SINGH SABHA and OTHER SOCIO-RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS in the PUNJAB 1997, THIRD Edition

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Editor (vi) THE NIRANKARIS Dr. Man Singh Nirankari 1 THE SIKH’S STRUGGLE AGAINST STRANGULATION Saint Nihal Singh 12 ORIGINS OF THE SINGH SABHA Prof. Harbans Singh 21 THE SINGH SABHA MOVEMENT Prof. Teja Singh 31 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SINGH SABHA MOVEMENT: CONSTITUTIONAL ASPECTS Gurdarshan Singh 45 CHIEF KHALSA DIWAN: FORTY YEARS OF SERVICE (1902-1951) 59 SIKH EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCE Dr. Ganda Singh 69 THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS AT THE TIME OF ANNEXATION Dr. Roshan Lal Ahuja 72 KHALSA COLLEGE AMRITSAR Prof. Teja Singh 78 BHAI JAWAHIR SINGH: ARYA SAMAJ-SINGH SABHA 86 THE SIKH KANYA MAHAVIDYALA Sardul Singh Caveeshar 99 GIRLS’ EDUCATION IN THE PUNJAB Sanaullah Khan 113 THE AKALI MOVEMENT Sardul Singh Caveeshar 123 THE AKALIS AND SWARAJ 147 THE KUKA MOVEMENT Dr. Bhagat Singh 153 INTRODUCTION OF PANJABI LANGUAGE IN PATIALA STATE 162 EXEMPTION OF KIRPAN FROM RESTRICTIONS 169 THE ‘RAJ KAREGA KHALSA’ COUPLET Dr. Ganda Singh 180 THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE PUNJAB Dr. C.H. Loehlin 183 THE BRAHMO SAMAJ Devinder Kumar Verma 207 THE ARYA SAMAJ J.N. Farquhar 213 THE DEV SAMAJ Prof. S.P. Kanal 241 THE CHET RAMIS J.N. Farquhar 253 THE AHMADIYAH MOVEMENT Dr. Wilfred Cantwell Smith 258 THE FIRST POPULAR MOVEMENT IN THE PANJAB Prof. Gurmukh Nihal Singh 263 BOOK REVIEWS THE SIKHS, in the AURANGZEB AND HIS TIMES Dr. Ganda Singh 267 AKALI MORCHIAN DA ITIHAS Mohinder Singh 277 AKALI MORCHIAN DA ITIHAS Dr. Bhagat Singh 281 CHRONOLOGY 285 INDEX 291 INTRODUCTION In view of the celebration of the centenary of the Singh Sabha movement in the country in 1973, this issue of the Punjab Past and Present is being devoted to it. In order to understand the historical background of this movement and to study its impact on the life of the people, articles on the Nirankari and Kuka movements, the Chief Khalsa Diwan and its Educational Committee, the Gurdwara Reform movement and some other allied subjects have also been included in this issue. Movements such as the Brahmo Samaj, the Arya Samaj, the Dev Samaj, the Chet Ramis and the Ahmadiyahs also belong to this period. Articles on these have been included in this volume as well. Of these socio-religious movements, the Singh Sabha, the Ahmadiyahs, also known as the Qadiani or Mirzai, and the Chet Rami are the only indigenous ones, having been born in the Panjab. The Brahmo Samaj came here from Bengal. The founder of the Arya Samaj, Swami Dayananda, was born in Gujrat and has established his Samaj at first in Bombay. Pandit Shiv Narayan Agnihotri, renamed Dev Guru Bhagwan and Dev Atma, belonged to Uttar Pradesh. The state boundaries within a country, however, can seldom hold back the growth, development and spread of ideas. No wonder these movement soon acquired all-India character. “Religion there is but one, the religion of Truth, if any one were to practise it with firmness,” says Guru Nanak - Eko Dharm drirhai sach koi.1 And the illimitable God pervades His creation all over, says he - Balihari qudrat vassia, tera ant najae lakhia.2 The differences that appear to divide one religion from the other are all due to historical, geographical and political factors that surrounded them at the time of their birth, development and expansion, and it was these factors which determined the attitudes of the followers of one towards those of the other. These attitudes had at their bottom egoism, self-conceitedness and self-assertiveness which have in all ages, and in all countries, been responsible for hatreds, tensions, bloodshed and wars resulting in the destruction of countless human beings in the name of religion. This irreligionism is the worst of crimes against God, religion and humanity. Religion is not mere profession of some creed or observance of certain rites and rituals or adoption of some signs and symbols. Religion is the way of life of honest and truthful living with the service of humanity as the basic principle of conduct. The signs and symbols are aids to the maintenance of religious discipline. A religion appeals to people to the extent that its votaries live up to its teachings and are of service to their fellow beings without distinction of clime or creed. Of this we have the living example in Christians. They came from the far-off comer of Western Europe-from Spain and Portugal-to the coasts and interior of southern India, and, in due course of time, won with love and sympathy, thousands of suppressed and depressed people for Christianity from the homeland of the Brahmans who proclaimed the theory of Eko Brahma dwitiya nāstee-there is but one Creator and no other-while in actual practice they treated some classes of people as unapproachable and untouchable. This sort of hypocrisy has been responsible for distinctions and hatred between man and man in India and for the spiritual and social weakness, and political downfall of her people. With the integrity of faith and practice, the followers of the great Prophet Muhammad could carry the message of Islam from Arabia to the land’s end in Europe within eighty years of his death. It was with sincere faith in the teachings of the Gurus and with unflinching spirit of service towards their countrymen that the Sikhs could face the tyranny of the Mughal emperors for over forty years and at last emerged triumphant as liberators of the Punjab. On the 10th of December, 1710, Emperor Bahadur Shah ordered through a royal edict the wholesale extermination of the Sikh people as rebels against the Mughal Government. But, in spite of it, the Sikhs did not relax their struggle for the emancipation of the people of the Punjab from the galling yoke of Mughal tyranny. To them the Muslims were as much the people of the country as the Sikhs and Hindus and deserved to be liberated from the oppression of the local rulers. The local Muslims also knew that the Sikhs’ was purely a political struggle. Within four and a half months of the issue of the Imperial edict for a general massacre of the Sikhs wherever found, as many as five thousand Muslims joined the Sikhs against the Mughal imperialists with fullest freedom for Muslim prayer and sermons in the Sikh army (Akbar-i-Darbar-i-Mualla, April 28,1711). This is self explanatory. In fact, there have always been happiest of relations between the Muslims and the Sikhs ever since the birth of Sikhism in the fifteenth century. The minor political differences at times-and they were very rare-may be ignored, as differences in the field of politics are at times seen even among the people belonging to the same religion. The greatest contribution of these movements was in kindling among the people a spirit of quest in religious thought and an enthusiasm for social reform. The lead was taken by Christians who soon directed their activities from big cities to small towns and villages where their services, they felt, were needed the most for the amelioration of the condition of the depressed classes who had not only been neglected but suppressed by the Brahmanical Hindus. This won them proselytes from among the so-called low caste Chuhras and Chamars, many of whom, with improved economic condition, soon rose to better social status. The credit for the establishment of most of the homes for lepers, the crippled and the handicapped also goes to the Christian missionaries whose spirit for selfless service to suffering humanity can hardly be excelled. The Arya Samaj, the Dev Samaj and the Singh Sabhas-particularly the Chief Khalsa Diwan and its Sikh Educational Committee-have done commendable work in the field of education for boys and girls and in raising social and political consciousness in the country. II The Sikhs had to begin their work under the most inauspicious circumstances. It was only a little over two decades that they had lost their kingdom. Some of the Sikh Sardars and men of influence were still locked up in jails, licking their unhealed wounds. The jagirs and lands of many families had been confiscated with their younger generations living in helpless poverty, dreaming of the glorious past that was once theirs. And who on earth would not wish and struggle for its return? The British, officials, therefore, looked with suspicion upon every effort on the part of the Sikhs at organizing their community and creating an awakening even for religious and social reform. The Kuka movement was purely religious in its aims and objects but the officials had smelt a rat in it and had suppressed it in a ruthless manner. They blew away from the guns as many as sixty-five Kukas without any formal trial and without proving any charges against them. These were also the days when Maharaja Duleep Singh, the deposed and exiled sovereign of the Panjab, was struggling in England for justice through a formal trial of his claims by the Law Lords there. Failing to receive any satisfaction from the British Government, the Maharaja left England, went to Russia and transferred his loyalty to the Czar in the hope of marching upon India with Russian help. Nothing came out of it however, and the Maharaja returned to France where he died in Paris on October 22, 1893. The chief agent of the Maharaja Duleep Singh in India during his struggle against the British Government in the eighteen eighties was the well known Sardar Thakur Singh Sandhawalia of Raja Sansi, the originator of the Singh Sabha at Amritsar in 1873. It was he who had gone to England to brief the Maharaja on religious and political matters and was responsible for his public renunciation of Christianity and return to the faith of his ancestors.

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