Men of God

When Guru Nanak passed away, he left the heritage to Angad, who as the second Guru, faithfully carried out the mission of his master devoting his time to organising the Sikhs as a sect. His successor, Amar Das, the third Guru, on finding it necessary to distinguish the Sikhs from the Hindus, substituted the Anand-marriage ceremony for the Brahmanical form of marriage and made it a rule that whoever came to see him must first dine in his langar or free kitchen and thus disregard caste restrictions and get freed from the prejudices and superstitions of the Hindu millions. Ram Das, the fourth Guru, felt the need for a central place for the Sikhs to assemble from time to time and the liberal-minded Akbar granted to him in 1577 A.D. the site of the tank and the Golden Temple at Amritsar, which the Guru established as the headquarters of the Sikhs.

The work of the first four Gurus bore fruit in the formation of a distinct community of Sikhs, with a common source of divine knowledge, the Guru, and with a common object of meditation and worship, the True Name, God. Things took a different turn, when Arjun became the fifth Guru. He was a born poet with a remarkable capacity for organisation. His practical philosophy and statesmanship were visible in all that he did and died for. He compiled the Sacred Book, installed it in the Golden Temple at Amritsar and introduced the system of collecting money offerings from the Sikhs, assumed the temporal and spiritual control of the sect, and formulated rules to regulate their social and political life.

“The rapid development of the Sikhs at this time and the growing influence of their Guru,” says Payne, "soon led to trouble with the Moghals and the persecution of their sect at the hands of the Moghals dates back from Arjun’s ministry.” It is noteworthy that up to the time of the great Akbar, the Moghal emperors did not much interfere with the peaceful organisation of the Sikhs and their Gurus had gone on converting to their faith whole villages with their hundreds of Hindus as well as Mussalmans. The phenomenal success of Guru Arjun invited the wrath of Jehangir who was restoring the forms and tenets of the Muhammadan faith that had been neglected and discouraged during Akbar’s regime.

EMPEROR TAKES NOTICE

Jehangir’s attitude towards Arjun can be understood from his own memoirs. “There was a Hindu, named Arjun,” he wrote, “in the garments of sainthood and sanctity, so much so, that he captured many of simple-hearted of the Hindus and even of the ignorant and foolish followers of Islam, by his ways and manners, and they had loudly sounded the drum of his holiness. They called him Guru, and from all sides stupid people crowded to worship and manifest complete faith in him. For three or four generations (of spiritual successors) they had kept this shop warm. Many times it occurred to me to put a stop to this vain affair or to bring him into the assembly of the people of Islam.”

In 1606 A.D. Guru Arjun was charged with sedition for having assisted Khuzru in his rebellion, summoned to Lahore, put into prison and, through the usual process of torture, put to death.

Before Arjun’s departure, he had installed his son, Har Gobind on the gadi and left him with his last injunction that he was to sit fully armed on the throne and maintain the largest military force he could muster since it was impossible to protect his followers without the aid of arms. Such an order admirably agreed with the temperament of Har Gobind; and ofcourse, it brought its own trials, He was imprisoned for 12 years by Jehangir. But after the latter’s death, he thrice led the army of his own creation and whetted its martial spirit by the taste of victory on each occasion. Hari Rai, the seventh Guru, devoted his attention to peaceful organisation, but retained with him 2,200 soldiers though no battles were fought. Hari Kishan, the eighth Guru, died on his accession when quite young.

When Tej Bahadur, the ninth Guru, succeeded to the gadi, the country had seen six years of Aurangzeb’s rule. It is wellknown how after firmly establishing himself as the Emperor of India by adopting methods which were certainly sinful in the eye of the Koran and denounced by liberal-minded and pious Moslems including Shah Abbas of Persia and the Sheriff of Mecca, he reversed the policy of the great Akbar and began his campaign of Jehad or "exertion in the path of God” which involved the extermination of the idolatrous Hindus. These subject people groaned under the weight of disabilities hurled upon them. Jazaya or polltax as compensation for permitting the Kafirs to breathe in the Mussalman State, Khuraj or land-tax, humble dress and behaviour befiting a subject race, ban on riding and carrying arms, prohibition of religious gatherings or processions, exclusion from State service these correctives were prescribed by the Emperor for Kafirs and he completed the list by the crowning order (given on 9th April 1669 A.D.) “to demolish all the schools and temples of the infidels and put down their religious teachings and practices.”