ANGLOSIKH RELATIONS need to be traced to the transformation of the British East India Company, a commercial organization, into a political power in India . Victory at Plassey (23 June 1757) brought Bengal under the de facto control of the British, and that at Buxar (22 October 1764) made Oudh a British protectorate. By August 1765, the grant of the diwani rights to the Company by the Mughal Emperor Shah `Alam made them the virtual rulers of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Robert Clive (1725-74), the victor of Plassey and governor of Bengal during 1765-67, watched with interest the repeated invasions of India by Ahmad Shah Durrani and rejoiced at his final repulse at the hands of the Sikhs in 1766-67.
BHAI, of Indo Aryan origin (Sanskrit bhratr, Pali bhaya), means brother in its literal sense and is employed as an honorific as well as in the dominant familial sense and as a title of affection between equals. It has been used in the Guru Granth Sahib in the latter sense and there are several apostrophic examples none of which seems to imply any special rank or status. However, by the middle of the seventeenth century, it was being used as a title implying distinction: the earliest example is the Bala Janam Sakhi (AD 1658) which refers to its putative author as Bhai Bala. The naturalness of its use in this particular context suggests that it must have developed the honorific connotation even earlier though it does not necessarily follow that these connotations were clearly apprehended in earlier usage.
