The colonel reportedly paused. He looked at the young soldier who had just done what no veteran had dared. He smiled. “No, son,” he said. “You are no longer a Rangroot. You are a Bahadur (Brave One).”
The water was freezing, up to his chest. His turban unraveled slightly, trailing in the icy sludge. But he and a handful of other “Rangroots” emerged on the German flank. They didn’t fire volleys; they fought with the kirpan (dagger) and the brutal short sword of the khanda.
When we think of World War I, the images are often fixed: muddy trenches in France, Tommy Atkins with his Enfield rifle, and the poppies of Flanders Fields. But what if we shift the lens? What if the soldier in the mud wasn’t from Manchester, but from Punjab? And what if his last name was a challenge to an empire? sajjan singh rangroot
The men pointed to the mud-caked, shivering Sikh with frozen beard. “Sajjan Singh, sir. The Rangroot.”
In recent years, the story of Sajjan Singh has inspired a feature film ( Rangroot , 2018) and a graphic novel, reviving interest in the 1.5 million Indian soldiers who fought for a king who didn’t consider them equals. Sajjan Singh’s tale is the ultimate reversal: an insult turned into a title of honor, a greenhorn turned into a lion. The colonel reportedly paused
This is the story of , a name that became synonymous with a rare and controversial title: Rangroot . The Anatomy of a Slur To understand Sajjan Singh, we must first understand the word Rangroot . In the British Indian Army, it was a derogatory term for a fresh recruit—literally translating to “color of the root” or, more cruelly, “raw, unseasoned meat.” It was a label given to green soldiers who hadn’t yet tasted battle. But in the cauldron of the Great War, the word transformed. From the Dust of Punjab to the Snow of Ypres Sajjan Singh was a Jat Sikh from the village of Mahla in Ludhiana district. He belonged to the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs, a regiment with a ferocious pedigree. In 1914, like thousands of his countrymen, he boarded a ship to Marseille, leaving behind the golden wheat fields of Punjab for the frozen, shell-pocked hell of the Western Front.
But history remembers him by the slur he shattered. —the recruit who became a leader. The Legacy Sajjan Singh survived the war. He returned to Ludhiana with a scar on his cheek from a bayonet and a chest full of medals (likely the Indian Distinguished Service Medal and the British War Medal). He went back to plowing his fields. When villagers asked him about Europe, he would simply say: “The mud there is the same color as here. But the courage required to stand up in it is gold.” “No, son,” he said
According to oral history passed down in Sikh regiments, Sajjan Singh, the Rangroot , did something unexpected.
