Maharajah Ranjit Singh, a Sikh warrior known for his vast conquests and religious toleration has been voted the greatest leader of all time, defeating rival nominees including Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln, in a poll by BBC World Histories magazine.
The historian Matthew Lockwood nominated the 'Lion of Punjab', arguing that while he was a conqueror, he formed a “modern empire of toleration” that unravelled after his death when the British took his former territories, The Times reported.
Singh was born in 1780 and the leader of the Sikh Empire, the northwest Indian subcontinent in the early half of the 19th century. After his father died, he fought several wars to expel the Afghans in his teenage years and was proclaimed as the "Maharaja of Punjab" at age 21.
Prior to his rise, the Punjab region had numerous warring misls (confederacies), twelve of which were under Sikh rulers and one Muslim. Ranjit Singh successfully absorbed and united the Sikh misls and took over other local kingdoms to create the Sikh Empire.
“Singh, however, was more than a mere conqueror. While the Indian subcontinent was riven with imperial competition, religious strife and wars of conquest, Singh was, almost uniquely, a unifier — a force for stability, prosperity and tolerance . . . He also went to great lengths to ensure religious freedom within his lands,” Mr Lockwood reportedly said.
“He patronised Hindu temples and Sufi shrines, attended Muslim and Hindu ceremonies, married Hindu and Muslim women, and even banned the slaughter of cows to protect the religious sensitivities of Hindus.
“His reign marked a golden age for Punjab and northwest India.”
His famous legacies today include Harmandir Sahib at Amritstar, the gurdwara which he rebuilt with gold leaf in the 1830s- creating the 'Golden Temple'. He was also the owner of the Koh-i-noor diamond that is now part of the Crown Jewels in Tower of London.
