BACK
Distorting
Sikh History and Religion
Prof Hazara Singh*
A systematic campaign has been launched by a few non-Sikh
writers, both in Pakistan and India, for distorting Sikh
history and religion. If the various foundations, sadans
and chairs in the universities set up for propagating Sikhism
do not take note of this campaign, the distortions are bound
to become printed facts, leading to conflicting views on
various aspects of Sikh faith.
Attention
is drawn to narrations in the following two books to begin
with:
The Real Ranjit Singh by Faqir Syed Waheeduddin, Lion Art
Press, Karachi (Pakistan), 1965
and
India: The Seige Within by an Indian, M J Akbar, Penguin
Books Ltd, Middlesex (UK), 1985.
Neither of the two authors is a historian by profession.
Faqir Syed Waheeduddin, a descendant of Faqir Azizuddin,
Foreign Minister of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, bases his book
on family archives. Wherever he makes a statement, not relating
to the archives, he does not quote the source for corroborating
the same M J Akbar is a journalist, whose primary consideration
is to influence contemporary readers and not to state historical
facts objectively.
About Babar And Mughal Dynasty
Faqir Syed Waheeduddin states at page 51 of his book: Sikh
historians give a very interesting account of a meeting
between Babar, the founder of the Mughal empire, and Guru
Nanak, founder of the Sikh religion. They say that when,
after two unsuccessful invasions of India, Babar was marching
towards Delhi in 1525 to try his luck once again, a number
of prisoners were produced before him at Eminabad, a small
town in the Punjab. At the sight of one of them, he stood
up from his seat and exclaimed to his minister in Turanian,
“What! here in flesh and blood is the holy man who
appeared to me in a dream at Ghazni and invited me to invade
India for the third time, prophesying my victory”.
The holy man was Guru Nanak, Babar addressed with great
respect and asked him to express some wish which he could
fulfil. Guru Nanak asked only for the release of the prisoners,
which was carried out forthwith. He then blessed Babar and
prophesied that, if he and his successors treated their
subjects justly without distinction of caste or creed, his
dynasty would rule over India for centuries.
“Who, where and when” of Sikh historians giving
this account have not been mentioned, thus reducing the
statement to a mere fancy.
The
account is incongruent with the description of excesses
committed by the soldiers of Babar as recounted in a hymn
at pages 417-18 in Adi Granth. Guru Nanak had been an eyewitness
to that carnage and plunder. Babar himself records in his
Memoirs:
“He (Babar) advanced to Sialkot, the inhabitants of
which submitted and saved their possessions, but the inhabitants
of Syedpur (Eminabad) who resisted were put to sword, their
wives and children carried into captivity and all their
property plundered.” (3:140)
Marauders are not blessed but condemned by holy men, which
Guru Nanak did. The cruelties perpetrated by the hordes
of Babar on the residents of Eminabad were recited through
the same hymn by the Guru to Bhai Lalo as follows:
“As the word of the Lord cometh to me, so I make known,
O Lalo!
Bringing a bridal procession of sin, Babar hath hasted from
Kabul and demandeth wealth as his bride, O Lalo!
Modesty and religion have vanished; falsehood marcheth in
the van, O Lalo!
The occupation of the qazis and the brahmins is gone: the
devil readeth the marriage service, O Lalo!
Muslim women read the Quran, and in suffering call upon
God, O Lalo!
Hindu women whether of high or low caste, meet the same
fate as they, O Lalo!
They sing the paean of murder, O Nanak, and smear themselves
with saffron of blood.
Nanak singeth the praise of the Lord in the city of corpses,
and utterth this.
They shall come in ’78, depart in ’97 and then
shall rise another disciple of a hero.’ (4:109-110)
The statement of Faqir Syed Waheeduddin is inconsistent
with this hymn.
Dr Kirpal Singh, former Professor and Head, Department of
Punjab Historical Studies, Punjabi University, Patiala,
clarifies the last line of the hymn means that the Mughals
came in ’78 (1578 B.K. viz., 1521 A.D.) and departed
in ’97 (1597 B.K. viz., 1540 A.D.)., when Sher Shah
defeated Humayun and the latter fled from India. (5:105).
Guru Nanak prophesied the exit of Mughals and did not bless
the rule of Babar’s dynasty.
The statement of Faqir Syed Waheeduddin reminds us of a
similar myth floated by the British after the 1857 uprising.
‘A superstitious belief had been attributing the British
rule in India to the blessings of Lord Rama given to one
of the maid servants who served Sita very faithfully during
her captivity in Lanka. It is said that after the death
of demon king Ravana who had abducted Sita, when she was
recovered, she spoke to her husband highly of Trijta, one
of the maid servants, deputed by Ravana to guard her. Lord
Rama got pleased and blessed her that in the Kalyug, Trijta
and her descendants would rule over Bharat, country of his
birth.
Our people particularly those serving in the army had been
given to understand that Tritja took birth during the Nineteenth
Century as Queen Victoria. After the 1857 uprising, the
British Government ended the rule of East India Company
and Queen Victoria proclaimed herself as Empress of India.
The British regarded this upheavel as a mutiny of the native
sepoys, who revolted not for the independence of India,
but because the sentiments of orthodox Hindu soldiers had
been injured due to the rumour that the cartridges which
were issued for use in their rifles, contained the fat of
cow, an animal sacred to them. The outrage of a religious
sentiment had led to an India-wide sepoy revolt. An equally
strong story with a religious background was needed to win
back their loyalty. Hence, the orthodox Hindu soldiers were
given to believe through subtle preaching by battalion priests,
that Queen Victoria had become the Empress of India through
the blessings of Lord Rama, and the loyalty to her and her
descendants was a matter of faith enjoined by Lord Rama.
The superstition worked as a miracle to win back an unwavering
loyalty of the natives to the rule of Queen Victoria and
her descendants over India. (2)
Faqir Syed Waheeduddin’s book The Real Ranjit Singh
was published in May 1965 followed by three quick editions
in July, August and September 1965. The year 1965 had been
very unpleasant as far as the Indo-Pak relations were concerned.
There had been skirmishes in Kutch (Gujarat) during April
and a fullfledged war in Kashmir during September 1965.
The operation to liberate Kashmir, launched by Pakistan
in September 1965, still smoulders through a proxy war.
It appears that the book was tolerated to be published in
Pakistan in 1965, not as an exclusive tribute to Maharaja
Ranjit Singh, but as a subtle part of cultural invasion
on Sikh history and religion. Brainwaves of M.J. Akbar
M.J. Akbar at pp. 121-22 of his book India: The Seige Within
records about Sikh Ardas as follows:
‘... The Sikh that we recognise so easily today was,
in fact, created precisely two hundred years after Guru
Nanak began preaching his message. And from that year, a
cry went up which is still heard at every time of prayer:
‘Raj Karega Khalsa’ (The Khalsa shall rule).
The full form leaves no doubt about the intention:
Dilli takhat par bahegi, aap Guru Ki Fauj
Chatter phirega sis par, barhi karegi mauj
Raj karega Khalsa, baaqi rahe na koe
Khwar hoye sab milenge, bache saran jo hoye.
Translated, this means that the armies of the Guru will
rule Delhi, and only those will survive who seek the protection
of the Khalsa; the frustrated shall submit, and enemies
will be vanquished. After the British conquered Punjab,
they did not like the idea of anyone ruling Delhi, but themselves,
and so they banned the verse. The Sikh leaders compromised
by removing the first two lines from the popular recitation,
and then rationalized the last two by explaining that the
pure would rule only in the spiritual, not the temporal
sense. It was an old trick: to preserve a dream by calling
it an illusion.
The British let it pass. The slogan can still be found daubed
on the walls of Delhi and Amritsar, and is a part of the
Sikh prayer.'
The author does not corroborate his statement about the
removal of first two lines from the popular recitation by
quoting his source of information. That he is guided more
by his ears than by any objective reasoning is borne by
the fact that the word in third line is aaqi not baaqi.
He easily skips over the fact that as Ram Raj alluded to
by Gandhi ji in his evening prayers did not amount to restoration
of a rule as per Ramayana traditions, likewise Raj Karega
Khalsa does not mean Sikh rule.
Earlier at pp. 118-19, the author observes:
“...It was here that Arjun, the fifth Guru, built
the sacred Harimandir, or Golden Temple. There was obviously
great friendship between Sikhs and Muslims then; the foundation
stone of the Golden Temple was laid by a Muslim divine invited
from Lahore, Mian Mir. It was during the twenty-five years
of Arjun’s ministry that the compilation of the Granth
Sahib was completed, and the Sikh church truly established.
The number of conversions increased rapidly, much to the
anger of the brahmins and the mullahs; four new towns built,
and the people began to refer to Arjun as the Sacha Padshah,
the True Emperor’.
“ But here the problems began, particularly since
Guru Arjun could not resist the temptation of playing power
politics. With his influence on the increase, Guru Arjun
entered the vicious whirlpool of Mughal succession wars.
He supported the revolt of Jehangir’s son, Khusrau.
If Khusrau had succeeded, Guru Arjun would surely have been
a star in the court of Delhi, ensuring recognition, reward
and even perhaps a Sikh-Mughal coalition on the Rajput-Mughal
pattern. Instead, he earned the anger of Jehangir, whose
fits of virulence and cruelty have been recorded by every
historian. The enemies of Guru Arjun, particularly the priests,
found this an excellent opportunity to destroy the ‘upstart’;
Sikh tradition names one of Arjun’s tormentors as
the banker Chandu Shah who had been rebuffed when he proposed
marriage between his daughter and Guru Arjun’s son.
Guru Arjun was arrested and tortured, and he died in capativity
on 30 May 1606. The martyrdom of Arjun, and later during
the reign of Aurangzeb, the execution of the ninth Guru,
Teg Bahadur (who had begun extracting tribute from the people,
along with an ally, a Muslim faqir, Hafiz Adam), and of
the two young sons of the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, have
become symbols of a Sikh hatred for Muslims that has lasted
more than three centuries’.”
About the execution of Guru Arjun, Jehangir records in his
Tuzuk or Memoirs:
‘So many of the simple-minded Hindus, nay, many foolish
Muslims, too had been fascinated by the Guru’s way
and teachings... For many years the thought had been presenting
itself to my mind that either I should put an end to this
false traffic, or that he be brought into the fold of Islam....
I fully knew his heresies, and I ordered that he should
be brought into my presence, that his property be confiscated,
and that he should be put to death with torture'. (1: 230-231)
No historical record gives even the slightest hint that
Guru Arjun could not resist the temptation of playing power
politics. Perhaps M J Akbar is the only scholar who used
the unbecoming word ‘upstart’ for Guru Arjun.
M J Akbar’s reference to Guru Tegh Bahadur is being
commented upon after, his observation that follows:
M J Akbar states at p. 178 -
‘Guru Tegh Bahadur returned to the Punjab and found
an ally in a Muslim Sufi mendicant, Hafiz Adam, belonging
to the order of Shaikh Ahmed Sirhindi. The two organised
a mass uprising against the Mughal Emperor. Aurangzeb himself
was in the Deccan, but his troops quelled the revolt and
arrested Guru Tegh Bahadur at Agra. He was sentenced to
death and decapitated on 11 November 1675, in Delhi, at
the place where the Gurdwara Sis Ganj now stands’.
In both his references to Guru Tegh Bahadur at pages 112
and 178, M J Akbar has conveniently overlooked the recorded
fact that the ninth Guru laid down his life for the protection
of freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and
propagation of religion. The tale of Kashmiri brahmins who
sought the protection of Guru against the onslaught of Mughal
Governor of Kashmir and the resolve of the Guru to go to
Delhi and sacrifice his life for creating among people a
spirit of courage and resistance have been eclipsed by the
author, as it would expose his subjective way of thinking.
It is surprising that the author either forgot or did not
bother to take note that the third centenary of the martyrdom
of Guru Tegh Bahadur was celebrated in 1975 all over the
country by paying tribute to him as Hind di Chadar. M J
Akbar wrote this book in 1985 barely ten years after that
historic celebration.
At p. 202, the author states that the Akal Takhat was built
by Guru Hari Krishen. This betrays his ignorance about Sikh
history and religion. The Akal Takhat was raised in 1609
by Guru Hargobind. Guru Har Krishan (1656 to 1664), not
Hari Krishen, was invested with guruship in 1661. There
are incorrect statements about the Punjab turmoil, which
require to be taken up separately.
At Page 11 (Introduction) of his book, M J Akbar states
‘... To Khushwant Singh I am grateful for his critical
examination of Punjab section....’
Khushwant Singh owes it to his readers to confirm or contradict
this escapade of M J Akbar.
The Sikh Institutions are under an obligation to remove
all misunderstandings and misinformation which M J Akbar
has laboured to spread.
~~~
References
1. Harbans Singh and Lal Muni Jain, An Introduction to Indian
Religions, Punjabi University Patiala, 1973
2. Hazara Singh, ‘Significance of Seasonal Festivals’,
Advance, Chandigarh, April 1987
3. John Leyden and Erskine (tr), Memoirs of Zahiruddin Babar,
Vol.11
4. Macauliffe M.A., The Sikh Religion, Vo!.l, New Delhi,
1963
5. Proceedings of Punjab History Conference, 23rd Session,
March 17-19, 1989, Part 1, Punjabi University Patiala
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2007, All rights reserved.
