Sikhs Rescue Hindu Women From Hordes of Abdali Abdali crushed the Marathas as an all India power in the historic battle of Panipat, fought on January 14, 1761, but when the victorious invader was returning to Afghanistan the Sikh chiefs again assembled at the Golden Temple and resolved to take all possible measures to rescue the Hindu and Maratha young women being carried away as war booty by the Afghans. In pursuance of this resolution the Sikhs made a determined attack on the rear of the caravan at the Goindwal ferry of River Bias and rescued over two thousand young women from the clutches of the Abdali and made arrangements to return them to their original homes. (James Browne, History of the Origin and Progress of the Sikhs, London, 1778, P. Il 22.)
This process of rescuing young women, the Sikhs followed till the invader crossed the River Jhelum and this whole campaign was considered, resolved upon and sustained from the Golden Temple and its precincts.
Abdali’s Vengeance on Sikhs
In 1762 the Abdali returned to India on his sixth invasion, with the specific object of liquidating the Sikhs completely and finally of destroying their cultural and spiritual roots and of extirpating their very memory from the minds of the people so that there remains then no power in India cherishing the temerity of opposing him. In a lightening attack this greatest of generals that Asia has produced the Abdali put to sword a large portion of the Sikh people, men, women, and children over thirty thousand of them near Ludhiana took possession of the two original volumes of the holy Granth prepared by Nanak V and Nanak X and then proceeded to complete his task by blowing up the Golden Temple with gun powder, destroying its other adjuncts, and then filled the holy lake after desecrating it with the blood of cows.” (A Short History of the sikhs, op. cit. p. 1171) The Abdali, knowing full well the theopolitical significance of the Golden Temple had these operations varried out under his personal supervision as a consequence of which he was wounded on the nose by the a flying brick piece on April 10, 1762, which wound remained a festering incurable sore till he died of it, on October 16, 1772 at Toba Maruf in the Suleiman hills of Afghanistan.
The Abdali however, had stayed in the Punjab, throughout the year, 1762 and on 17th October 1762, more than sixty thousand Sikhs assembled at the ruins of the Golden Temple to challenge and chastise the Abadi for the arrogant sacrilege he had committed. Offers of peace and negotiations made by the Abdali were contemptuously and summarily rejected by the Sikhs and they inflicted a signal defeat on him and forced him to retire towards Lahore, and thus the Sikhs sought to vindicate the theopolitical status of the Golden Temple. Charat Singh the grandfather of Maharaja Ranjit Singh was then placed in charge for restoring and rebuilding the Golden Temple and its holy lake.
It was on April 10, 1763 when the Sikhs as usual, had assembled at the Golden Temple in their biannual concourse that, “some brahmins of Kasur came and complained against the Afghan inhabitants of their city, especially against the grandee Uthman Khan, who had forcibly carried away the wife of one of them and converted her to Islam. Hari Singh Bhangi volunteered to help the aggrieved brahmins and being supported by Charat Singh after making a theopolitical resolution gurmata, led an expedition against Kasur. Uthman Khan with five hundred of his men was killed and the brahmin lady was restored to her husband.”
(Ghulam Mohayudin, Twarikhi Punjab. Persian Ms. (1848); also, A Short History of the Sikhs op. cit. p. I 174).
In October, 1764 Ahmedshah Abdali invaded India for the seventh time and on December 1, 1764 he paid a military visit to the Golden Temple to satisfy himself that the Sikhs no longer used this spot for political activities. He found thirty Sikhs standing guard at the entrance gate of the Golden Temple, under the captaincy of Jathedar Gurbaksh Singh, whose mausoleum still stands behind the Akali Takht. “They were only thirty in number. But they had not a grain of fear about them….They were resolved to sacrifice their lives for the Guru,” tells us, Muslim eyewitness the author of the Jangnameh, (1766) (page 100).
On April 10, 1765 after the return of the Afghan invader the Sikhs again assembled at the Golden Temple and took the political decision to occupy Lahore as the seat of the Government of Punjab and from that day till 1850 the Golden Temple and the Government of Punjab with its other territories remained under the sovereign dominion of the Sikhs. The Golden Temple and its adjuncts even during the Sikh Raj retained their theopolitical autonomy and the writ of the Maharaja Ranjit Singh did not run within its precincts.
British Device of Managing the Golden Temple
In 1850, the British masters of the Punjab took over the Golden Temple and its adjuncts under their direct administrative control and till the conclusion of the First World War its theopolitical status was maintained and superficially respected through a fiction and a device, into which the Sikhs will milly acquiesced, after their failure to dislodge the British in more than one attempt. The fiction assiduously cultivated was that the British were the allies of the Khalsa come to Asia in fulfillment ‘of a prophecy of the Guru to prepare ground for the eventual victory of the great Cause of Sikhism, that of fostering a world culture and establishing a universal society. The device was of managing the ceremonial services of the Golden Temple and its adjuncts through a government appointed Sikh manager a kind of arrangement which the present rulers of India seem to aim at, but without the accompanying fiction. This arrangement broke down, when at the time of Jallianwala Massacre in 1919 the British made the mistake of seeking to use the theopolitical status of the Golden Temple in approval of the action of General Dyer. The Sikhs rose as a body against this un Sikh like subversion of the true status of the Golden Temple and the Akali movement into which the Sikh resentment took shape eventually succeeding in wrestling of the possession and management of the Golden Temple from out of the British hands, who by a statue passed in 1927 handed over not only the Golden Temple but also other Sikh historical shrines in the Punjab to a democratically elective body of the Sikhs, the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee and this committee still retains its rights and privileges, thus won.
Throughout the remaining British period till 1947 the Sikhs zealously guarded the theopolitical status of the Golden Temple and throughout never hesitated to assert their right to use it and its precincts tor the integrated Sikh activities of a theopolitical character. Those into whose hands has now passed the power of running the Government of India not only upheld this right of the Sikhs so to use the Golden Temple but they have on numerous occasions themselves so employed these precincts.
Mahatma Gandhi Hails the Sikh Victory
As first decisive battle for India’s freedom When in 1921 the British India Government through their official representative handed over the keys of the Golden Temple to Baba Kharak Singh, the veteran Sikh leader, Mahatma Gandhi sent him the following telegram: “Congratulations. The first decisive batile of Indian freedom has been won.”
Mahatma Gandhi well knew, not only all about the theopolitical status of the Golden Temple but also knew and recognized that it was the centre of a world government and thus it was basically integrated to the weltanschauung of Indian freedom which later he refused to consider as a mere national independence from foreign rule.
Indian Government’s Umbrage
It was only after 1947 that, these politicians and men in power have been umbrage at the Sikhs desire to continue in enjoyment of their basic and historic rights pertaining to the true status of the Golden Temple and as their repeated attempts to obtain control over the Golden Temple and other Sikh shrines, through their party men the Congressite Sikhs have been, on every occasion, foiled by a wide awake and resentful Sikh electorate their anger and their objections against the Sikhs taking the true theopolitical status of the Golden Temple seriously have mounted. It is now asserted that the Sikhs, in some way, transgress against the Holy Ghost and act reasonably by employing the Golden Temple and its precincts for the purpose, for which they have always been
employed, and for which they were intended from the very beginning, A grievance is loudly made out that the Sikhs that is, such Sikhs who do not fall in line with the Tuling party, mix up the profane with the sacred and thus injure the interest of the Sikh religion about which their own solicitude is claimed to be greater than that of the Sikhs themselves. Be that as it may, it must be granted that, the claims that the Sikhs make and the practices in which they indulge have no element of novelty in them, for, they are in accord with their past history and traditions, their beliefs and their doctrines and therein, they are neither guilty of insubordination nor of recalcitrance in relation to those who today wield the power of state, and if they displease and irritate, the fault lies not in their present temper or understanding but in their spiritual constitution and historical psych mental makeup and that for which no individual is responsible no individual can be blamed in fairness.
What is the third reason the psychopathic and historical besides, which accounts for the present Sikh problem which is again and again concretized around the theopolitical status of the Golden Temple?
It has been said earlier that, it arises out of the peculiar doctrinal position of the Sikhs out of which this theopolitical status of the Golden Temple stems. This doctrinal position must eventually be traced to their view of the ultimate reality and the way it has been interpreted in relation to the historical process through which the Sikh movement has passed. Sikhism does not recognize any ultimate dichotomy between the real and the unreal and hence between the sacred and the profane, though it recognizes a distinction between them difference of immaculate between them. “God is real and all that He createth it.” (Guru Granth Paurs, Sukhmani V. 23.5) Sikhism therefore enjoins that a religious life must be lived and practiced in the socio political context. The God is immanent in the human socipolitical activity: know this through an understanding of the Word of the Guru.” (Ibid Kanre ki var I). It is from these premises that the validity of the sanctum sanctuary of the Golden Temple where nothing but the praises of God and meditation upon Him may be made conjoined to the Akal Takht where the highest and the most hazardous political deliberations and decisions are frequently taken arises.This ideological base than animates the peculiar met legal constitution which Guru Gobind Singh finally gave to the Sikh society:
“Previously, the ultimate authority had rested with the Guru… Guru Gobind Singh, however had abolished the personal Guruship and had vested it in the holy Granth to be administered by the Khalsa … The essential features of this central authority were that it was to be one and that it was to be exercised impersonally.” (A Short History of the Sikhs, op. cit. p. I 110111).
Conclusion
From tis it follows:
(1) The Sikhs, wherever they happen to be in any appreciable numbers, have a right to be dealt with as a civic group, and an attempt to atomize this group for exercise of political power over them, constitutes an infringement of this right. The postulate behind this law of Sikh social constitution is that on the sociopolitical level, the significant unit is the group rather than the individual for, it is the group which lays down norms of conduct for, the individual.
(2) Political subjugation or slavery is incompatible with the basic constitution of Sikh society.
(3) It is the implied right of the Sikhs to assemble freely, as such, to consider and deliberate upon any matters that they may deem as vital to their interests irrespective of whether these matters are of this world or of the other, and
(4) The Golden Temple and by analogy, the other Sikh places of worship have a theopolitical status which is not a matter of concession by a political state, but is a right sui generis.
These are the four sociopolitical doctrines which are implicit in the Sikh way of life, and it is these doctrines which impel a Sikh and the Sikhs to abhor personal rule or group domination.
George Forester in his book, A Journey from Bengal to England. London. 1798. p 29495 writes:
“From the observations that I have made of the Sicques they would appear to be a haughty and high-spirited, people. Once I traveled in the company of a Sicque Horseman for some days, and though I made to him several tenders of my acquaintance, he treated them all with great reserve and a covert sort of disdain. There was no reason to be particularly offended by this hauteur towards me, for, he regarded every other person in the same manner. His answer, when 1 asked him very respectfully, in whose service he was retained, seemed strikingly characteristic of what I conceived to be the disposition of the Sicque Nation. He said in a tone of voice with a countenance which glowed with and was keenly animated by the Spirit of liberty and independence that he disclaimed an earthly Master and that he was a servant of only the Guru on high.”
In the Sikh attitudes and the Sikh temper, which apparently irritate and anger those who have now come into power, it is well to perceive that the Sikhs are doing: nothing merely to obstruct somebody’s enjoyment of power. They are made the way they are, and they act the way they have always acted, and whether they are to be understood and accommodated or mended and bent their position should be comprehended clearly, without obscuring prejudices. If the Sikh masses are used by individuals for ulterior purposes the individuals do so by paying lip service to the convictions that the Sikhs hold dear, and if they resentfully and doggedly have refused to lend ear to others it is because the others through willfulness or ignorance have failed to take note of these convictions.
Ina democratic society, such as that of India of today, the Sikh need not encounter any contradictions between their own collective convictions and the requirements of the state to which they owe allegiance. If therefore, there are frictions the fault must be found somewhere in the sphere of implementation of true democratic processes and the persons who implement them. A satisfied and properly integrated to the nation Sikh people can be an invaluable and lasting asset to any state, more so to India in the soil and traditions of which they are rooted, just as a frustrated or suppressed Sikh people can be an obvious weakness in the strength of the nation.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 23, 1989
