During the time of the founder of the Sikh religion, Guru Nanak (1469-1539), the Punjab we know now was a much bigger geographical unit. In the north, this area was marked by the high Himalayas, the Hindu Kush mountain range, and the mountains of Afghanistan. In the west the river Indus flowed. The south was marked by the desert of Rajasthan. The eastern boundary was not very clearly defined. But, broadly speaking, Punjab was a region of large plains, watered by the rivers Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej, and Beas – the five main tributaries of the Indus (Punjab means ‘the land of five waters’).
This is the area where the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the oldest civilizations in the world, was born. Stone implements dating back to almost 5,00,000 years have been found here. Copper and bronze implements dating back to 25,000 years have also been unearthed along the banks of the Indus. The ruins of the Harappan culture, found at Ropar, proved the existence of a flourishing urban culture, dating as far back as 2500 BC. ‘It was also in Punjab that the Aryans evolved the Vedic religion and composed the great works of Vedic and Sanskrit literatures.’*
The Aryans were followed by wave after wave of conquerors: the Greeks, the Bactrians, the Scythian tribes, and the Huns. After them, at the beginning of the eleventh century came tribes who differed greatly from one another but had one common factor: their religion, Islam. The Ghaznavis, the Ghoris, the Tughlaqs, the Suris, the Lodhis, and the Mughals – all invaded North India and ruled it.
The Muslim tribes, when they had settled down in Punjab, directed much of their energies towards destroying nonbelievers. For over three hundred years, Islam and Hinduism existed side by side in Punjab, in a state of constant conflict. Hinduism had a pantheon of gods and goddesses who were worshipped in the form of idols, and a society that was based on the caste system, while Islam, which was rooted firmly in monotheism, abhorred idolatry and believed in the equality of all human beings.
Some attempts were made to bridge this divide. The Bhakti Movement preached that there was only one God and He was without any form or feature. They advocated that all men were equal and preached against the caste system. The Sufis, too, tried to bridge this divide. For the first time, music was introduced into Muslim religious practice. The Sufis welcomed non-believers both in their homes and in their mosques; and believed that all human beings had a right to observe their own form of worship.
But both these attempts were tentative in nature and any popular acceptance they may have found was destroyed by the Turko-Mongolic conqueror, Timur’s invasion in 1398. The Muslim ruling class turned, once again, to killing and robbing the Hindu masses and to destroying their temples. The average Muslim believed that he could gain merit in the eyes of God by converting non-believers to Islam, even if it was at the point of the sword. Religious practices, in both Hinduism and Islam had degenerated into the performance of empty rites and rituals. The followers of Islam believed that circumcision, abstinence from pork, and, fasting during Ramzan were the attributes of a good Muslim. The Hindus meanwhile re-affirmed their belief in the merit of idol worship. They had an even more determined belief in the caste system; in the rituals of washing away their sins in holy rivers, eating vegetarian food, and wearing a holy thread (the janeu), all of which they felt would make them pure.
In 1499, Nanak embarked on an attempt to define the common thread running between the two religions, and to free religious practices from all the rituals and the hypocrisy that had come to surround them. His teachings were soon accepted by thousands of followers and the faith (known as Sikhism) became the youngest of the great religions of the world. By the time Guru Nanak died in 1539, he had a sizeable following, mainly in Punjab but also in little pockets along the routes he had taken on his Udasis.
Despite their increasing numbers, the Sikhs were not regarded as a threat by the Mughals, and were treated at best with a degree of cordiality or at the worst with a patronizing tolerance. Babur (1483-1530, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India) had known Guru Nanak personally and had found him to be a true man of God. This is why, not only had he ordered his release from imprisonment after the sacking of Saidpur (in Amritsar), but also deferred to Nanak’s wish that all the other citizens be also released. His grandson, emperor Akbar had made a visit to Guru Amar Das, the third Guru’s dera at Goindwal (in Punjab) and was so impressed by the Sikh way of life that he wanted to make a gift to the Guru. The Guru politely but firmly declined this offer on the plea that his needs were more than taken care of by God. The emperor, not wishing to be thwarted in his generous impulse, made a gift to the Guru’s daughter Bibi Bhani, in the form of a jagir. It was on this piece of land that Bibi Bhani’s husband, the fourth Guru, Guru Ram Das, founded Amritsar. Interestingly, it was also on a part of this piece of land that the fifth Guru, Guru Arjan Dev, built the Harmandir Sahib also known as Golden Temple.
When the fifth Guru began the work of compiling the Adi Granth, rumours were spread that the new granth contained passages that were inimical and hostile to Islam. These rumours were strong enough for Akbar to take note of and to have the draft of the granth examined by his scholars to see if there was any truth to the rumours. The scholars found that not only were there no truth in the rumours, but the granth even contained extracts from the works of Muslim saints and scholars. The main reason for this cordiality and tolerance of the newly emerging faith – as time was to prove – was that the Sikhs had not yet defined themselves in any definite terms and were generally regarded as another fringe reformist movement of Hinduism.
This lack of a definite identity was rectified with the completion of the compilation of the Adi Granth by Guru Arjan Dev in 1604 and the building of the Harmandir Sahib, another task undertaken by Guru Arjan Dev in 1588 and completed in 1604. The Adi Granth was installed in the new temple of the Sikhs in 1604. Thus the Sikhs now not only had a religious book of their own, but also a spiritual headquarters of their faith. Their identity had now been clearly and definitely established and there would never again be any doubt that Sikhism was a faith in its own right.
At last, the Mughal rulers woke up to the fact that the new faith was attracting a strong following, and that it might well be a threat to the pre-eminence of Islam in the days to come. The days of the religious liberalism of Akbar were over and done with, and though his immediate successors put on a facade of religious tolerance, they showed enough signs to indicate the extreme religious intolerance that would be the hallmark of the Mughal rule in the times to come. If any proof of this was needed, it came in the form of the sadistic and totally uncalled for martyrdom of the fifth Guru, Guru Arjan Dev in Lahore in 1606. This tragic event marked the end of the easy, comfortable relationship that had existed between the Sikhs and the Mughal rulers till then. From here on there would be only hostility and bad blood between the two and even Guru Gobind Singh’s support to Prince Muazzim,(later Bahadur Shah I), whom he considered to be the rightful heir, in the war of succession after Aurangzeb’s death, did nothing to improve the situation.
Under Guru Hargobind, the sixth guru, the process of the transformation of the Sikhs from a non-violent and pacifist community to a people who could stand up and protect their beliefs and ideals, had begun.
Guru Hargobind carried two swords, one symbolizing his temporal (miri) powers and the other his spiritual (piri) powers. He understood clearly that times had changed and that if the Sikhs were to protect themselves, it could only be through the use of arms. He trained his followers, not only to be physically strong, but also to be skilled in martial arts. He built up an army, consisting both of the infantry and cavalry. He welcomed gifts of horses and weapons. With the new impetus that he provided to the Sikhs, more and more people flocked to his call. They saw in this call, the first real challenge to the cruel and exploitative power of the Mughals, and hence, their first real chance for liberation. Threatened by this growing following, Jahangir, the Mughal emperor, arrested the Guru and imprisoned him in the fort of Gwalior. There had already been anger and hatred caused by the martyrdom of Guru Arjan Dev, and the wise men at the court feared that this arrest would cause this cumulative anger to turn into a violent backlash, which the Mughals would find hard to contain. They advised the emperor to release the Guru, an advice he was sensible enough to act upon.
During Shah Jahan’s reign, relations once again reached breaking point between the Sikhs and the Mughal rulers. Guru Hargobind fought as many as four battles with the imperial forces and held his own in each of them.
A further impetus was provided to this transformation of the Sikhs when the head of the martyred Guru Tegh Bahadur was delivered to his son, the nine-year-old Gobind Rai in 1675. Guru Tegh Bahadur had given his life to protect the right of the Kashmiri pundits to practice their faith. The young boy, who was now called Guru Gobind saw what Guru Hargobind had seen before him: That the survival of the Sikhs now depended entirely on their skills in war, and he began working assiduously to hone this skill.
Guru Gobind Singh transformed the Sikhs into a well organized, highly skilled, and excellently trained group of warriors. The climax to this transformation came on that historic Baisakhi day of 1699, when he created the Khalsa. With an army made up of such brave men, the Sikhs became a formidable force. Little wonder then that Guru Gobind Singh was able to carry out such brilliant military campaigns.
Guru Gobind Singh is one of the most fascinating and remarkable personalities in Indian history. We see him first as a little boy, with a wisdom way beyond his tender years, advising his father that the most apt sacrifice that he could make to the cause of the Kashmiri Pundits was his own life. We see him as an adult with the multifaceted personality of the ideal Renaissance man. He was a brilliant military strategist and a general par excellence. He was an excellent administrator and an able leader of men. He was a polyglot with an outstanding command over Gurmukhi, Urdu, Persian, and Arabic. He was a great poet too. He had a deep interest in music and was considered a great musician.
This book is an attempt to relate the birth and growth of this great religion, Sikhism, through the life-stories of its ten Gurus. This work claims no originality; everything it contains has been culled from the sources listed at the end. It has been written solely for the young readers in a simple narrative form, so that they get to know more about Sikhism.
The only justification for retelling a story that has already been told so often is the firm belief that a story so beautiful and inspiring needs to be retold as often as possible. If a small fraction of the great charm of this story can communicate itself to the reader, the effort will not have gone in vain.
*Excerpt taken from Khushwant Singh’s book The History of the Sikhs. (See bibliography for publication details.)