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The world-famous Golden Temple
of the Sikhs, situated at Amritsar in India, bears Harimandir,
'the Temple of God', as its original name and it forms an
island in a lake to which the name of Amritsar was given by
the Nanak V, Guru Arjan (1563-1606), in the year 1589, when he
laid the foundations of what is now known as the Golden
Temple, and the town which grew around this Mecca of the Sikhs
has subsequently acquired the name of Amritsar.
The Nanak V, requested his great
contemporary mystic and Muslim savant, Mir Mohammed Muayyinul
Islam, popularly known as Mian Mir, to lay the foundation
stone of the temple and this fact, as well as the name
bestowed on the lake, bears a basic significance in relation
to the Sikh doctrines
The impact of Islam on North Western India in the 11th century
had been through military conquest and sword and this had
naturally slated reactions in the proud and sensitive, Hindu
mind, that resulted in impassable barriers of hatred and
prejudice between the two world-culture currents, and their
mutual contacts have, therefore, left irritating and
unfortunate monuments of bigotry and misunderstanding,
spiritual and physical, that still mark the Indian scene.
The Sikh prophets, the Nanaks, desired to level down these
barriers with a view to discover and provide a common
spiritual ground for the two, Hinduism and Islam, where
Hinduism gets over its injured superiority and sense of
exclusiveness, and Islam, its arrogance, horn out of military
superiority. The Nanak V declared:
musalmănu momdil hovai antar ki
. . .
mal dil te dhovai,
duniyă rang na ăvai nede jio
Kusum pat ghio păk hară
--Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Maru-V.
13 iii. 12
"Let Muslims rediscover the
truth that the essence of religious practice is compassion and
its goal, the purification of soul, and the political
utilitarianism is foreign to Islam as such, and let the Hindus
concede that Islam, thus understood, is as respectable and
ceremoniously pure as the flowers, the silk, the deerskin and
the butter-fat."
Sikhism -- A Meeting Ground of
Hinduism and Islam
And since Sikhism was to be this
common meeting ground between these two world-culture streams,
that is why a prominent Muslim divine was asked to lay the
foundation of the Golden Temple. Amritsar, name was given to
the lake encircling this temple, as amrta means, the enduring
principle of all that is, in Hindu metaphysical thought, and
water is the symbol of the first impulse of manifestation the
Unmanifest in Aryan thought-idiom, and the Golden Temple in
the embrace of the waters of Immortality, thus, was intended
to he a profound symbol of future confluence of the
world-cultures into a universal culture for the mankind.
In this temple, the proposed centre of a world-culture and
world religion, the Nanak V installed the Sikh scripture, Guru
Granth Sahib, and ever since, the presiding place, even when
the Sikh Gurus were personally present, has remained reserve
for the Book and the religious ceremonial and services have
exclusively and always consisted of prayers to the singing
prai" of, and meditation upon God in this sanctum-sanctorum of
Sikhism.
It was in 1609, that the Nanak VI, Guru Hargobind (1595-1644)
erected the Akal Takht edifice opposite the entrance
bridge-head of the Golden Temple, upon which the Guru sat in
state, wearing two swords of dominion over the two worlds, the
seen and the unseen and the peculiar Sikh doctrine of Double
Sovereignty took birth, the essence of which is that a man of
religion must always owe his primary allegiance to Truth and
mortality, and he must never submit to the exclusive claim of
the secular state to govern the bodies and minds of men and
the whole of subsequent Sikh History must be seen as an
unfoldment of this Sikh attitude, if it is to be properly
understood, the Nanak X, Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708)
explained this doctrine to Mughal emperor Aurangzib, in a
written communication the Zafarnameh (1707), in the following
words:
cunkăr az hameh hilte
darguzusht
halăl ast burdan b-shamshir
dast.
"When all means of peaceful persuasion fail, it is
legitimate (for a man of religion) to move his hand to the
hilt of the sword."
The Sikh doctrine of Double
Sovereignty promulgated in the beginning of the 17th century,
has curiously modern ring and flavour as from 19th century
onwards, a growing school of writers in Europe have tended to
think on the lines in which it is grounded. The main substance
of this doctrine is that any sovereign state which includes
Sikh population and groups as citizens, must never make the
paranoia pretensions of almighty absolutism entailing the
concept of total power, entitled to rule over the bodies and
minds of men, in utter exclusiveness. Any state which lays
such claims qua the Sikhs, shall automatically forfeit its
moral right to demand allegiance of the, Sikhs and there is
thus an internal antagonism between such a state and the
collective community of the Sikhs, represented by the order of
the Khalsa, and in this deadly duel the State shall never
emerge out as finally victorious, for self-destruction is the
fruit of the seed of nonlimitation, and the status and the
prerogatives and the Khalsa are imprescriptible.
The 19th century German writer, Schulse supports the basic
premise of this doctrine by asserting that the view that the
State is absolutely supreme and incapable of doing wrong is
misconceived and dangerous (Deutsches Staatstrecht Vol ‘l Sec.
16). The whole Sikh history is relentless jehăd against this
dangerous misconception, and the Sikhs have always insisted
that any State fit and entitled to demand their allegiance
must ab initio recognise and concede its own self-limited
character, arising out of the principles of morality, the
teachings of Religion, the principles of abstract justice, the
principles of the Sikhs' metalegal constitution which lays
down that, (1) they must he approached and dealt with at State
level as a collective group and entity, and (2) they must he
governed impersonally, that is, through the rule of law and
not by arbitrary will, and this self-limitation must further
be circumscribed by the immemorial customs, long-established
traditions and the facts of the history of the Sikhs. This
Sikh doctrine is, in essence, the same which today finds
explicit expression in the modern concept of the pluralistic
State, which recognises that the State, in practice, is the
government, and the government is no more than a group in
control of the governmental machinery, and that the aims and
objects of this group, may any time clash with those of other
groups, not in power. The government may be the temporary
principal of all such groups, but it is only primus inter
pares, the elder amongst equals; it is not the sole repository
of power or focal of loyalty. This is, indeed, the sole
essence of the Sikh doctrine of Double Sovereignty, which
finds powerful support in the writings of Professor Harold J.
Laski, Mr. G.D.H. Cole, and the French jurist, Duguit, and
also Dr. J. N. Figgis.
The Sikh revolt during the 17th and 18th centuries, against
the Mughal State was, in reality, an attempt to assert their
doctrine of Double Sovereignty against the Muslim absolutist
theomonist theory of State, as a result of which the Sikhs had
no pass through the valley of death, as the narrative that
follows would show, before they emerged out with the sceptre
of political sovereignty in their hands, and it would be well
to understand that the present bitterness and misunderstanding
that clouds relations between the Sikhs and the State is also
grounded in the same doctrinal conflict.
In the 1708 Guru Gobind Singh, after protracted, discussions
and parleys with the Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah, the son and
successor of Aurangzib, came to the firm conclusion that 'all
means of peaceful persuasion' had failed, and it had,
therefore, become the right and duty of Sikhs to 'move the
hand to the hilt of the sword', and in the same year,
(February, 1708) the Guru initiated a Hindu yogi and
occultist, Madhodas bairagi, as a Sikh and renamed him Banda
Singh, and then appointed him the Genaralissimo of the Sikhs,
after conferring upon him the military title Bahadur. Banda
Singh Bahadur, was then ordered to proceed to Punjab with the
assignment of 'due chastisement of the Mughal rulers, who have
usurped the power that belongs to the people, condign
punishment of those guilty of atrocities, destruction of their
military bases and reestablishment of the freedom of the
people.’ (Turken te nij levan bair păthio Gur ne mujh ko kar
banda, mai kar khuar bajide ko mar Sarhind ujad karehon
suchhanda, Giani Gian Singh, Panth Prakash, Kavita (1880),
III, 752.)
Banda Singh Bahadur carried out his assignment with admirable
fidelity and in 1710 declared the freedom of the province of
Sirhind, fixed as its capital the fortified Mukhalispur, in
the hills, near Ambala, and the Sikhs adopted the legend on
their State Seal, which began:
"We hereby place our impress of sovereignty upon both the
worlds, the seen and the unseen." ("Sikkeh zad bar har du ălam.")
And thus they reiterated the basic doctrine of Sikhism, that
of Double Sovereignty.
After the collapse of political power of the Sikhs under
Genaralissimo Banda Singh Bahadur, in 1716, there follows a
complete blackout till 1721, when the Sikhs shifted their
centre of activities, their spiritual and political capital
and their acropolis to the Golden Temple, the lake that
surrounds it, and the complex of buildings, including Akal
Takht, that are attached to it.
Ever since 1721, the Golden Temple with the complex of
attached structures, has remained the centre of the Sikh
world, the Sikh history, the Sikh, politics and the Sikh
theophany. Throughout the last 250 years, whether the Sikhs
were declared as outlaw by the State, whether the Golden
Temple and its adjuncts were reduced to mass of ruins or they
were forcibly occupied by the State whether the Sikhs were a
sovereign people or politically, subjugated, they have never
abandoned or compromised the position that (1) the Golden
Temple and its adjuncts are the hub of the Sikh world, not as
a matter of concession by any worldly power, but as the
inherent right of the Sikh people, sui generis and
inalienable, and (2) there is no ultimate dichotomy in the
true Sikh doctrine between this world and the next, the
secular and the religious, the political and the spiritual.
This position and this status of the Golden Temple is unique
in the religious or political centres of world history.
It is the Mecca of the Sikhs, because it is the religious
centre of the Sikhs, but it is vastly more.
It is the St. Peter's at Rome, for it is the capital of Sikh
theocracy, but it is very much more and also something less
and different. Sikhism has no ordained priestly class and,
therefore, there can be no theocratic political state of the
Sikhs in which the priests rule in the name of an invisible
God. They have no corpus of civil law of divine origin and
sanction and they, therefore, must have a state based on
secular non-theocratic laws. It is, more, because it remains
the real capital of ultimate Sikh allegiance, whatever the
political set-up for the time being.
It is the Varanasi or Banaras of Sikhism, because it is the
holiest of the holies of the faith, but it is not precisely
that because the true Sikh doctrine does not approve of any
tradition or belief, which seeks to tie up theophany with
geography.
It is the Jerusalem of Sikhism because it is the historical
centre of the epiphany of Sikhism but it is not precisely that
because Sikhism, as a religion, is not history-grounded, that
is, its validity is not tied up with or dependent upon any
historical event.
It is not precisely the political capital of the Sikhs,
because political capital presupposes a state under the
control of the Sikhs, and when the Sikhs do have such a state,
it is not imperative that its administrative centre must be at
Amritsar, and even when it is, the Golden Temple and its
precincts shall still retain their peculiar independent
character apart from this administrative centre. When the
Sikhs do not have a sovereign state of their own, the Golden
Temple, with its surrounding complex, continuously retains its
theo-political status, which may be suppressed by political
power, compromised by individuals or questioned by
politicians, but which remains and never can be extinguished,
for, it is sui generis and inalienable, and imprescriptible.
It is owing to this unique status, grounded in certain
peculiar doctrines of Sikhism that, many misunderstandings
continuously arise concerning the use of the Golden Temple
with its surrounding complex, for Political purposes', for
allowing ingress into it and housing of those whom the
political state may deem as "offenders', and for pursuing,
'extra religious activities' from inside its precincts. The
Sikhs, themselves, have never viewed any of these activities,
started or controlled from inside the precincts of the Golden
Temple, as either improper, or repugnant to the Sikh doctrine,
or contrary to the Sikh historical tradition. The reasons for
this Sikh attitude are three, in the main, not singly, but
collectively:
One reason is that this geographical site itself is charged
with theopathic influences such as no other known and still
accepted site on earth, including the old site of the
Solomon's Temple, revered by three great religions of the
world, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, can claim to be.
Prehistoric Antiquity of
Amritsar
Ever since the man on this earth
became civilised in any comprehensive sense, about four or
five millennia ago, imagination seems to find some foothold to
countenance the belief that the lake engirding the Golden
Temple most extensive pre-classical civilisation of the most
basic activity of man, the religion. The most extensive
pre-classical civilisation of the world, the Indus Valley
civilisation, stretched, in the third millennium BC from Rupar
at the foot of the Simla hills to Suthagendor near the shores
of the Arabian Sea, a stretch of one thousand miles, and the
site of the Golden Temple lies in the heart of this great
river-system. The prominently situated "Bath" or sarovar in
the newly dug up ancient mound of Mohenjodaro, as readily
suggests to mind the central significance of water reservoirs
in the metaphysical thought idiom and religious practices of
these ancient people as it springs before the mind's eye, the
Golden Temple, lake-surrounded.
Our proto-historical records, the Pauranas, and the
pre-Christian era Buddhist traditions definitely assert that,
from ancient times, there has existed a natural and holy lake
of water, (In Vaivasyatpaurana, a genre of ancient Sanskrit
text reduced into literary form in about the first century of
Christian era, but of much greater antiquity of contents there
is mention of Amarkunda (synonym for Amritsaras, Punjabi
Amritsar), a holy lake situated betwixt the rivers Vipăsă
(Modern Bias) and Airăvati (Modem Ravi)’, for the possession
of which, in the pre-History epoch of creation, a fierce
struggle took place between the gods and anti-gods, for, the
out come of this struggle would decide as to whether the
forces of religion will triumph in the current world age or
those of irreligious. The gods came out victorious and
Amritsar is now the centre of ecumenical religion.) where the
Golden Temple is now situated and the geophysical layout of
the site amply confirms the probability of these assertions. A
bird's eye view of the area, from an aeroplane even today
would confirm the conclusion that, this site must have been a
natural water reservoir for thousands of years past. The Vedic
and Buddhist traditions of holiness attached to this site and
the lake suggest an earlier and more ancient origin of this
attachment, extending back to the third and second millennia
of the Indus Valley civilisation, on the basis of the
historical trend that once a holy place, always so and that, a
new holiness must be grounded in some older one.
The creative imagination, therefore, is justified in
discerning grounds for the belief, not altogether fanciful,
that the holy lake and the site of the Golden Temple, was an
ancient centre of theophanic human activity, at the dawn of
human civilisation, round about 5,000 years ago, peopled by
the Mohenjodaro race and further, that it was an equally well
revered spot for the theomatic rishís of the vedăs.
It is interesting to recall here that when Guru Arjan was
having the ancient alluvium of this lake cleared, a sealed
masonry subterranean dome was sounded and exposed, which being
opened up reviled a macerated yogi in lotus-posture, immersed
in seedless nirbija trance. When the Guru reanimated him, he
disclosed that he went into his trance "thousands of years
ago", with the object of experiencing the somatic touch of the
Nanak, before entering into the utter Void.
This spot was commemorated by the Guru by the subsidiary lake,
Santokhsar, which stands till today. Were some of the Vedic
hymns actually revealed to the Aryans at the banks of this
ancient holy lake, just as the major portions of the Guru
Garth in the 17th century were? Intuitive imagination guesses
so and there is no good reason to think otherwise. In the
early centuries of the Christian era, when the ecumenical
religion of the Mahayan took birth in the North West India in
the form of the original Prajnaparmitta and the
Sadharmapundrika sutras, the Golden Temple site and the holy
lake were already an active centre of beehive Buddhist
monk-communities, of which the great Nagarjun and Aryadeva
themselves might have been the Abbots, during the periods of
their creative activity, and if herein the intuitive
imagination hovers near the truth, then it emerges that the
site of the Golden Temple and the banks of its surrounding
waters are the scenes of earliest spiritual activity of the
civilised man, the highest watermark of the theomancy of the
Vedic Aryans, the greatest achievement of the Buddhist mind
and the most glorious efflorescence of the genius loci of the
Punjab.
Coming to near modern history and times, the founder of the
Lamest Buddhism in Tibet, Padanisambhava, a professor at
Nalanda university who was invited to Tibet by the great king,
Khri-sron-lde-btsan (745-797) in 747 AD is the patron-saint of
Tibet and one of the greatest figures of Buddhism, and he is
called, ‘Lotus-born’, to signify his theomorphic status, while
his biographies unanimously agree that the ‘Lotus’ out of
which he took his non-human birth, floated on the limpid
waters of a sacred lake, which is identified as now
surrounding the Golden Temple. To this day, devout Tibetans
make long and hazardous journeys to visit and pay homage to
this sacred spot of the marvellous origination of the Guru
Rimpoche, the Previous Master.
If many of these surmises lack palpable root and material
evidence, the fact does not render the intangible pull of this
picture on the racial subconscious mind, any the less potent,
and, indeed, the circumstances multiplies this potency
manifold, as keen students of religious psychology well know.
Such a site, surcharged with such ancient and potent spiritual
influences it was that the Sikh Gurus chose as the centre of
the new world religion and world culture, which they
inaugurated, and instinctively sensing its high spiritual
potency in relation to the future of mankind, the Sikhs,
during the last 250 years, that the secular state powers, in
utter disgard and blind ignorance of, the implications of the
Sikh doctrines have tended to regard this geographical spot as
just another area subject to their political domain, have paid
the highest price demanded of them, in vindication of the true
theo-political status of the Golden Temple.
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 revive 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 he
rooted around the Golden Temple. Khushwaqt 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 Zakriya Khan, the
military governor of the Punjab, wondered that the
grass-eaters should he so bold as to lay claim to
sovereignty." (Folio 44. b).
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-nation, an autonomous political status, analogous to
that offered to the Sikhs in early 1947 by Mr. Jinnah of the
Muslim League. A revenue grant of a hundred thousand rupees
and the betters Patent of the Nawah 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. I, 121). All these
developments took place and were finalised within the
precincts of the Golden Temple, in front of the Akal Takht 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 atomising 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 dívălí 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 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 reprieve 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-noor 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 Zakarlya Khan, the
military governor of the Punjab:
Nadir Shah: "Who are these
mischief-makers, any way?"
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 recognised 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 into central offices of the district officer,
Mussalih-ul-din, popularly known as Massa Ranghar. 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 travelled 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, as
stateless outlaws and aliens in their own homeland, when in
1746, Lakhpatrai, a Hindu Dewăn, 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 scriptures, 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, rorí was to be used
instead. The word, granth was also to, be replaced with, pothí.
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 1,132).
It is not to he supposed that a man of the 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
Medford to defend it, and reiterated that the Sikh people were
an indivisible entity and sovereign sui generis. (Giani Gian
Singh, Panth Prakash, Vartak. Delhi, 1892, p. 907).
In full realisation that, in the plains of Amritsar, neither
their fighting strength nor the flimsy protection of mud-walls
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." (Rattan Singh, Bhangoo,
Prachin Panthprakash, (1837), Amritsar, 1914, p.325). It must
always he 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 1749, the Sikhs
cleared the holy lake of Amritsar of the debris with which it
was gutted by the chief minister Lakhpatral, and in 1757, the
Afghan conqueror, Ahmed Shah Abdali, invaded India for the
fourth time, when he found, as before, that the Sikhs, of all
peoples of India, resented his incursions into their country
the most and made no secret of this resentment. Well
understanding the theo-political 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
Morgenthau plan of the Allies, calculated to evirate
culturally and industrially the German people. The Sikhs
however, refused to he 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 chiefs, 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 honour 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
Sarbatt Khalsa, a Sikh theo-political doctrine, by which the
Sikhs assume the powers and status of the centralised
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.
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 of the rear of the
foreigner at the Goindwal ferry of River Beas, 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. II, 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, 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 lightning 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, destroyed its
other adjuncts, and filled the holy lake, after desecrating it
"with the blood of cow." (A Short History of the Sikhs.
op.cit.p.1,171). The Abdali, knowing full well the theo-political
significance of the Golden Temple, had these operations
carried out under his personal supervision, as a consequence
of which he was wounded on the nose by 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 Suleman 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 Abdali 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
theo-political status of the Golden Temple. Charat Singh, the
grandfather of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, was then placed in
charge of 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 bi-annual concourse
that,
"Some Brahmin 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 he to Islam. Hari Singh Bhang! Volunteered
to help the aggrieved brahmins, and being supported by Charat
Singh, after making a theo-political resolution, gurmată, 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. 1,174).
In October 1764 Ahmad Shah Abdali, invaded India fo 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 Gurbakhsh Singh, whose
mausoleum still stands behind the Akal 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 the Punjab and from that day till 1850, the
Golden Temple and the Government of the 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 theo-political autonomy and the writ
of the Maharaja Ranilt 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 theo-political status was maintained
and superficially respected through a fiction and a device,
into which the Sikhs willy-nilly acquiesced, after their
failure to dislodge the British in more than one attempts. The
fiction assiduously cultivated was that the British were the
allies of the Khalsa, come to Asia in fulfilment 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 and services of the Golden Temple and its
adjuncts through a government-appointed Sikh manager, a kind
of arrangement which the British rulers of India seemed 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 theo-political
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 this Sikh resentment
took shape, eventually succeeded in wresting the possession
and management of the Golden Temple from out of the British
hands, who by a statute passed in 1927, handed over not only
the Golden Temple, but also other Sikh historical shrines in
the Punjab, to a democratically elected 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 theo-political status of the Golden
Temple and throughout, never hesitated to assert their right
to use it and its precincts for the integrated Sikh activities
of a theo-political 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.
Mohandas Gandhi Halls 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 Uarak Singh, the veteran
Sikh leader, Mohandas Gandhi sent him the following telegram:
"Congratulations. The first decisive battle of Indian freedom
has been won."
Mohandas Gandhi well knew, not only all about the theo-political
status of the Golden Temple, but also knew and recognised that
it was the centre of a world-movement for a universal culture
and a united 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 took 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 of 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 theo-political
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 treasonably, 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 ruling party,
mix up the profane with the sacred and thus injure the
interests of the Sikh religion, about which their own
solicitude is claimed to be greater than 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 yield 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 psychomental makeup, and that for which no
individual is responsible, no individual can he 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 concretised around the theo-political 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 theo-political
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 recognise tiny ultimate dichotomy between the
real and the unreal, and hence between the sacred and the
profane, though it recognises a distinction between them,
difference of immaculation between them. "God is real and all
that He createth is likewise real, and there is naught but
that He createth it." (Guru Granth, Gauri, Sukhmani, V.23.5).
Sikhism, therefore, enjoins that a religious life must be
lived and practised in the socio-political context. "The God
is immanent in the human socio-political activity: know this
through an understanding of the Word of the Guru" (Ibid,
kanre-ki-var, Ill). It is from these premises that the
validity of the sanctum sanctorum of the Golden Temple, where
nothing but the praise 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 then animates
the peculiar metalegal 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.1, 110-111).
Conclusion
From this it follows that. (1)
The Sikhs, wherever they happen to he in any appreciable
numbers, have a right to be dealt with as a civic group, and
an attempt to atomise this group for exercise of political
power over them, constitutes an infringement of this right.
The postulate behind this raw of Sikh social constitution is
that on the socio-political 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 theo-political
status which is not a matter of concession by a political
state, but is a right, sui generis.
These are the four socio-political 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. 294-95 writes:
"From the observations that I
have made of the Sicques they would appear to be a haughty and
high-spirited people. Once I travelled 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 I asked him very respectfully, in whose service
he was retained, seemed strikingly characteristic of what I
conceive to be the disposition of the Sicque Nation. He said
in a tone of voice and 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 in 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 wilfulness or
ignorance, have failed to take note of these convictions.
In a democratic society, the Sikhs 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.
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