Hindu-Sikh Relationship (part 6/10)
-----------------------------------

To fulfil a certain need of the hour, Guru Govind,Singh
- preached the gospel of the Khalsa, the pure or the elect.
Those wo joined his group passed through a ceremony known as
pahul, and to emphasize the martial nature of 'their new voca-
tion, they were given the title of Singh or "lion". Thus began a
sect not based on birth but which drew its recruits from
those who were not Khalsa by birth. It was wholly manned by the
Hindus.

Military organisation has taken different forms in different
countries at different times. The Khalsa was one such form
thrown up by a tyrannized people, weak in arms but strong in
determination. This form worked and the people of the Punjab
threw away the Mughal tyranny. But fortunes change; in 1849, the
British took over the Punjab. The old-style Khalsa was no longer
possible and the recruitment to it almost ceased. The Punjab Ad-
ministration Report of 1851-52 observes: "The sacred tank at Am-
ritsur is less thronged than formerly, and the attendance at the
annual festival is diminishing yearly. The initiatory ceremony
for adult is now rarely performed." Not only did the fresh re-
cruitment stop, but also a new exodus began. The same Report
says that people leave the Khalsa and "join the ranks of Hinduism
whence they originally came, and bring up their children as
Hindus."

The phenomenon continued unabted. The Administration Report
of 1854-55 and 1855-56 finds that "now that the Sikh commonwealth
is broken up, people cease to be initiated into Sikhism and re-
vert to Hinduism." At about this time, a census was taken. It
revealed that the Lahore division which included Manjha, the ori-
ginal home of the Sikhs, had only 200,000 Sikhs in a population
of three million. This exodus may account at least partly for
this small number.

The development raised no question. To those who were in-
volved, this was perfectly in order and natural. Nobody was
conscious of violation of any code. Hindus were Sikhs and Sikhs
were Hindus. The distinction between. them was functional, not
fundamental. A Sikh was a Hindu in a particular role. When
under the changed circumstances, he could not play that role, he
reverted to his original status. The Government of the day ad-
mitted that "modern Sikhism was little more than a political as-
sociation, formed exclusively from among Hindus, which men would
join or quit according to the circumstances of the day."

This development, perfectly in accord with Indian reality,
was not liked by the British. They considered it as something "to
be deeply deplored, as destroying a bulwark of our rule."

Imperialism thrives on divisions and it sows them even where
they do not exist. The British Government invited one Dr. E.
Trumpp, a German Indologist and missionary, to look at Sikh
scriptures and prove that their theology and cosmology were dif-
fernt from those of the Vedas and the Upanishads. But he found
nothing in them to support this view. He found Nanak a "thorough
Hindu," his religion "a pantheism, derived directly from Hindu
sources." In fact, the influence of Islam on subsequent Sikhism
was, according to him, negative. "It is not improbable that the
Islam had a great share in working silently these changes, which
are directly opposed to the teachings of the Gurus," he says.
However, to please his clients, he ,said that the external
marks of the Sikhs separated them from the Hindus and once these
were lost, they relapsed into Hinduism. Hence, Hinduism was a
danger to Sikhism and the external marks must be preserved by
the Sikhs at all costs. Precisely because there was a fun-
damental unity, the accidental difference had to be pushed to
the utmost and made much of. From then onwards, "Sikhism in
danger" became the cry of many British scholar-
administrators


Hindu-Sikh Relationship (part 7/10)
-----------------------------------

Lepel Henry Griffen postulated that Hinduism had always been
hostile to Sikhism and even socially the two had been anta-
gonistic. One Max Arthur Macauliffe, a highly placed Brit-
ish administrator, became the loudest spokesman of this thesis.
He told the Sikhs that Hinduism was like a "boa con-
strictor of the Indian forests," which "winds its opponent and
finally causes it to disappear in its capacious interior."
The Sikhs "may go that way," he warned. He was pained to see
that the Sikhs regarded themselves as Hindus which was,
"in direct opposition to the teachings of the Gurus." He put
words into the mouth of the Gurus and invented prophecies by
them which anticipated the advent of the white race to whom the
Sikhs would be loyal. He described "the pernicious effects of
the up-bringing of Sikh youths in a Hindu atmosphere." These
youths, he said, "are ignorant of the Sikh religion and of
itsprophecies in favour of the English and contract exclusive
customs and prejudices to the extent of calling us Malechhas
or persons of impure desires, and inspire disgust for the
customs and habits of Christians."

It was a concerted effort in which the officials, the scho-
lars and the missionaries all joined. In order to separate the
Sikhs, they were even made into a sect of Islam. For example,
one Thomas Patrick Hughes, who had worked as missionary for twen-
ty years in Peshawar, edited the Dictionary of Islam. The
work itself is scholarly but, like most European scholarship, it
had a colonial inspiration. The third biggest article in this
work, after Muhammad and the Quran, is on Sikhism. It devotes
one-fourth of a page to the Sunnis and, somewhat more justly,
seven pages to the Shias, but devotes eleven and a half pages to
the Sikhs! Probably, the editor himself thought it rather exces-
sive; for he offers an explanation to the Orientalists who "may,
perhaps be suprised to find that Sikhism has been treated as a
sect of Islam." Indded, it is surprising to the non-Orientalists
too. For it must be a strange sect of Islam where the word
'Muhammad' does not occur even once in the writings of its found-
er, Nanak. But the inclusion of such an article "in the present
work seemd to be most desirable." It was apolicy matter.

Macauliffe and others provided categories which became
the thought equipment of subsequent Sikh intellectuals. But
the British Government did not neglect the quicker administra-
tive and political measures. They developed a special Army Policy
which gave results even in the short run. While they disarmed
the nattion as whole, they created privileged enclaves of what
they called martial races.

The British had conquered the Punjab with the help of Poora-
biya soldiers, many of them Brahmins, but they played a rebel-
lious role in 1857. So the British dropped them and sought
other elements. The Sikhs were chosen. In 1855, there were
only 1500 Sikh soldiers, mostly Mazhabis. In 1910, there were
33 thousands out of a total of 174 thousands, this time mostly
Jats--just a little less than one-fifth of the total army
strength. Their very recruitment was calculated to give them a
sense of separateness and exclusiveness. Only such Sikhs were re-
cruited who observed the marks of the Khalsa. They were sent to
receive baptism according to the rites prescribed by Guru Govind
Singh. Each regiment had its own granthis. The greetings ex-
changed between the British officers and the Sikh soldiers were
Wahguruji ka Khalsa ! Wahguruji ki Fateh. A secret C I.D.
Memorandum, prepared by D. Patfie, Assistant Director, Criminal
Intellegence, Government of India (1911), says that "every en-
deavour has been made to preserve them (Sikh soldiers) from the
contagion of idolatory," a name the colonial-missionaries gave
to Hinduism. Thanks to these measures, the "Sikhs in the Indian
Army have been studiously nationalized," Macaulille observed.
About the meaning of this "nationalization", we are left in no
doubt. Petrie explains that it means that the Sikhs were "en-
couraged to regard themselves as a totally distinct and separate
nation." No wonder, the British congratulated themselves and
held that the "preservation of Sikhism as a separate religion
was largely due to the action of the British officers," as a
British administrator put it.



Hindu-Sikh Relationship (part 8/10)
------------------------------------

The British also worked on a more political level. Singh
Sabhas were started, manned mostly by ex-soldiers. These worked
under Khalsa Diwans established at Lahore and Amritsar. Later
on, in 1902, the two Diwans were amalgamated into one body--the
Chief Khalsa Diwan, providing political leadership to the Sikhs.
They all wore the badge of loyalty to the British. As early as
1872, the loyal Sikhs supported the cruel suppression of the
Namdhari Sikhs who had started a Swadeshi movement. They were
described as a "wicked and misguided sect." The same forces
described the Ghadarites in 1914 as "rebels" who should be dealt
with mercilessly.

These organisations also spearheaded the movement for the
de-Hinduization of the Sikhs and preached that the Sikhs were
distinct from the Hindus. Anticipating the Muslims, they repre-
sented to the British Government as far back as 1888 that they be
recognized as a separate community. They expelled the Brahmins
from the Har Mandir, where the latter had worked as priests. They
also threw out the idols of "Hindu" Gods from this temple which
were installed there. We do not know what these Gods were and
how "Hindu" they were, but most of them are adoringly mentioned
in the poems of Guru Nanak. At any rate, more often than
not, iconoclasm has hardly much spiritual content; on the other
hand, it is a misanthropic idea and is meant to show one's ha-
tred for one's neighbour. In this particular case, it was also
meant to impress the British with one's loyalty. Hitherto,
the Brahmins had presided over different Sikh ceremonies which
were the same as those of the Hindus. There was now a
tendency to have separate rituals. In 1909, the Ananda Marriage
Act was passed.

Thus the seed sown by the British began to bear fruit. In
1898, Kahan Singh, the Chief Minister of Nabha and a pacca loyal-
ist wrote a pamplet: Hum Hindu Nahin Hain (We are not Hindus).
This note, first struck by the British and then picked up by the
collaboratonists, has not lacked a place in subsequent Sikh
writings and politics, leading eventually in our own time to an
intransigent politics and terroristic activities. But that the
Sikhs learn their history from the British is not peculiar to
them. We all do it. With the British, we all believe that India
is merely a land where successive invaders made good, and that
this country is only a miscellany of ideas and peoples-- in
short, a nation withour a nomos or personality or vision of its
own.

The British played their game as best as they could, but they
did not possess all the cards. The Hindu-Sikh ties were too inti-
mate and numerous and these continued without much strain at the
grass-root level. Only a small section maintained that there was
a "distinct line of cleavage between Hinduism and Sikhism"; but a
large section, as the British found, "favours, or at any rate
views with indifference the re-absorption of the Sikhs into Hin-
duism." They found it sad to think that very important classes of
Sikhs like Nanak Panthis or Sahajdahris did not even think it
"in- cumbent on them to adopt the ceremonial and social obser-
vances of Govind Singh," and did not "even in theory, reject the
authority of the Brahmins."

The glorification of the Sikhs was welcome to the British to
the extent it separated them from the Hindus, but it had its
disadvantages too. Mr. Petrie found it a "constant source of
danger," something which tended to give the Sikhs a "wind in the
head." Sikh nationalism once stimulated refused British guidance
and developed its own ambitions. The neo-nationalist Sikhs
thought of a glorious past and had dreams of a glorious future,
but neither in his past nor in his future' "was there a place for
the British Officer," as a British administrator complained.
Any worthwhile Sikh nationalism was incompatible with loyalty to
the British. When neo-nationalists like Labh Singh spoke of the
past "sufferings of the Sikhs at the hands of the Muhammadans,"
the British found in the statement a covert reference to them-
selves. When they admired the Gurus for "their devotion to reli-
gion and their disregard for life," the British heard in it a
call to sedition.

Sikh nationalism was meant to hurt the Hindus, but in fact it
hurt the British. For what nourished Sikh nationalism also nour-
ished Hindu nationalism. The glories of Sikh Gurus are part of
the glories of the Hindus, and these have been sung by poets like
Tagore and others. On the other hand, as Christians and as
rulers, the British could not go very far in this direction. In
fact, in their more private consultations, they spoke contemp-
tuously of the Gurus. Mr. Petrie considered Guru Arjun Dev as
"essentially a mercenary," who was "prepared to fight for or
against the Mughul as convenience or profit dictated;" he tells
us how "Tegh Bahadur, as an infidel, a robber and a rebel, was
executed at Delhi by the Moghul authorities." As imperialists,
they naturally sympathised with the Moghuls and shared their
view-point.

        Hindu-Sikh Relationship (part 9/10)
-----------------------------------

While the British were devotedly busy consolidating the Empire, other
forces detrimental to their labour were also at work. Indians were an ancient
people and they could not be kept in subjugation for long. The Time-Spirit was
also against the British. Even during the heydays of Sikh loyalty to the
British, there were many rebellious voices. One Baba Nihal Singh wrote (1885)
a book entitled Khurshid-i-Khalsa, which "dealt in an objectionable manner with
the British occupation of the Punjab." When Gokhale visited the Punjab in 1907,
he was received with great enthusiasm by the students of the Khalsa College, an
institution started in 1892 specifically to instil loyalty in the Sikh youth.The
horses of his carriage were taken out and it was pulled by the students.He spoke
from the college Dharamsala from which the Granth Sahib was specially removed to
make room for him. It was here that the famous poem, Pagri Sainbhal, Jatta, was
first recited by Banke Dayal, editor of Jhang Sayal; it became the battle-song
of the Punjab revolutionaries,

There was a general awakening which could not but affect the Sikh youth,
too, Mr. Petrie observes that the "Sikhs have not been, and are not, immune
from the disloyal influences which have been at work among other sections of
the populace."

A most powerful voice of revolt came from America where many Punjabis, mostly
Sikh Jat ex-soldiers, had settled. Many of them had been ln Hong Kong and other
places as soldiers in the British regiments. There they heard of a far-away
country where people were free and prosperous. Their imagination was fired.
The desire to emigrate was reinforced by very bad conditions at home. The
drought of 1905-1907 and the epidemic in its wake had killed two million people
in the Punjab. In the first decade of this century, the region suffered a net
decrease in population. Due to new fiscal and monetary policies and new
economic arrangements, there was a large-scaie alienation of land from the
cultivators and hundreds of thousands of the poor and middle peasants were
wiped out or fell into debt: Many of them emigrated and settled in
British Columbia, particularly Vancouver. Here they were treated with contempt.
They realized for the first time that their sorry status abroad was due to
their colonial status at home. They also began to see the link between
India's poverty and British imperialism. Thus many of them, once loyal soldiers
who took pride in this fact, turned rebels. They raised the banner of Indian
nationalism and spoke against the Singh Sabhas, the Chief Khalsa Diwan and the
Sardar Bahadurs at home. They spoke of Bharat-Mata; their heroes were patriots
and revolutionaries from Bengal and Maharashtra, and not their co-religionists
in the Punjab whom they called the "traffikers of the country."

The earlier trends, some of them mutually opposed, became important components
of subsequent Sikh politics. The pre-war politics continued under new labels at
an accelerated pace. During this period, social fraternization with the Hindus
continued as before, but politically the Sikh community became more sharply
defined and acquired a greater group-consciousness.

In the pre-war period, an attempt had been made to de-Hinduize Sikhism;
now it was also Khalsa-ized. Hitherto, the Sikh temples were managed by non-
Khalsa Sikhs, mostly the Udasis, now these were seized and taken out of their
hands. Khalsa activists, named Akalis, "belonging to the Immortal," moved from
place to place and occupied different Gurudwaras. These eventually came under
control of the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee in 1925. From this point
onwards. Sikh religion was heavily politicalised. Those who controlled resources
of the temples controlled Sikh politics. The SGPC Act of 1925 defined Sikhs in
a manner which excluded the Sahaja dharis and included only the Khalsa. SGPC,
Akalis, Jathas became important in the life of the Sikh community. Non-Khalsa
Sikhs became second-grade members of the community. The Akalis representing the
Khalsa, acquired a new self-importance. In their new temper, they even came
into conflict with the British on several occasions. The Government was less
sure now of their unquestioning loyalty. As a result, their share in the Army
fell from 19.2 percent in 1914 to 13.58 percent in 1930; while the Muslim share
rose from 11 to 22 percent during the same period.

The pericd of the freedom struggle was not all idealism and warm-hearted
sacrifice. There were many divisive forces, black sheep, and tutored roles.
But the role of the Akalis was not always negative. They provided a necessary
counterweight to the Muslim League politics. On the eve of independence, the
League leaders tried to woo the Akalis. But, by and large, they were spurned.
For a time, some Akali leaders played with the idea of a separate Khalistan,
and the British encouraged them to present their case. But they found that they
were in a majority only in two Tehsils and the idea of a separate state was
not viable.

Independence came accompanied by division of the country and large displacement
of population. The country faced big problems but she managed to keep above
water. We were also able to retain democracy. But just when we thought we had
come out of the woods, divisive forces which lay low for a time reappeared. The
old drama with a new cast began to be enacted again. Muslim separative politics,
helped by huge Arab funds, has become active again. Christian missions have
their own ambitions. They both are looking at the politics of extremist Sikhs
with great hope and interest and they find it fits well with their own plans.




Hindu-Sikh Relationship (part 10/10)
------------------------------------

When the British showed solicitude for the minorities,
national India resented it and called it a British game. But
surprisingly enough, the game continues to be played even after
the British left. The minorities are encouraged to feel insecure
and aggrieved. The minority stick is found handy to beat the
majority. Hindu-baiting is politically profitable and intellectually
fashionable. Constantly under attack, a Hindu tries to save
himself by self-accusation; he behaves as if he is making
amends for being a Hindu.

The atmosphere provided hot-house conditions for the growth
of divisive politics. Our Sikh brethren too remembered the old
lesson (never really forgotten), taught to them by the British,
that they were different. Macauliffe's works published in the
first decade of the century were reissued in the sixties. More
recent Sikh scholars wrote histories of the Sikhs which were
variations of the same theme. In no case, they provided a
different vision and perspective.

In the last two decades, another separating factor too has
been silently at work. Thanks to the Green Revolution and varioaus
other factors, the-Sikhs have become relatively more rich
and prosperous. No wonder, they have begun to find that the
Hindu bond is not good enough for them and they seek a new
identity readily available to them in their names and outer
symbols. This is an understanble human frailty.

"You have been our defenders," Hindus tell the Sikhs. But in
the present psychology, the compliment wins only contempt --and I
believe rightly. For self-despisement is the surest way of losing
a friend or even a brother. It also gives the Sikhs an exaggerated
self-assessment.

Under the pressure of this psychology, grievences were
manufactured; extreme slogans were put forward with which even
moderate elements had to keep pace. In the last few years, even
the politics of murder was introduced. Finding no check, it knew
not where to stop; it became a law unto itself; it began to
dictate, to bully. Camps came up in India as well as across the
border, where young men were taught killing, sabotage and
guerilla warfare. The temple at Amritsar became an arsenal, a
fort, a sanctuary for criminals. This grave situation called for
necessary action which caused some unavoidable damage to the
building. When this happened, the same people who looked at the
previous drama, either helplessly or with an indulgent eye, felt
outraged. There were protest meetings, resolutions, desertions
from the army, aid committees for the suspvects apprehended,
and even calls and vows to take revenge. The extremists
were forgotten. There were two standards at work; there was a
complete lack of self-reflection even among the more moderate and
responsible Sikh leaders.

The whole thing created wide-spread resentment all over India
which burst into a most unwholesome violence when Mrs. Indira
Gandhi was assassinated. The befoggers have again got busy and
they explain the whole tragedy in terms of collusion between
the politicians and the police. But this conspiracy A growing
resentment at the arrogant Akali politics is the main cause of
this fearful heppening.

However, all is not dark. The way the common Hindus and Sikhs
stood for each other in the recent happenings in the Punjab and
Delhi show how much in common they have. In spite of many recent
provocations, lapses and misunderstandings, they have shown that
they are one in blood, history, aspiration and interest. In a
time so full of danger and mischief, this agelong unity proved
the most solid support. But seeing what can happen, we should
not take this unity for granted. We should cherish it, cultivate
it, re-emphasize it. We can grow great together; in separation,
we can only hurt each other.

<end>
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