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Sikh Theology
Raj Karega Khalsa
by Bhai Sahib Sirdar Kapur Singh
On the 20th July, 1975, a Government-sponsored, All Communities
Convention was held at Patiala to chalk out a programme
for the tercentenary celebrations of the martyrdom of Guru
Tegh Bahadur, addressing which the nonagenarian venerable
Sardar Bahadur, Bhai Jodh Singh, ex-vice-Chancellor of the
Patiala University, exhorted the audience, as the daily
Tribune, Chandigarh of the next morning tells us, that,
"In celebration of Guru's martyrdom a vigorous campaign
should be launched against the wrong belief that State Power
was necessary to sustain any religion. Politics, he emphasized,
must be insulated from religion."
This declaration of Bhai Jodh Singh was apparently somewhat
irrelevant for the occasion but so is its under-water iceberg
base which is always much more substantial and dangerous
than the visible apex.
It is not generally appreciated that,
1. Bhai Jodh Singh has been an active politician during
the British as well as the post-British period under the
guise of a religious man and he has never deemed it fit
to insulate his own politics from his religion, with the
result that grateful and appreciative foreign rulers conferred
upon him the high distinction and title of Sardar Bahadur
in addition to other tokens of favour, and in the post-British
period also he has been in much demand by these in political
power.
2. A clear-headed person that Bhai Jodh Singh is, he does
not say, in so many words that, 'insulation of politics
from religion' is a definite Sikh doctrine: he merely proffers
it as his own piece of secular and pagan wisdom, for he
is aware that Sikh doctrine and tradition both hold politics
as isolated from religion as pedagogy, opportunism and unprincipled
trickery. Only by implication and through insinuating he
desires that the Sikhs should accept the views of those
whose voice he is, that, such, is the true Sikh doctrine.
3. The British who subjugated the Sikhs and throughout
remained in terror of them as well as held them in manly
admiration, secretly desired that the Sikhs should remain
somewhat obscure about the true Sikh doctrine embodied in
their shrill historical and fundamental cry of 'liberty
or death' raj karain ke lr mar hain (Unexpuragated, Prachin
Panth Prakash) and there can be no doubt that, by them Bhai
Jodh Singh was fond as a useful ally.
4. The current rulers of India even have not made any secret
of their desire and determination to wean the Sikhs away
from the core-teachings of their Gurus that, the Sikhs cannot
fulfil their divine spiritual and social assignment without
their own base of political power and that for a Sikh to
insulate politics from religion is an un-utterably abominable
degradation and fall from grace.
It is in this background that the Patiala performance of
Bhai Jodh Singh has to be critically examined.
Bhai Jodh Singh's singularly unfortunate Patiala utterances,
namely, that, a) it is a wrong belief that State-Power is
necessary to sustain any religion, Sikhism included, b)
that this "wrong belief" deserves to be dispelled
through a high-priority effort integrated with the religious
projects and organized plans of the Sikhs, and c) that Politics
must be insulated from Religion, altogether which he insinuates
is the true Sikh position, are altogether unsustainable,
and the revered Bhai took a most undue advantage by publicizing
his own credo from a platform of Sikh religion and he also
proceeded to enjoin upon the Sikhs his debatable personal
option as an integral part of Sikhism.
The Sikh position on the all-time tantalizing question
of 1) Politics versus religion, 2) State power and Sikhism,
and 3) Political sovereignty and the practice of Sikh religion,
is unambiguously codified in the litany sung daily in all
free Sikh congregations ever since the passing away of Guru
Gobind Singh (1707), the litany being a srimukh-vak, "the
very blessed words" of the Guru Himself:
raj karega khalsa aki rahe na koe
khwar hoe sabh milenge bache saran jo hoe.
(The Sikh people shall remain free and sovereign, always
none challenging this position. All, every one, must eventually
accept this position no matter how unpalatable and bitter
it, to them be. And, behold, peace and safety is in such
a concession, or submission).
This startlingly tall and audacious claim has been publicly
proclaims by the Sikh people during the last three centuries,
firmly and defiantly and it has moved many to sheer ridicules,
others to fright, still others to resentment and boiling-heat
anger, many Sikhs themselves to chicken hearted, craven
fear or shameless apologies and the political Hindus of
the post-1947 euphoria, it has, almost invariably moved
to greater contempt for those whom they see as already in
their last death-throes.
Be that as it may, it is legitimate to examine as to whether
the Sikh doctrine itself is devoid of historical perceptiveness
and realistic out-look, and whether it stands the test of
scientific scrutiny. Thus alone its intrinsic validity can
be judged, however, unpalatable or prima facie impracticable
it might otherwise appear in the case of present day Sikh
people, politically subjugated, culturally submerged, intellectually
confused and barren, morally decayed, economically deprived
and plundered through the Partition of India and religiously
profaned, it can not be, off-hand asserted or insinuated
that this Sikh doctrine is prima facie ill-conceived or
stupid or unsustainable.
Let us glance through the world History, ever since well-defined
and locatable civilizations have emerged and we find that
there has always been at any given period, one or two nations,
peoples, which were leading raj-jati, characterized by the
ethos of, Raj Karega Khalsa, or nations or people who were
admired and were tacitly imitated by others. There is no
exception known to this rule.
This phase of leadership, political or moral or both, has
passed from one nation to another on rotation, and, in historical
times, no nation has yet enjoyed it twice. Whether such
is some hard and fast law of History, cannot be asserted.
By way of illustration, might be mentioned, the early Egyptians,
Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians under Achaemenid dynasty
from 550 B.C. But the Greeks are the earliest who still
seem to live in the thoughts of the Western man to day,
just as he Confucian China does in its "barbarian"
periphery and the Hindus in the Buddhist Far East and Southeast
Asia. A remarkable aspect of the Greek leadership was that
it never took the political form of a single empire except
for a very few years in the lifetime of Alexander of Macedon.
Owing to a verity of circumstances, local and accidental,
the empire broke up at his death, but dynasties, Greek thought
and Greek methods of war, nevertheless, dominated a large
part of the world for three centuries and more.
Greek eminence gave way to Roman, Roman ideas, Roman fashions,
and Roman armies held undisputed leadership for some four
centuries. Roman concepts of imperial domination and organization
and Roman ethos of social insularity were strictly observed
and practiced by the British rulers of India. Up to the
end of Nehru regime even in a free India, these Roman concepts
held away in our ornamental atmosphere, through WOGS-Westernized
Oriental Gentleman, the I.C.S., men and Nehruite politicians.
After about two centuries of confusion, Arabs appeared
on the world-stage as the international leaders, sustaining
the most powerful empire of their time from CE 650 to CE
850. After the commencement of their political decline they
remained the leaders in thought and science for five hundred
years more.
When the Arabic-speaking people fell behind, they had already
passed on the torch of art, learning, science and industry
to Western Europe. Here the lead was first assumed by the
Holy Roman Empire, then by Spain, France, and Britain in
that order.
In our life-time, the USA has not imposed military occupation
on many nations, yet American slang, American clothes, American
music, the horribly noisy concupiscent Jazz, the American
architecture of crazy skyscrapers have spread all over the
world. Herein lies the true explanation of over ninety per
cent Sikh migrants to the USA, Canada, British Isles and
Western Europe, unashamedly falling in for the ugly unaesthetic,
barbarous fashion of clean-shaven faces and the pernicious,
unclean habit of smoking while the Sikh migrants to the
African continent and the South-east Asian regions have
retained their Sikh dignity or uncut hair and healthy and
sensible abhorrence of smoking until recent times.
We can scarcely claim that this is due to the fact that
they, the USA culture-patterns, are intrinsically better
than anything which could be produced anywhere else.
There is obviously something in human nature which causes
us to imitate the thought and mannerisms of those who are
physically strong and it was to this secret that Guru Gobind
Singh drew mankind's attention when he declared that, "in
this world of phenomenon, everything, is covered and controlled
by the time, sword, and men tend to lean on the mightiest":
'ya jag main sabh kal kirpan ke
bhari bhujan kau bhari bhroso.' [1]
How else can we explain the backsliding of almost 8,000,000
of Sikhs in 1849, to a mere 1,800,000 of Sikhs in the Census
of 1862? What explains, if not decay of political power
and might of the Sikhs in 1850, the conversion of Raja sir
Harnam Singh and Sadhu Sunder Singh to Christianity, the
conversion to Islam of the learned ulema, Obeidullah Sindhi,
and the father and family of internationally famous jurist,
Sir Mohammad Zaffer-Ullah Khan? What made the scion of the
martyr Bhai Mati Das, the late Bhai Parmand, his son and
son-in-law, and the uniquely vital off-spring of a devout
sahajdhari Sikh family, Dr. Sir Gokal Chand Narang break
away from the gravitational orbit of Sikhism and stray into
the barren wastelands of Aryasamj? Again, during the short
historical span of their existence, the Sikhs have seen
much misunderstand and malice, prejudice and persecution,
fierce onslaughts and genocide pogroms, victory and glory,
power and prosperity, defeat and subjugation, ridicule and
abasement, poverty and deprivation, ridicule and abasement,
poverty and deprivation, and yet throughout these vicissitudes,
neither friend nor foe, neither neighbour or stranger, through
ill-will or ignorance has ever dared or cared to belittle
or denigrate the great Sikh Prophets, the Gurus, in respect
of their thoughts, words or deeds universally holding them
in highest estimation, as men, leaders of men and religious
Prophets. Malcolm, McGregor, Cunnigham, Dorothy Field, Tonybee,
Sujan Rai, Khsswaqt Rai, Daulat Ram, Mohamad Latif display
unanimity here though much multiniaity elsewhere, while
wrings on Sikhs and Sikhism. But, for the first time when
they succeeded, in the changed circumstance, in establishing
a University of Sikh Culture called the Punjab University
at Patiala, and a University of Sikh Religion called, the
Guru Nanak Dev University, at Amritsar, "Sikh"
professors in these Universities boldly surfaced to proclaims
and argue that Guru Tegh Bahadur was a robber-chief, in
the habit of providing succor and incitement to likeminded
lawless elements, which misleads of his brought upon him
the nemesis of the Mughal Law leading to his public decapitation
as a criminal, at Delhi, of which just punishment, the Great
Mughal, Aurangzeb, was altogether innocent and ignorant,
that the main and original grievance of Guru Gobind Singh
against the good Mughal Government was that land revenue
and State taxes were demanded of him, according to law which
he was reluctant to pay, and that he met defeat after defeat
in his conflicts with the State forces owing to his poor
knowledge of field-strategy. Has the current political status
if the Sikh people nothing to do with this disgusting phenomenon?
Delhi based pseudo-Nirankaris are not being discussed here
for obvious reasons.
There are only few instances of the operative and decisive
role which political power and prestige play in relation
to acceptability and prevalence of a religion and this law
of History, the basic pattern of human behaviour and tendency
of human nature is more pertinent in the case of Sikhs and
Sikhism, for, Sikhism, unlike most other world-religions,
is not merely a Church of social policy also, and as soon
as the Sikh people are separated from and deprived of political
sovereignty and power, Sikhism becomes eviscerated of its
élan and true ethos. It is for this reason that the
ambition, the claims, and the destiny, adumbrated and proclaimed
in the litany: raj karega khalsa is basic to Sikh religion
and the assignees of its social commitments, the Sikh people,
and the second hemistich of this litany: aki rahe na koi
is merely complementary to the first, both being obverse
and reverse sides of the same medal.
The shatimaya satyegraha, ahimsa of the twenties and thirties
of this century in India were merely subtle shibboleths
and Hindus' political gadgets to vex and exasperate the
oxbridgian ruling Englishman, and Lord Wavell, the Viceroy
of India, has rightly recorded (The Viceroy's Journal, London,
1973, page 238) that "He (Gandhi) is a politician and
not a saint," and in this subtle political game the
simplistic Sikhs became its first and most willing subtle
political victims, by voluntarily twisting the very fundamentals
of their own religion by declaring that Guru Arjan and Guru
Tegh Bahadur were embodiments, "avtars," of shantimaya
and ahimsa. Not long age, in a faked, All World Sikh Conference
at Amritsar, during the hegemony of the two late lamented
sants in Sikh polities, the main 'resolution' adopted specifically
named these two Gurus as the Sikhs' only models and guides,
thus, repudiating, what they heretically believed to be,
'the other and different' eight Gurus, a doctrine destructive
of the very roots of Sikhism. Has not Guru Gobind Sikh unambiguously
declared that he who deems and understands one Sikh Guru
as different form the other, is no Sikh? "The essence
of Sikhism is to know and believe all the Ten Gurus as one
continuous, unbroken Spirit, and a failure to understand
and accept this is a failure to adopt true Sikhis'-jini
jania tunu hi aidhi pai, binujane sidhi hathu na ai. We
must ever remember that the general disapproval of conquest,
UNO hotchpotch, "territorial integrity," "non-interference
in internal affairs," non-alignment, the Panchshil,
etc.etc. Is a temporary phenomenon?
Let us hearken to one who, by the test laid down by Guru
Gobind Singh, is "verily a true man", for, "he
says what he has in mind and there is no disparity between
his intentions and his spoken word': human mard bayed shavad
sukhanwar, na shikme digar dar dahane digar [2], he is,
by no means an insignificant person in the contemporary
world, Mao Tse Tung.
"Wherever the army of Chinese Communist Party goes,
it creates Marxism Leninism it creates a Communist Party
and a Communist Government. Only guns and canons create
a Party, a culture, even a world." (Problems of the
Chinese Revolution, Yenan, December, 1939).
"Whoever has an army has power, for, war settles everything."
-(Problems of War and Strategy, November 6, 1936).
"Everything grows out of the barrel of a gun."
(Selected Works, Vol. II, New York, International Publishers,
1954, p. 272)
There is no doubt whatsoever that, throughout History,
military conquest and balance of-terror-Principle have been
the principal means by which the torch of leadership has
been passed on. The conquest of Alexander, the Great spread
Greek thought over Middle East. The military empire of Rome
gave civilization to innumerable backward areas and races.
When Rome collapsed Arabs were just in time to snatch the
fallen torch. The immediate result of Arab ascendancy was
to plunge the West once more into barbarism by isolating
it from Asia, but before the Arabs fell, or as the famous
ibn-i-Khaldun (1332-1406) puts it, in his, Muqaidameh the
Arabs lost their a 'abiyveh, basic élan, they handed
back the trust to Europe with interest.
Secondly, the mantle of leadership frequently falls on
the shoulders of a colony of its predecessor. The Arabs
derived much of their knowledge from Syria, Egypt, and North
Africa hitherto colonies of Rome. Spain conquered by the
Arabs was to succeed them as a great empire and the USA
began as a British colony.
It, therefore, follows that the Sikh claim and doctrine
1) that religious worship and social commitment are inter-related
2) that political participation and power are complementary
to Sikh religious activity, and, 3) that he aspiration to
political power to be employed as a fulcrums for social
change and upliftment are legitimate Sikh activities, are
neither a) ungrounded in the firm patterns of History, b)
contrary to the tenets of Sikhism, or c) otherwise impracticable
or fantastic merely because of the current depressed, degraded
condition and colonial subsidiary status of the Sikhs.
When the Sikhs say that politics and religion must not
be separated, that is not to claim that he Sikhs have a
direct hot line to the deity. It merely means that a men'
public, private and spiritual life are inseparable and that
the most fruitful and secure is the synergic culture wherein
the religion, and the social order facilitate the individual,
by the same act and at he same time, to serve his own advantage
and that of the group.
Sardar Bahadur, Bhai Jodh Singh's gratuitous exhortation
to the Sikhs at Patiala is a clear negation of the Sikh
doctrine, the lessons of Sikh history, and the unambiguous
and uncompromisingly clear teachings of the Sikhs Gurus.
We must now consider whether the discoveries of Modern
Science and the insights they provide and the guidance they
suggest for understanding human nature and planning of human
society, also called "Social engineering" by these
who must put old wine in new bottles before tasting it,
agree with or militate against the basic Sikh doctrine enshrined
in the litany: raj karega khalsa.
The latest Scientific discipline is Ethology, founded by
three winners of the 1973 award of Nobel Prize for Physiology
or Medicine, which has gone to Karl von Frisch, Nicolas
Tinbergen and Konard Lorens. The last named of them wrote
his prize-winning dissertation as early as 1966, On Aggression,
in which book he has advanced and established the thesis
that the man is not only an immutably aggressive animal
a hostile one at that, but that the principle of aggressiveness
in his instinctual structure, demonstrates and establishes
other inevitability of war. He further demonstrates the
utility and necessity of aggressiveness for human life and
he concludes that aggression is a vital dimension of human
nature. For these fundamental discoveries in the Science
of Physiology he has been awarded the Nobel Prize, with
two others, as co-laureates, four years ago.
In 1974, Desmond Morris, and erstwhile pupil of our Nobel
Prize laureate, Nicolas Tinbergen, at Oxford supported Lorans's
theory as one of the naked truths of his book: Naked Ape
in which, in prousaic scientific terminology, he has paraphrased,
so to speak, the prophetic wisdom of Guru Gobind Singh:
"Aggression and Destruction is primary and Genesis
is secondary prithame khanda saj kai sabh sansar upaiya.
[3]
In the sphere of literary fiction, William Codling, in
his novel, Lord of the Flies, has demonstrated existence
of the aggressive instinct, in his powerful literary style?
He portrays in his book, the story of young children stranded
on an island, who revert to savagery, once al restraints
of civilization are removed and withdrawn.
Robert Andrey, a prestigious dramatist, turned, anthropologist,
in three successive successful best-seller, African Genesis,
The Territorial Imperative, and The Social Contract has
accumulated, classified and interpreted adequate material
to explode, once for all finally, the thesis and fallacy
that man is a pacific being, that ahimsa is his core-essence
or that non-violent satyaraha is a basic technique of human
existence, survival and perigee.
All these influential theorists have come to their opinions
via Ethology, the study of behaviour from the zoological
viewpoint. Ethology involves systematic study of the evolution
of human traits through observation of non-human behaviour.
Karl von Frisch, our Nobel Prize laureate of 1973 spent
his time with birds, fish and bees: Lorenz with grey grease,
rats and fighting fish: Tinbergen with birds, and Morris,
with apes in the London zoo.
Lorenz sees "aggression, far from a destructive principle."
He considers the pertinent question: Will not in-group aggression
extinguish the group and ultimately the species? His reply
is in the negative, for, the strong, he says; learn not
to destroy the weak. The Evolution Process is responsible
not only for aggression, but also for the phenomenon of
inherited patterns of restraint that control and regulate
aggression.
These patterns display in the submission of the weaker
section to he stronger through gestures of appeasement to
the stronger: the defeated one or the subbordinated ally
is never killed and destroyed. This is the true exegesis
of the Sikh litany: bache saran jo hoe. Thus the instinct
to dominate and destroy: raj karega khalsa aki rahe na koe,
can be and is modified if and when the inferior and the
weaker can learn abasement, submission and the survival-value
of alliance-khwar hoe sabh mileage. In his analogy between
man and bird, Lorenz sees the basic secret of survival and
evolution embedded in Nature-qudret of Sikh philosophical
concept-that if the powerful will learn to subdue and not
to kill and destroy and the weak will learn not to resist
but to submit, all strife, wars and revolutions will come
to an end and man will no longer have to concern himself
with problems of Survival. It is full awareness of this
secret of Nature which is evidenced in the Sikh war Ethics
and practices testified to by the enemy-chronicler, Qazt
Nur Muhammed, in his, Jang-namah (1765) that the Sikhs "never
kill in battle those who lay down arms or otherwise refuse
to resist and fight." kih nakushand namard ra hich-gah-fararendeh
ra ham na girand rah.
The disturbing truth is there that the man shares this
gruesome propensity with the dove, including Picaso's dove
adopted by Russians as the emblem of their variety of 'Peace.'
In his well-known book, King Solomon's Ring, Lorenz, in
the Chapter entitled, "Morals and Weapons," shares
with us one of his most dis-quietening discoveries by telling
the reader, how the dove, while by reputation one of the
most peaceful birds, is, in reality, one of the cruelest,
and it will mutilate and destroy members of its own species
without a qualm. On the other hand, contrary to the popular
belief and notion, the wolf will not finally kill another
wolf in battle if the loser asks for clemency by baring
its neck. Here is material for thought for him who deludes
himself with the escapist hope that there is greater safety
with the ahimsa-peddler than with the other who declares,
"get converted or be killed," a stupid notion
that bedeviled the Sikh leadership in 1947, and rendered
them incapable of comprehending the true significance and
implications of the British withdrawal from India and the
consequences thereof for the Sikhs.
The patterns of behaviour in the present still have roots
in those of the past and thus to understand man one mist
understand his past, that is, an analysis of animals and
men, particularly those who deem themselves as so clever
as competent to find their way about in life without taking
refuge in the revealed guidance, that is the Guru: nanak
guru na chetani man apne euchet, as the Sikh scripture puts
it.
Raj karega khalsa aki rahe na koe, khwar hoe sabh milenge
bache saran jo hoe, is not only a divinely revealed truth
but a well-established scientific fact. Lorenz, Andrey and
Morris have not picked up their theories from the air. They
belong to an ancient, prestigious tradition of Western speculation
and Scientific inquires that stretches back to Sigmund Freud,
through Spangler to Thoman Hobbes, Spangler in his Magunm
Opus: Decline of the West, has been virulent about his claims
about aggressiveness. "The beast of prey," he
says, "is the highest form of active life. The human
race ranks highly because it belongs to the class of beasts
of pray. Man lives engaged in aggression [5], killing, and
annihilation. Man is a beast of prey. I shall say it again
and again. The traders in virtue, the champions of social
ethics are but beasts of prey with their teeth broken."
Spangler's contribution to Nazi ideology was not insignificant.
Freud's firm conviction about the aggressive instinct in
man is patent in his: Civilization and its Discontents.
In it he says: "The truth is that men are not friendly,
gentle creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves
if they are attacked, but that a powerful measure for aggression
has to be reckoned with as a part of their instinctual endowment."
For Freud, man is not a rational animal but a repressed
animal: "Civilization, suppression and neurosis are
inevitably associated in such a way that more civilization,
the more neurosis, the less suppression, the less neurosis
and the less civilization." Thus, it is not in our
power "to dislodge the greatest of our obstacle to
civilization which is the constitutional tendency in man
to aggression."
He was obviously unaware of the divine guidance that is
the teaching of the Guru, that shows mankind the way out
of this patent predicament -the practice of nam-yoga: kahu
nanak ihu tatt bichra, bin haribhajan mahin chutakara. [6]
That human nature can be totally transmuted is a proposition
not easily acceptable to Western mind.
It is the hatred we suppress and repress with difficulty
that remains the main spring of our social life. Man, the
aggressive beast of prey is the core-essence of a social
homo sapiens, and not the lachrymos love-sentiment and gushing
pity of the Christian good, and the mercy, days of the Hindu
Parameshvar. Nietzshe was making out a point when he said
in his, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: "God is dead, God is
dead. He died of pity." It is a basic misconception
of human nature to accord primacy to non-violence, ahimsa
and to uphold socially uncommitted religion and secular
politics, separated from religion. The Sikh idiom of thought
made prevalent by Guru Gobind Singh himself to designate
the elite man, as the ferocious lion, Singh, the king crocodile,
Nihang, the spread-hooded cobra. Bhujangi; the angry snake
in the attack-posture, pechidah mar, [7] enshrines the ultimate
scientific truth about human nature and destiny and to confuse
and mislead the Sikhs on this point as the Patiala performance
of Bhai Jodh Singh seeks to do, is infamous and indefensible
altogether.
Freud's theories and the scientific insights now provided
by Ethology are generally accepted as supporting the scientific
view that war, the highest political activity, is inevitable
and necessary and desirable for human weal. Bertrand Russel
gave him support by arguing that it was "only the external
enemy which supplied the cohesive force of Society, so that
a World-state, if it were firmly established, would have
no enemies to fear and would, therefore, be in danger of
breaking down through lack of cohesive force."
Did not Confucius declare two thousand years ago that,
"a country that has no external enemies is doomed?"
8
Aggressiveness, war, then is a natural quality of human
psyche and the Sikh doctrine of raj karega khalsa is in
a sense, a scientific doctrine and a legitimate religious
aspiration and to attempt to wean the Sikhs, away from it,
is a crime against sanity and Science, Religion and God.
To exhort Sikhs to insulate religion from politics and to
fall into the fatal error of believing in possibility of
a full and genuine religious life without a base of political
autonomy and a full forum of political power is an utterly
mean, unforgivable thing to do.
The Sikh doctrine of raj karega khalsa is useful socially
and necessary if society is to hold together. Since to-day
war has become so dangerous to indulge in on a massive scale,
Lorenz speaks of how we suffer "an insufficient discharge
of the aggressive derive." Desmond Morris is hopelessly
pessimistic in relation to any optimism expressed as to
our ability to re-mould our way of life:
"Control our aggressive and territorial feelings and
dominate all our basic urges, I submit that this is rubbish.
Our raw animal nature will never permit this."
"Permanent peace, progressive prosperity," "classless
Society," "Secular Politics," "a private
personal religion," "insulation of religion from
politics," "are just poppycock or psychedelic,
dreams. Only rarely are there periods of World-peace with
minor skirmishes, as during the Pax Romana (27 B.C.-A.D.
180) and the hundred years of Pax Britannica (1814-1914).
There is no higher truth and more reliable guidance available
to mankind then the principles embedded in and implicated
by the words, spoken, by the 'blessed mouth' of Guru Gobind
Singh;
raj karega khalsa aki rahe na koe,
khawar hoe sabh milaenge bache saran jo hoe.
Notes
1. Akalustat
2. Zafarnamah.
3. var sribhaguti ji ki.
4. Asa di Var I
5. Khalsa so jo kare nit jang
6. Asa I
7. chiha shud kih tu kushtehee baccheh char, kih baqi bimand
ast pachideh mar, Zafarnaman.
8. Analects.
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