The Sikhs never forgot that the places of Guru Nanak’s birth and death as well as the popular Sikh shrine, Panja Sahib, lay in Muslim-majority areas of Punjab, over which Ranjit Singh had ruled in the nineteenth century. Moreover, they were strongly attached to the British-era canal colonies they had helped develop in Lyallpur, Montgomery and other Muslim-majority districts. Driven by these connections but lacking a majority in any district, the Sikhs tried nonetheless to mark out a substantial ‘Sikh’ Punjab consisting of several eastern Punjab districts where Sikhs and Hindus, taken together,
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