In response to the expansion of the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Sikh community began a process of militarization which would culminate in a dramatic rebellion and the foundation of the Sikh Empire in 1799 on the Indian subcontinent. Images of a despotic Mughal state, religious intolerance and a vulnerable Sikh minority would come to characterize the period"s historiography. But, as Hardip Singh Syan argues, the development of Sikh militancy was neither natural nor inevitable. Drawing on a range of contemporary sources, this book focuses on the intellectual dialogues within the Sikh community and its relationship to the wider Islamic world. Identifying significant distinctions within the Sikh community, Syan questions the irredentist visions of Sikh and Mughal society, thereby challenging the grand narratives of Early Modern South-Asian History. An essential revisionist work for students and scholars of Mughal India and Political Sikhism.