Never before have the Sikh's way of life, their modes of worship, their baptisms, weddings and rustic dances and their attempts to keep alive their marital traditions been more vividly captured by the camera or as clearly explained in words by India's foremost author. Here is a rare collection of photographs taken by one of the country's best photographers.

Review

Sikhism is one of the world's gentlest religions--a sort of eastern version of Anglicanism. It is as though someone has taken the best bits of Hinduism and Islam and merged them into a religion accessible even to the most secular of souls. There is no class or caste system, hence the men are all called Singh (Lion) and the women Kaur (Princess), and it makes no great claim to be the only way; indeed, unlike most religions it actively promotes the idea that its followers may learn from other faiths. And yet, the popular image of Sikhs as fiercesome warriors is almost diametrically opposed to the tenets of their faith. Just how this came to be is wonderfully told in Patwant Singh's history of the Sikhs, published to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the Khalsa--the most important date in the Sikh calendar.

As might be expected, Singh is a highly partisan narrator. The Sikhs are always bold and noble and those who oppress them--the Moghuls, the Hindus and the British--are conniving and duplicitous. But this aside, he tells a truthful story of the early days of Sikhism up to the 20th-century partition of the Punjab and the diaspora to East Africa and Britain. But the book really takes off when we reach the modern era. He provides a moving account of the storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar by Hindu troops, acting on the authority of the Indian government in 1984. This led directly to the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards, which in turn brought swift and widespread retribution as thousands of Sikhs were rounded up and massacred.

What Patwant Singh doesn't answer, though, is why so many people have felt so threatened by Sikhism over the centuries. Sikhs do not proselytise their religion and they only make up 2 percent of the Indian population, yet they have been persecuted throughout their history. Maybe just as nature abhors a vacuum so man-made religions abhor moderation. --John Crace

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