Introduction To The Book 'Guru Gobind Singh - Life And Achievements (Vol.2)' By S. P. Gulati 

The second volume in the series "Guru Gobind Singh---Life and Achievements" includes excerpts on Guru Gobind Singh from notable works by Western authors, published in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The "Khalsa of Gobind Singh" has been taken from J.C. Archer's celebrated book The Sikhs published in 1946. Archer was a Christian missionary and by virtue of his association with the Baring Union Christian College at Batala, he had an opportunity to reside in Punjab and come in contact with Sikhs. He was highly motivated to know the Sikhs' origin, history, religion and heritage----probably an extension his missionary interest -and by the end long and arduous study of Sikhs and Sikh creed he arrived " simple conclusion, that Sikhism was a new faith, a new religion, even though initially it was meant to reconcile Hinduism and Islam but had failed in its object. It was Guru Gobind Singh c by founding a unique entity-the Khalsa -that it developed a separate, independent faith. "Gobind Singh was unquestionably the ablest man the Sikhs had yet produced," he says, "probably the most learned of them all upto the time of his death and certainly the ablest administrator."

Lepel H. Griffin was a British administrator in the period closely following the annexation of Punjab in 1849 and his study of e Sikhs and their-history was prompted by the exigencies of  administration of the recently subverted Sikh kingdom. Griffin treated Sikh faith in otherwise an historical book, titled Ranjit Singh, on  the reasoning that Ranjit Singh's career and character could not properly be understood without an understanding of Sikh religion. In his essay "Departure from Nanakism" taken from Ranjit Singh, Griffin says that Guru Nanak was highly ethical, and no change of any religious importance was effected by his successors "until the time of Gobind Singh, whose teaching and book of conduct were a new starting point for the Sikhs and did more than the authority of Nanak to form them into the military nation which they afterwards became."

Dorothy Field in her Religion of the Sikhs, published in 1914, finds Sikhism as "essentially a practical religion" and "would rank almost first in the world." She is surprised that it made a nation in so short a time and succeeded in transforming notoriously servile and timid outcaste Indian into a "fine and loyal warrior."

John J.H. Gordon in "Sikh Commonwealth" taken from The Sikhs, published in 1904, says, "under Guru Gobind Singh's strong hands the Sikhs rose by a feeling of nationality among a people who had none. He well and truely laid the cornerstone of that nation, which Ranjit Singh a hundred years later, by the force of the religious bond of the Khalsa, raised on the ruins of the Mughal Empire emancipating the land of his ancestors from thraldom and persecution."

John Malcolm's "Bold Reformer" is taken from his book Sketch of the Sikhs, first published in 1812. John Malcolm had come to Punjab with the army of Lord Lake in pursuit of Jaswant Rao Holkar. Malcolm stayed back to study the religion of the Sikhs, their history and religion in a manner other British scholars preceding him had not done. He even had some books of Sikh authors translated into English for his study. He writes, "Guru Gobind Singh taught a doctrine suited to the troubled state of his mind and called upon his followers, by every feeling of manhood to lay aside their peaceable habits, to graft the resolute courage of the soldier on the enthusiastic faith of the devotee, to swear eternal war with the cruel and haughty Muhammedans and to devote themselves to steel, as the only means obtaining every blessing that this world or that to come, could afford to mortals."

The essay "Short Life-Immortal Glory" is taken from J.D. Cunningham's most comprehensive work The History of Sikhs published in 1849 on the eve of annexation of Punjab by the British. Summing up the character and achievements of Guru Gobind Singh, Cunningham writes, "The last apostle of the Sikhs did not live to see his own ends accomplished, but he effectively roused the dormant energies of a vanquished people, and filled them with a lofty although fitful longing for social freedom and national ascendancy, the proper adjuncts of that purity of worship which had been preached by Nanak. Gobind saw what was yet vital, and he relumed it with Prometheon fire."

-S.P. Gulati