The further history of the Sikhs is political rather than religious, and need not detain us here.  Despite the efforts of the Mughals to exterminate them, they were favoured by the disturbed state of the country in the early decades of the eighteenth century, for the raids of Afghans and Persians convulsed and paralyzed the empire of Delhi.  The government of the Khalsa passed into the hands of a body of fanatics, called Akalis, but the decision of grave matters rested with a council of the whole community which occasionally met at Amritsar.  Every Sikh claimed to have joined the confederacy as an independent soldier, bound to fight under his military leaders but otherwise exempt from control, and entitled to a share of land.  This absolute independence, being unworkable in practice, was modified by the formation of Misals or voluntary associations, of which there were at one time twelve.  From the middle of the eighteenth century onwards the Sikhs were masters of the Panjab and their great chief Ranjit Singh (1797-1839) succeeded in converting the confederacy into a despotic monarchy.  Their power did not last long after his death and the Panjab was conquered by the British in the two wars of 1846 and 1849.

With the loss of political independence, the differences between the Sikhs and other Hindus tended to decrease.  This was natural, for nearly all their strictly religious tenets can be paralleled in Hinduism.  Guru Govind waged no war against polytheism but wished to found a religious commonwealth equally independent of Hindu castes and Mohammedan sultans.  For some time his ordinances were successful in creating a tribe, almost a nation.  With the collapse of the Sikh state, the old hatred of Mohammedanism remained, but the Sikhs differed from normal Hindus hardly more than such sects as the Lingayats, and, as happened with decadent Buddhism, the unobtrusive pressure of Hindu beliefs and observances tended to obliterate those differences.  The Census of India,[678] 1901, enumerated three degrees of Sikhism.  The first comprises a few zealots called Akalis who observe all the precepts of Govind.  The second class are the Guru Govind Sikhs, who observe the Guru’s main commands, especially the prohibition to smoke and cut the hair.  Lastly, there are a considerable number who profess a respect for the Guru but follow Hindu beliefs and usages wholly or in part.  Sikhism indeed reproduces on a small scale the changeableness and complexity of Hinduism, and includes associations called Sabha, whose members aim at restoring or maintaining what they consider to be the true faith.  In 1901 there was a tendency for Sikhs to give up their peculiarities and describe themselves as ordinary Hindus, but in the next decade a change of sentiment among these waverers caused the Sikh community as registered to increase by thirty-seven per cent. and a period of religious zeal is reported.[679]

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