Akar Nusa
Punjabi Sikh: police, guards and dairy farmers
A turbaned policeman stands outside a police station in a small Perak town. Down the road, a smaller group is building a plain white hall with a flag on the roof. It is the gurdwara, the Sikh place of worship, and in these years wherever Sikh police were posted, one was built.
The story
The Sikhs come from Punjab, in the north-west of India. In 1871 some were used as soldiers in the Selangor civil war. In 1873 Captain Speedy came to Perak with 110 men, mostly Sikhs, to bring order to the tin-mining district of Larut. Most historians count that arrival, on 28 September 1873, as the first recorded Sikh event in Malaya.
The next year a treaty brought British Residents to Perak. Speedy's men became the Resident's Guards, then the Perak Armed Police by 1877, then the First Battalion Perak Sikhs in 1884, and in 1896 the Malay States Guides. Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang also hired Sikhs. After 1896 Sikhs made up 30 to 40 per cent of the Federated Malay States police.
Why Sikhs? The British had a belief, common in their empire, that Sikhs were a "martial class" (a people said to be born soldiers). They also liked hiring men who were strangers to Malaya. Today scholars question both ideas, but they explain why recruiters went to Punjab. Many policemen later went home to Punjab with stories of the chances they had found, and more Sikhs followed.
Not all of them became policemen. Sikhs also worked as watchmen, bullock-cart drivers and dairy farmers. In Perak in the 1880s, Sikh bullock-cart drivers and dairy farmers led in building one of the first gurdwaras on Club Road. In Penang, many of the Sikhs who worshipped at the large Wadda Gurdwara were watchmen and dairy farmers.
The hard part, told plainly. Many Sikhs were hired to guard a colonial order and to put down unrest, including riots among Chinese miners. That was their job, and the pay was steady. It was a role the colonial government gave them. It says nothing about the people living here now.
Where you can still see it today
- Gurdwaras in Taiping, Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur, Penang and many other towns, many first set up by police units.
- The Wadda Gurdwara in Penang, once called the Diamond Jubilee Sikh Temple.
- Langar, the free community meal served at every gurdwara to anyone who comes.
- Vaisakhi, the Sikh new year festival.
What DNA can tell, and what it cannot
A father line such as R-M420 is one of the most common in north India and Pakistan (see your family-line story "A Central and South Asian line"). A mother line may point to South Asia. A region estimate may show that part of your DNA looks closest to South Asia.
These lines are shared by many peoples across the region. They cannot say whether a family is Sikh, Hindu, Muslim or Christian, or whether an ancestor served as a policeman, a guard or a farmer.
DNA does not decide race, religion or bumiputera status. Being a Sikh is a matter of faith and family, not of a gene.
