Today I was reading a topic on another site and I was surprised That population of sikhs at the time of maharaja Ranjit singh was around 8-10 million and after that it was reduced to just 10-20% of original population
Then I searched net and found 2 very good sites on this
http://www.advancedcentrepunjabi.org/eos/POPULATION.html
No census was taken during those days and no exact or near exact figures can be computed from any sources of information available today, but a general estimate has come down the generations that Sikh population in what then constituted Raṇjīt Siṅgh's Punjab was around ten million. But with the fall of the Sikh Kingdom in 1849, there set in a rapid decline in the numerical strengh of the community. As the Punjab Administration Report for the year 1851-52 issued by the British noted:
The Sikh faith and ecclesiastical polity is rapidly going where the Sikh political ascendancy has already gone. Of the two elements in the old Khalsa, namely, the followers of Nanuck, the first prophet, and the followers of Guru Govind Singh, the second great religious leader, the former will hold their ground, and the latter will lose it. The Sikhs of Nanuck, a comparatively small body of peaceful habits and old family, will perhaps cling to the faith of their fathers; but the Sikhs of Govind who are of more recent origin, who are more specially styled the Singhs or "lions", and who embraced the faith as being the religion of warfare and conquest, no longer regard the Khalsa now that the prestige has departed from it.
These men joined in thousands, and they now desert in equal numbers. They rejoin the ranks of Hinduism whence they originally came, and they bring up their children as Hindus....
The first demographical survey in Punjab was carried out as on the night intervening between 31 December 1854 and 1 January 1955. Detail of Sikh population was recorded only in respect of the Lahore division, "which contains the Mājhā or the original home of the Sikhs" and there they were found to be only about 200,000 in an aggregate population of about three million. Referring to this fact, the Punjab Administration Report for the year 1955-56 commented:
This circumstance strongly corroborates what is commonly believed, namely that the Sikh tribe is losing numbers rapidly. Modern Sikhism was little more than a political association (formed exclusively from among Hindus), which men would join or quit according to the circumstances of the day... Now that the Sikh commonwealth is broken up, people cease to be initiated into Sikhism and revert to Hindooism. Such is the undoubted explanation of a statistical fact, which might otherwise appear to be hardly credible.
Besides large scale reversion into the Hindu fold, Christian proselytization, with overt government aid and encouragement, was also making inroads, especially among the backward classes. In the enumeration made in the Punjab including the cis-Sutlej princely states in 1868, Sikhs numbered only 1,141,848. In the first regular census of 1881, the Sikh figure stood at 1,853,426. Thereafter, the decennial censuses reflected a steady increase in Sikh population. This upward trend was largely the result of the Siṅgh Sabhā reform movement launched in 1873. The figures are :
The other I found i an e-book written by william owen
The Sikhs: their religious beliefs ... - Google Books
Its surprising how people shunned sikhism when empire of maharaja declined
Then I searched net and found 2 very good sites on this
http://www.advancedcentrepunjabi.org/eos/POPULATION.html
No census was taken during those days and no exact or near exact figures can be computed from any sources of information available today, but a general estimate has come down the generations that Sikh population in what then constituted Raṇjīt Siṅgh's Punjab was around ten million. But with the fall of the Sikh Kingdom in 1849, there set in a rapid decline in the numerical strengh of the community. As the Punjab Administration Report for the year 1851-52 issued by the British noted:
The Sikh faith and ecclesiastical polity is rapidly going where the Sikh political ascendancy has already gone. Of the two elements in the old Khalsa, namely, the followers of Nanuck, the first prophet, and the followers of Guru Govind Singh, the second great religious leader, the former will hold their ground, and the latter will lose it. The Sikhs of Nanuck, a comparatively small body of peaceful habits and old family, will perhaps cling to the faith of their fathers; but the Sikhs of Govind who are of more recent origin, who are more specially styled the Singhs or "lions", and who embraced the faith as being the religion of warfare and conquest, no longer regard the Khalsa now that the prestige has departed from it.
These men joined in thousands, and they now desert in equal numbers. They rejoin the ranks of Hinduism whence they originally came, and they bring up their children as Hindus....
The first demographical survey in Punjab was carried out as on the night intervening between 31 December 1854 and 1 January 1955. Detail of Sikh population was recorded only in respect of the Lahore division, "which contains the Mājhā or the original home of the Sikhs" and there they were found to be only about 200,000 in an aggregate population of about three million. Referring to this fact, the Punjab Administration Report for the year 1955-56 commented:
This circumstance strongly corroborates what is commonly believed, namely that the Sikh tribe is losing numbers rapidly. Modern Sikhism was little more than a political association (formed exclusively from among Hindus), which men would join or quit according to the circumstances of the day... Now that the Sikh commonwealth is broken up, people cease to be initiated into Sikhism and revert to Hindooism. Such is the undoubted explanation of a statistical fact, which might otherwise appear to be hardly credible.
Besides large scale reversion into the Hindu fold, Christian proselytization, with overt government aid and encouragement, was also making inroads, especially among the backward classes. In the enumeration made in the Punjab including the cis-Sutlej princely states in 1868, Sikhs numbered only 1,141,848. In the first regular census of 1881, the Sikh figure stood at 1,853,426. Thereafter, the decennial censuses reflected a steady increase in Sikh population. This upward trend was largely the result of the Siṅgh Sabhā reform movement launched in 1873. The figures are :
The other I found i an e-book written by william owen
The Sikhs: their religious beliefs ... - Google Books
Its surprising how people shunned sikhism when empire of maharaja declined
