By Bhai Kapur Singh

The second reason, therefore, which fortifies the basic Sikh attitude concerning the theo-political status of the Golden Temple is grounded in the nimbus of the Sikh history that hangs over it and provides guiding precedents to the Sikh mind.

Till the demise of Guru Gobind Singh, the Nanaks, the Sikh Gurus, were centres of the Sikh movement, and afterwards, Banda Singh Bahadur took over the command of their political affairs. It was after the execution of Banda Singh Bahadur, and the collapse of the Sikh sovereignty which he had established on the political plane, that the Sikhs collectively assumed the rights and duties of their doctrine of Double Sovereignty, and in 1721, Bhai Mani Singh was installed as the head priest of the Golden Temple, who immediately took steps to Tevive the true theo-political status of this place. A free community kitchen for the visitors and the disabled was started and politico civic activities of the Sikh people were gathered afresh to be rooted around the Golden Temple. Khushwant Rai, the author of the manuscript, Tarikhi Sikhan, (1811) says that at this period the Sikhs, “lived in caves and thorny bushes, and subsisted on roots and blades of grass, and Zakariya Khan, the military governor of the Punjab, wondered that the grass eaters should be so bold as to lay claim to sovereignty.”

Mughals Conceded The Status Of SubNation To Sikhs

In 1733, when the Mughal government found that extreme measures of persecution had failed to persuade the Sikhs to compromise their basic doctrines and attitudes they conceded to the Sikhs the status of a sub-mation, an autonomous political status, analogous to that offered the Sikhs in early 1947 by Mr. Jinnah of the Muslim League. A revenue grant of a hundred thousand rupees and the Letters Patent of the Nawab were conferred upon the Sikhs which they accepted with the reservation that, “the Khalsa meant to rule freely, cannot accept permanently, a subordinate position.” (Teja Singh, Ganda Singh, A Short History of the Sikhs, Orient Longmans, p. 1. 121). All these developments took place and were finalized within the precincts of the Golden Temple, in front of the Akal Takhat and further these arrangements show that the government of the day, even during those early days of Sikh history, fully appreciated that the Sikh doctrines envisage that the state must deal with them as one people and not by atomizing them into individual citizens. Immediately at the conclusion of these arrangements, the Sikhs proceeded to establish five military cantonments, one at the lake of the Golden Temple and the other four at the remaining four sacred tanks that constitute the adjuncts of the Golden Temple, the Ramsar, the Bibeksar, the Lachhmansar and the Kaulsar. These arrangements, by their very nature, were doomed to failure and consequently in 1736, the Mughal government authorities occupied the Golden Temple and its precincts and it was under these circumstances that, Bhai Mani Singh approached the authorities for permission to celebrate the Sikh consortium of divali in November, 1738 and he undertook to pay a sum of Rs

five thousand to the state for police arrangements, on the explicit condition that the government would not interfere, directly or indirectly in the right of the Sikhs to collect donations at the Golden Temple, in complete freedom. Since the government authorities deliberately broke the terms of the agreement and as is the invariable custom of governments, accused Bhai Mani Singh of having done it instead, Bhai Mani Singh accepted the penalty of death, inflicted by hacking his body into bits, limb by limb rather than agree to pay the stipulated amount of Rs five thousand or earning a reprive otherwise.

The next year, 1739, saw the invasion of India by the terrible Nadir Shah who sacked Delhi, put its inhabitants to sword and took away the peacock throne and the Kohi nooor diamond as loot in his haversack. It was the “grass eaters” the Sikhs alone, out of all the peoples of India, who then came out of their caves and thorny bushes to attack the rear of the returning invader, till he reached Lahore exhausted by this harassment and the following conversation is recorded by a contemporary between Nadir Shah and Zakariya Khan, the military governor of the Punjab:

Nadir Shah:

“Who are these mischief makers, anyway?”

Zakariya Khan:

“They are a group of vagabond mendicants who visit their Guru’s Tank twice a year and then disappear.” Nadir Shah:

“Where do they live?”

Zakariya Khan:

“Their homes are their horse saddles.”

Nadir Shah:

“Take care my son the day is not distant when these rebels will take possession of thy country.”

The Sikhs Avenge Profanity of the Golden Temple

Here again, it was recognized by all concerned that, the Golden Temple is the hub of the Sikh universe. After its occupation by government in 1736 the Temple and its adjuncts were put to profane secular use and were converted in to central offices of the district officer, Mussalihuldin, popularly known as Massa Rangahar. When the news of this profane secular use of the sanctum sanctorum of the golden Temple reached a group of Sikh refugees in the far off Jaipur, two of them traveled all the way to Amritsar, after taking a solemn vow that they would either cut off and bring back to Jaipur the head of this arrogant government official or never return alive at all. In early August 1740 this presumptuous government functionary was beheaded on the spot during the early office hours and his head was carried to the assembled Sikhs at Jaipur. In vindication of the Sikh doctrine of Double Sovereignty, with the Golden Temple as its acropolis.

The Sikh people thus lived a precarious existence, a stateless outlaws and aliens in their own homeland when in 1746 Lakhpatrai, a Hindu dewan or chief minister of the military governor of the Punjab took it into his head to out-herod Herod to display greater zeal even than the Mughals to destroy the Sikhs and Sikhism and besides ordering a genocide of the Sikhs caused it to be announced with the beat of drum that no one should read the Sikh scripture, and anyone taking the name of the Guru should be arrested and his belly ripped open. Even the word gur (molasses), which sounded like Guru was not to be uttered but the word rori was to be used instead. The word, Granth was also to be replaced with pothi Many volumes of the holy Granth were collected and thrown into rivers and wells. The tank of the Amritsar was filled with earth.”

(A short history of the Sikhs, op. cit. page I, 132).

It is not to be supposed that a man of keen intelligence of his race and an energy peculiar to that by a subordinate position inspired, the chief minister Lakhpatrai would have missed the central significance of the Golden Temple and its adjuncts in the Sikh scheme of things and therefore, whereas he strove to destroy the cultural roots of the Sikhs he did not neglect the Golden Temple in view of its theo-political status.

In March 1748 the Sikhs emerged from their hideouts and drove away the occupation forces from the Golden Temple, built a mudfort to defend it, and reiterated that the Sikh people were an indivisible entity and sovereign sui generis. (Giani Gian Singh 2Panthprakash, Vartak. Delhi, 1892. p. 907).

In full realization that, in the plains of Amritsar neither their fighting strength nor the flimsy protection of mudwalls could save them from sure destruction by the Mughals they resolved that, “no better death is conceivable for a Sikh than that which overtakes him while defending the great Cause of Sikhism at this centre of Sikhism” (Rattam Singh Bhangoo, Prachin Panthprakash (1837), Amritsar 1914 p, 325). It must always be borne in mind that this “Great Cause” is essentially theo-political in content and not merely sorteriological in the scheme of peculiar Sikh values, a position which is not correctly appreciated by those who honestly castigate Sikhs for mixing up politics with religion.

In 1747 the Sikhs cleared the holy lake of Amritsar of the Debris with which it was gutted by the Chief Minister Lakhpatrai and in 1757 the Afghan conqueror, Ahmedshah Abdali invaded India for the fourth time when he found, as before, that the Sikhs, of all peoples of India, resented his incursions in to their country the most and made no secret of this resentment. Well understanding the theopolitical status of the Golden Temple and its adjuncts the redoubtable Abdali had the temple demolished its adjuncts destroyed and its lakes filled up and ploughed over, a strange precursor of the Second World War Moregenthau plan of the Allies, calculated to evirate culturally and industrially the German people. The Sikhs, however, refused to be cowed down, and in April 1758, when the combined forces of the Marathas and the Sikhs had succeeded in driving out of the country the Afghan occupation forces, the Golden Temple was rebuilt and its holy lake cleared up through the labour of the enemy prisoners of war and under the direct supervision of the famous Maratha chief Raghunath Rao and Malhar Rao Holkar who then humbly made an offering of Rs one hundred twenty five thousand at the Golden Temple and received ceremonial robes of honor from its head priest. These Maratha chiefs well understood that the restoration of the true theo-political status of the Golden Temple was an integral part of their grand national project of regaining liberty of the people and the freedom of India.

In November 1760, the Sikhs again assembled before the Akal Takht, at the Golden Temple and declaring themselves as the Sarbat Khalsa, a Sikh theo-political doctrine by which the Sikhs assume the power and status of the centralized conscience and will of the people resolved to take possession of Lahore, the seat of the Punjab Government a project delayed somewhat by the fifth invasion of the Abdali the same year.

Article extracted from this publication >>   June 16, 1989