"The notion of martyrdom and the role of martyrs in religious and political history constitutes a major component in discourse among Sikhs throughout the world. Martyrdom in the Sikh Tradition examines how and why Sikhs began to represent their history as a history of persecutions and martyrdoms and began to see themselves as a 'community through whose veins flows the blood of martyrdom'. Fenech seeks the reasons why the themes of sacrifice and martyrdom came to dominate Sikh imaginations in the early twentieth century and how these understandings continue to play such a vital role in the Sikh community today. He does this through an analysis of the Sikh scriptures, eighteenth and nineteenth century Sikh literature, as well as the voluminous tracts and newspapers produced under the auspices of the late nineteenth-century 'reform' movement, the Singh Sabha. "--BOOK JACKET.