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Punjab: Struggle for
Freedom through the Ages
Ganda Singh
 The
Punjab has been called the sword-arm of India. It has been truly so
throughout the ages. The geographical position of the Punjab has
always placed its sons as sentinels at the north-western gates of
India. All important invasions of this great subcontinent have been
led through the northern passes, crossing the Indus near Attock.
Like the early immigrants, the Greeks, the Afghans, the Mughals and
the Iranis and the Durranis swooped down upon the country from the
north-west and the Punjabis had always to face the first blows in
its defence. But never did an invader have an easy walk over. The
people of the Punjab offered a bold front and a stout resistance.
Smeared with Punjabi blood and fat, the blunted swords of the
invaders were not unoften rendered useless for further execution in
India. The Punjabis fought for every inch of the land and continued
to fight single-handed even the losing battles, year in and year
out, not only for decades but for centuries. The freedom-loving
Punjabis knew no defeat; if they fell down overpowered and lay
unconscious for a time, weakened by excessive bleeding, they rose
again to continue the struggle with renewed vigour. They won or they
died fighting. This trait is common to the land of the five rivers
and is still traceable in the character of the blue-blooded sons of
the Punjab who would prefer death to a dishonourable existence.
This is not true of them in the field of battle alone. It is equally
true of them in other fields as well. Their struggle against
religious bigotry, social tyranny or political domination goes back
to the days of early Aryan immigration. They would not accept the
Vedic or Brahmanical culture as propounded by its priests. For
centuries they stood against its dogmas. The independence of the
Punjabis is adversely commented upon by the conservative Aryan
author of the Mahabharata who described them as "living in a state
of kingless anarchy and as possessing no Brahmans, living in petty
villages and governed by princes who supported them by internecine
war." They were so free from social taboos and inhibitions and in
religious practices and observances as to invite the criticism of
the Brahmanical Aryans who called them uncultured. "Not only were
there no Brahmins but there were no castes", continues the same
author. "The population had no respect for the Veda and offered no
sacrifices to the gods. They were rude and uncultured, given to
drinking spirituous liquors and eating all kinds of flesh." (Grierson,
Ling. Sur. IX., Mahabharata)
During his invasion, Alexander the Great, found the Punjab sown with
a rich crop of small states, like the democratic City States of
Greece, all self-sufficient and independent. It was due to their
love of independence and stubborn opposition at every stage in the
country that the progress of the Macedonian advance became slow and
was ultimately checked on the border of the Jullundur doab. All
eloquence of Alexander, the allurements of rich booty and promises
of glorious triumphs in the Gangetic doab failed to prevail upon the
exhausted Greek soldiers to move further into the country. Alexander
was, therefore, forced to beat a retreat. Immediately after the
departure of Alexander from the Punjab, the people of the subjugated
areas rose in rebellion, killed the Macedonian governor and
dispersed the Greek force.
From the second century B.C. to the middle of the sixth century A.D.
came in waves of the Parthians, the Sythians and the Huns who were,
in turn, subverted by the Turks in 555. Then came in the Muslims.
Their first inroad in India took place in 711 AD under Muhammad-bin-Qasim
who conquered Sindh and laid the foundation of the Muslim rule in
India. The onrushing Muslim invaders, who had, within the brief
space of eighty years from the great Prophet's death become the
masters not only of Arabia but also of Persia, Syria, Western
Turkistan, Sindh, Egypt and southern Spain, received the first real
check to their India-ward advance in the Punjab. It took as many as
two hundred and fifty years before they could have a foothold in the
country. The first Muslim dynasty to be established in this country
was that of the Ghaznavis (960-1189). And when under the Lodhis. the
pinch of their tyranny was felt everywhere and the common man was so
cowed down that he was afraid even to remonstrate, it was a saint of
the Punjab, Guru Nanak, who protested against it and sang it aloud
to his people. Unlike many other saints and reformers of India, he
did not confine himself to a life of prayer and devotion. He was a
man of the people. He lived and moved amongst them. His heart bled
to see the political condition of the country which he described in
one of his hymns in the Majh ki Var. He says:
Kings are butchers, cruelty their knife.
Dharma, or the sense of duty, has taken wings and vanished.
Falsehood prevails like the darkness of the darkest night.
The
moon of truth is not to be seen anywhere.
I
have tired myself in search but the path (of righteousness) is not
visible.
In
Ego the world is suffering; how shall it be saved?'
Guru Nanak was not the person to sit idle in slumbering meditation
while his people were groaning under the heel of the oppressor and
were being slowly squeezed out of social and political existence. He
knew his countrymen and their potentialities which lay dormant in
the deep and inner recesses of their emasculated minds. They had
only to be relumed with Promethian fire, and this he undertook to
do.
The
atmosphere was not favourable. As he raised his voice against the
oppression of the Muslim ruling class, they could not take kindly to
him. On the other hand, his field-work was mostly amongst the
Hindus, who had not only been politically crushed but had also been
religiously exploited and socially suppressed by the priestly class.
The Brahman could not see them freed from his shackles. Guru Nanak
was, therefore, dubbed as a kurahiya, a heretic. But he had
unflinching faith in God, and in his own mission. He believed that
he could work miracles in the transformation of His creatures.
This was a veiled message of hope to the people to shake off their
cowardice and dependence. He soon created the institutions of sangat
(mixed congregations) and pangat (dining together) which brought
before the people the vision of a classless democratic society where
the high and the low and the rich and the poor could move freely and
claim equal status. This raised Guru Nanak into a symbol and
tradition of manly independence and self-reliance. His torch was
taken up by his devoted successors who gave to the Punjabis a
unifying organization and a rallying centre.
The last of the line was the soldier-saint Guru Gobind Singh who
created a new people of them by a process of complete
democratization. His humility and voluntary submission to the
discipline created by himself are living monuments of a true and
honest democracy and stand unparalleled in the history of religious,
social and political institutions of the world.
The
power-mad Rajas of the Shivaliks looked upon this popular movement
with suspicion and conspired with the great Mughals to smother it in
its infancy. Thus was Guru Gobind Singh forced to take to the sword
in defence of his people and ideal. He had to fight as many as
fourteen battles and was decisively victorious in twelve of them.
This emboldened the people of the Punjab for greater ventures for
freedom from Mughal tyranny. After the death of the last Guru, his
disciple Banda Singh launched upon an armed offensive against the
Mughals and succeeded in freeing the entire eastern and southern
Punjab (which now forms part of India). But the Mughal Government
was yet too strong for the rising aspirants. Banda Singh and his
comrades were captured and tortured to death at Delhi in March-June,
1716.
Although Banda Singh and his companions are no more and their dust
returned to dust two hundred and sixty years ago, their names still
remain writ large on the roll of immortality for their selfless
sacrifices at the altar of Independence. Banda Singh was the first
man in the Punjab not only to raise the social status of the
down-trodden shudras and the so-called untouchables but also to
place them on equal level with those of the upper classes in the
adminstration of his new State. He introduced one of the greatest
fiscal reforms in the country by abolishing the Zamindari system of
the Mughals and made the actual cultivators of the soil the
proprietors of their holdings.
And
above everything else, it was through him that the long-lost path of
conquest and practical freedom was discovered by the people of the
Punjab.
The
Sikhs had now to face a regular campaign of wholesale extermination
launched against them by the Mughal government. 'A royal edict,'
according to the Akhbare-i-Darbar-i-Mualla and the Miftah-u-Tawarikh, "was issued by Emperor
Bahadur Shah on
December 10, 1710, and repeated by Emperor Farrukh Siyar ordering
all who belonged to the faith of Sikhism Nanak-prastan to he
indiscriminately put to death wherever found". And "to give effect
to this mandate a reward," according to John Malcolm, "was offered
for the head of every Sikh''.
For
a time the movement appeared to have died out. In fact, it had gone
underground and was gathering strength. The people found a
favourable opportunity to rise again during the Invasion of Nadir
Shah in 1739. While the Punjabis were preparing to fight the common
enemy, the Imperial courtiers at Delhi were carrying on intrigues
with him. In fact, he had been invited to India by them.
The
history of the Punjab during the thirties, forties and early fifties
of the eighteenth century is full of harrowing tales of the
executions of the rebel Sikhs, not only of the leaders but also of
the common men, women, and children in hundreds and thousands.
Minars and pyramids of their heads were raised in Lahore and their
headless bodies were piled up in large heaps in the Bazar Nakhas on
the site of the present Landa Bazar.
The
governorship of Mir Mannu is notorious in the annals of the Punjab
as responsible for hacking to pieces young babies in the presence of
their mothers and hanging these pieces round their mothers' necks,
evidently to overawe them to betray their menfolk fighting for
freedom. And history does not record a single instance of these
valiant fighters swerving from the path of sacrifice which they had
chosen for themselves.
A
new calamity swooped down upon India in the middle of the eighteenth
century when
Ahmed Shah Durrani led his Afghan hordes for booty and conquest.
This was a new danger to the fighters for freedom. They had not been
able to shake off the old Mughal yoke completely when a new one
threatened them with worse and greater oppression.
The
sons of the Punjab, however, accepted the challenge and were at last
successful in pushing back the Afghans beyond the Indus. The victory
of Sirhind on January 14, 1764, on the third anniversary of the
Third battle of Panipat, removed from the cis-Sutlej Punjab every
trace of foreign bondage and paved the way for the freedom of the
trans-Sutlej Punjab in the following year.
The
country was, however, not destined to enjoy its independence for
more than eighty-four years when, in 1849, it fell a victim to
machinations of the British in India.
The
Punjab was still writhing and chaffing at the loss of its
independence when the mutiny of 1857 took place. The native
regiments from the UP, which had rebelled, had fought against the
Punjab in 1845-46, when it was struggling for its independence, and
had taken a leading part in subjugating the country for the British
in 1848-49. The memory was so fresh that the Punjabis could not take
up the cause of their immediate enemies without being reconciled,
consulted and invited. Moreover, the people of the Punjab,
particularly the Sikhs, had suffered very heavily at the hands of
the Mughals during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The
mutineers now wished to restore a descendant of theirs to the throne
of Delhi. Him the People of the Punjab could not be persuaded to
fight for,
However, the spirit of independence was still there, and within four
years of the mutiny it came to the surface in the shape of the Kooka
movement under the leadership of Baba Ram Singh of Bhaini. The
Kookas in a way, boycotted the British machinery of administration
and communication in the province and set up a parallel government
with their own Subas (district administration). They tried to
establish relations with Nepal and Afghanistan. Their activities
were soon detected by the Government and the police kept a regular
vigilance over them. In January 1872, they came in conflict with the
local authorities at Malerkotla where they were apprehended and
sixtyfive of them were blown away from the guns.
Baba Ram Singh and twelve of his lieutenants were exiled from the
Punjab and the headquarters of the movement at Bhaini (District
Ludhiana) was watched by the police for some fifty years. Baba Ram
Singh died in exile at Rangoon on November 29, 1884.
The
spring and summer of 1907 saw the beginnings of the new political
agitation in the Punjab in connection with the Colony Bill of 1901
which was regarded as unduly oppressive to the Punjabi colonists in
the Lyallpur district. The stirring poems of Banke
Dayal (Pagri Sambhal O Jatta) and the fire-breathing speeches of
Sardar Ajit Singh worked up the rural agriculturists against the
Government. Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh were deported to Burma. The
agitation was, however, successful in pursuading the Viceroy Lord
Minto to withhold his sanction to the Bill.
Ajit Singh disappeared to Persia and then to the U.S.A. where he got
in touch with the Hindustan Ghadar Party of San Francisco organized
by the Punjabis there on November 1, 1913.
The object of this revolutionary
association was to spread rebellion in India and free the country
from under the yoke of the British.The Ghadarites were pioneers in
the field of an armed revolution for Indian Independence on an
extensive scale.
The Ghadarites organized a regular
rebellion in a number of Punjabi regiments and the date fixed for it
was February 21, 1915, later on changed to February 19. But as the
secret had leaked out, the precautionary measures of the Government
proved an effective check. The leaders and active workers were all
arrested and tried under three different cases. Seventeen of them
were hanged and a large number of them were sent to jail for life.
The Komagata-maru episode (1914) and the
Raqabganj Delhi agitation added fresh fuel to the smouldering fire.
The massacre of Jallianwala Bagh at Amritsar followed by great
sacrifices of the Sikhs during the Akali movement in the Punjab lent
fresh vigour to the Indian National Congress. The Guru-ka-Bagh and
Jaito Morchas are memorable events in the history of the Punjab.They
lowered the prestige of the British bureaucrats in the eyes of the
masses who were encouraged to greater ventures in the cause of
India's independence.
The original organizer of the great INA
(Azad Hind Fauj), General Mohan Singh, was a son of the Punjab as
also were the first three heroes of the INA, General Shah Nawaz and
Colonels Prem K. Sehgal and Gurbakhash Singh Dhillon who were tried
by a court martial in 1945.
And in the end it may be mentioned that
if the Punjab leaders had not rejected the offers of Mr. Muhammad
All Jinnah and had not protested against the inclusion of the Punjab
in Pakistan, the Land of Five Rivers would, perhaps, have been
completely lost to India.
(Courtesy Punjab Past and Present vol
X, pp 1-2, 1993)
15 August, 2007
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