A History of Agriculture in India v2.c87.s3: Sanctuary in the Siwalik Hills
A History of Agriculture in India v2.c87.s3
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Sanctuary in the Siwalik Hills
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Below the outer Himalayas are the Siwalik Hills, covered with scrub forest, the haunt of the leopards and the wild boar. While Majha was the cradle of Sikhism, its further growth took place in the Siwaliks. In 1634 Guru Hargobind settled at Kiratpur. His successor Guru Har Rai (1644-1661), the seventh guru, also lived at Kiratpur, where he maintained a small army.
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Guru Tegh Bahadur (1621-1675)
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The ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur, shifted from Baba Bakala to Kiratpur and from there he moved on to a site near the village of Makhowal and laid the foundation of a new town, which he named Anandpur. Harassed by his jealous kinsmen, he left Anandpur and travelled east, visiting Agra, Allahabad, Benares and Gaya. He settled for a while at Patna, where his son Gobind Rai was born. After touring Bengal and Assam, he returned to Anandpur. At that time Aurangzeb was at the peak of his power, and proselytism to Islam was taking place on a massive scale in the Kashmir valley and other places. A deputation of Kashmiri Brahmans approached the Guru for advice and help. The Guru advised them to inform the Mughal authorities at Delhi that if he, their Guru, accepted Islam, they would follow suit. The Guru was summoned up to Delhi and on his refusal to embrace Islam he was beheaded.
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Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708)
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Gobind Rai, as he was known in his early years, was nine years old when his father, Tegh Bahadur, was martyred at Chandni Chowk, Delhi. He spent his early years at Paunta on the Jumna, learning Sanskrit and Persian, riding and hunting and practising the use of arms. He also pondered deeply on the contemporary problems, the tyranny of the Mughals who denied freedom of worship to the Hindus, and the malaise of Hinduism, its caste system and empty rituals, taboos and superstitions.
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In 1686 came his first test when he fought the Hindu Hill Rajas at Bhangani, six miles (9.6 km) from Paunta, and defeated them. This victory gave him confidence to return to Anandpur. Anandpur was fortified, and he taught his Sikhs the techniques of warfare. The Guru was also a poet and scholar. He had fifty-two bards at his court, and heroic poetry was encouraged to enthuse his followers.
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When the Guru was organizing the Sikhs to fight the Mughal oppression, he was advised by Kesho Das, a Brahman priest, who had come from Benares, to perform a yajna to Nainadevi, the goddess of power. The yajna was carried on for many days but the goddess did not appear. The Guru realized that the main weakness of the Hindus was their belief in supernatural powers rather than in their own strength. In utter disgust, he threw the ghee, incense, and other paraphernalia into the sacrificial fire, and there was an enormous blaze visible for miles. The credulous believed that the goddess had appeared. When asked whether he had seen the goddess, the Guru unsheathed his sword and said, 'This is the goddess.' He told them that the goddess is the power which is always in us. It is the conscience of man which refuses to bow before evil. It is the anger which the righteous and truthful men feel when faced with oppression and falsehood. The Guru asked his followers to take up the sword and fight evil.
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On the Baisakhi of 1699 he convened an assembly of his followers at Anandpur and created the Khalsa. He declared at a congregation that he wanted to sacrifice a man. At his call five men volunteered. They belonged to different castes and were from different parts of India, viz. Daya Ram, a Khatri from Lahore; Dharam Das, a Jat from Rohtak; Mohkam Chand, a washerman from Dwaraka in Gujarat; Himmat, a water-carrier from Jagannath Puri in Orissa; and Sahib Chand, a barber from Bidar in Deccan. The Guru baptised them with water stirred with a sword. They were told to renounce their ancestral occupations, family ties, old religious beliefs, rituals and customs. Thus a casteless society, the Khalsa, was created. As Cunningham observed, "through his baptism of the sword, Gobind roused the dormant energies of a vanquished people and filled them with a lofty, although fitful, longing for social freedom and national ascendancy, the proper adjuncts of that purity of worship which had been preached by Nanak. Gobind saw what was yet vital and he relumed it with Promethean fire."² It was thus that the timid Hindus riven by caste dissensions were transformed into warriors who suffered fearsome persecutions and ultimately overthrew the tyrannical government of the Mughals.
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² Cunningham, J.D., *A history of the Sikhs*, p. 75
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Guru Gobind Singh gave a distinctive form to his Singhs by prescribing five symbols, viz. unshorn hair, a sword, a steel bangle on the right wrist, a comb to keep the hair clean, and a knee-length *kachh* or shorts. Smoking of tobacco was forbidden. This ban promoted physical fitness, as tobacco is an insidious poison, which contributed significantly to the deterioration of the physique and stamina of the Mughal soldiers, the adversaries of the Singhs. As the bulk of the converts were the Jats of the Punjab, this ban added to their efficiency as farmers and soldiers.
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Apprehensive of the rising power of the Guru, Aurangzeb ordered the governors of Sarhind and Lahore to invest Anandpur. The Guru, confronted by a force vastly superior in numbers, was forced to leave Anandpur. At Chamkaur, his two elder sons—Ajit Singh and Jujhar Singh—died fighting the Mughals. His remaining two sons—Zorawar Singh, aged nine, and Fateh Singh, aged seven—were walled alive at Sarhind. The Guru’s mother who had accompanied them, unable to bear the shock, also died at Sarhind. The Guru took shelter in the scrub jungle of Malwa and at the village of Talwandi Sabo, now called Damdama Sahib. He collected his writings, and compiled the *Dasam Granth*.
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Guru Gobind Singh abolished the institution of Gurudom. He vested the spiritual leadership in the *Guru Granth*, and temporal leadership of the community in Khalsa Brotherhood. He placed a revolutionary ideal before his followers, viz. of the Raj Khalsa or the people’s democracy. This ideal opened the prospects of worldly power and prosperity to the men of the lowest castes of the Hindu society, who hitherto were doomed to poverty and perpetual subjugation.
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Passing through Rajasthan, the Guru came to Agra. In the mean time Aurangzeb died and Bahadur Shah succeeded him. The Guru ultimately settled for a while at Nander on the Godavari in the Deccan. Here he was assassinated in 1708 by two Pathans, who had been deputed by Wazir Khan, Governor of Sarhind.
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The sacrifices of Guru Gobind Singh are unparalleled in history. He exhorted his father to sacrifice his life for freedom of worship. He lost his mother and four sons. His courage and sacrifices thrilled the peasantry of East Punjab and they embraced Sikhism in large numbers.