Book Review: Deep Singh Shaheed, The Man in the Legend
An overview of the excellent new biography of Baba Deep Singh
341 years ago on approximately this date, a boy named Deepa was born in the village Pahuwind in central Punjab. This boy upon adolescence would initiate himself into the new social order of the Khalsa, renewed with the name Deep Singh. Many decades later, upon being appointed as a general of a fifth of the Khalsa army, he would append the surname “Shaheed”, and lead legions of blue-clad traditionalist devotees as Deep Singh Shaheed. In the final battle living up to his chosen surname, though Deep Singh Shaheed’s body would pass, he would be immortalized in Sikh tradition as Baba Deep Singh - and as the stickers and posters adorning his image across Punjab attest, become a figure of legend whose feats stood out to Sikhs of young and old, to the spiritually-inclined, the scholarly-inclined, and the soldierly-inclined; all of whom to this day find qualities to admire in the Baba’s storied life.
This book written by Colonel Harisimran Singh is the most recent in centuries of efforts to document knowledge of Baba Deep Singh’s life in a scholarly biographic fashion. I found it an amazing, thorough, and thought-provoking read that certainly lives up to the lofty material it tackles and would highly recommend purchasing the book to read it for oneself and to support the author’s efforts (I also got a secondary digital copy for reference).
Scribe and Scholar of the Guru
The book starts off with with a biography of Baba Deep Singh with his family origins and birth. From the onset of the book, one can understand the scholarly rigor of the book just through the effort Harisimran Singh takes in verifying basic biographical facts of Deep Singh; in addition to comparing and contrasting all the available written sources on his ancestry and home village and competing local claims, the author is able to verify with geneological evidence in the form of the pandavahi record of Deep Singh. This record corroborates a few important facets of his life, such as his home-pind being Pahuwind, the name of his father, and his status as a bihangam - that is to say, Baba Deep Singh stayed unmarried his entire life and had no children or direct descendants. In general, this rigor (and attention taken to competing theories) is appreciated as it provides a complete picture as to the process of Sikh history, and how many of the facts we take for granted now or read in the epic poetry of itihaasic granths had years of research put behind them and reasons for variance.
One of the main messages that resonated for me from this section is the close association that Baba Deep Singh had with Guru Gobind Singh - he hailed from a family of Sikh devotees and took pahul from the Guru himself not soon after the original one on Vaisakhi day. In addition, Baba Deep Singh's appointment as the Taksal wasn't just one and done - he was actively under the mentorship of Bhai Mani Singh as a scholarly aid and served as a scribe to none other than Guru Gobind Singh himself. These facts are nothing new in terms of broad knowledge, but how the author narrates it (by weaving in dhadi-vaaran and at times self-written imagined dialogue of major events in Baba Deep Singh's life) really hit this point home for me in a way I had never reflected before. The sacred position of Bhai Gurdas and his vaaran as a contemporary of the Guru rests upon his close scholarly association with the Gurus - and although Baba Deep Singh is often associated with his later life as a warrior in the misls, him and [Bhai Mani Singh] played this exact same role earlier in life. The duo would have been the first to put together compilations of the Dasve Padshah Ke Granth and also to have scribed the final copy of what would become anointed as the Guru Granth Sahib, the Damdami Bir of the Adi Granth.
"The Heroic Century"
The next section of the book broadly covers Baba Deep Singh's involvement in "post-Guru history", from the military campaign of Baba Banda Bahadur to the origin of what would become the misl system. Much of the section is a narration on these epochs in Sikh history, and may not immediately seem novel for readers already well-versed in them. However, one thing that makes Harisimran Singh's narration refreshing is his application of modern war theory (which is expanded upon in the epilogue), and how he constructs the story with carefully chosen prose that at times borders on the poetic.
Another idea that I thought of while reading this part is that of Baba Deep Singh's close association with Guru Gobind Singh and how it would be perceived in this time period. Due to the political turbulence of the era, the social body of the Khalsa Panth went through several massive reorganizations. Similar to the earlier Baba Buddha, Baba Deep Singh's longevity ensured he saw the Panth in several eras - the military campaign of Banda Bahadur, the internal splits and reconciliations following Banda, the early organization of the Dal Khalsa under Nawab Kapur Singh, and the formation of the 12 Sikh misls. As Harisimran Singh points out, Baba Deep Singh would have been one of the foremost figures involved in each of these epochs, and a large part of it is probably due to the reverence given to him by his close scholarly association with Guru Gobind Singh. It's not hard to imagine that new initiates to the Khalsa throughout the decades would receive religious tutelage provided by the revered Baba, and his upbringing and association with the Guru would increasingly seem to be something of legend. This is seen in a small detail Harisimran Singh provides in a footnote about how in the early 1800s, several Khaira residents of the village Pahuwind moved to a land jagir of a village that came to be known as "Shaheed" - the timing means this jagir was given by none other than Maharaja Ranjit Singh, and the purpose seems to have been to honor the ancestral kinsmen of Baba Deep Singh. Though the Maharaja was not separated from Baba Deep Singh by that many years, the fact he saw him as a figure from legend worth some form of devotion in the present - much like how we regard him now.
The Final Battle
I would argue this section represents the climax of the book in writing style and themes, and is really where its value and contribution to Sikh literature shines through as no book has before. As always, Harisimran Singh thoroughly represents a variety of sources from written Sikh literature, dhadi-vaaran, and oral tradition. But in wanting to paint an entirely comprehensive picture, he introduces two new sources; a written Afghan source (which represents one of the only contemporary written records to the battle) and geographical evidence in the form of samadhis (expertly translated as “cenotaphs” throughout the chapter) that dot where warriors on both sides fell on the battlefield in this epic clash.
I want to quickly digress to a continually present motif in this review - how Baba Deep Singh along with Bhai Mani Singh comprised the "scholarly duo" that oversaw and aided the Guru in major Sikh literary efforts. As mentioned, this association with the Guru gave both Baba Deep Singh and Bhai Mani Singh the credibility and status to assume major roles in mediating and leading Panthic affairs and conflicts when called upon. That the two ended up becoming Shaheed attests to the violent and oppressive times the Khalsa was to see after the Guru - although the two incidents are usually never explicitly linked owing to the large time gap and differing political circumstances between each. Yet ironically, both of the scholars of the 10th Patshah would find Shaheedi through the same cause - maintaining the sanctity of the Sikh celebration of Diwali.
Coming back to the final battle, Harisimran Singh points out that the reclamation of Darbar Sahib was not randomly initiated - Baba Deep Singh specifically declared his campaign on Diwali, and the cause was to return to the long-established Khalsa tradition of celebrating Diwali at Darbar Sahib which the Afghan invasions and desecrations had interrupted. This is not often recognized in our contemporary renditions of the history, but should be highlighted more - the fact that two of the closest scholarly associates of Patshah 10 recognized and highlighted the importance of Diwali to Sikhs despite all obstacles attempting to halt it.
In general, the coverage surrounding "The Final Battle" is also where Harisimran Singh's book earns its foreward by esteemed military historian Gordon Corrigon; it is a thorough narration of the battle with maps covering troops formations and a neat chronological breakdown of where and how clashes occurred. In short, I highly encourage curious readers to buy the book to absorb this in all its glory; the research Harisimran Singh has put here is the crown jewel of an already excellent book and alone is enough to mark the work as a significant novel contribution to Sikh studies.
Very interesting and informative posts. May I reproduce these articles on my website sindhcourier.com
Nasir Aijaz
Editor
Sindh Courier
Karachi Sindh
Waheguruji Waheguruji Waheguruji Waheguruji Waheguruji Waheguruji Waheguruji Waheguruji Waheguruji Waheguruji Waheguruji Waheguruji Waheguruji.