They were given, as would have any monks joining a Hindu order, new names to each of which was attached the suffix 'Singh' or lion. Thus was formed the Khalsa . D espite continued persecution under the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, the Sikh community managed to flourish, and by the middle part of the eighteenth century, Sikh rule was regularized by the imposition of a revenue demand from the Punjab peasantry equal to one-fifth of the harvest in return for the protection of the khalsa . In the early part of the nineteenth century, Ranjit Singh came to preside over the formidable Sikh kingdom, which was not subdued by the British until the Anglo-Sikh wars of the 1840s. The partition of India in 1947 was deeply wounding to the Sikh community, and from time to time, there have been demands for a separate Sikh state.
T here is scarcely any doubt that Sikhism is a distinct Indian religion.
The boundaries between Sikhism and Hinduism were never sharply drawn until very recent times, and in the Punjab it was not uncommon at all, until the violent secessionist movement of the 1980s began to alter the landscape, for a Hindu family to raise one of its children as a Sikh. Sikhs who have abandoned the most overt marks of their faith, such as unshorn hair, can scarcely be distinguished from Hindus, and it is not in the least incorrect to suggest that the wrath of orthodox Sikhs is directed at least as much at moderate Sikhs as at Hindus. There are other considerations, as well, which suggest the vastly altered circumstances under which one must contemplate the future of Sikhism. At one time the Sikhs were entirely confined entirely to India, and it is in the nineteenth century that some began to go overseas, such as those who were taken as a laboring force to build railroads in Uganda. The first taste of the world outside for many Sikh males came when they were recruited to fight in the two world wars, and in the aftermath of World War II, as the worn-torn economies of Europe struggled to stand on their feet, the Sikhs were enticed to Britain, Germany, and Holland with the promise of citizenship in return for their labor.