The roots of the farmer movement lie in the Sikh cultural tradition, where acting politically and justly, even in the face of certain death, is an aspect of religious practice
The Sikh’s fearlessness, sense of sacrifice and empathy can be traced to their cultural tradition. Representation Pic
Farmers slated to hold a panchayat in Delhi next week will largely comprise the Sikhs, who baffle with their relentless quest to bend the government’s will, unmindful of the price they might have to pay. In the previous year-long struggle, as many as 700 protesting farmers died. They stand up not only for their interests but also for others—when Article 370 was abrogated, largescale protests broke out in Punjab, with participants holding placards that declared, “Our pain is shared, our enemy is shared.”
Four months later, the Sikhs of Punjab took to the streets again, to protest, and empathise, with Muslims over the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019. They need not have as the Act is beneficial to Sikh citizens of the neighbouring countries. Last year, anger at the plight of Kuki women in Manipur was expressed widely in Punjab. Wish more Sikhs were in other states than are!
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In contrast to the trend of appropriating mosques, Punjab has seen, according to its Waqf Board, 429 new mosques built and old ones repaired in the last two years. Among all states, Punjab has the highest population of Dalits—34 per cent—yet, after excluding the Northeast states, it was the fifth lowest on the 2022 chart of cases filed under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocity) Act. Uttar Pradesh tops with 12,287 cases, Punjab clocked 112.
The 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom did not spawn retaliatory riots in Punjab. To appreciate this, recall how the death of kar sevaks in a train set afire triggered the 2002 genocide of Muslims in Gujarat. Yes, Sikh militants killed Hindus in the 1980s and 1990s, but they targeted Sikhs as well, gunning down even Rajinder Kaur, daughter of Master Tara Singh, the proponent of Khalistan. During those decades, the State, too, ‘encountered’ Sikhs on the suspicion of being Khalistan supporters. Farmers and communists took on the Khalistanis, as Monday Blues narrated in the mid-day edition of January 18, 2021.
The Partition riots seemingly contradict the idea of Sikh restraint. But the riots in Punjab cannot be compared to those elsewhere in the country, for the killings there were because of the tacit alliance between Master Tara Singh and the rulers of princely states. They not only supplied the former’s supporters with arms, ammunition and vehicles, but also deployed their own armies to exterminate Muslims, says Bleeding Punjab Warns, a 1947 report of Dhanwantri and P C Joshi, both communists.
“The princes of these states…were finding that the popular movement for freedom and democracy was…a threat to their autocracy and privileges,” Dhanwantri and Joshi explain. Their view academic Ian Copland endorses in The Master and The Maharajas. Yet, in 1947, Malerkotla was not attacked because its then Muslim nawab was believed to have opposed Aurangzeb’s killing of Guru Gobind Singh’s two youngest sons.
The Sikh’s fearlessness, sense of sacrifice and empathy can be traced to their cultural tradition. Ponder over what Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, said, “If you want to play the game of love/then step onto My Path with your head on the palm of your hand…” True love for the Divine requires the readiness to die. It was thus that Guru Arjan Dev courted martyrdom, rather than convert to Islam, as Mughal emperor Jahangir demanded.
Academic Navdeep Mandair defines martyrdom as a “sacrificial death for a socially just cause.” It was, indeed, a just cause when Mughal emperor Aurangzeb was challenged by Guru Tegh Bahadur to convert him to Islam before compelling the Pandits of Kashmir to do so. Before Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded, he said, “The truly enlightened ones/Are those who neither incite fear in others/Nor fear anyone themselves.”
This can be the motto of our fraught times, a motto subliminally guiding the Sikhs’ political conduct. There exists the concept of Miri Piri, the two swords Guru Hargobind would wear, with Miri signifying the temporal power and Piri the spiritual power. This Sikh tradition obligates the Sikhs to “act politically and justly as an aspect of religious practice,” writes Mandair. All the examples I have cited above meet the yardstick of Miri Piri.
Guru Gobind Singh, whose four sons courted martyrdom, evolved the concept of Ardas, or special prayer, in which a person takes the vow that s/he would complete his/her mission or die. Ardas institutionalises the idea of sacrificial death for a just cause. Here is a 20th century example—in order to liberate the Nankana Sahib gurdwara from corrupt mahant Narain Das, Bhai Lachhman Dharowali led a band of 130 volunteers, in February 1921, there. He was told that Das was waiting for him, with 400 armed mercenaries. Bhai Lachhman did not retreat, for he had offered Ardas. Unarmed, he and his followers were mowed down. The refusal of farmers to withdraw the 2020-21 movement, without victory, is linked to the idea underlying Ardas.
Among my friends, there are some who, depressed over the politics of hate sweeping the Hindi heartland, remark that to keep intact their sanity, they should shift to Tamil Nadu or Kerala. I tell them that I’d rather go to Punjab, to live among the Sikhs, for no community in India is like theirs.
The writer is a senior journalist.
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