sikh tradition a conceptual system which could accommodate fearless resistance to despotic authority and an agonizing death. Finally, the study examines references to martyrs in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Sikh literature. This paper locates the origins of the Sikh concept of martyrdom not in the period of the first nine Gurus (1469-1675 C. E.) but in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, as a consequence of the social, religious, and political environment. It is this period, moreover, that shapes the definitions of both martyr and martyrdom that we find in the early to late nineteenth century, ones far more inclusive than contemporary definitions of these terms allow.