It is November 1675. A man is heading north from Delhi, towards the Punjab. He is carrying something. The man can get into a lot of trouble if he is found out and his package examined.
Travelling on foot under the cover of darkness in disguise, taking backroads to avoid the main ones monitored by Mughal soldiers, the man finally makes it to Anandpur Sahib, the seat of the Guru of the Sikhs.
He is known to history as Bhai Jaita, later baptised as Bhai Jiwan Singh. The package he is carrying is, in fact, the severed head of Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Sikh Guru, who had been beheaded in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk on the express orders of Emperor Aurangzeb.
Bhai Jaita is, however, not from the upper echelons of the subcontinent’s caste-ridden society. He is, in fact, from the Rangreta caste of Dalits.
But Gobind Rai, Tegh Bahadur’s son and the future Guru Gobind Singh, makes a solemn promise to Jaita: Rangrete Guru ke bete. From now on, the Rangretas are the sons of the Sikh Guru and will be accorded an equal status in society.
The community becomes known as ‘Mazhabi’(faithful), from Mazhab or faith. Bhai Jaita’s bravery and courage will be replicated years later by members of his community, when they form the nucleus of a new corps of soldiers in the British Indian Army.
The tenth Guru had promised equality and fraternity to the Mazhabis. But this became undone in the decades and centuries after his passing.
“The founder of Sikhism had intended that there should be no discrimination on the grounds of religion, caste or class, but this did not stand up in practice. The caste system persisted, and there were many social grades of Sikhs. At the top were the Jats: the Lobanas, Ramdasias and Mazhbis were amongst those lower down,” notes M&R: A Regimental History of the Sikh Light Infantry 1941-1947 edited by J D Hookway.
The millennia-old caste system still held sway.
Not that the Mazhabi and Ramdasia men had not displayed their bravery and courage. They also formed part of the armies of Ranjit Singh, Maharaja of the Punjab from 1799-1839. “The Mazhabis were patronised by Ranjit Singh, who tried to recruit them for the Khalsa Army. High-caste Sikhs objected to their integration into the Khalsa and they were formed into separate companies, one attached to each high-caste battalion,” writes Stephen P Cohen in The Untouchable Soldier: Caste, Politics, and the Indian Army.
He adds that when the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny broke out, the Mazhabis were drawn into the British Indian Army and formed the First Pioneer Sikh Regiment.
“A second regiment was raised in 1858 by John Lawrence, and a third followed shortly. The three Pioneer units saw extremely varied service; at one time or another they were employed in China, Africa, Europe and the Middle East,” notes Cohen.
He also observes that, “By the eighteen-seventies there was ample evidence to indicate that caste was not a vital determinant of a man’s fighting ability.”
The Sikh pioneers were an indispensable part of any Field Force partly as roadmakers, and partly as a reserve of skilled and tough fighting men, given the rugged and roadless country over which the Indian Army of those days had to operate, notes Hookaway.
“Despite the generally favourable commentary on their quality, low-caste units were gradually reduced in size and number between 1870 and 1914-18,” writes Cohen. They (and other important classes of Indians) were the unwilling victims of the theory of the “martial races.”
The Mazhabis were heavily recruited during World War I. But after the war, the Indian Army was reorganised. Hookaway’s book takes it up from here:
“After the war, in 1922, the Indian Army was reorganised and ten years later, in 1933, during one of those economic crises with which we are all too familiar, all the Regiments of Pioneers were disbanded. Perhaps they had outlived their usefulness in those days of railways and motor roads; perhaps they had become too technical and too similar to the Sappers and Miners. No one quite knew. They took the blow with their customary stoicism, held a final parade, distributed their funds and trophies, transferred as many men as they could to other units and sent the rest home. India was deprived of some of its finest fighting material.”
But the fighting spirit of these Mazhabi and Ramdasia men would soon be put to use again, and in a new avatar.
“Nine years later, in 1941, these same Mazhbi and Ramdasia Sikhs were recalled to arms. Some of the older men had served in the Pioneers; the majority were relations. This time they were infantry, not pioneers, but they all had the same background. After some initial hesitation, they were called The Sikh Light Infantry and were allowed to bear on their colours the battle-honours of their predecessors The Sikh Pioneers,” notes M&R: A Regimental History of the Sikh Light Infantry 1941-1947.
In independent India, the Sikh Light Infantry has taken part in every major conflict involving the country.
This includes the 1947-48, 1965 and 1971 wars with Pakistan, the 1962 Sino-Indian War, the 1961 military operation in Goa and the Kargil Conflict of 1999.
The Sikh Light Infantry also played a role in the 1980s Indian Peace Keeping Force operations against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka.
The 13th Sikh Light Infantry was involved in the tragic Jaffna University Heliodrop in October 1987 where, a platoon of 30 men was airdropped by helicopter into the grounds of Jaffna University, only to be ambushed and killed by LTTE men, though not before making a last stand by fighting with just their bayonets, after they ran out of ammunition.
The regiment is one of the most decorated in the Indian Army, having won 15 Maha Vir Chakras and 23 Vir Chakras.
In conclusion, the Sikh Light Infantry and its Mazhabi and Ramdasia soldiers stand as shining examples of the highest ideals of both Sikhism as well as the ideology of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar.
While Sikhism teaches every man and woman to be a ‘saint-soldier’, Babasaheb Ambedkar saw military service as a vital means of fighting caste discrimination, fostering self-respect and demanding equal rights.
As Cohen rightly notes, a man’s fighting ability need not be determined by his background. It is just his innate qualities of courage, determination, boldness and bravery that should count.