About The Author Of 'Land Marks In Sikh History - A Fully Researched And Documented History : 1699 - 1947'

Professor M.L, Ahluwalia, M.A. (HONS) is a prominent historian archivist. He taught for several years, history of modern India including  constitutional history, modern Europe and also political science to the degree and post - graduate students. During the last 50 years of his active career he has written several books and research papers on Punjab history alone, which have been widely commended by prominent historians in India and abroad. He is the founder Secretary of the Punjab History Forum and Society, Delhi; founder Secretary & Vice President of the Association of Indian Archivists and its Corresponding Member on the SPA,A, of the International Council on Archives. In 1978 Prof.Ahluwalia was deputed by the Govt. of India to U.S.S.R. and Hungary under the Cultural Exchange programme. The author utilized this opportunity to be explore a large number of hither-to-unknown documents useful for the history of freedom  movement in Indiia and Indo-U.S.S.R. and Indo-Hungarian relations. He was Sectional President, of the Seminar held by the Punjabi University, Patiala to celebrate the 200th Birth Centenary of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. He was President of the Modern History Section at the 17th Session of the Punjab History Conference and again Sectional President of the Medieval history Section at the 28th Session of the Conference. For his contributions towards an objective research in Punjab History, the All India Sikh History Board gave a Man Patra to Prof. Ahluwalia on 30Oct,1982 and the Indian Council of Historical research conferred a Senior Research Fellowship upon him. He is the Chairman of the Research Committee of Babba Jassa Singh Ahluwalia  Bi-Centenary Society. Professor Ahluwalia is currently a Fellow of the B.P. Koirala India-Nepal Foundation for writing the history of Political and diplimatic relations between the two countries.

Preface To 'Land Marks In Sikh History - A Fully Researched And Documented History : 1699 - 1947' By M.L. Ahluwalia

The author feels over whelmed by the encouraging response this book received at the hands of friends teaching History and Political Science in the Indian universities and colleges. My publishers were naturally cautious to print only limited copies of the book in 1996 knowing that such reference books have particulary very limited clientage, that too only in the university libraries. Moreover the book being devoted to the history of the Sikhs only its market was supposedly limited to the universities where the syllabi includes studies in important phases of the history of the Sikhs.

But inspite of that the universities in the south and also elsewhere in India and abroad had placed orders for the book for their libraries. The reason being that for the first time very important topics such as the study of the concept of the Khalsa formed by Guru Gobind Singh three centuries back, the heroic fight of Banda Bahadur being a chosen leader of Guru Gobind Singh, and after him the liberation struggle put up by the Sikh Misls from 1739 A.D. onwards starting with the invasion of Emperor Nadir Shah and thereafter against Ahmad Shah Abdali wh founded the modern kingdom of  Afghanistan, which led to  the establishment of the sovereign dominion of the Khalsa by Ranjit Singh, against formidable odds created for him by the two giants, the British in Hindustan and the rulers of Afghanistan in the west got a little wider market for the book. In the same manner, chapters devoted to the fall of the Sikh Empire have provided first hand information about the heroic rule of Maharani Jindan, mother of the last ruler of the Sovereign Punjab, Maharaja Dalip Singh and the struggle he carried on for the liberation of "Aryabarat",  as he declared while setting up an emigre government of free India at Pondichery then an enclave  under the government of France are all topics of universal  interest. like wise are the Sikh movements of the Namdharis, Singh Sabha and the Gurdwara Reform  Movement of 1919-25 etc.

As I had mentioned in the earlier preface of this book my aim had been althrough to unveil the mischief of the European scholars particularly the English authors to miscontrue the real facts of the history of the Sikhs whom they thought were their only formidable enemies after extermination of the Maratha empire created by the energetic Peshwas Madhav Rao the IST and IIND. For that aim  in view the british government soon after exiling Baba Ram Singh Namdhari Guru in January 1872, established the Singh Sabha movement in march  1872 itself with the help of loyalist Sikh rulers, Sikh jagirdars of Punjab and the Sikh priests who held charge  of the important Sikh Gurdwaras in Punjab including those of Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar and Anandpur Sahib. The sole aim of British in launching the Sikh Sabha movement was to denegrade the Namdhari leaders as anti panthic and thereby indirectly weakening the urge of the Sikh masses to join the nationalist forces.

I may however, like to submit that it was my good luck that I gave up teaching in 1950 and joined the national Archives of India and thus could, in addition to  my official responsibilities. carry on my mission to explore the true facts about the historiography of the Sikhs particularly from British documents being based on the concept of accountability of the Governor General in Council and the freedom of expression their bureaucracy enjoyed, their archives convey to the scholars a fuller view of each and every issue which came up in the process of governance.

With these remarks  I submitt this reprint to the public at large as well, because the topics discussed in this book are of much greater relevance now when we are celebrating the Tercentenary  of the formation of the Khalsa.

Table Of Contents For 'Land Marks in Sikh History A Fully Researched and Documented History : 1699 - 1947' By M L Ahluwalia