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History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c48: Chapter XXXV. Hindu Reaction

History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c48

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Chapter XXXV. Hindu Reaction

§1. Hindus of Mathura district oppressed.

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Such open attacks on Hinduism by all the forces of Government naturally produced great discontent among the persecuted sect. Some frantic attempts were made on the Emperor's life, but they were childish and ended in failure. The wandering Hindu saint Uddhav Bairagi was imprisoned in the police station "as a punishment for his seduction of men to falsehood." In June 1669, two of his Rajput disciples stabbed to death Qazi Abul Mukaram, by way of revenge. Aurangzib put to death not only the two murderers but also their innocent spiritual guide. (M.A. 84.)

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Early in 1669 a most formidable popular rising took place in the Mathura district. The Indian peasant, especially in Agra, Mathura and Oudh, was a bad taxpayer in Muslim times, and the collection of revenue often required the use of force. Akbar's wise regulations for giving fixity to the State demand and protecting the ryots from illegal exactions had disappeared with him. Under his successors a revenue collector was, no doubt, removed from his post when his oppression became intolerable and the public outcry against him repeatedly reached the Emperor's ears. But such cases were exceptional. In the Mathura district in particular, nothing was done by Government to win the love and willing obedience of the peasantry, but rather a policy was followed which left behind it a legacy of undying hatred.

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For instance, we read how a local *faujdar* named Murshid Quli Khan Turkman (who died in 1638) took advantage of his campaigns against refractory tenants to gratify his lust. When the villagers were defeated he seized all their most beautiful women and placed them in his harem. Another practice of this licentious officer is thus described in the *Masir-ul-umara* (iii. 422):

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"On the birthday of Krishna, a vast gathering of Hindu men and women takes place at Govardhan on the Jamuna opposite Mathura. The Khan, painting his forehead and wearing a *dhoti* like a Hindu, used to walk up and down in the crowd. Whenever he saw a woman whose beauty filled even the Moon with envy, he snatched her away like a wolf pouncing upon a flock, and placing her in the boat which his men had kept ready on the bank, he sped to Agra. The Hindu [for shame] never divulged what had happened to his daughter."

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Abdun Nabi Khan, who was *faujdar* of Mathura from August 1660 to May 1669, was free from such vices. But he gave the people equally strong provocation in another way. He had started life as an officer of Sadullah Khan, the famous wazir. His able and honest management of his master's private estates greatly improved their income and prosperity. It attracted Shah Jahan's attention. One day he smilingly asked his wazir, "How is it that you have a Philosopher's stone but do not present it to me?" Sadullah understood his meaning and replied, "Yes, your Majesty, Abdun Nabi is a man in outward form, but he has the property of creating gold." Passing on to the imperial service, Abdun Nabi occupied trusted though subordinate positions and rose to the rank of a Commander of Two Thousand before his death. He amassed property worth more than 30 lakhs of Rupees, besides building a grand mosque at his own expense.

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Aurangzib chose him as faujdar of Mathura probably because he, being "a religious man" (as the Court history calls him), was expected to enter heartily into the Emperor's policy of "rooting out idolatry." Soon after joining this post Abdun Nabi built a Jama Masjid in the heart of the city of Mathura (1661-1662) on the ruins of a Hindu temple. Later, in 1666, he forcibly removed the carved stone railing presented by Dara Shukoh to Keshav Rai's temple. When in 1669 the Jat peasantry rose under the leadership of Gokla, the zamindar of Tilpat, Abdun Nabi* marched out to attack them in the village of Bashara, but was shot dead during the encounter (about 10th May). Gokla, flushed with victory, looted the pargana of Sadabad, and the disorder spread to the Agra district.

§2. Rising of Jat peasantry in Mathura.

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At this Aurangzib sent a strong force under Radandaz Khan to quell the rebellion, while high officers like Saf Shikan Khan and Hasan Ali Khan were successively appointed faujdars of Mathura. Throughout the year 1669 lawlessness reigned in the district. An attempt in September to make terms with Gokla by granting him a pardon on condition of the restitution of all his booty, failed. By the end of November the situation had become so serious that the Emperor had to march from Delhi to the affected area. On 4th December Hasan Ali Khan attacked the rebel villagers of Rewarah, Chandar-kaha, and Sarkhud. They fought till noon, when being unable to resist any longer, many of them slaughtered their women and rushed upon the swords of the Mughals, fighting with the recklessness of despair. The loss of the imperialists was heavy, while the rebels had 300 killed and 250 (both men and women) taken captive. During the campaign the Emperor very humanely detached 200 horsemen to guard the crops of the villagers and prevent the soldiers from oppressing any of them or taking any child prisoner.*

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∗ Abdun Nabi, Ruqat No. 34 (Philosopher's stone); A.N. 573, 966; M.A. 75, 83 (death); N.W. Gaz. viii. pt. I. 93; Akhbarat, 9/7. There is a village named after Abdun Nabi on the left bank of the Jamuna opposite Mathura and south of Gokul.

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Next month Hasan Ali Khan with his lieutenant Shaikh Razi-ud-din of Bhagalpur (who was a rare combination of soldier, theologian, traveller and business man in one) defeated Gokla. The rebels, who mustered 20,000 strong, mostly Jat and other stalwart peasants, encountered the imperial forces at a place 20 miles from Tilpat, and charged most gallantly. But after a very long and bloody contest they gave way before the superior discipline and artillery of the Mughals, and fled to Tilpat which was besieged for three days and at last stormed at the point of the sword. The havoc was terrible. On the victors' side 4,000 men fell and on the rebels' 5,000, while 7,000 persons, including Gokla and his family, were taken prisoner. The Jat leader's limbs were hacked off one by one on the platform of the police office of Agra, his family was forcibly converted to Islam, and his followers were kept in prison in charge of the provost of the imperial camp. Innocent strangers who had been arrested along with the rebels, were ordered to be set free after proper inquiries, while the old men and children were handed over to an eunuch of the Court.

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∗ Peasant risings in Mathura and Agra districts.—M.A. 83, 92-94, 110; Ishwardas, 53 (fall of Gokla); Akhbarat, 12/22, 12/25, 13/7, 14/3.

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But the trouble did not die out with the loss of one leader. We read that even as late as March of that year (1670), Hasan Ali Khan was "engaged in enslaving and capturing the rebels, plundering their houses, extirpating their families, and dismantling their strong [mud] forts." These measures had the desired effect, and in a short time peace was restored to the district.

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But the peace did not last more than ten years. In June 1681, the faujdar of the environs of Agra had to lead an expedition against some villagers and was mortally wounded by them. This was a purely agrarian revolt, and was probably soon ended. In 1686, when the Emperor was engaged with his many enemies in the Deccan, the second great Jat rising began, under the leadership of Rajaram, and though Rajaram was soon slain, his brother's son Churaman, with his head-quarters at Sansani, carried on an intermittent war till the end of Aurangzib's life, and could not be subdued by that Emperor's decadent successors. [See Ch. 59.]

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§3. The Satnami sect: their character.

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The revolt of the SATNAMI faqirs in May 1672 has gained a place in the history of Aurangzib out of all proportion to its size or political importance.

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Unlike other popular disturbances of the reign it appealed to the vulgar craze for the supernatural and sent a short thrill of fear through the capital itself. Hence, men greatly marvelled at it and it became the talk of the age.*

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The title *Satnamis* has been adopted by at least three religious bodies of Northern India. The one best known nowadays was founded in 1775 in Oudh, but we are not here concerned with it. The sect that rose against Aurangzib was really the *Sadhs*, who employ the name Satnami among themselves. They are a unitarian community, founded in 1543 by Birbhan of Bijesar, near Narnol, and may be looked upon as an offshoot of the Rai Dasis. [Hastings's *Encyclopædia of Religion*, xi. 46, 210.] The people nicknamed them *Mundiyas* or Shavelings from their practice of shaving off all the hair, —even the eye-brows, from their heads. The sect is scattered all over Upper India, and has monasteries in many places, but its stronghold in the 17th century was the district of Narnol, 75 miles south-west of Delhi. The religious mysteries practised by these sectaries were abominable, and a contemporary Hindu historian, Ishwardas Nagar, thus describes the repulsion which they excited: "The Satnamis are extremely filthy and wicked. In their rules they make no distinction between Hindus and Musalmans, and eat pigs and other unclean animals. If a dog is served up before them, they do not show any disgust at it! In sin and immorality they see no blame." (61b.)

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∗ *Satnamis*.—M.A. 115; K.K. ii. 252—254; Ishwardas 61b; *Storia*, ii. 167—168. Wilson's *Religious Sects of the Hindus* describes another sect bearing the same name but founded about 1775.

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But evidently their esoteric doctrines and rites did not make them bad citizens or men. Khafi Khan (ii. 252) gives them a good character as an honest and manly brotherhood, saying, "Though they dress like faqirs, most of them follow agriculture or trade on a small capital. Following the path of their own faith they wish to live with a good name and never attempt to obtain money by any dishonest or unlawful means. If any one tries to oppress them, they cannot endure it. Most of them carry arms."

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§4. Satnami rebellion, its history.

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These people came into conflict with the forces of Government from a purely temporal cause. "One day a Satnami cultivator near Narnol had a hot dispute with a foot-soldier (piada) who was watching a field, and the soldier broke the peasant's head with his thick stick. A party of Satnamis beat the assailant till he seemed dead. The shiqdar (petty revenue collector), hearing of it, sent a body of piadas to arrest the men; but the Satnamis assembled in force, beat the piadas, wounded some of them, and snatched away their arms. Their number and tumult increased every hour."

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The quarrel soon took on a religious colour and assumed the form of a war for the liberation of the Hindus by an attack on Aurangzib himself. An old prophetess appeared among them and declared that her spells could raise an invisible army at night, that the Satnamis fighting under her banner would be invulnerable to the enemy's weapons, and that if one of them fell eighty others would spring up in his place. The movement spread like wildfire and the Government was completely taken by surprise. The rising looked like a sudden "irruption of ants out of the ground or of locusts from the sky." Soon some five thousand Satnamis were up in arms. The local officers underrated the danger and sent out troops in small parties which were successively defeated. These initial victories only raised the confidence of the rebels and confirmed the tale of their magical power. They plundered many villages in the district and when, at last, the faujdar of Narnol came out to meet them, they routed him with heavy loss and seized the town.

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The danger now assumed threatening proportions. The victorious rebels plundered Narnol, demolished its mosques, and established their own administration in the district, holding it by means of outposts and collecting the revenue from the peasants.

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"The zamindars of the neighbourhood and some foolish Rajputs seized the opportunity to rebel and withhold the payment of revenue to the State. The disturbance daily grew worse." "The rebels marched to Bairat Singhana, looting the villages. The noise of their tumult reached Delhi, where the grain supply became scanty and the citizens were greatly alarmed and distracted." Superstitious terror demoralized the imperial army. "Magical powers were ascribed to the Satnamis...Great Rajahs and experienced generals with large armies were appointed against them, but refused to face them, though they had arrived within 32 or 34 miles of Delhi."

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Aurangzib was now fully roused. On 15th March he sent a large force, 10,000 strong, under Radandaz Khan and many other high officers with artillery and a detachment from the Emperor's bodyguard against the rebels. To counteract the spells of the Satnamis, the Emperor, who had the reputation of being a living saint (*Alamgir zinda pir*), wrote out prayers and magical figures with his own hand and ordered the papers to be sewed on to the banners of his army and displayed before the enemy. The encounter was terrible. "The rebels advanced to the attack. In spite of their poverty in war-material, they enacted the scenes of the great war of the *Mahabharat*. The Muslim heroes reddened their pitiless swords in the blood of the wretches." After a most obstinate battle, two thousand of the Satnamis fell on the field, while many more were slain during the pursuit. "Very few of them escaped; and that tract of country was cleared of the infidels." In the imperial ranks 200 were killed, and Rajah Bishnu Singh Kachhwa, who had fought most gallantly, had his elephant wounded in seven places. The victors were richly rewarded. Radandaz Khan was given the title of Shujaet Khan, and all the officers, high and low alike, received promotion and robes of honour. The artillery planted outside Delhi to command the approaches to the city, stood there for some time after as an eloquent memorial of the panic created at the capital by the Satnami advance.

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§5. The course of the Sikh religion.

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The Mughal empire soon afterwards created a more formidable enemy, who continued to wage war with it till its downfall. These were the SIKHS.

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Towards the close of the 15th century, when the first wave of Muslim immigration into India had worn itself out, leaving the country in political disruption social disorder and moral decadence, there arose in the extreme east and the extreme west of India two Hindu reformers who called upon the people to prefer the essence to the form of religion, a living faith to a dead mechanical ritual, and the spirit to the letter of their scriptures. Both of them insisted on the unity of the Godhead underlying the multitude of the idols of popular worship. Both taught that God can be realized only by means of a love as ardent and all-absorbing as the conjugal passion. Both urged on their hearers to work out their salvation personally by strenuous holy living and not to imagine that it can be won through any other man's exertions or the mechanical repetition of any words. Both invited earnest believers to their folds without distinction of caste or creed, and tried to form a brotherhood of the elect. Both attempts, after glorious success for three generations, ended in failure, and their only result has been to add two more names to the long list of the religious sects of the Hindus. The goal of Chaitanya* was lost when his Church passed under the control of Brahman Goswamis who developed a very subtle and esoteric theology in which the brain has suppressed the heart, and his Vaishnava followers now form two sharply divided sections,—an emotional but morally undisciplined rabble at the base, and a keenly intellectual but cold and fastidious priesthood at the top, without any link between them. The aims of Nanak were abandoned when his successors in the leadership of the Sikhs set up a temporal dominion for themselves and made military drill take the place of moral self-reform and spiritual growth.

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∗ For the teachings of Chaitanya, see my work *Chaitanya's Life and Teachings*, 2nd ed.

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"The liberation which Baba Nanak realized in his heart was not political liberty, but spiritual freedom. Nanak had called upon his disciples to free themselves from selfishness, from narrow bigotry, from spiritual lethargy. Guru Govind organized the Sikhs to suit a special purpose. He called in the human energy of the Sikhs from all other sides and made it flow in one particular channel only; they ceased to be full, free men. He converted the spiritual unity of the Sikhs into a means of worldly success; he dwarfed the unity of a religious sect into an instrument of political advancement. Hence the Sikhs, who had been advancing for centuries to be true men, now suddenly stopped short and became mere *soldiers*! The end of Sikh history looks very sad. When a river, which had left the pure, snowy, cloud-kissing hilltops to reach the ocean, disappears in a sandy plain, losing its dance, losing its song, a sorry sight is its failure. Even so, when the pure white stream of energy which issued from a *bhakta's* heart to cleanse and fertilize the earth ends in the red mire of a military cantonment, men can see no glory, no joy in it.......To-day there is no spirit of progress among the Sikhs. They have crystallized into a small sect. Centuries have failed to produce a new spiritual teacher from among them."*

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∗ Rabindranath Tagore, as translated by me in *Modern Review*, April, 1911, 334-338. Cf. Pincott, "The religion of Nanak began in

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§6. Life and teachings of Nanak.

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Nanak, a Hindu of the Khatri or trader caste, was born in 1469 at Talwandi (now, Nanakana), 35 miles s. w. of Lahor. In early youth he began to consort with holy men and wandering friars and have ecstatic visions, and then throwing up his post under Daulat Khan Lodi he took to a life of religious travel and preaching. The essence of his creed was belief in the one true living God, and the shaping of every man's conduct in such a way as to realize that God. In his moments of inspiration he held communion with his Maker and sang of Him in the very language of the Song of Songs. Like Kabir and other Indian saints before him, he preached against the hollowness of conventional beliefs and mechanical rites, and urged his hearers to go back to the very spring-head of a personal and living faith. It was only natural that such a teacher should denounce the Hindus and Muhammadans of the age as false to their creeds, and that his insistence on the common truth of all religions should make all spiritual-minded men among both sects accept him as their master and guide, even as Kabir had been accepted. But the vulgar people and the selfish priests raised the cry that Nanak had condemned their scriptures as inefficacious for salvation, that he was saying "There

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large-hearted tolerance; and political causes operated to convert its adherents into a narrow-minded sect."

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is no Hindu and there is no Musalman,'' and even that he had ``become a Turk!''*

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Indeed, there was much in Nanak's speech and conduct to lend colour to such a charge. His dress was as eclectic as his doctrines. ``The Guru set out towards the east, having arrayed himself in a strange motley of Hindu and Muhammadan religious habiliments......He wore a necklace of bones, and imprinted a saffron mark on his forehead in the style of Hindus.'' (Mac. i. 58.)

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His devotion to one God, ``the True, the Immortal, the Self-existent, the Pure, the Invisible,'' made him reject incarnations and idols as abominations, while his insistence on right conduct cut away the basis of ritualistic practices and set prayers. As he said, repeating the words of Kabir, ``O brethren, the Vedas and the Quran are false, and free not the mind from anxiety......God can be obtained by humility and prayer, self-restraint, searching of the heart, and fixed gaze on Him.'' (Mac. i. 177.)

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Nanak (who lived till 1538) drew round himself a band of earnest worshippers, and in time they solidified into a sect. But his original intention was to save all souls without distinction, and not to found a narrow brotherhood with its peculiar dress, marks, doctrines, form of worship and scripture. He acknowledged no guru save God and no worship except the practice of virtue. Even his hymns were mostly adapted from the sacred songs left behind by the monotheistic reformers of the past, and had nothing distinctive, nothing sectarian about them.

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∗ Macauliffe's *Sikh Religion*, 6 vols., Hughes's *Dictionary of Islam*, 583-594 (article by F. Pincott), *Dabistan-ul-mazahib* (Bombay lithographed text), 178-193, and Sujan Rai Khatri's *Khulasat-at-tawarikh*, as trans. by me in *India of Aurangzib*, 88-91, are our original sources of information about the Sikh gurus. I shall, in future, refer to the first of these works as 'Mac.'

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This liberality of mind, devotion to the essence of religion, and contempt for wealth and power continued to mark the Sikh gurus throughout the 16th century, from Nanak to Arjun the 5th guru. Their saintly lives won the reverence of the Mughal emperors and they had no quarrel either with Islam or the State.

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§7. Change in the lives and aims of the later Gurus.

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Before the reign of Aurangzib the Sikhs were never persecuted on religious grounds, and their collision with the Mughal Government, which began in Jahangir's time, was due entirely to secular causes, and the change in the character of the gurus was solely responsible for it.*

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∗ "The entire reversal of the project [of Nanak to reconcile Hinduism with Muhammadanism] and the production of the deadliest of feuds between Muhammadans and Sikhs......was as much due to political causes as to a steady departure from the teachings of the Founder of Sikhism." (Pincott, in Hughes, 591.)

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Nanak had no guru save God, and his two immediate successors were chosen for superior character only. But after the third guru the headship of the Church became hereditary. The guru was credited with superhuman powers; he was invested with regal pomp, and man-worship began to infect the Sikhs. When boys of nine and even five years (like Govind Rai and Har Krishan respectively) were accepted as spiritual leaders, it was clear that the guru had ceased to be regarded as a human teacher and was held to be born with supernatural powers like an incarnation of God, whose acts could not be judged by the standard of human reason.*

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Under Arjun, the 5th guru (1581-1606), the number of Sikh converts greatly increased, and with them the guru's income. As a contemporary remarked, "The Emperor [Akbar] and kings bow before him. Wealth ever cometh to him." (Mac. iii. 28.) "The royal state and retinue" of this guru were so great that even a Chancellor (diwan) of the empire considered the guru's son a desirable match for his daughter, but the guru scornfully declined the alliance. With the business instincts of a Khatri (petty trader), guru Arjun organized a permanent source of income. A band of agents called *masands* were stationed in every city from Kabul to Dacca where there was a Sikh, to collect the tithes and offerings of the faithful; and this spiritual tribute, so far as it escaped peculation by the agents, reached the central treasury at Amritsar. The guru was treated as a temporal king and girt round by a body of courtiers and ministers called *masands*, which is the Hindi corruption of the title *masnad-i-ala* borne by nobles under the Pathan Sultans of Delhi. Like the Muslim kings, too, the gurus used to take several wives.* They also began to be called *Padishahs* or Emperors.

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∗ So, too Baba Atal, the son of Har Govind, though only 8 years old, conveyed "a profound meaning in whatever he said even jestingly," (Mac., iv. 130) and was believed to be "a treasury of miraculous power." (131.)

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The effects of this conversion of a spiritual guide into an earthly ruler began to show themselves clearly after the death of Arjun. That guru was a man of peace and humility, and devoted himself to consolidating the Church. He completed the two sacred tanks at Amritsar, built the first temple for enshrining the Holy Book (*Granth*) on the site of the present Golden Temple, drew up a scheme of daily religious services for the Sikhs, and gave the final shape to their scriptures by compiling a volume of hymns selected from those composed by his four predecessors as well as those current among "the followers of the principal Indian saints, Hindu and Muhammadan, since the days of Jaidev." (Mac. iii. 60.)

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∗ Har Rai, 7th guru, when a mere boy of nine, was "wedded collectively" to all the daughters of a follower named Daya Ram. (Mac. iii. 225.)

§8. Conflict of the Gurus with the Mughal Government.

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At the very end of his career, Arjun made the sole mistake of his life. Moved by compassion and entreaty, he in a weak moment blessed the banners of Khusrau, the rival of Jahangir for the Mughal throne, and even gave money help to that prince. On the defeat of the pretender, Jahangir fined the guru two lakhs of Rupees for his disloyalty to the king *de jure*. The Sikhs were willing to subscribe the amount; but the man of God forbade them, saying, "Whatever money I have, is for the poor, the friendless and the stranger." (iii. 92.) He regarded the fine as an unjust imposition, refused to pay it, and stoically endured imprisonment and torture, which were the usual punishments of revenue defaulters in those days. Worn out by being forced to sit in the burning sand of Lahor, he died in June 1606. This was clearly not a case of religious persecution, but merely the customary punishment of a political offender.

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With his son Har Govind (1606-1645), a new era began. He was a man of a less spiritual fibre than Arjun. "Unlike his father, Har Govind constantly trained himself in martial exercises and systematically turned his attention to the chase." Early in his pontificate, he began to enlist men and increase his bodyguard of 52 warriors till it became a small army. When the saintly old Sikh, Bhai Budha, remonstrated against this unspiritual passion, Har Govind replied, "I wear two swords as emblems of spiritual and temporal authority. In the guru's house religion and worldly enjoyment shall be combined." His retinue during his tours to places of pilgrimage was large enough to scare away holy men by suggesting that some Rajah had arrived! (Mac. iv. 4-5, 53.)

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Under the easy and good-natured Jahangir, Har Govind was fairly well treated by the imperial family, though he had to undergo twelve years' confinement in Gwalior fort to make him pay the balance of his father's fine. But the growing military strength and royal pomp of the guru and his worldly spirit and tastes made a conflict between him and the Government of the country inevitable, and it broke out after Shah Jahan's accession. When that Emperor was hawking near Amritsar, the guru entered the same area in pursuit of game, and his Sikhs quarrelled with the servants of the imperial hunt about a bird. The two parties came to blows, and in the end the imperialists were beaten off with slaughter. An army was sent against the audacious rebel, but it was routed with heavy loss, at Sangrana, near Amritsar, 1628. (Mac. iv. 80-98.)

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The victor's fame spread far and wide. "Many men came to enlist under the guru's banner. They said that no one else had power to contend with the Emperor."*

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Such an open defiance of imperial authority could not be tolerated near Lahor. Larger and larger armies were sent against the guru, and though he gained some successes at first, his house and property at Amritsar were, in the end, seized, and he was forced to take refuge at Kiratpur in the Kashmir hills beyond the reach of Mughal arms.†

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† *Dabistan*, 188. The Sikh accounts disguise the guru's defeat, but they can offer no explanation of his flight to the hills if he had been, as they allege, always victorious over the imperialists.

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Here he died in 1645, after investing his younger grandson, Har Rai, a boy of fourteen, as his successor. An elder grandson, named Dhir Mal, set up as guru in the Panjab plains, in alliance with the imperial Government, and kept possession of the original copy of the *Granth*, which had already attained to the veneration of a tutelary idol.

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Har Rai's pontificate (1645-1661) was uneventful. But Dara Shukoh had paid him visits of respect in the course of his general devotion to *sadhus*, and the guru had blessed the prince when a fugitive in the Panjab after the battle of Samugarh. Aurangzib summoned Har Rai to answer for his conduct. The guru sent his eldest son Ram Rai to Court, but that young man temporized and ingratiated himself with the Mughal, for which his father disinherited him. Har Rai died in 1661 after investing his second son, Har Krishan, as his successor. Ram Rai immediately proclaimed himself guru and claimed his father's heritage. Taking advantage of the disputed succession to the leadership of the Church, "the *masands* collected and kept the greater part of the offerings for themselves." (Mac., iv. 314-317.)

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∗ He had so completely sunk the character of a religious reformer in that of a conquering general, that he had no scruple in enlisting large bands of Afghan mercenaries. These afterwards deserted him, joined the imperial general, and attacked the guru.

§9. Tegh Bahadur's career.

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Aurangzib summoned Har Krishan to Delhi to decide the suit. But before it could be done, the boy guru died of small-pox (1664), and the same scene of disorder and rapacity again broke out among the Sikhs. "Twenty-two [men] of Bakala claimed the right to succeed him. These self-made gurus forcibly took the offerings of the Sikhs." (Mac., iv. 332.) After a time Tegh Bahadur, the youngest son of Har Govind, succeeded in being recognized as guru by most of the Sikhs. With his personal followers he accompanied Rajah Ram Singh (the son of Mirza Rajah Jai Singh) to the Assam war (1668) and fought in the Mughal ranks as a mercenary; but he came back to Upper India in a few years, and took up his residence at Anandpur.

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From this place he was drawn into the whirlwind which Aurangzib had raised by his policy of religious persecution. A soldier and priest could not remain indifferent while his creed was being wantonly attacked and its holy places desecrated.* He encouraged the resistance of the Hindus of Kashmir to forcible conversion to Islam and openly defied the Emperor. Taken to Delhi, he was cast into prison and called upon to embrace Islam, and on his refusal was tortured for five days and then beheaded on a warrant from the Emperor. According to another account, the long-continued torture induced him to command a Sikh, who was with him, to cut off his head. (Hughes, 593.)

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Now at last open war broke out between the Sikhs and Islam. The murdered guru's followers were furious; one of them threw bricks at the Emperor (27th Oct. 1676) when he was alighting from his boat on his return from the Jama Masjid.

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∗ Khafi Khan (ii. 652) says, "Aurangzib ordered the temples of the Sikhs to be destroyed and the guru's agents (masands) for collecting the tithes and presents of the faithful to be expelled from the cities." Life of Tegh Bahadur in Mac., iv. 331-387. The Persian histories are silent about him. For Guru Govind, Mac., vol. v., supplemented by Irvine's "Guru Govind and Banda" in J. A. S. B., 1894, pp. 110 et seq. (reprinted in Later Mughals, i. 80-92.)

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(M.A. 154.) But such attempts at retaliation were futile. Soon a leader appeared among the Sikhs who organized the sect into the most efficient and implacable enemy of the Mughal empire and the Muslim faith. Govind Rai, the tenth and last guru (1676—1708) and the only son of Tegh Bahadur, was a man of whom it had been prophesied before his birth that "he would convert jackals into tigers and sparrows into hawks." He was not the person to leave his father's death unavenged. All his thoughts were directed to turning the Sikhs into soldiers, to the exclusion of every other aim.

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§10. Military organization of the Sikhs.

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We have by this time travelled very far indeed from Baba Nanak's ideal,* and we may here pause to consider what causes made the success of Guru Govind possible. The first was the gradual elevation of the guru to a superhuman position. Nanak, like every other Hindu religious preacher, had laid stress on the help which a true teacher (guru) can give in leading a man to the path of virtue; the guidance of one experienced in such things saves the disciple much difficulty, chance of error, and loss of time. "The object of the guruship is to save the world, to give instruction in the true Name, and to blend men with their Creator" (iv. 316). Such being the guru's function, he was to be implicitly obeyed. As Bhai Gurudas, who lived in the late 16th century, says in his exposition of the essence of the Sikh religion: "The Sikh who receiveth the guru's instruction is really a Sikh. To become a disciple is, as it were, to become dead. A disciple must be like a purchased slave, fit to be yoked to any work which may serve his guru. Love none but the guru: all other love is false." (Mac. iv. 244-263.)

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∗ As Har Rai once said, "The vessel which Baba Nanak had constructed for the salvation of the world, had almost foundered." (Mac. v. 151.) F. Pincott remarks. "The religious aspect of the movement became gradually converted into a military and political propaganda. No contrast, indeed, could be greater than that between the inoffensive and gentle-minded Nanak and the warlike and ambitious Gurus of later times." (Hughes, 594.)

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A natural consequence of such teaching was the blind unquestioning devotion of the Sikhs to their spiritual head. The author of *Dabistan*, who had frequent intercourse with Har Govind, narrates a story (p. 193) how a certain guru praised a parrot and a Sikh immediately went to its owner and offered to barter his wife and daughter for the bird! In other words, he had no hesitation in dooming his wife and daughter to a life of infamy simply to gratify a passing fancy of his guru. The perversion of moral judgment and ignorance of the relative value of things illustrated by this anecdote and another* that I have omitted for the sake of decency, are extreme; but so too is the spirit of devotion among the followers of the gurus.

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∗ *Dabistan*, 192. It shows that the Sikhs of the middle 17th century held the same views about women that the Anabaptists of

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This implicit faith in a common superior knit the Sikhs together like the soldiers of a regiment. As Har Govind told his disciples, "Deem the Sikh who comes to you with the guru's name on his lips as your guru." (iv. 219.) The Sikhs were famous in the 17th century for their sense of brotherhood and love for each other.*

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This was quite natural, as the Sikhs felt themselves to be a chosen people, the Lord's elect. We again quote the language of Bhai Gurudas: "Truth is hidden both from the Hindus and the Muhamadans; both sects have gone astray. But when they lay aside superstition they form one body of Sikhs. . . . Where there are two Sikhs, there is a company of saints; where there are five Sikhs, there is God!" (iv. 272 and 243.) The unity due to sameness of religion was further cemented by the abolition of caste distinctions under orders of Govind. All restrictions about food and drink, so prevalent

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Munster did. Macauliffe considers this author's testimony about the guru as "of the highest importance" (iv. 217).
* Sujan Rai of Batala wrote in 1695, "The reliance which this sect has on its leader is seldom seen in other sects. If a wayfarer arrives at midnight and takes the name of Baba Nanak, he is treated as a brother." (India of Aur. 91.) Mac. v. 90-92.

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in Hindu society, had already been discarded, and to be a Sikh was to be "as free in matters of eating and drinking as a Musalman." (iv. 219.)

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Everything was, therefore, ready for converting the sect into a military body obedient to its chief to the death, and what is even more difficult, ever ready to surrender the individual conscience to that of the guru. If Cromwell's Ironsides could have been inspired with the Jesuits' unquestioning acceptance of their Superior's decisions on moral and spiritual questions, the result would have equalled Guru Govind's Sikhs as a fighting machine.

§11. Guru Govind, his ideal and career.

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Govind steadily drilled his followers, gave them a distinctive dress and a new oath of baptism, and began a policy of open hostility to Islam. He harangued the Hindus to rise against Muslim persecution, and imposed a fine of Rs. 125 on his followers for saluting any Muhammadan saint's tomb. His aims were frankly material. "Mother dear, I have been considering how I may confer empire on the Khalsa." And, again, "I shall make men of all four castes lions and destroy the Mughals." (Mac. v. 109 and 99.) Clearly, Nanak's ideal of the kingdom of heaven to be won by holy living and holy dying, by humility and prayer, self-restraint and meditation, —had been entirely abandoned. Guru Govind lived in princely state, kept a train of poets in his Court, and made plenty of gold ornaments for himself and his family. His bodyguards were provided with arrows tipped with gold to the value of Rs. 16 each; and he had a big war-drum made in imitation of the Mughal imperial band, while his troops insulted and robbed the subjects of his host, the Bilaspur hill-Rajah, like the liveried retainers of the barons of mediæval England. (v. 59, 111, 5, 137.)

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In the hills of North Panjab, Govind passed most of his life, constantly fighting with the hill-Rajahs from Jammu to Srinagar in Garhwal, who were disgusted with his followers' violence and scared by his own ambition,—or with the Mughal officers and independent local Muslim chiefs who raided the hills in quest of tribute and plunder. Large imperial forces were sent from Sarhind to co-operate with the quotas of the hill-Rajahs and suppress the guru; but they were usually worsted. He was once defeated and expelled from Anandpur, but recovered the town on the retreat of the imperialists. His army went on increasing, as recruits from the Panjab doabs flocked to him and received baptism. Even Muslims were enlisted. Anandpur was five times invested. In the last attack, after undergoing great hardship and loss, with his followers and family threatening to desert if he prolonged the resistance, the guru evacuated the fort, and then went to Kiratpur, Nirmoh and Rupar, closely pursued by the Mughals. At Chamkaur with only 40 Sikhs he stood a siege in a Jat cultivator's house; but two of his sons were slain and he fled. Next he passed through many adventures and hairbreadth escapes, changing his place of shelter repeatedly like a hunted animal. His two remaining sons were arrested by the governor of Sarhind and put to death (1705). The Mughal officers plundered parties of Sikhs going to make offerings to their guru. (Mac. v. 121-222.) Then Govind with his few but faithful guards undertook a journey to Southern India by way of Bikanir and Baghaur; but returned to Northern India on hearing of Aurangzib's death (1707). He is said to have assisted Bahadur Shah I. in securing the throne, and that Emperor made much of him at Agra and induced him to accompany him on the march to Rajputana and the Deccan. The guru reached Nander on the Godavari, 150 miles n. w. of Haidarabad in August 1707 at the head of some infantry and 2 to 3 hundred cavalry, and there after a stay of more than a year he was stabbed to death by an Afghan (1708). With him the line of gurus ended. (v. 226-246.)

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§12. Sikh history after the last Guru's death.

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The guru was gone, but not the Sikh people. In the hour of his final defeat at Chamkaur, Govind's parting instructions had been to make the Sikhs independent of a supreme guide and to turn them into a military democracy. "He seated near him the five Sikhs who alone remained of the army, and proceeded to entrust the guruship to them. He said, 'I shall ever be among five Sikhs. Wherever there are five Sikhs of mine assembled, they shall be priests of all priests.'" (v. 189.)

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Even in the darkest days of Guru Govind's life bands of his followers, each acting under an independent leader, used to harass the Mughal officers and raid parts of the Panjab. Of one such band the fate is thus described in a letter of Aurangzib (written about 1701-1705): "I learn from the news-letter of Shah Alam's camp sent by Khwajah Mubarak that nearly 20,000 Hindus, who call themselves the Khalsa of Govind the follower of Nanak, had assembled and gone to the country of the Barakzai under the escort of the Yusufzai Afghans, and that the men of the escort and other Afghans of the neighbourhood of the Nilab river had fallen on them, so that the party had been killed or drowned. The Emperor orders that the prince should imprison these misbelievers, and expel them from that district."*

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Thus we see that the Mughal Government under Aurangzib did succeed in breaking up the guru's power. It robbed the Sikhs of a common leader and a rallying centre. Thereafter the Sikhs continued to disturb public peace, but only in isolated bands. They were no longer an army fighting under one chief, with a definite political aim, but merely moving bodies of brigands,—extremely brave, enthusiastic, and hardy, but essentially plunderers uninspired by any ambition to build up an organized Government in the land. If Aurangzib had been followed by worthy successors, these Sikh bands would have been hunted down as surely as the Mirzas and Champat Rai Bundela had been in the past, and Dhundhia Waug and Tantia Topi were to be under British rule.

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∗ Inayetullah's Ahkam, 2a. Readers of Kipling will remember the story of "The Lost Legion" in this connection.

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If Ranjit Singh had not risen, there would have been no large and united State under Sikh dominion, but a number of petty principalities in the Panjab with a ruling aristocracy of Sikh soldiers, sending their organized marauders every year to raid and lay waste the country up to Delhi, Saharanpur and even Hardwar, or engaged in their selfish internecine wars between clan and clan. These would have been silently absorbed in the expanding British empire. The Persian and not the Sikh gave the death-blow to the Mughal empire, and it was not from the heirs of Aurangzib but from the Afghan inheritors of Nadir Shah that the Sikhs conquered the Panjab.

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