History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c48.s5: §11. Guru Govind, his ideal and career.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c48.s5
- Language
- English
§11. Guru Govind, his ideal and career.
v3.c48.s5.1
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.)
v3.c48.s5.2
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.)
v3.c48.s5.3
§12. Sikh history after the last Guru's death.
v3.c48.s5.4
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.)
v3.c48.s5.5
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."*
v3.c48.s5.6
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.
v3.c48.s5.7
∗ Inayetullah's Ahkam, 2a. Readers of Kipling will remember the story of "The Lost Legion" in this connection.
v3.c48.s5.8
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.