History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c48.s4: §9. Tegh Bahadur's career.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c48.s4
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§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.