By D.S. Gill
It is not only the ideology that imparts a sense of purpose and direction to the people, the role of leadership is not less important. The leadership cannot be made nor does it emerge overnight. It is the existence of a situation that culminates it.
The traditional and hierarchical leadership only can do in the peace times. In revolutionary periods, this type of leadership has nothing to do to cope with or to meet the challenge. Historically it was the militant Sikh collective leadership working under the patronage of the Akal Takht which had turned the tables and broken the status quo many a times.
Without strong leadership the very complexity of goals, aspirations and motivations of a revolutionary situation could easily degenerate into a war of each against all. Without effective leadership the revolutionary situation may remain an unrealized potential. It is the revolutionary group (or proto-party) which catalysis the ingredients of the revolutionary situation by developing a strategy and tactics, and by channeling the spontaneous initiative of the masses into a clearly revolutionary direction. Obviously the revolutionary leaders must be conscious of their mission and be devoted to it.
In addition to the ideological factor, revolution implies an orientation toward organization and institutionalization. And, it is the leaders who make crucial decisions and who coordinate the functioning of the organization.
The vital question of leadership was solved by Sikh Gurus in their own way. As long as the Sikh Gurus were there, it is they who determined the goals of the movement and guided its direction and organization. But, in their own times, they made a consistent conscious effort to develop the leadership on the panth. The Sikh congregation (Sangat) was declared the leadership on the panth. The Sikh congregation (Sangat) was declared twenty one parts against Guru being twenty parts (Sangat iki visve, Guru weeh visve). Guru Gobind Singh developed the leadership of the Khalsa on the five Beloved Ones, which shows that the Guru regarded them not only as his equals but made his leaders.
Before passing away, Guru Gobind Singh formally conferred Guruship both on Guru Granth Sahib and the Khalsa. That is, he developed the leadership on the Khalsa but made it subject to the ideology of Guru Granth Sahib. Guru Gobind Singh declared that he would ever abide in the Khalsa.
The Sikh movement had clear cut revolutionary aims, it was assiduously built by the Gurus over a long period through institutions such as Sangat, Pangat, the Panth and the Khalsa, Not only the Sikh movement, endured but it carried on a better, prolonged armed struggle till it emerged victorious. All this happened because the Sikh movement was a revolution and it was led by the revolutionary leadership.
The Sikh militancy was institutionalized by the creation of the Khalsa. The ideology was to be supreme and the individuals realized their status according to the extent they imbibed this ideology and dedicated themselves towards its realization.
This marriage of ideological commitment with broad-based leadership helped the Khalsa in the prosecution of their revolutionary struggle (The active political phase of the Sikh Revolution was institutionalized by the creation of the Khalsa in 1699. From that year to 1764 when the Khalsa assumed sovereignty, is a period of continuous and intense armed struggle). The Khalsa guerillas carried on a relentless struggle, almost single-handed, without a centralized leadership or a common center until they were successful in achieving their goal.
The Khalsa was locked in a very bitter and protracted (from 1606 to 1764) revolutionary struggle with the mightiest military empire in the world at that time. During this long period, which saw many ups and downs, the Sikh revolutionaries did not once comprise their political objective.
When Guru Gobind Singh had lost all his army, he refused to come to terms with Aurangzeb, as suggested by some Sikhs, and the Missals, though hard pressed, refused Abdali’s several offers for a negotiated settlement and fined Ala Sinh (Patiala State) for cooperating with him (Hari Ram Gupta, History of Sikhs, Vol. I, pp. 143, 264.
The Sikh uprising which originally initiated a war of revenge against Wazir Khan’s ill treatment of Tenth Master soon engulfed entire Punjab and assumed the dangerous form of total war for liberation from the Mughal rule. The Sikh revolt once roused to a pitch the iniquitous and tyrannical treatment of the Mughals, knew no abating till the tyrants had been completely wiped out making room for the oppressed to take the government of the land in their own hands.
Baba Banda Singh Bahadur, armed with five arrows and battle drum and sent by Guru Gobind Singh to rouse the peasantry of Punjab, after receiving encouragement from the Sikhs of Punjab, issued a proclamation offering protection to any one “threatened” by thieves, dacoits or highway robbers troubled by Muslim bigots or in any way subjected to injustice, ill-treatment,” says Sohan Singh. The proclamation was like a spark in highly inflammable situation. The Jats of cis-Sutlej Punjab rose against the zimidars and local officials of the Mughal Government to expel them from the land. There was a profuse, spontaneous and voluntary response to the Banda’s call for a struggle for emancipation.
They sacked Sirhind, and put Wazir Khan to death, even dismembered his dead body and hanged the pieces on the main gateway of Sirhind. They preceded against the Mughal garrisons, because they were the citadels of oppression and imperial strangle holds. They removed garrisons from the “thanas” and put them in charge of their own men. They made the whole country an abode of disturbances. They tore to pieces all such obstacles as impeded the realization of their ultimate objective.
Now with than as under their control the Sikhs proceeded to make a more spectacular and more impressive move to declare the emergence of an independent sovereign state in Punjab.
After the collapse of political power of the Sikhs under Banda Singh Bahadur in 1716 there was a complete blackout till 1721, when the Sikhs centered their theo political activities at the Akal Takhats. Being leaderless, the Sikhs started deciding their religio-political affairs at the biennial meetings of the Sarbat Khalsa on Baisakhi and Diwali days. They organized themselves into Misals.
Ever since 1721, when Bhai Mani Singh resolved the dispute between Bandai’ Khalsa and Tat Khalsa, who earlier doubted, blamed, challenged and quarreled with each other the Akal Takhat has remained the major center of Sikh politics,
The Sikhs who were struggling for sovereignty for the last so many years became triumphant in most areas of Punjab and in 1799 they were finally able to establish an independent Sikh sovereign State under Maharaja Ranjit Singh after consolidating all the misals.
During this period, the Akal Takhat became the target of the Mughal and Afghan ruler’s wrath; it was demolished in 1746, 1756 and 1762.
The Sarbat Khalsa, the democratic institution of the Panth, was neglected by Maharaja Ranjit Singh after 1805, when the Maharaja shifted his policies from the Sikh way to the ways of an ordinary king.
After the annexation of Punjab by the British, the position further deteriorated. Akal Takhat, the theo-political seat of the Sikhs, was turned into an ordinary historical shrine. Gradually it came under the undeclared but direct control of the British Government and the government used the seat of Miri Piri for ulterior motives which the then Sikh leaderships could little understand.
The puppet ‘sarbrah’ of the Akal Takhat, in a Hukamnama, declared that the Sikhs who had fought against the British police at Baj Boj Ghat (Calcutta) were not Sikhs. Honors were showered on General Dyer, the killer of hundreds of people of Punjab and Sikhs in 1919, which shook the Sikh Panth.
With the passage of the Gurdwara Act, 1925, the Sikhs got the control over their shrines. Since then almost all the Sikh movements have been launched from the Akal Takhat, which include the Punjabi Suba Morcha an agitation against imposition of Emergency 1975-77 and the Dharam Yudh Morcha 1982.
It is strange that the Akal Takht did not, in any way, react to the Sikh situation in 1947 at the time of partition of Indian sub-continent into two countries. The Akal Takhat didn’t call Sarbat Khalsa, nor did it issue any “Hukamnama” to Sikhs as to how they should take up the question of a Sikh State,
Recently once again, the Akal Takht remained silent spectator in the wake of storming of the Golden Temple by the Indian Army resulting in destruction of the Akal Takhat itself and the genocide of the Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere in India.
In the Inidra Sikh War of June 1984 so amateurish was the thinking at the Centre that government continued to believe that persuation, threats, a show of fire power would bring March 9, 1990 the agitating Sikhs to their knees. The rulers did not read the history before striking at the Sikhs. The Sikhs, too were shockingly ignorant of their own history, says D.H Butani in his book: The Third Sikh War? Towards or Away from Khalistan?
The Sikh masses were caught, rather, viciously, in what was essentially a political game. The consequences were grievous. The army suffered a massive loss, the Sikh psyche was hurt to its depth and in the “bargain’’, the country lost its prime minister. And in the interval between the storming of the Golden Temple and the assassination of Mrs. Indira Gandhi we were celebrating the victory over the Sikhs,” adds D.H. Butani.
These developments were more than enough to provoke the wrath of the Sikhs to ponder over the vital issues facing the Punjab and Sikhs. The Sikhs rose as a body against the puppet Sikh high priests and restored the supremacy of the Akal Takhat by calling a Sarbat Khalsa at the Akal Takhat on January 26, 1986.
The Akal Takhat and the Sarbat Khalsa played a crucial and positive role during the Misal period. This democratic spirit continued to struggle effectively during the 18th century and haphazardly in the period of Ranjit Singh and finally in a big way when it was revived after operation “Blue Star.”
Efforts have been made since then by those who either have no understanding of the Sikh religion and history or are under the influence of the Delhi Darbar to dilute and confuse the role of the Sikh sangat, articulated through the Sarbat Khalsa. And a puppet priests are sought to be bolstered over the Sikh masses to lull them #7 into submission to Delhi and its political interests.
The main task before the Panthic collective leadership of the Akal Takhat, was to break these hierarchical stratifications which had been a great hurdle in developing a real leadership and ushering an era of equality and freedom.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 9, 1990
