The Sikh misls

Formation

After the execution of Banda Singh Bahadur in 1716 and decades of persecution under Mughal governors, Sikh bands survived in the forests and hills, emerging to raid and withdrawing again. As Mughal authority in the Punjab collapsed and Afghan invasions under Ahmad Shah Abdali repeatedly crossed the province, these bands consolidated into larger units.

By the middle of the century there were twelve principal misls, each under its own leader with its own territory and revenue. The word derives from an Arabic term for a file or register, reflecting the arrangement by which shares were recorded.

Organisation

The misls were not a state. Each was independent in its own territory, and leadership within them owed as much to ability and following as to inheritance. What held them together was the Sarbat Khalsa, the general assembly convened at Amritsar at Vaisakhi and Diwali, at which the misls met in the presence of the scripture and passed gurmatas, binding resolutions, on matters affecting all of them — chiefly the defence of the Punjab against Afghan invasion.

The Dal Khalsa, the combined army, could be raised from the misls for joint campaigns, and was, repeatedly, against Abdali.

Territory and decline

At their height the misls controlled most of the Punjab between the Indus and the Yamuna, together with territory in the hills. Rakhi, a system under which villages paid for protection, gave them revenue and gradually turned raiding into administration.

Their independence was also their weakness: they fought each other as readily as outsiders. Ranjit Singh, who inherited the leadership of the Sukerchakia misl, absorbed or subdued the others between 1799 and the 1820s, converting the confederacy into a single kingdom and ending the arrangement.