New Zealand scholar and an authority on the history of Sikhism

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 September 2009

William Hewat McLeod, who has died aged 76, was a scholar whose life's work helped transform the understanding of Sikhism. He produced a remarkable series of publications and was central in establishing Sikh studies as a distinctive field. Although his own work was careful, measured and judicious, it frequently provoked controversy.

Hew, as he was known, was born and raised in a farming family near Fielding, in New Zealand's North Island. He completed his schooling at Nelson college before attending the University of Otago, Dunedin, where he undertook a BA and then an MA in history. He also met Margaret Wylie there, and in May 1955 they got married.

Hew then began theological studies and in 1958, with his wife and son, Rory, joined the New Zealand Presbyterian church's mission to Punjab. At Kharar, in Punjab, he learned Hindi and Punjabi as well as teaching English at the Christian Boys secondary school. He found that his lack of training as a language teacher and his New Zealand accent made this task difficult.

Hew escaped these concerns by immersing himself in studying the Punjab, especially the Sikhs, a community that quickly captured his imagination. This new interest was developed further when the family, which by then included sons Michael and Shaun, spent an extended period in England, where Hew studied for a PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1965. While in London, Hew and Margaret adopted a half-Punjabi baby girl, Ruth.

The family returned to Punjab, where Hew took a job teaching history at Baring Union Christian college at Batala. They left India in 1969 after both Hew and Margaret realised the extent of their religious doubts. Hew recognised that he did not, in fact, believe in God. Many Sikh critics have persisted in dubbing him the Rev McLeod, failing to recognise that he severed his formal ties with the Presbyterian church 40 years ago and the ways in which his agnosticism shaped his approach to Sikh religion and history.

Hew's revised thesis was published by the Clarendon Press as Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion (1968). This book assessed the historical value of the janam sakhis, popular narratives that recounted the life of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, and embodied the highest standards of philological analysis and the evaluation of sources. This approach angered some Sikhs because they saw it as a direct challenge to the authenticity of their traditions.

After 18 months in England on fellowships at Cambridge and Sussex universities, Hew and his family returned to New Zealand. He became a professor of history at the University of Otago, a position he held until his retirement in 1997. He continued to produce books, including The Evolution of the Sikh Community (1975) and Early Sikh Tradition (1980), and completed a pioneering study of the history of Punjabi migration to New Zealand.

Conferences and sabbaticals allowed Hew to travel widely in the late 1970s and 80s. In 1987, during one of these trips, he suffered a stroke. This would later impede his ability to lecture and argue ex tempore, though he continued to write, opening up new aspects of Sikhism to scholarly assessment, from popular art through to women in Sikh tradition. He produced an indispensable Historical Dictionary of Sikhism (1995) and edited Textual Sources for the Study of Sikhism (1990), as well as publishing several surveys of the religion. For five years from 1988, he taught for one term annually at the University of Toronto, where he supervised PhDs by Louis Fenech and Pashaura Singh, leading figures in the field today.

Hew was renowned for his openness and his readiness to answer any question and to read any manuscript. This generosity, together with his precocious embrace of email, placed him at the centre of an international scholarly community.

He is survived by Margaret, his four children and four grandchildren.

• William Hewat ("Hew") McLeod, historian, born 2 August 1932; died 20 July 2009