Why Sikhs need Khalistan?
Why Sikhs should get Khalistan?
Article by the Khalistan Council, Brussels, Belgium
under devel
opement
Before 1947
For more than 3,000 years India or Bharat was a rich land of mystery (some argue many more thousands). Over the years India has seen the birth of several of the worlds great religions, which in turn have made contributions to other religions and cultures around the world. Many years ago the first of these religions came to be organized into a system based on rigid divisions of society. The people of India were divided into 4; others argue 5, varnas, more commonly known as castes today.
The duties of each caste were clearly defined.
The word caste came to India with the Portuguese who were the first Europeans, seeking first to break the back of a Muslim Arab cartel and to find allies in their fight against the Islamic invaders. Which invasions, across the Bosphorus, ended up in the modern day 'Balkanization' of parts of Europe. Later seeing that India was divided into many weak ununited kingdoms the Portuguese too colonized part of India.
Controlling the overland routes to India the Arabs had for centuries been buying cheaply, the many highly valuable products of India and the Asian countries beyond, and then selling them at exorbitant rates to the Europeans.
Da Gama and the rulers of Portugal thought that India was the home of the illusive Prester John. On his first visit with the King of Calicut he actually thought that the Hindus were Christians. It was remarked in a journal of the trip that the 'Christians' of Callicut had a many armed Madonna.
The Caste System
The word caste is from the Latin - casto, from castus meaning "pure, cut off, separated. The Portuguese had noticed the Hindu social divisions and duties associated with each group and used their words casta raca - pure or unmixed race.
Who had divided Hindu society into such rigid, fixed divisions? In India like in every other society in the ancient world those in power made the rules the men who were in control of knowledge, education and its dissemination.
The castes were very 'private clubs' the entry ticket to a caste was birth. What was the ticket to the next higher caste? Simple, a life of unquestioning service to one's cast and its prescribed duties and a life filled with good, appropriate deeds.
What were these castes?
- Brahmin
- Kshatriya
- Vaisia
- Sudra
Below these castes were the untouchables.
The Kshatrias were the traditional warrior or protector caste. From childhood the sons of this caste were trained in the arts of warfare and educated in the Vedic religion. They were the protectors of Hindu society and served as well as its Rajas or rulers. The Rajputs were the Kshatrias of Northern India. Those who couldn't gain Kingdoms in Rajasthan carved out hill kingdoms in the mountains of Northern India.
With the coming of the Mughals these 'protectors of India' save one or two, became partners in the Mughal Empire. Some even becoming Muslims themselves.
Guru Nanak and Senseless ritual
Saint-Soldiers of Guru Gobind Singh and the Khalsa
Aurengzeb, the last great Mughal, was an Ghazni, a Muslim who dreamed of conquering all of India, which he and his ancestors referred to as Hindustan, andturning it into a Muslim state in a move to bring his plans to fruition he ordered the Govenor of Kashmir to tell the Pandits of the vale that they had a choice—convert to Islam or face death and torture. He reinstated the hated Mughal Jisia, a tax on non muslims, during his reign the forced conversion of Hindu men and women increased along with the wholesale destruction of Hindu Temples. Finally 500 Pandits, with their time to choose almost up, approached Shri Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji asking for help.
Guru Ji, on behalf of his troubled neighbors, asked if they would give up their religion if the Emperor could succeed in converting him. They agreed trusting the great man to whom they had come. The word or challenge was soon sent to Aurangzeb that if he could succeed in getting Guru Tegh Bahadur to convert to Islam, then the highly respected Pandits of Kashmir (revered across India by other Hindus) the Pandits of Kashmir were the first pawns in Aurangzeb's gambit or 'game of Chaturanga' — if he could convert them, so his thinking went, then all the Hindus of India would follow suit and willingly convert.
They put their lives and their Sanatan Dharma in the Guru's hands risking all on the Ninth Nanak who like all the Nanaks before him had long questioned many of the ceremonies, rituals and beliefs that these Brahmins held sacred in their heart of hearts. Never had a man of peace, unarmed and without an army dared to challenge the mighty Mughal Emperor, let alone, in his own Darbar (Court) in the Laal Kila the Mighty Red Fort of Delhi.
Aurangzeb on hearing of this , we can only guess the fury that this open challenge to his authority must have kindled in the Emperor's mind, ordered the immediate arrest of the Guru. Guru Ji and four companions soon set out for Delhi, it wasn't long before the five were arrested and brought before the Emperor in Chains. After Guru Ji refused to convert to Islam or perform a miracle (The Emperor's method of giving the Guru a way out, one which his younger brother had used in the Mughal's court couting favor. (Performing miracles was not allowed by the Sikh Gurus). Guru Tegh Bahadur was subjected to many cruelties; he was kept in an iron cage and starved for many days. The Guru was made to watch as Bhai Mati Das his devoted Sikh was tied between two pillars and while still alive his body was sawed in two. Bhai Dyala was lowered alive into a cauldron of boiling water and Bhai Sati Das was wrapped in cotton wool and then set on fire. They bore these cruelties without flinching while their Guru watched them die. He too was to bear his own torture without flinching or showing any anger or distress. Finally on November 11, 1675 Guru Tegh Bahadur, with prayers on his lips, was publicly beheaded by the Mughal executioner in Delhi's Chandini Chowk.
And so the Ninth Guru of the Sikhs sacrificed his life in an effort to end the Mughals attempt to end Sanatan Dharma. The Sikhs had avoided much of the Mughal terror visited on the Hindus as they did not have Idols in their houses of worship and like the Mughals they belived in one Creator God. For this great sacrifice the Guru, even today, is known as the Hind ki Chaddar (The Shield/Protecter of India.)
The Guru, of course, did this expecting nothing in return, while pondering what to do to help the Pandits (the Pandits had procrastinated, waiting until the time given them to return an answer to the Mughal Govenor of Kashmir, on their acceptance of Islam, was almost up) the Gurus young son Gobind Rai had suggested to his father that non could be more appropriate than his father to face down the 'Emperor of The Universe' and most likely lose his live. (Aurangzeb, after arresting his father has bested Shah Jahan (the Emperor of the world) by taking the Imperial title Alamgir I (Emperor of the Universe).
The attacks on the Hindus were forestalled, but the suffering of the Sikhs was to get much worse, Soon Farikh Siyaar and the Muslims of Afgan were to even place bounties on Sikh heads. Untold thousands were to die. There were even great mass killings called the Great and Small Halocaust.
Forced to take shelter in distant forests and deserts the Sikhs, long hunted themselves, would lead daring midnight raids freeing thousands of their Hindu Countrymen, the ancestors of many Indians today, from the likes of the Persian Shah and the Afgan Durranis who had taken them to sell as slaves back across the 'Hindu Kush'.
Did these brave men do this expecting a reward?
In their Daily prayers Sikhs ask for the well being of their fellow men (Sarbat de Bhallah).
For thousands of years foreigners had invaded the rich valleys and plains of the Punjab, the lush verandah to the treasures of India. Everytime the invaders had looted, killed and enslaved. Earlier before the Greek and Arab invaders India had always been a land of internecine killing as one group or ruler fought with his neighbors over their little kingdoms.
The old saying divide and conquer was well known to the invaders of India, but rarely did they have to do any dividing, for the 'Indians' had been doing that for thousands of years before their coming. The epic battle of Kurukshetra, the mass killing spree of Asoka (the tearless one) whose own wanton savegery finally fueled his rule becoming one of the great 'moments' of Indian history. It was Asoka who first spread the Indian model of peace and prosperity from the the Bahmian plains to the tip of Asia's Easter Shores. This once great spread of Indian culture was fueled by his religion and his efforts to spread the Budhist message of peace and brotherhood. Yet, save for the Lion headed column capital and its wheel of Dharma, that once adorned his columns across Asia, now state symbols, little remains of Budhism in India.
Every time India fell back on its old ways becoming easy prey for the likes of Alexander and the invader 'of the moment'. In each case it was India's most powerful men with their tendancy to grab what ever territories they could hold onto in the name of their religion or family tree. It was this lack of unity that kept 'India' enslaved.
The Sikh Misls and Maharaja Ranjit Singh's check of the British Advance
The Anglo-Sikh Wars
After Mughal rule was broken by the Marathas and the Sikhs the British were able to use this native tendancy of me and mine, my God or Gods and my religion and my Holy practises to, once again, pit Indian kingdoms against one another. In a huge 'protection racket' the British were able to rapidly cross India seting up Cantonements along the way.
In the 'Great Game' which saw them moving to check any Russian advance into the region, the British were soon crossing the Hindu Kush only to suffer there worst military defeat ever..3
Arab, Afgan and an invited Mughal 'Tiger's Dynasty
The European Colonizations
The 12 Misls Become One / Ek Onkar
Crys for 'Azadi' Awaken
The first wars of freedom for Hindustan was fought by Sikhs the Anglo-Sikh wars. Two years before the so-called Armed Uprising of 1857, the so-called Sepoy Mutiny, which was not really a fight for freedom, but rather an unorganized series of attacks, often filled with brutal savagery-just as often returned with even more brutal savagery, by groups hoping for a return to the Hindu, Mughal or Afgan rule in little principalities scattered across India, before the coming of the British and the modern weapons and tactics of an European army.
It was this tendancy to grab territory, to split India into a thousand weak kingdoms that had always allowed India to be easy pickings for the firangi. But the Loyal Sikh soldiers of the British Army, who were instrumental in breaking the Mutiny, having had a taste of unity under Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The Raja of one of 12 misldars who like everyone else in India was out for what he could grab. It is said that power corrupts but here was a man, a leader (He had been the leader of one of the 12 misls (tribal groups) of Panjab) who had the foresight to unite 12 tribes into one kingdom. Elected Maharaja by his fellow Rajas he was the only leader in all of Asia who had who had built an army that checked the newest 'firangi' in their march across India.
The Sikh Kingdom or Federation
What went wrong
And what we got back, Gangu Dhar Kaul, the Brahmin cook of Gurus, betrayed Mata Gujri (wife of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji) and her 2 little grand-children, and got them imprisoned.
The reason for the fall of the Sikh Kingdom, were the Hindu Dogras, who betrayed the Sikh Kingdom.
During the Indian Independence Struggle; Out of 2,175 Martyrs 1,557, (75 percent), were Sikhs, out of 2,646 Indians sent to Andamans for life imprisonment 2,147,(80 percent), were Sikhs, out of 127 Indians who were hanged 92, (80 percent), were Sikhs, out of 20,000 who joined the INA under Bose 12000, (60 percent), were Sikhs, 500 Babbar Akali Lehar martyrs were all Sikhs. ‘’’Have Sikhs been rewarded for their selfless service to India , Sikhs have been made slaves.’’’
After Partition
Despite all of this, we didn’t get even a separate State after Independence. When asked we were suppressed by Police. The police attacked Darbar Sahib, Amritsar in 1955 and Poanta Sahib in 1963. In 1955, there was no Sant Jarnail Singh Ji Bhindranwale in Darbar Sahib, yet why was fire opened and 1 person killed? In 1963, police opened fire at Poanta Sahib and killed 13 Nihang Sikhs randomly. These are just some examples. After a long struggle, we got a state (in 1966), which was further divided into 3 parts – Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, which was based on language spoken. Altough almost all Hindus in Haryana and Himachal spoke Punjabi, they gave their mother tongue as Hindi, which resulted in the partition of the already partitioned Punjab. In 1978, the Nirankari leader Gurbachan Sinh made insulting remarks against Sri Guru Granth Sahib and insulted the Sikhs. A few Sikhs came to know that Gurbachan was coming over to Amritsar. They peacefully were protesting when the Nirankaris attacked them. 13 innocents Sikhs were killed. All 65 persons charged, including Gurbachan were acquitted the same day. In the 80s and aftermath
In the early 80s, a charismatic Sikh leader arose, Sant Jarnail Singh Ji Bhindranwale. He was a preacher who preached about Sikhism in rural villages. He openly spoke about the atrocities committed by Indian Govt. on the Sikhs. This didn’t sit down well with Indira Gandhi. She wanted to completely destroy Sikhism. She ordered to invade the Golden Temple at Amritsar. If Operation Blue star was conducted to flush out the so-called “terrorists” in Amritsar, then why where 38 other Gurudwaras attacked all-over Punjab? In retaliation, two Sikh bodyguards of Indira Gandhi killed her. What followed was the murder of thousands of Sikhs in India. In Delhi alone 20,000 Sikhs were burned alive, raped, killed. Already 24 years have passed and not a single Congress leader who was responsible for all this is punished. Other anti-Sikh riots were in cities like Kanpur, Bokaro etc. And in what followed in Punjab was worse; CRPF and BSF were deployed. They randomnly abducted and killed 250,000 Sikhs. The last example is when President Clinton visited India in 2000, Hindu militants killed 38 Sikhs in Chattisinghpura and blamed the Hindu militants. MASR report quotes the Punjab Civil Magistracy as writing “if we add up the figures of the last few years the number of innocent persons killed would run into lakhs [hundreds of thousands.]” Many reports indicate that since 1947, more than a million Sikhs have been killed. MASR also reports that there are 52,268 Sikh Political Prisoners in India, some of them in jail since 1984.
The only way to prevent that our Identity, Religion, Culture and Language remain save are an Independent Country! Khalistan Zindabad!
