Empire of the Sikhs (6 page)

The creation of the Khalsa proved a turning-point for Sikhism because of the dynamic it injected into it by making every individual Sikh feel responsible for upholding Sikhism's stature and
prestige. If a man in a turban and wearing the other symbols of his faith disgraced himself, he would disgrace all Sikhs. So it was obligatory on him to conduct himself in a manner conducive to the principles to which Sikhs were pledged.

Inevitably, the success of the conclave at Anandpur – where around 50,000 persons were baptized – made the hill chieftains uneasy. They sent a message to Emperor Aurangzeb informing him of the creation of the Khalsa and telling him that Gobind Singh had suggested general rebellion against the emperor. They asked for his assistance to expel the Guru from Anandpur, with the warning ‘Should you delay his punishment, his next expedition will be against the capital of your Empire.'
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This representation to Aurangzeb illustrates how India's people – perpetually resentful of each other – have so often helped aggressors get a stranglehold on the subcontinent. These same chieftains had often come to the Guru for help but were not averse to betraying him when it suited them. Aurangzeb needed no persuasion. Although their plea reached him as he campaigned in the south, he sent an expeditionary force against the Sikhs, which was joined by the
pahari
(hill) rajas. Once again it was routed.

After yet further humiliating military defeats, Aurangzeb now tried a different strategy. He laid siege to the entire Anandpur area, diverting the only stream on which Anandpur depended for its water. He offered the Guru and his party safe passage if he vacated Anandpur for good. A wrenching dilemma faced Guru Gobind Singh. Acceptance of Aurangzeb's offer would violate everything he had learnt from the exemplars of his faith. Equally unthinkable was to witness the slow death of his family and fellow men. At the end of 1704 he took the decision to leave his beloved Anandpur.

Despite their pledge of safe passage, the Mughals and their camp followers attacked the Sikhs no sooner had they left their fastness in the hills and reached the plains to cross the River Sarsa. The attack, and the swollen river after the winter rains, separated
many of the party from each other, which included Gobind Singh's mother and two sons. With a handful of men left out of an initial 500, the Guru, with his two elder sons Ajit Singh (seventeen) and Jujhar Singh (fifteen), fought his way to Chamkaur village with a Mughal force close on his heels.

Here a fierce battle was joined between forty Sikhs and the heavily armed Mughal force. The Guru's two elder sons were killed in hand-to-hand combat. Only Gobind Singh and three others survived. As they evaded the enemy's formations at night and headed for a place more conducive to regrouping the Khalsa, the Guru was separated from his companions in the heart of Mach-hiwara Forest. Continuing his journey on foot, however, he was fortunate enough to be reunited with his three companions. Aside from other Sikhs who rallied round them, when they reached the village of Jatpura they experienced a gratifying reception from the Muslim chief of the area, Rai Kalha, who was deeply appreciative of the uncompromising stand the Sikhs had taken against the intolerant and oppressive policies of Islamic rulers. What Rai Kalha and his fellow Muslim chiefs of a liberal bent proved once again was that, even in dire situations, human decency between men of different faiths need never be forsaken. Even ‘the Caliph of Mecca had shown disagreement with Aurangzeb's religious policy, while the Caliph of Baghdad had even refused to receive Aurangzeb's envoy'.
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One of those evil men with primitive instincts who are always at hand, Aurangzeb's governor of Sirhind, Nawab Wazir Khan, had Guru Gobind Singh's two younger sons Zorawar Singh (aged eight) and Fateh Singh (six) killed in the most gruesome manner when they fell into his hands. They were first bricked up alive up to their necks, then extricated and beheaded when they would not convert to Islam. It was following this tragedy that Guru Gobind Singh wrote the celebrated letter to Aurangzeb known as the
Zafarnamah.
This was an open letter to him in Persian that bluntly
accused him of deceit and inhumanity. ‘If the Prophet himself was present here, I would inform him of your treachery,' he wrote.
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History offers few other instances of a sovereign of a major empire wielding absolute authority being so indicted by the representative of a tiny minority group.

Astonishingly, instead of being outraged at Gobind Singh's open accusations, Aurangzeb expressed a desire to meet Gobind Singh, to see and talk to the man who had such nerve. Despite the emperor's proven perfidiousness and the blood of the Guru's sons on his hands, Gobind Singh was confident enough to travel to the south to meet him. Their meeting, however, never came about as the ninety-year-old emperor died while Gobind Singh was still travelling.

Following Aurangzeb's death, his son Prince Muazzam sought the Guru's help in his power struggle with his brother Azam. The same Muazzam had once been sent by his father to assault Anandpur and put Guru Gobind Singh down once and for all, but Muazzam, reputedly a man of rectitude, preferred not to do so. The Guru had not forgotten this and sent a contingent of Sikh troops to fight alongside Muazzam's in the Battle of Jajau near Agra. Azam was killed, his force routed, and Muazzam ascended the Mughal throne as Emperor Bahadur Shah.

He and Gobind Singh had their first meeting in Agra. It was cordial, and they discussed at length how things could be set right in Punjab. The two continued their discussions while journeying together to the south, where Muazzam wanted to deal with his other brother Kambakhsh who had also risen against him. By the time they reached Nander, however, Gobind Singh had realized that the new emperor had little intention of ending the tyrannical ways of Mughal rule, and so in September 1708 he parted company with him.

During his short stay in Nander, Gobind Singh converted a Hindu
sadhu
or ascetic, Madho Dass Bairagi, to Sikhism. Bairagi
was an assertive man of some standing in the area with a following of his own. His initiation into the Sikh faith as Banda Singh Bahadur was to prove of profound historical significance.

First, however, a cataclysmic event overtook the Sikh camp at Nander. Wazir Khan of Sirhind, the murderer of Gobind Singh's two younger sons, fearful that Bahadur Shah's closeness to Gobind Singh might adversely affect his own fortunes, sent two Pathans to kill him. One of them stabbed the Guru in the chest as he lay on his bed after evening prayers. Although wounded near the heart, Gobind Singh ran him through with his sword, while his followers decapitated the second. While the wound seemed to be healing well, his over-exertions a few days later reopened it, and excessive bleeding ended the life of this remarkable man at the age of forty-two.

But before the end he drew on his willpower and inner reserves to tell his followers who had assembled in large numbers around him that the tradition of living Gurus would end with him and that after his death the Granth Sahib would be the Guru of the Sikhs for all time. This was a far-sighted move reflecting a clear understanding of human loyalties which can waver when familiar conditions give way to new and stressful demands. The Guru Granth Sahib, as it would thenceforth be known, was not only a repository of the supreme insights of the Sikh Gurus but a compendium of the wisdom of scholars and sages of all faiths. These unique scriptures would ensure that Sikhs would always be open to every thought that respects reason, compassion and just social structures.

As a modern Sikh historian has pointed out: ‘When a Sikh bows before and seeks guidance from the Holy Granth, he offers his devotion as much to Farid, the renowned Muslim Sufi, and Jaidev, a Hindu
bhakta
of Krishna, as to Guru Nanak or Guru Arjan, the compiler of the Granth. It is a commonwealth of the men of God.'
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So when Sikhs bow before the Guru Granth Sahib they bow before knowledge and wisdom, not before an idol or deity.

With unerring instinct Guru Gobind Singh had sensed in Banda Singh the qualifications of a future leader. Banda, believed to have been born in Kashmir, was at ease everywhere, which is how he had come to settle in Nander in the remote south. He had been a farmer and a hunter and had won a reputation as a formidable fighter; at the same time he possessed the willpower and the discipline to practise yoga and the ascetic life. In converting this seemingly pacific
sadhu
to the Sikh faith Guru Gobind had released his white-hot inner nature.

Burning with hatred for those who had perpetrated such crimes against a man like Guru Gobind Singh and his family, Banda was determined on vengeance. He set out for Punjab almost 1,500 miles away with just twenty-five armed followers, But he was also armed with Gobind Singh's
hukamnamahs
(directives) to all Sikh
sangats
to rally round his banner. The Guru had given him five arrows from his own quiver, a
nishan sahib
(flag) and a
nagara
(war drum) as symbols of authority. Banda's tiny force soon swelled with the addition of warriors eager to strike back at their Mughal tormentors.

After many armed clashes on the way Banda and his men eventually arrived at the gates of the heavily fortified town of Samana, home of Sayyed Jalal-ud-Din, Guru Teg Bahadur's executioner, and Shashal Beg, who had executed Guru Gobind Singh's two younger sons. Helped by a previously oppressed peasantry, the augmented Sikh force took the town in a surprise dawn attack. Other Punjabi towns towns fell before Banda's men and finally Sirhind. Given the extent to which Sikh anger would boil over at the very mention of Sirhind and its governor, Wazir Khan, the outcome of the first savage battle that took place over it
outside the city was never in doubt. Wazir Khan's well-armed army of 20,000 men fought a far smaller Sikh force, but he was killed.
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Sirhind itself was taken after a two-day siege but at high cost to the Sikhs, who lost 500 men before the fort's heavy guns were silenced. The destruction of the town was not permitted following a fervent appeal by its Hindu population. Because of its notorious past, however, it was not to be spared half a century later when Jassa Singh Ahluwalia's forces invested it.

A six-year roll of victories brought Banda to the gates of Lahore, a city symbolic of Mughal and Afghan authority in India. In one of his most audacious campaigns the Sikh leader captured the fortress of Mukhlispur built on a promontory on the lower reaches of the Himalayas, renamed it Lohgarh and flew the flag of the Khalsa over it. He announced that Lohgarh would henceforth represent Sikh authority over the regions now under their control, and seals and coins were struck to celebrate Sikh rule.

An incensed Emperor Bahadur Shah, with a force of 60,000 horsemen, laid siege to Lohgarh. The majority of a combined Sikh force of around 3,000 horsemen and foot soldiers held the enemy at bay while Banda and a few of his men escaped. Inevitably, however, the vastly superior Mughal forces prevailed. When Banda Singh was finally taken in a siege of the town of Gurdas Nangal on 17 December 1715 the Mughals outdid themselves in barbarity. Three hundred Sikhs were summarily executed and their heads stuffed with hay, mounted on spears and carried in a victory procession to Lahore and then on to Delhi. After spells of torture alternating with attempts to buy him off, Banda was finally taken to the Qutb Minar (a thirteenth-century stone tower 239 feet in height) where ‘they had him dismount, placed his child in his arms and bade him kill it. Then, as he shrank with horror from the act, they ripped open the child before the father's eyes, thrust his quivering flesh into his mouth and hacked him to pieces limb by limb.'
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The Sikhs now faced the most savage persecution in their history. With the death of Bahadur Shah in 1712 and the accession of Far-rukh Siyar to the throne in 1713, the Mughal Empire came to be headed by a man who outstripped all his predecessors in gratuitous cruelty. His governors and commanders curried favour with him by sending him severed Sikh heads ‘for his pleasure'.
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When once Zakariya Khan, for example, who was later to become governor of Lahore under him, called on the emperor in Delhi and presented him with a particularly large number of Sikh heads, the overjoyed emperor raised Zakariya's rank and loaded him with presents. Zakariya ordered his men to arrest Sikhs wherever they saw them and bring them to Lahore for daily public executions. He announced a reward of 50 rupees for every Sikh head brought to him.