Sangat Singh

Sangat Singh is the author of The Sikhs in History, a single-author narrative of Sikh history from the Gurus into the 1990s. The name is common among Sikhs; this page is about the author of that book. The preface to the first edition is dated 18 November 1994 and the preface to the second edition 28 December 1995. In the second he says the first edition was published and released in New York.

He describes his own work as international and strategic studies and says that in 1982 he was on a foreign posting; the sources opened for this page do not name the posting or his employer, and give no dates for his life.

How the book came about, in the author's own account in the preface:

• The Kendri Sri Guru Singh Sabha, which he says was founded in 1973, made attempts from 1980 at a reappraisal of part of Sikh history and held three seminars in 1981.
• In 1982 its president, Hukam Singh, wanted him to take extraordinary leave to undertake the project. He says it was not possible to agree at once, though the idea stayed with him.
• In the autumn of 1990 the History Board of the SGPC appointed him chairman of a small committee to write modern Sikh history. Because he was not willing to accept gurdwara funds for the project, he says, he did the work on his own.

The book is arranged in six parts: an introduction on the Sikh problem; Sikhism in medieval history; the Sikhs under the British; two parts on the Sikhs in independent India, the first covering 1947 to 1975 and the second headed Facing Genocide, covering 1975 to the 1990s; and a closing look at the future. He says that more than half the space goes to the years since 1947. He writes that facts are sacred while interpretation is one's own, and that he alone is responsible for the opinions in the book.