420.The Man in Blue – Guru Hargobind

Guru Hargobind was born in Guru Ki Wadali near Chheharta Sahib, to the west of Amritsar. He became the successor to Guru Arjan in 1606. In reaction to Guru Arjan’s martyrdom he started wearing two swords, and he erected a mount opposite Harmandr Sahib which he called the Akál Takhat, the throne of the Timeless One. He also used two Nishan Sahib’s.

All this was to symbolise that there was no separation between the worldly and the spiritual realm. In the eyes of the Mughal authorities he was challenging them and was behaving as if he was an independent nobleman.

Of course all Gurus, from Guru Nanak onwards, lived their life under one authority only, the authority of God.

According to the book ‘The Mughal Empire’ by John F Richards ‘[Guru] Hargobind adopted a new quasi-regal style. He wore two swords, held court, hunted with his retainers and built a fort at Amritsar as if he was a raja or a prince. Jahangir, apprised of this, moved to squash the young Sikh leader’s pretensions by arresting and imprisoning him in the state prison at Gwalior fort for two years (1609-1611)’.

It is a pity that the writer does not provide any reference to his source. Is the imprisonment of Guru Hargobind and his release, together with other political prisoners, mentioned in any Mughal source, or in any other document outside our own tradition ?

The SGPC website says : ‘There are divergent views regarding the detention period of Guru Sahib in the Gwalior Fort prison, but the most acceptable one seems to be three years from 1609 to 1612’.

We also have the puzzle about the connection between Guru’s release and Divali. Those desperate for an excuse to attach a Sikh meaning to Divali, claim that either Guru was set free on Divali or arrived back in Amritsar on Divali. As we do not even know the years of Guru’s imprisonment I do not think that claims about either date are very believable.

The battles of Guru with the Mughals are not mentioned in the book either, but I think I read in J D Cunningham’s ‘A History of the Sikhs’ that Teg Bahadur as a young man was described by Mughal sources as a dacoit, which points to his involvement in armed struggles with the Mughals.

Richards finishes his two paragraphs on Guru Hargobind with a mention of Guru’s move to the Himalayan foothills, where he lived like the ‘hilly rajas’ sheltered from too much interference by the Mughals. There was no further persecution of the Guru during Jahangir’s reign. There is no mention of the time Guru spent in the Kartarpur which is just west of Jalandhar.

419.The Man in Blue – Guru Arjan

While the debate on Khalsa, Khalas, Khalis and Khalisa is hotting up on the Sikh News Discussion and Man in Blue group, I am writing the second of the articles based on my reading of ‘The Mughal Empire’ by John F Richards.

On page 96 Richards writes ‘During Khusrau’s [Jahangir’s Son] ill fated coup in 1605, the rebel prince had a brief encounter with Arjun, the fifth Sikh Guru. At Goindwal … Arjun made the mistake of offering his blessing to Khusrau. Jahangir seems to have been consistently hostile to popularly venerated religious figures. In the emperor’s memoir he comments :

In Goindwal, which is on the river Biyah (Beas), there was a Hindu named Arjun, in the garments of sainthood and sanctity, so much so that he had captivated many of the simple-hearted 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 they had kept this shop warm. Many times it had occurred to me to put a stop to this vain affair or to bring him into the assembly of the people of Islam.
Jahangir, Tuzuk, 1, 72     

The writer then refers to the saffron mark made on Khusrau’s forehead by Guru Arjan. From previous pages in which Khusrau’s revolt is described it is clear that Jahangir treated very severely with anybody who had in any way supported Khusrau, and on page 97 Richards writes ‘Simply by making a finger-mark of saffron on Khusrau’s brow as an auspicious sign, Arjan suffered a fate similar to most of Khusrau’s followers’.

The quote from Jahangir’s diary is very interesting. I do not know if the diary also refers to Khusrau’s ‘tilak’. Mostly the tilak story and Hindu in Goindwal story are presented as two different or rival explanations of Guru Arjan’s martyrdom, but according to one website both stories are part of Jahangir’s ‘Tuzuk’.

Richards throws new light on this part of our history where he points to Jahangir’s hostility to popularly venerated religious figures, and the fact that even minor supporters of Khusrau were treated very severely.

On page 98 Richards tells us of Jahangir’s relationship with the widely venerated Vaishnava ascetic Gosain Jadrup. It proves the point that the Emperor was not against ‘Hindus’ as such, but was very weary of people like Guru Arjan, who did not live in a hut or a grotto somewhere far away, but  lived a full life in society.

From our point of view Jahangir would have done much better to follow Guru Arjan instead of the ascetic Gosain Jadrup !

Stop use of violence !

All Sikhs, Sikh organisations and Gurdwaré should undertake never again to use violence as a means to settle differences of opinion. There is no precedent from Guru’s days for this bad practice, the Guru taught us to stand up against injustice, not against opinions that we do not agree with.