Traditions, Personalities and Memories: Aspects of Sikh History, 1469–1914, Essays in Honour of Sardar Saran Singh highlights the traditions of self-sacrifice associated with the Sikh gurus and their renowned followers. Ironically, these great traditions ended up being undermined during the most glorious phase of Sikh history—the rule of Maharajah Ranjit Singh—so much so that both the British sympathizers, Chief Khalsa Diwan and the Singh Sabhas, as well as the anti-British Namdharis, tried to revive these noble traditions. Persecuted by the British rulers, the Namdharis sustained their anti-colonial activities through the Ghadar movement in the twentieth century. The legacy of Baba Gurdit Singh, explored in this volume, is also intertwined with those of the Ghadarites, owing to his expedition with Sikh migrants from Punjab to Vancouver on his chartered ship Komagata Maru, to circumvent the repressive strategies of the white dominions of Canada and the US against the Indian migrants. Around the same time, Ghadarites, retired army personnel and radical Bengali anti-colonial forces began to collaborate closely in Calcutta, which became the hub of these revolutionary activities. This volume is an effort to join these dots across history, highlight the varying sacrificial traditions and the fascinating personalities associated with such sacrifice and to rekindle the memories cherished by Sikhs Contents: Foreword Preface Introduction 1. Martyrdom in Sikhism and Islam: A Historical Perspective 2. Salvation through the Sword: Zafarnama, Tagore and the Sikh Idea of Martyrdom 3. Namdhari Struggle against the British Raj 4. Baba Gurdit Singh: His Ethics and Discourse 5. From Public to Secret: The Controversy Surrounding Komagata Maru and Underground Responses in Calcutta During the First World War 6. Kabir: A Pragmatic Thinker 7. Ideas of Guru Nanak and Sankaradeva: An Analogical Study Notes on Editor and Contributors Bibliography Index The Editor Chhanda Chatterjee is Senior Research Fellow at the Indian Council of Social Science Research, attached to the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi. A former Professor of history, she has also served as the Director of Centre for Guru Nanak Dev Studies, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan. Her previous publications include Punjab and Awadh: Ideology, the Agrarian Social Structure and Imperial Rule, 1858–1887 (1999); Tagore and the Sikh Gurus: A Search for an Indigenous Modernity (2014); and The Sikh Minority and the Partition of the Punjab, 1920–1947 (2019).