Abstract
In his preface to this book, J. S. Grewal describes his purpose in writing the book as an attempt to take a fresh look at the life and legacy of the tenth Guru of the Sikhs. He had tried his hand at the job long ago, in 1967, in a publication on the same subject jointly with his colleague S. S. Bal. The passage of more than half a century had seen fresh forays into the subject, and Grewal wanted to share his updated interpretations of the mysteries of the Guru with his readers in this volume. Grewal has added appendices to all chapters narrating crucial landmarks in the Guru’s life to concentrate at length on the controversies related to them. He could trace a single underlying thread of unity in the Guru’s strivings throughout his chequered career, and this was to lead his community in the right direction. The central event of his career was the formation of the Khalsa, and the Rahitnama, or definition of the Khalsa way of life, marked out the Sikhs from other communities. The markers, or sikhi, made his followers a distinct lot imbued with a dream of sovereignty. This was necessary in an age when the Sikhs were threatened with schism within through the emergence of Udasis, Minas and Ram Raiyas. The term Khalsa also meant a close bond between the Guru and his followers, without the intervention of masands or local representatives entrusted with collecting and delivering contributions from the followers to the Guru. It denoted an attempt to consolidate the community instead of letting it run haywire in the hands of local potentates. The necessity to carry arms on one’s person denoted a desire to keep the community constantly on its toes for struggle within and struggle without. The Guru attached so much importance to his Khalsa that he left his followers to the care of the Guru Granth Sahib, as interpreted by five members of his Khalsa and discontinued the institution of a human Guru to provide against any future schism.
Grewal could notice a difference in the portrayal of the Guru’s pontificate between Koer Singh’s Gurbilas Patshahi Dasvin and Sainapat’s Sri Gur Sobha. While the first one portrays the Guru as presiding over a sophisticated court, conforming to the ideals of regalia prevalent in the royal courts of those times following the tenor of the Bachittar Natak (autobiographical writing attributed to the Guru himself or prepared under his direct supervision), Sainapat rouses the vision of a peasant culture, reminiscent of the influx of the Jats in large numbers in the community. The Khalsa symbols might have been a direct outcome of this Jat influence.
Grewal has also dwelt on the Guru’s indomitable spirit and his self-assertion from a position of superiority to the cowardice of the conspiring hill rajas, the betrayal of the Sikhs by the Mughal General despite an oath on the holy Quran, and the successive execution of the Guru’s sons, two teenagers and two infants, by the Mughals in his Zafarnama, addressed to the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. The Zafarnama proved to be a real epistle of victory of the right over the wrong since Aurangzeb died soon after he received it from the Guru’s messenger in Deccan.
Grewal has taken great care to carry forward the story of the progress of the Khalsa after the Guru’s valiant death in the Deccan from the bursting of an old wound while trying to break a bow that no one could manage. Grewal followed Indu Bhusan Banerjee’s rejection of Irvine’s suggestion that the Guru had accepted a mansab from Bahadur Shah and had therefore accompanied him to the Deccan. It was more likely that he was in Bahadur Shah’s camp to seek redressal of his grievances against his old enemy, Wazir Khan, responsible for the bricking alive of his infant sons.
Under the leadership of his disciple Banda Bahadur, the Akal Purkhia Khalsa, as it was called since the abolition of a human Guru, went from one victory to another and came up to Saharanpur. Wazir Khan was executed in a manner deserved by a coward. The Khalsa established its own Sarkar at thana levels, and the yellow flag flew over the whole stretch of territory. This victory did not endure for long. But the Sikhs reasserted again on the trails of the brief Afghan rule, and the Sikh misls, or fighting forces under generals, recovered almost the whole of Punjab after initial reverses from Afghans remembered as chhota ghallughara and again a bara ghallughara in which nearly 25,000 Sikhs were killed by Ahmad Shah Abdali’s army. By 1765, they had regained control of these places and had struck their own coins to commemorate their rule. The climax of their success was the Sarkar–i-Ala under Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Grewal’s fond hope was the one expressed in the Tankha nama ‘Raj Karega Khalsa, Khalsa/Aki rahe na koi/Khwar hoe sabh milenge/bachae saran jo hoe’. Like a true Sikh, he believed in the universality and superiority of the Sikh way of life above everything. He sang his swan song with this refrain of the moral superiority of the faith outlined by the tenth Guru. The book remains, in the last analysis, a testament to Sikh sovereignty.