Answer: The organisation of the Sikhs into a political community during the seventeenth century helped in regional state-building in Punjab. Several battles were fought by Guru Gobind Singh against the Rajput and Mughal rulers, both before and after the institution of the Khalsa in 1699. Under a number of able leaders in the eighteenth century, the Sikhs organised themselves into a number of bands called jathas, and later on, misls. Their combined forces were known as the grand army (dal khalsa). Guru Gobind Singh inspired the Khalsa with the belief that their destiny was to rule (raj karega khalsa). Their well-knit organisation enabled them to put up a successful resistance to the Mughal governors first and then to Ahmad Shah Abdali, who had seized the rich province of the Punjab and the Sarkar of Sirhind from the Mughals. The Sikh territories in the late eighteenth century extended from the Indus to the Jamuna, but they were divided under different rulers. One of them, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, reunited these groups and established his capital at Lahore in 1799.