Nanak started the Raj, (built) truth(-like) fort by laying a firm foundation.¹

As Bhai Satta and Bhai Balvand sing in Ramkali ki Var, Guru Nanak Sahib established sovereign rule, and this sovereignty was then carefully guarded, protected, and expanded by his successors. In Sikh political theology, sovereignty is therefore not a human invention that must later be sanctified. By Sikh political theology, I mean the Sikh tradition’s way of thinking about power under the horizon of the Divine. It is the framework through which Sikhi links Miri and Piri,² understands sovereignty as a sacred trust carried by the House of Nanak, and evaluates governance by whether it aligns with Gurmat (Guru-granted Sikh paradigm), protects the vulnerable, and keeps authority accountable to Guru Granth Sahib and the collective responsibility of Guru Panth (Collective Authority). For Sikhs sovereignty is a sacred and divine trust that must be enacted in history with restraint, courage, and justice. 

In other words, Sikh sovereignty is both ethical and institutional. It is ethical because it is answerable to the Divine and to the Gurus’ teachings. It is institutional because it must be practiced through assemblies, leadership, discipline, revenue, and law, even when those instruments are improvised under duress.

Sikh sovereignty in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is best understood by tracing the forms through which the Khalsa Panth (community, people, nation) enacted its entrusted authority under radically different constraints. Rather than treating a centralized state as the primary benchmark, this essay follows how the Khalsa generated legitimacy, coordinated collective action, protected communities, and governed land and revenue whenever conditions allowed.

A useful way to track this movement is to ask four recurring questions in each era:

1. Where does legitimacy come from? 
2. How does the Khalsa coordinate collective action? 
3. How are resources gathered and distributed? 
4. Who is protected, and what counts as justice? 

These questions prevent us from romanticizing any single moment, while also guarding against a narrow state-centered and Western definition of sovereignty. What is ‘Western Sovereignty’? Western sovereignty is often defined by territorial exclusivity and a single supreme authority. Sikh sovereignty in this essay is defined as a Gurmat-grounded, Panth-held practice of legitimacy, protection, and collective decision-making that can persist even when territory cannot be held, and that takes different institutional forms as conditions change.

Period I - From Revolt to Rule: Banda Singh Bahadar and the First Experiment of Khalsa Raj (1710–1716)

The raj (rule) of Banda Singh Bahadar (1670-1716) did not endure, lasting less than a decade, but it disclosed, with striking clarity, what Sikh sovereignty does when it first touches land, revenue, and law. In the years after the joti jot³ of Guru Gobind Singh Sahib, Baba Banda Singh Bahadar led Khalsa forces to rapid territorial gains in south eastern Panjab, including the decisive capture of Sirhind in 1710.⁴ This was not only a military episode. It was an attempt to reconstitute political legitimacy by displacing an unjust order and asserting Khalsa authority over administration.

Baba Banda Singh Bahadar’s importance for governance lies in his attempt to translate Sikh political theology into a lived order. This translation required more than bravery. It required decisions about punishment and mercy, about who would collect revenue and on what basis, about how to signal to ordinary people that a new authority was present, and about how to hold Khalsa discipline while ruling over a diverse countryside.

Seen in this light, the early Khalsa Raj is best understood as a constitutional experiment under fire. Its institutional life was compressed by war, but it still reveals core Sikh commitments, especially the insistence that power must be justified by protection, not by lineage. In other words, Panthic leadership has an obligation to protect citizens from harm. This responsibility is what gives them power. Banda Singh Bahadar and the early Khalsa had no great lineage in the worldly sense (of course from a Sikh perspective, their lineage was royal through Guru Gobind Singh Sahib and Mata Sahib Kaur). What gave them legitimacy was not the usual things that gave leadership legitimacy in that time period, it was instead the fact that they were committed to emancipation and freedom and protection for the people living under their rule.

Sovereignty as Moral Reversal

One of the most durable memories of Baba Banda Singh Bahadar’s governance is the disruption of the zamindari⁵ order and the assertion of rights for the tillers of the land. Reference works and historical syntheses describe his measures as chipping away at the power of oppressive intermediaries and recognizing peasant claims to land in the territories he controlled.⁶ For a Sikh governance model, this is not a superficial reform. It is a statement that sovereignty must protect dignity and restrain the extraction of wealth through humiliation.

This is also the point where the language of Miri-Piri (Political-Spiritual) becomes more than a slogan. If spiritual authority is inseparable from ethical responsibility, then political authority must be measured by whether it reduces coercion and restores the capacity of ordinary people to live with dignity. A governance model that merely replaces one extractor with another would fail this test, even if it were carried out in the name of the Khalsa.

For Sikh governance thought today, Baba Banda Singh Bahadar’s memory pushes us to ask how liberation is institutionalized. What prevents revolutionary authority from hardening into a new elite? What practices keep rulers accountable to the Panth, and to the poor, rather than to their own households?

Sovereignty as Administration and Public Legitimacy

Although the archival detail is uneven, the signs of statecraft are visible. Banda Singh Bahadar issued seals and coinage, and the language of these instruments matters. The official motto of the Khalsa at the time was Degh-o tegh-o fatih, nusrat bedrang, yaft az Nanak Guru Gobind Singh.⁷ This formula is political theology rendered into public currency: abundance and power, victory and assistance, are gifts received through the House of Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh Sahib. In other words, authority is not self-generated by a ruler. It is held as a trust, and it is publicly named as such.

These public instruments matter because sovereignty must be recognizable to those who live under it. Coins, seals, proclamations, and appointed officials are not merely administrative. They teach people what kind of rule is being claimed, and they warn rival powers that an alternative order is being built.

Notice, too, the relationship between Degh (Cauldron) and Tegh (Sword). A political body must secure sustenance and must be prepared for force. But in Sikh terms, force is morally constrained. It is not an entitlement. It is a responsibility to be exercised for defense, for the protection of the vulnerable, and for the preservation of collective freedom.

The Precedent of a Short Raj

By 1715–1716 the Mughal state crushed this first territorial experiment, culminating in Baba Banda Singh Bahadar’s capture and execution.⁸ Yet for the Panth, the significance lay in precedent. The Khalsa had demonstrated the capacity to move from revolt to rule, to name legitimacy in Sikh terms, and to imagine governance as moral protection.

That precedent becomes the hinge for the next era. When stable territory became impossible, Sikh sovereignty did not disappear. It adapted. The Panth shifted from the sovereignty of held land to the sovereignty of mobile institutions, collective discipline, and revolutionary coordination under conditions of near-constant pursuit and persecution.

Period II - Survival With an Argument: Insurgency, Confederacy, and Sovereignty Without a State (c. 1716–1765)

The mid-eighteenth century is sometimes narrated as a period of Sikh survival. It is more accurate to say it was survival with an argument—survival with a purpose, not survival that focused on just ‘getting by,’ by making Gurmat-based decisions around how to organize and govern themselves. In the wake of Baba Banda Singh Bahadar’s defeat, Mughal authority in Panjab relied on a militarized provincial order that governed through appointed officials, revenue extraction, and exemplary punishment, treating Khalsa organization as sedition rather than as a legitimate political body. Afghan incursions then compounded this instability, as competing imperial projects fought over Panjab’s cities, routes, and tax base, producing a landscape in which sovereignty was asserted through conquest, tribute, and coercive control of territory rather than through durable consent. Against these shifting regimes, the Khalsa refused incorporation into Mughal and Afghan sovereignty, refused the terms by which the state defined legality, and refused the erasure of Sikh political capacity. Under this pressure, the Panth developed forms of governance-in-motion that could survive persecution and pursuit while retaining collective direction.

This period therefore invites a more careful definition of sovereignty. Sovereignty can mean the monopoly of violence within a territory, but it can also mean the ability of a people to refuse illegitimate authority and to maintain collective institutions under attack. The Khalsa’s insurgent decades show sovereignty as endurance, organization, and the ongoing capacity to assemble.

When we read the period as a governance model, three features stand out:

1. Decentralization is a strategy of survival.
2. Coordination is a moral practice, sustained by discipline and shared norms. 
3. Legitimacy remains Panthic, expressed through assemblies and resolutions even when the Panth cannot hold cities.

Jathas and the Logic of Distributed Sovereignty

In this era the Khalsa frequently organized into smaller jathas, semi-autonomous bands that could disperse and recombine. The jatha form enabled speed and adaptability. It also trained a political habit: unity as a practice, not a permanent structure. Sovereignty here is not centered in a single court. It is distributed across disciplined collectives that share an ethic of protection and a commitment to Panthic aims.

The jatha also functions as a school of leadership. Because life was precarious, leaders were tested continuously, not only for skill in battle but for their capacity to sustain morale, share resources, keep conduct aligned with Sikh discipline and their allegiance to Gurmat traditions. Authority in such conditions is earned repeatedly, rather than inherited once.

This helps explain why the insurgent period is remembered through exemplars of sacrifice and endurance. Great warriors and martyrs like Bhai Mani Singh, Bhai Taru Singh, Bhai Tara Singh Van, Bhai Mehtab Singh & Bhai Sukha Singh, Baba Bota Singh and Baba Garja Singh, and Bibi Baghail Kaur are still remembered and celebrated to this day. Such exemplary Sikhs are not merely devotional stories. They are political education. They teach the Panth what disciplined power looks like when it has to survive underground.

From Jathas to Misls and the Dal Khalsa

Over time, jathas were reorganized into larger, named misls.⁹ These units could hold territory when possible, extract revenue, and coordinate with one another through confederate action. The combined forces of the misls were known as the Dal Khalsa, a confederate military and political formation that matured in the mid-eighteenth century.¹⁰ The key governance feature is not bureaucracy but coordination: how authority is shared, how conflicts are mediated, and how collective aims are maintained while power remains plural.

The misl form retained a confederate spirit while allowing for territorial administration when openings emerged. A misl could hold forts, negotiate with local elites, collect revenue, and protect trade routes, yet it remained part of a broader Khalsa ecosystem of power. This was a governance logic built for uncertainty, in which the Panth had to be able to contract and expand without losing coherence.

From a political theory perspective, we could call this a networked sovereignty. Its strength is redundancy. If one branch is destroyed, others continue. Its challenge is coordination at scale. This is why Panthic assemblies remain essential.

Sarbat Khalsa and Gurmata as Constitutional Practice

The confederate order did not rely only on force. It relied on assembly. The institution of the Sarbat Khalsa¹¹ and Gurmata¹² emphasizes these institutions as mechanisms through which the Panth could articulate integrated will and bind itself to collective decisions.¹³ In this register, a Gurmata is not merely strategy. It is a claim about legitimacy, that decisions should emerge from collective discernment in the presence of Guru Granth Sahib and under the horizon of Gurmat.

The institution of the Sarbat Khalsa can be understood as constitutional because it provided the Panth with recognized procedures for legitimating decisions, producing collective direction, and making authority answerable to a shared source. A Gurmata carried weight because it was made in the presence of Guru Granth Sahib and because it was intended to bind the Panth beyond the preferences of any single leader. Describing the Sarbat Khalsa in this way is not meant to collapse Sikh political practice into European constitutional frameworks, but to name a functional reality: the Panth cultivated a durable decision-making process that constrained individual authority and grounded legitimacy in collective, Gurmat-orientation.

This provides a crucial lesson for later periods. As the Khalsa became territorially powerful, the central question was not only how to expand, but how to preserve decision-making that remained recognizably Panthic. In other words, how could authority remain accountable to collective deliberation under Gurmat, rather than becoming court-centered, concentrated in the ruler’s capital, inner circle, and administrative elites?

This is sovereignty without a state, but not without politics. The Panth preserves unity without requiring permanent centralization. It sustains authority through disciplined assemblies, shared norms, and confederate coordination.

The Insurgent Pivot Toward Territorial Authority

By the 1750s and early 1760s, this mobile sovereignty increasingly moved from survival toward assertion. The capacity to assemble and to coordinate at scale created the conditions for a decisive shift: the ability to take and hold major urban centers.

Period III - A Plural Raj: The Khalsa Sultanate and Misldari Governance (1765–1799)

The capture of Lahore in 1761 marks an inflection point between insurgency and territorial sovereignty. When the Khalsa first conquered Lahore under the leadership of Sardar Jassa Singh Ahluwalia, the Panth, in recognition of this monumental victory, gave Jassa Singh the title of Sultan-ul-Qaum (Sultan of the Nation).¹⁴ It is for this reason that I give this era the title of Khalsa Sultanate. The term Khalsa Sultanate must however be used with care. It does not suggest that the Khalsa adopted the full ideological world of Islamic sultanates. It signals, instead, that the Khalsa becomes a ruling power over cities and revenue, yet did so through a confederate order rather than a single dynastic line.

The victory in 1761 was short-lived and it wasn’t until 1765 that the Khalsa fully freed Panjab from Afghan and Mughal rule.¹⁵ For our purposes, the precise chain of events matters less than the political transformation: Lahore becomes a site where Khalsa sovereignty is not only declared, but administered.

Lahore matters because it is a political theater as much as a strategic prize. To rule Lahore is to claim the capacity to govern an imperial city, to manage its markets and its plural populations, and to present the Khalsa as a sovereign power to neighboring states. In that sense, the 1765 moment is a declaration that the Panth can translate insurgent coordination into urban administration.

Misldari as Confederate Rule

The Misl period is often portrayed as fragmentation, but it also represents a functional confederacy. Misls governed through a mixture of military force, revenue extraction, local alliances, and the continuing symbolic authority of Panthic institutions. If Baba Banda Singh Bahadar demonstrated that the Khalsa could rule, the Misldari era demonstrated that the Khalsa could govern as a plural political body, coordinating sovereignty across multiple centers.

In practice, Misldari governance blended coercion and consent. Local legitimacy depended on protection and predictable revenue demands, but also on managing conflict among competing chiefs. Where the Khalsa succeeded, it was because Misldari governance could stabilize life in a landscape shaped by weakening Mughal authority and repeated Afghan campaigns. By reducing opportunistic plunder, securing routes, and making revenue collection more legible and routinized, Sikh authority could appear as a credible alternative to regimes that increasingly relied on forceful extraction and sporadic violence to assert control.

This era is also where we see the growth of political pragmatism. Misls form alliances, adopt diplomatic strategies, and sometimes compete intensely with one another. These realities should not be sanitized. They are part of the question of sovereignty: how to preserve Panthic commitments when power is plural and competing ambition is unavoidable.

Legitimacy, Coinage, and the Public Language of Sovereignty

Sikh sovereignty in this period is visible not only in conquest but in symbols that circulate. Here there is a clear continuity with the Baba Banda Singh Bahadar period, where coinage and seals already functioned as public declarations of sovereignty in Sikh terms. The Degh Tegh Fatih inscription continues to appear on Sikh coinage, anchoring political authority in the House of Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh Sahib rather than dynastic pedigree. This is not ornamental. It is a repeated constitutional assertion, renewed across shifting regimes: sovereignty is a trust, to be exercised with generosity and force in the right proportion.

At the level of everyday governance, the repeated invocation of Degh (Cauldron) and Tegh (Sword) is also a reminder that political authority must feed. Sovereignty is not proven only by battlefield victories. It is proven by the ability to stabilize life, protect harvests, keep routes open, and ensure that communities can breathe.

Limits of the Sultanate Form

The strengths of Misldari governance were flexibility and local rootedness. Its limits were coordination at a larger scale, succession disputes, and vulnerability to external diplomacy and military consolidation. These limits help explain the next transition, the rise of a centralized Sarkar-i-Khalsa under Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

Period IV - Empire as Ethical Claim: The Sarkar-i-Khalsa and Centralized Sovereignty (1799–1849)

With the capture of Lahore in 1799, Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780-1839) begins the consolidation of a centralized Sikh state, often referred to as the Sarkar-i-Khalsa.¹⁶ This period is frequently called the Sikh Empire in modern historiography, but within Sikh political memory, the language of Sarkar-i-Khalsa matters. It signals a state that claims, at least symbolically, to govern in the name of the Khalsa, and therefore under the moral horizon of Gurmat.¹⁷

This centralization is often framed as inevitable, but it can also be read as a specific answer to the Misldari dilemma. A confederacy can win and hold territory, yet it struggles to coordinate diplomacy, raise standardized forces, and govern a large region with coherence. The Sarkar-i-Khalsa addresses these needs by consolidating authority in Lahore, professionalizing administration, and concentrating military command.

At the same time, centralization creates its own questions. If sovereignty is held in trust by the Panth, what does it mean for that trust to be exercised through a monarchic court? How does the Khalsa remain the ethical horizon of the state, rather than becoming a symbolic decoration for state power?

Centralization without Theological Kingship

Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s sovereignty is distinct from earlier forms because it stabilizes territory, develops a professional army, and expands administration across a wide region. At the same time, its legitimacy remains publicly staged as subordinate to the Gurus. A striking example is the Guru Nanak coin issued during this period, depicting the Maharaja in a posture of humility before Guru Nanak Sahib.¹⁸ This coin does not prove perfect governance. It does show how legitimacy is narrated: power must bow to the Divine.

This is why the Sarkar-i-Khalsa is best read as a negotiation between two logics. One logic is Panthic, emphasizing humility before the Gurus, public accountability, and the duty to protect. The other logic is statist, emphasizing centralized command, revenue, and the discipline of a standing army. Ranjit Singh’s success, at least in the period of consolidation, is that he holds these logics in a workable balance.

Administrative Apparatus: Daftars, Revenue, and Record

Unlike the Misldari order, the Sarkar-i-Khalsa develops a more formal administrative machinery. Scholarly work on Lahore Darbar administration notes the organization of state business into multiple daftars, offices in which civil and military matters were recorded and arranged.¹⁹ A case study of Multan under and after Ranjit Singh describes the formation and adjustment of financial record departments and local treasury arrangements, indicating a bureaucratic attention to revenue, expenditure, and documentation.²⁰ This matters because sovereignty is not only the right to command, it is the capacity to make governance legible through records, offices, and fiscal systems.

In governance terms, the shift to daftars also signals a shift in time. Record keeping allows a state to govern beyond the immediacy of personal memory. It enables taxation, budgeting, appointment, and accountability to be tracked across years. This is one of the clearest distinctions between the Sarkar-i-Khalsa and earlier forms of Sikh sovereignty.

Yet bureaucratic capacity is not automatically moral capacity. A central question for Sikh governance is how records and offices can serve justice rather than merely amplifying extraction. The Sikh tradition insists that administration must remain anchored to protection and ethical restraint, or else sovereignty becomes mere technique.

Plural Elites and Pragmatic Governance

The Sarkar-i-Khalsa is also notable for its pragmatic use of diverse officials, courtiers, and diplomats. This inclusivity is often praised as a strength, and it supported stability across religious and regional differences. At the same time, centralization necessarily reduced the autonomy of smaller Sikh principalities and altered the confederate spirit that had characterized the Misl period. 

We should name this pragmatism as a governing skill. Ruling a diverse region requires working with multiple constituencies, and it requires translating Sikh ethical commitments into policies that do not assume a single community. This is one reason the Sarkar-i-Khalsa is remembered as a relatively plural order in many accounts, even as it remains a Sikh led state.

There is a tension between court-centered decision making and assembly-centered decision making. Where the Sarbat Khalsa represents deliberation as a Panthic institution, the Lahore Darbar represents deliberation as a courtly practice. Both can produce decisions. The question is which model better preserves the sense that sovereignty is held by the collective under the Gurus’ teaching.

Succession, Fracture, and the Colonial Hinge

After Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s death in 1839, succession conflict and court factionalism intensified. The Sikh state remained formidable, yet internal fracture combined with external pressure culminated in the Anglo-Sikh Wars and the annexation of Panjab in 1849. In governance terms, the decisive change was not only military loss but institutional displacement: Sikh authority was replaced by colonial frameworks of law, property, and bureaucracy that sought to reorder Panjab as part of an imperial state.

The post-1839 crisis also illustrates a structural vulnerability of centralized sovereignty. When authority is concentrated in a court, succession becomes a potential site of fracture, and factions can redirect state institutions toward short-term survival rather than long-term legitimacy. In that sense, the collapse is not only a story of external conquest. It is a lesson about how governance forms shape resilience.

Conclusion: Four forms, one sovereignty

Across these four periods, Sikh sovereignty appears as a consistent trust enacted through changing forms.

• Baba Banda Singh Bahadar demonstrates sovereignty as moral reversal and the first labor of territorial administration.
• The insurgent decades demonstrate sovereignty as distributed capacity, sustained through jathas, confederate Misls, and Panthic assemblies.
• The Misldari period demonstrates sovereignty as plural governance, taking and administering cities while retaining a confederate logic.
• The Sarkar-i-Khalsa demonstrates sovereignty as centralized statecraft, with expanded administration and fiscal machinery, yet with ongoing tensions about Panthic self-governance.

If there is a single analytic claim to carry forward, it is this: Sikh sovereignty cannot be reduced to a single institutional template. It is a moral and political practice that moves. It is anchored in the House of Nanak and oriented toward protection, justice, and collective welfare, yet it takes different constitutional shapes as conditions change. For Sikh governance thinking today, this history offers not nostalgia but repertoire, multiple precedents for how the Panth has coordinated authority, disciplined power, and defended collective dignity.

These eras can be treated as a library of precedents rather than as a linear ladder. Sometimes, the Panth needs confederate coordination. Sometimes, it needs the capacity of a state. Sometimes, it needs the moral stubbornness of insurgency. The tradition offers precedents for each, along with warnings about their weaknesses.

Sovereignty is granted by the Divine, but it is not guaranteed by history. It must be practiced, renewed, and defended through institutions that keep power accountable. In the Sikh tradition, that accountability ultimately returns us to Guru Granth Sahib and to the collective responsibility of Guru Panth.

Bibliography

Ali, A., Akbar, M., & Hayat, K. (2018). Administrative System in Punjab during and after Ranjit Singh: A Case Study of Multan. Arts and Social Sciences Journal.  9: 336. https://www.hilarispublisher.com/open-access/administrative-system-in-punjab-during-and-after-ranjit-singh-a-casestudy-of-multan-2151-6200-1000336.pdf 

Banerjee, A.C. (1985). The Khalsa Raj. Abhinav Publications. 

Kaur, Rajinder (2011). Role of select courtiers and officials at Lahore Darbar (1799-1849). (Doctoral Dissertation, Punjabi University, Patiala.
https://gurmatveechar.com/books/English_Books/English_Thesis_Papers/Role.of.Select.Courtiers.and.Offici
als.at.Lahore.Darbar.1799.-.1849.by.Rajinder.Kaur.%28GurmatVeechar.com%29.pdf

Singh, Bhagat (1993). A History of the Sikh Misals. Publication Bureau, Punjabi University Patiala.

Singh, Ganda (1935). Life of Banda Singh Bahadar: Based on Contemporary and Original Records. The Sikh History Research Department, Khalsa College Amritsar.

Singh, Ganda (1990). Sardar Jassa Singh Ahluwalia (S. S. Bal, Trans.) Publication Bureau Punjabi University, Patiala.

Singh, IJ (2012). Sarbat Khalsa & Gurmata: Inseparably Intertwined. Sikh Research Institute. https://sikhri.org/articles/sarbat-khalsa-gurmata 

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References

¹    ਨਾਨਕਿ ਰਾਜੁ ਚਲਾਇਆ   ਸਚੁ ਕੋਟੁ ਸਤਾਣੀ ਨੀਵ ਦੈ ॥ translation by Guru Granth Sahib Project: https://gurugranthsahib.io/bani/details/RKV/1/2 

²   For more insight into the doctrine of Miri-Piri, please see SikhRI’s State of the Panth Report on Miri-Piri: https://sikhri.org/articles/miri-piri 

³   Literally, light merged with light; Sikh parlance for when the Guru left the earthly realm, for the Guru lives in the Granth-Panth.

⁴   Singh, Ganda, 1935, pp. 50-55

⁵    Zamindars were large feudal landowners and the primary way land was organized under the Mughal empire.

⁶    Singh, Ganda, 1935, pp. 243-245

⁷    Cauldron, Sword, victory and unhesitating patronage have been obtained from Guru Nanak and Gobind Singh.  https://www.eurasiareview.com/25112024-first-khalsa-coins-of-banda-singh-Bahadar-oped/. 

⁸    Singh, Ganda, 1935, pp. 214-236

⁹    Misls were large subgroups within the larger Khalsa Army, the Dal Khalsa. The smaller jathas were reorganized into 11 Misls at the Sarbat Khalsa of 1748. There are various etymologies of the word, but there is scholarly consensus around the idea that the word refers to a file of papers. The Misls would keep records of the villages and lands they had liberated at Akal Takht Sahib, with these records known as Misls. For an in-depth discussion of the etymology of the term see, Singh, Bhagat, 1993, pp. 362-363

¹⁰    Singh, Bhagat, 1993, pp. 41-43

¹¹    The Sarbat Khalsa was the legislative body utilized by the Khalsa in the 18th century. It was a consensus based-democracy where each leader of a jatha (and later Misl) were given equal say. Meetings would usually take place at Divali and Vaisakhi at Akal Takht Sahib, though they could occur at other places and times based on circumstances. 

¹²    The decisions reached by the Sarbat Khalsa, sanctified in the presence of Guru Granth Sahib, were called Gurmata, or a resolution of the Guru. These decisions were treated as decisions made by the Guru, as the Sarbat Khalsa was representative of the Guru Khalsa Panth, and the penalty for not following a Gurmata was excommunication. 

¹³    See SikhRI’s State of the Panth Report on the Akal Takht for more information: https://sikhri.org/articles/akal-takht-sahib-timeless-sovereign-throne 

¹⁴    Singh, Ganda, 1990, pp. 109-110 

¹⁵    Singh, Bhagat, 1993, p.51

¹⁶    Banerjee, 1985, pp. 68-69

¹⁷    Literally the Guru’s thinking, meaning the principles by which the Guru operates.

¹⁸    https://sikhcoin.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-coinage-of-maharaja-ranjit-singh_23.html

¹⁹    Kaur, Rajinder, 2011

²⁰    Ali, Akhbar & Hayat, 2018