(Third time's the charm :D)
I'll admit I'm not very familiar with this region/period, but I know that the British had just finished destroying the Sikh Empire, so what was the Sikh's motivation for siding with them?
Notes
In the following text I will use the terms 'British' and the 'East India Company (EIC)' interchangeably. Please note that pre-1857, there was no 'British empire' in India - it was just territory controlled by the East India Company, either directly or through vassalage.
I will not be going into the age-old debate on whether the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny/First War of Independence/Revolt of 1857/The Great Outbreak was actually a war of independence. However, I will mention that there is a tendency to romanticize the conflict in India to make it seem like a pan-Indian war with support from every part of India. The reality is a bit more complex.
As you can see, the Sikhs were not alone in opposing the rebelling armies in 1857.
Some required background for context
The concept of a united India was still fairly new in 1857. India itself was made up of several princely states and kingdoms at the time, and was slowly united because of annexation/vassalage by the East India Company.
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Mughal empire faded out of power and were replaced by the Marathas as the dominant power in the northern and central parts of the Indian subcontinent. However, neither the Mughals nor the Marathas had any influence on large parts of Southern India. After the invasion of Ahmed Shah Abdali in the 1750s and 1760s, they did not have any influence on the Punjab area too. The Sikhs and the Afghans vied for power, leading to the short-lived Sikh empire by Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
Subsequently, Indian nationalism was still at a very nascent stage. The concept of India, for the most part, was born with the British Empire - East India Company rule was the first time when Tamil Nadu and Punjab were part of the same country with the same administration.
In the early years of rule, the British exploited local divisions in order to gain footholds on regions they would have found much more difficult to conquer. In addition, the Presidency armies were a good source of steady income for many people from low classes and castes.
The Battle of Plassey was won with the defection of Mir Jafar, Siraj Ud-Daulah's commander. This battle is considered to be pivotal to the establishment of British rule in India.
Tipu Sultan of Mysore was defeated with the help of the Marathas and the Nizam of Hyderabad.
The Marathas were defeated by the British with the help of the Mahars, a caste considered untouchable at the time. The Mahar victory at Bhima-Koregaon is celebrated even to this day.
The Mahars were persecuted so heavily under Peshwa rule that the British, with their indifference, were the better option to them.
We see this recurring theme in the early history of the British empire, and it mirrors events from other parts of the world at other times. For example, the Spanish allied with chiefs of the Tlaxcala, Texcoco and several other cities to defeat the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan.
Why did they apparently 'betray' their own brethren? Because their primary enemies were other Indians, and a dalliance with the British was apparently preferable to yet another century of caste repression, religious conflict, linguistic suppression, the zamindari system etc. The British were relatively new to subcontinent, whereas some of these cultural divisions had persisted for hundreds of years. [of course, the British didn't really address a lot of these issues after gaining power, but hindsight is 20/20].
Early Sikh history is filled with stories of religious persecution by the Mughals and military action against organized action by the Sikhs.
Guru Arjan and Guru Tegh Bahadur were tortured and executed because they refused to convert to Islam. Guru Gobind Singh was assassinated by a Mughal assassin as he was waiting for an audience with the Mughal emperor. The Khalsa is the famous Sikh warrior group which owes its existence to this religious persecution by the Mughals.
The Sikhs and the Mughals would end up fighting many, many battles over the course of ~150 years, starting from the Battle of Rohilla and ending with the Sikhs occupying Delhi and the Red Fort - an event which gave the area of Tis Hazari in Delhi its name for the 30000 Sikh soldiers who were stationed there.
In short, there was no love lost between the Mughals and the Sikhs. This becomes important as the primary motivation of the sepoy mutineers in 1857 was to overthrow the East India Company and create a unified Empire of India under the Mughal ruler Bahadur Shah Zafar. A renewed Mughal empire was something that would not have been palatable to Sikhs with even the slightest knowledge of their religious history.
The Sikh Empire was the last major power to resist the East India Company.
The Anglo-Sikh wars were fought form 1845 to 1849, leading to the annexation of Punjab into the East India Company's ever-expanding territory. The East India Company's Bengal army was largely responsible for the conquest of the Sikh Empire.
Prior to 1857, this army consisted primarily of high-caste Brahmins and Rajputs from Oudh/Bihar, known as the Purbiyas, and Muslim sowars who served in the cavalry regiments.
The eminent historian R.C. Majumdar claims that the Anglo-Sikh wars would have been the perfect time for a rebellion against the British, and by not rebelling at that point, the sepoys lost the moral high ground of patriotic fervour in the eyes of the Sikhs. I quote verbatim from his book ^[1]
"In this connection a very important fact is often forgotten by those who claim the outbreak of 1857 as a national war of independence, for which patriotic sepoys shed their blood, and political leaders had been preparing grounds for a long time. The Panjab was conquered by the British with the help of the sepoys less than ten years before the outbreak of Mutiny. The battle of Chillianwala which proved the valour and heroism of the Sikhs, and their ability, under more favourable circumstances, to defeat the English, was fought in 1849, only eight years before the Mutiny. If there were really a movement for freeing India from the British yoke, obviously this was the most suitable opportunity. But we have not the least evidence to show that the Indian leaders like Nana Sahib and others mentioned above raised their little finger to help the cause of the Sikhs. The sepoys themselves, who are supposed to have sacrificed their all for the sake of their country in 1857, had not the least scruple to fight the Sikhs who were the last defender of liberty in India There are even allegations that the Sikhs entreated the sepoys to refuse help to the British, but in vain.
Although this cannot be definitely proved, it should have occurred to every sepoy, who had real love for his country, that by defeating the Sikhs he would only forge the last link in the chain by which India was being fettered by the British. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that the attitude and activities of the sepoys in 1849 certainly did not correspond to the patriotic fervour with which they are supposed to be endowed in 1857. Unless, therefore, we suppose that this sentiment was suddenly developed during the short interval of eight years, we can hardly regard the sepoys, who rebelled in 1857, as being inspired by the idea of liberty and freedom. Incidentally, the Sikh War also proves the absence, in 1849, of any serious conspiracy or organisation against the British, although, according to Sitaram Bawa, such conspiracy against the British was going on for many years in almost every native court. Surely the Sikh War would have been the most suitable opportunity, if ever there were any, which the conspirators should have taken "advantage of for organising a war of independence against the British."
In addition, the bravery of the Sikhs in the Anglo-Sikh wars meant that the British would consciously respect the Sikh troops and staff their armies increasingly with Sikh troops.
The central role of the Bengal army in the Anglo-Sikh wars meant that Sikhs had no sympathy for the mutineering troops of 1857 who were primarily from the Bengal army (e.g. Mangal Pandey).
Continued in part 2
