To

Punjabis the World over

CONTENTS

• Prologue 7

• Foreword 11

• Acknowledgements 18

• Introduction 19

• Shah Mohammed'sJangnamab 53Text in Gurmukhi and Persian scriptsPoetic Rendition in English and Hindi

-Index of Places 265

- Index of Names 268

PROLOGUE

The decline of the Sikh kingdom within a decade of thedeath of Maharaja Ranjit Singh presents a saga of tragic eventsthat touch the inner-most feelings of the Punjabis even today.No wonder, an account of the fIrst Punjab War of 1845 presentedby Shah Mohammed in his famous ]angnamah has been lookedupon as the best requiem written on the faU of the Sikh kingdom.Shah Mohammed's ]angnamah leaves no doubt that RanjitSingh's regime as represented by the Khalsa Darbar hadidentilled itself with the aspirations of the Punjabis as a wholeand had thereby come to symbolise the Punjabi pride. Becauseof this quality Shah Mohammed's account has attracted equalattention of historians and the litterateur. The doyen of Punjabhistory, Professor Sita Ram Kohli cast a critical look on thislangnamah in 1956, when he edited the text by appending ascholarly introduction to it. He accepts that Shah Mohammedbelonged to the lineage of Sultan Mahmud, an artillery offIcerof Maharaja Ranjit Singh and was well-educated. Professor KohliafflfffiS that the narrative given by Shah Mohammed presents abalanced and unbiased account of the events. Still, the authorof the ]angnamah also does not hesitate to pass his ownjudgments on men and events. The correctness of the eventsenumerated by Shah Mohammed remains unassailable whichmakes it a flfst-rate historical source. Sant Singh Sekhon, acelebrated Punjabi literary critic, looks at the ]angnamah as aliterary piece. He says: liThe skill and technical virtuosity in[angnamah Hind-Punjab (the original name of ]angnamah byShah Mohammed) is by no means consistently uniform. Whilemostly the lines show a felicituous style and skill in expression,there are places where expression just fills the gaps, which

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indicate that the over-all felicity of expression comes more fromnature than from art. Where nature sustains the expression, itis really perfect and such expressions are almost on the lips ofa large number of Sikhs (Punjabis?) even to this day." (A Historyof Punjabi Literature, Vol. II, 128-29, P.D.P., 1996).

P.K. Nijhawan has chosen to present a rendition of thislangnamab both in English and Hindi because "it is particularlyrelevant to the trifurcated Punjabi society today, which broughtabout the partition of India" (See Introduction). Nijhawan looksat Shah Mohammed as "a symbol of the true integration of allPunjabis into one society, all over again," because "this is theonly piece of literature or folk literature which is so full of Punjabitogetherness." It is out of this frenzy that Nijhawan asserts: "Ipersonally believe that Sikhism is the last re-statement ofHinduism that we know,'I-an eye-brow raising statement formany of us! He also tries to identify the rise of Sikhism with"revival of Punjabi nationalism." But before making such astatement, one has to perceive whether we can hear of anyreference to Punjabi nationalism from the chroniclers beforeSikhism appeared on the scene. The idea of Punjabi nationalismis only of recent origin. Nijhawan's references to Sikhism as a'schism of Hinduism' and the so-called Mona-Sebajdbaritradition also deserve attention. My personal and familyexperience has been at variance with Nijhawan's. My grand­father was attracted to Sikhism under the influence of his wifewho was a regular reciter of the Grantb. The couple decidedto initiate their sons into the Khalsa fold. The consequence wasdistancing of the entire Kapur gotra people from our family andmy grand-parents did not fmd themselves comfortable at that.None of their sons could get a bride from within the Dbai GbaraKhatri castes as per caste heirarchical tradition. On our part, wenever looked back. In this way; the Mona-Sebajdbari traditioncould hardly enable Sikhism to pass as a 'schism of Hinduism'.It is also not correct to aver that Ranjit Singh had declaredHinduism or for that matter even Sikhism as a state religion.His was not a theocratic state. He named his government;

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Sarkar-i-Khalsa because of the debt he owed to the Khalsa andthe Guru whose century-old struggle and vision had catapultedhim to the position of a sovereign ruler of the Punjab. ShahMohammed himself takes note of the Sikh identity by using theword Singh frequently. His laudatory references to the Khalsaleave no doubt that Khalsa had come to symbolise the Punjabipride during his period. His general reference to the existenceof two communites in Punjab Le. Hindu and Muslim in no waymerges the Sikhs within the Hindu social order. We fmdreferences by the British chroniclers also wherein Sarkar-i­Khalsa is described as a Hindu state. Such references are casualand reflect only lack of knowledge about ground realities andunique position of the Sikhs in the Indian sub-continent. We neednot refer to such things while looking around in search of aPunjabi identity as compared to Bengali, Tamil, Gujrati or Oriyaidentities. The only comparison that one can think of and thatcan sustain with the Punjabi-Sikh identity is Maharashtra-Maratha,Rajasthan-Rajput identities. Here also the presence of the Sikhsin Punjab as a distinct community, with an independent religioussystem of their own in their own right and identification of theHindus with their majority co-religionists in the rest of India andthe Muslims with the erstwhile ruling class makes the questionof Punjabi regional identity altogether different and morecomplex.

However, the project of rendition of jangnamah into Hindiand English undertaken by Mr. P.K. Nijhawan more as a mission,is unique in another respect also. Shah Mohammed representsthe ethos of post-Ranjit Singh Punjab and the impact of RanjitSingh's rule on Punjabi society is well brought out by him inthe jangnamah. No doubt, Shah Mohammed's jangnamahdescribes the elan of the masses of the Punjab as a whole, whohad then come to identify themselves with Khalsa-]i-Ke-Bol-Bale.He looks unto Ranjit Singh and the Khalsa as symbols of Punjabiglory, condemns traitors like Gulab Singh and also does notspare the Sikh Sardars like Lehna Singh Majithia, who despitetheir capabilities, did not rise to the occasion and preferred to

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retire in peace for their selfish ends. I am sure his purpose ofarousing the sense of Punjabi pride cutting across communalconsiderations on both the sides of the border, will be well­served by making the jangnamab accessible to wider readership.

However, Maharaja Duleep Singh - Raj Mata Jind KaurFoundation agreed to sponsor this project because this couldhelp the scholars of history of the Punjab in their bid todeconstruct the fallacious versions presented by the Britishofficers/scholars and to appreciate the grim struggle waged bythe last sovereign power of the Indian sub-continent to bluntthe aggressive designs of British imperialism.

Mr. Nijhawan has done a commendable job which I am surethe academic world will appreciate and welcome.

B-1,

Punjabi University Campus,Patiala.August 15, 2000.

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PRITHIPAL SINGH KAPUR

FOREWORD

In tenns of its literary value, Shah Mohammed's jangnamahmay not be all that notable. But, in tenns of its social and culturalsignificance, it is unsurpassed. Three things combine to makeit exceptionally significant.

One, the poem was written after the ftrst Anglo-Sikh War.In other words, the second such war which was to lead to theannexation of the Punjab by the East India Company had yetto take place. That important developments, social as well aspolitical, began to occur even in the wake of the ftrst Anglo SikhWar, becomes evident from a close reading of the poem. To quotethe translator, "AII wealth is today garnered by the sons ofmoneylenders and gumashtas in the main. II In other words, aclass of commercial entrepreneurs came into existence as soonas that war was over and the British settled down to appropriateRanjit Singh's empire. It was this very class which was to riseinto prominence during the later years. But then, the author wasobviously not in a position to foresee what would happen later.However, what he observed with his own eyes is referred to byhim. Taking into account the later history of the state of Punjab,one cannot but admire the incisiveness of the poet in noting whatwould not have been noted by those who were not so observant.

The second thing that stands out (and it has been underlinedby Nijhawan) is Shah Mohammed's complete and unconditionalidentiftcation with the Khalsa Darbar. Even six years after thedeath of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, his loyalty to the regimeestablished by him had not diminished in any way. If anything,he laments the cracks that had appeared in the structure builtby Ranjit Singh. He talks of the various intrigues that were takingplace and does so with a feeling of deep regret. Instead of

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gloating over the disintegration of the Darbar, his tone is oneof genuine concern.

How could this have happened? The explanation lies inthe manner in which Ranjit Singh governed the state. In totalcontrast to what had been happening for several centuries beforehim, he ran that state in such an even-handed manner that eventhough the majority of the population in the state was Muslim,none of them had the feeling that the state was being run bya Sikh ruler.

During the preceding Muslim period, both the pre-Mughaland the Mughal period, the situation had varied from ruler to ruler.In a few cases, the rulers had ignored the pressure from the Muslimclergy and other forces represented by the Muslim nobility, mostof whom had come from outside India. For 7-8 centuries, a largenumber of gifted professional soldiers as also men of piety andhumanism, had been migrating from Central Asia to India. Theformer were soldiers of fortune. They came to India in search ofwealth and power. The Muslim rulers who had establishedthemselves as the lords of the country, generally welcomed themand took them into service. Historians of the medieval period, itmay be added, have done a good deal of research work on thecharacter of the nobility established under the Mughals.

Beginning with Akbar, the character of this nobility beganto undergo a change. A certain proportion of it was local andmainly Rajput in background and character. The phenomenonof sharing power with the local nobility had started even beforethe advent of the Mughals but it became noticeable under theMughals, principally when Akbar was in power. Babar hadrecognised the need of it and had advised his son to adopt sucha policy. But Humayun failed to do so. One result of it was hisbeing ousted from the throne. That Babar could recognise theneed of coopting the local nobles, speaks volumes for hispolitical sagacity. lms new mode of governance was howeverformalised as well as institutionalised by his grandson, Akbar,with the result that it ensured the stability of the Mughal Empirefor another century or so.

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Ranjit Singh had not many such precedents to draw uponexcept form what had happened under Ahmed Shah Abdali onlya few decades earlier. On two separate occasions, the leadingcitizens of Lahore had come together and surrenderedvoluntarily, so to speak, to the Sikh Misals. On both occasions,the issue was whether to fight the Misals or agree to theirtakeover. While in the first round, it might have been a gamble,when it came to the second round, the citizens had had theexperience of how the Khalsa Misals had run the city during thebrief period that they had at their disposal. They were absolutelyfair and firm. Strict law and order was maintained and no high­handedness of any kind was permitted or perpetrated. To putit no more strongly, this was exactly in accordance with theteachings of the tenth guru. It was this tradition which RanjitSingh decided to carry forward. Also, his own political astutenesspersuaded him to learn from the past experience and evolve amodel of governance in which the Muslims who constituted theoverwhelming majority, came to look upon him as their wellwisher and benefactor. Even today, one of the Punjabi heroesrecalled from time to time in Pakistan, is Ranjit Singh. No onethinks of him as having been hostile or adverse in any way. Therewas complete identification between him and the people heruled. Shah Mohammed's poem is a testimony to what happened.That he continued to be remembered and revered even severalyears after he had been dead and his successors had messedup the governance of the state, was a tribute to his administrationand the legacy that he had left behind.

It is generally conceded that, apart from direct historicalevidence, literature is a rich source of social history. This poem byShah Mohammed makes it abundantly clear that there was no lackof trust between the way Ranjit Singh governed and those whowere governed. The norms of how people were governed inmedieval times were very different from what they are today.During those days, no one expected it to function like acontemporary welfare state as is the general expectation today. Inthose lawless days, Ranjit Singh seems to have treated his subjects

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in his own inimitable way so that he was seen as just and even­handed. This is precisely what endeared him to his people.

Ranjit Singh's relations with his own community were closeand intimate but there were also occasions when he wascensured by the religious leaders of his own community. Inpersonal terms, he was not a model of uprightness or chastity.He had a number of concubines. Those who controlled Sikhaffairs objected to his countless acts of dalliance. On oneoccasion, it was even decided to flog him publicly for havingbeen guilty of certain transgressions. He submitted to thepunishment proposed to be inflicted on him though it is anotherthing that it was not eventually carried out.

The point of referring to these details is that, unlike theMuslim clergy which sometimes directed the Muslim rulers to do,or not do, certain things, Ranjit Singh too was subject tosomewhat similar pressures. But he was astute enough tosomehow manage things and not have any kind of aconfrontation. In any case, there was no question of the Sikhclergy asking him to oppress his other subjects. That was notwhat Guru Gobind Singh had taught.

All his life he had fought for justice and was never guiltyof any injustice. This is what he taught his followers and thereare several instances, too many to quote here, where the Sikhsoldiers fought for justice rather than injustice. In fact, they wentto the extent of occupying only those territories where the localpeople were in favour of their continuing to do so. Certainhistorians have ascribed the failure of Sikhism to spread to areasother than Punjab and embark upon a career of militaryconquests to this lack of aggression or taste for militaryconquests. There is not enough evidence to argue on either side.This much however is incontestable that the tenth Guru wassingularly free of malice or the desire to dominate. His 'epistleof victory' addressed to Aurangzeb is as much a rebuke to thelatter as a challenge to him. In any case, it is a statement of hisvalues and beliefs to which he had held fast even at the costof his life and those whom he loved.

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Perhaps nothing illustrates the character of Ranjit Singh'sregime more tellingly than the fact that his decision to outlawthe killing of cows which was offensive to the non-Muslimpopulation was accepted without any resistance. Even the rulerof Afghanistan sent him his word to the effect that the killingof cows had been discontinued in his own countty. This wasdone presumably to court favour with him.

It was this atmosphere of tolerance and mutual respectwhich he was able to generate and which earned him theundying loyalty of people like Shah Mohammed and others.Nijhawan has called attention to this fact pointedly in hisintroduction and no more needs to be said about it.

The third point which Nijhawan makes is equallymeaningful. Going back to what he knows about the 19th centuryand the kind of atmosphere which prevailed in small towns andthe counttyside during his childhood, he makes bold to say thatco-existence amongst the various communities was a fact of dailylife. If all this began to change under the impact of the Britishrule, it needs to be recognised that these changes came aboutbecause of the social and economic forces generated by theBritish rule. At the same time, it was a matter of high policy forthe British to create divisions amongst the various communities.The introduction of the separate electoral system in the beginningof the 20th century and all that followed, are details which donot have to be recalled here. Those are recorded in countlessbooks of history.

What the British did was to promote a sense of separateidentity in each community. In the rest of India, there weremainly two communities: Hindus and Muslims were encouragedto look upon themselves in their exclusive way. For historical,as also sociological reasons, the Christians never got involvedin this competition for a separate identity. The Sikhs howevergot unavoidably involved. Their proportion in the totalpopulation of the Punjab was exceedingly small, closer to 5 than10 per cent at the time the British annexed the Punjab. But theywere higWy energetic and dynamic people. Depressed as they

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were after having had a spell of power, they gradually recoveredfrom this state of demoralisation. TIlis too has been written aboutat considerable length and need not be dilated upon here.

Nijhawan refers to the role of the Arya Samaj in giving aseparate consciousness to certain sections of the Hindupopulation. That this phenomenon led to some 'confrontationbetween the Arya Samajists and the Sanatanists is a sub story.The more important part of the story is that confrontationdeveloped between them and the Sikhs. Meanwhile the Sikhshad been energised by the Singh Sabha Movement about whichtoo a good deal of literature is available.

Confrontation between the Sikhs and the Arya Samajistsbecame a prominent feature of the political reality. Till the endof the nineteenth century, it was a different situation. It was notnecessary for Nijhawan to refer to these details except that herefers specifically to the virulence of confrontation whichdeveloped in the late 20th century. What is of real relevancehowever is how there was absolute peace amongst the variousconununities under Ranjit Singh and before the British appearedon the scene. Once the British set about the task of consolidatingtheir empire, and many things flowed from the manner in whichthe British went about this job, the situation began to change.

Going further, one can perhaps say that what happenedunder the British has continued to happen ever since then. Weare still passing through that phase when the impact of thoseforces released by the British is still at work. TIlis is true notonly of India but equally of Pakistan and Bangladesh. Economistsand sociologists would choose to describe these variousphenomena as the rise and spread of capitalism, the growth ofethnicity, the emergence of the nation state and various otherterms which are popular amongst the social scientists.

The significance of Shah Mohanuned's poem lies in this thathe captured that passing moment in Punjab history when therewas no cleavage whatsoever amongst the various conununities.The Muslims who had been dethroned, so to speak, by RanjitSingh, did not bemoan their fate as might have ordinarily

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happened. On the contrary, that brief interlude of half a centuryis still recalled in Pakistan with a certain feeling of nostalgia andwarmth.

Nijhawan is to be complimented on having made thisexceedingly important literary text available to a wide-readingpublic. It is for the more preceptive amongst them now to drawtheir own inferences. To what extent they, and in particular thesocial scientists, agree with Shah Mohammed's perception, is forthem to decide.

2/26, Sarv Priya Vihar,New Delhi.May 18, 2000

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AMRIK SINGH

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is a pleasant duty to acknowledge my heartfelt debt ofgratitude to:

• Dr. Giani Bhajan Singh who not only supplied me the textof jangnamah but remained my only resource personduring the entire period I worked on this subject.

• Dr. Amrik Singh, formerly Vice-Chancellor, Punjabi University,Patiala, has been my friend, philosopher and guide in allmatters literary. The critic in him is very parsimonious inpraising most literary efforts. However, in this case he hasgladly contributed the foreword which enhances the valueof this rendition manifold.

• Sardar Tarlochan Singh (now Vice-Chairman, NationalCommission for Minorities in the rank of a Union Ministerof State), my chum and valued colleague of yester yearsand a lover of all causes Punjabi. Not just that, he dotesover me as a lover would.

• Professor Prithipal Singh Kapur, formerly Pro-Vice-Chancellor,Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar and now Editor-in­Chief, Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, Punjabi University, Patiala,who as a perceptive historian immediately accepted the ideathat the First Anglo-Sikh War should more appropriately becalled the First Punjab War as the spirit of Shah Mohammedso compellingly conveys and then agreed to get itspublication sponsored by Maharaja Duleep Singh Foundation.

• Sardar Gurtej Singh, formerly ofIndian Administrative Service,of the Institute of Sikh Studies, Chandigarh also deserves myvery special thanks because he critically went through themanuscript ofEnglish rendition. In fact, he found itvery usefulfor the batch of Sikh students who had come to Chandigarhfrom the United States to learn more about Sikhism.

P.K. NIJHAWAN

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INTRODUCTION

I.

J feel J am singularly privileged to have rendered ShahMohammed's jangnamah in English as well as Hindi verse. Itis an absolutely contemporary account of the First Anglo-Sikhor Hind-Punjab War as fought between the armies of the KhalsaDarbar and the East India Company.

It is from Shah Mohammed's original title that I am temptedto call the First Anglo-Sikh War as most history books tell us,as the First Punjab War. The historians' nomenclature is anobvious distortion which appears to have been deliberatelyintroduced in order to rob this unique piece of poetry; of its realpan-Punjabi character. Soon after the armistice, the new rulershad started sowing seeds of a possible trifurcation of Punjabisociety in which job they proved eminently successful. The namethat Shah Mohammed has given to his jangnamahl 'lang Hind­Punjab~ is, quite apt. Besides it accords well with suchnomenclatures as the Kamataka War or the Maratha War. It alsoseems fully to support the view that, from the point of view ofthe East India Company, it was a war of imperial expansion; thetruth of the matter is that the British had been casting a covetouseys on Punjab, long before the actual war took place.

Shah Mohammed is an exception among poets. He knowswhere to draw a line between facts and perceptions. He is aboutas objective as the events that are unfolded here. But thesignificance of the poet lies in the fact that he is also a highly

1. Professor Sila Ram Kohli has preferred to call Shah Mohammed'sjangnamab, a balladwhich is not correct. jangnamab is a separate genre that crept into Punjabi poetryunder the influence of Persian.

perceptive man, grasping as it were, the subtlest nuances ofthings as they happened. In short, he is a remarkable kind ofa poet and a historian. In an utterly terse and tell-tale manner,he tells us all what happened after the death of Sarkar as RanjitSingh was lovingly called by his subjects. The events happenedwith such rapidity that none other than an extremely gifted poetcould have grasped them all. A curse of sorts seems to haveoperated in the Punjab, leading each one of the grandees to theirdoom, leaving the Lahore Darbar almost wholly orphaned in amatter of half a dozen years. There is a sense of divine wrathand dramatic irony in the enveloping tragedy. That the level ofthe poet's sensibility could have risen in the same proportionis something that cannot be overlooked. Without some suchprocess occurring, such a good, historically valid and evocativepoem could not have been written.

It is almost a filmic, yet truthful and sensitive account thatunfolds reel after reel in the form of a documentary which canbe remembered and sung with great effect before differentaudiences by the itinerant singers of Punjab called dhadies. Ourpoet is a man of great empathy and is able to bring on recordwhat no ordinary poet would have grasped, much less recorded.Above all, he is so much of a Punjabi patriot that he is notinfluenced by how the new rulers would react to his description.

. Another important fact which also needs to be mentionedright at the outset is that while Shah Mohammed is a high-bornMuslim, Ranjit Singh hailed from the peasant stock and becamethe ruler of Punjab after welding numerous principalities togetherinto a kingdom, only about half a century earlier. And thishappened after eight long centuries of Islamic rule in India. Butthen Shah Mohammed is wholly secular, with not a trace ofcommunal thinking in his mind. He blames only those who needto be blamed and praises where praise is due, without anydistinction of caste and creed. In short, he is a picture of whatan Indian Muslim should be in order to weld India into a strong,homogeneous society.

He is particularly relevant to the trifurcated Punjabi society

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today, which brought about the Partition of India. Most peoplecan hardly appreciate that here is a Punjabi Muslim who shedtears of blood at the fall of the Sarkar-i-Kha/sa. To see this inthe background of present-day communal atmosphere underlinesthe point that is sought to be made. The reason why I mentionthis fact in this manner is that it vindicates my thesis that "Abetter Hindu and a better Muslim is any day a more secularperson than one who is atheistic or irreligious. Similarly, a betterPunjabi and a better Bengali makes for a better Indian than onewho calls himself an Indian fIrst and last." Shah Mohammed can,therefore, be seen as a symbol of the true integration of allPunjabis into one society, all over again.

II.

Before describing the actual war, Shah Mohammed goesinto the events of the six years after the death of Ranjit Singh.That really supplies the essential backdrop of what, in fact, isgoing to happen. He actually makes Kharak Singh, the new King,hurl a curse on the Darbar. Coming out of his heart as it does,this curse is fulfilled by the Almighty in letter and spirit. Thereis something macabre about the deaths and murders that takeplace in quick succession, one after another. In fact, the wayKanwar Naunihal Singh on whom the curse had been hurledby his ailing father, Kharak Singh and who was to succeed himas the next Maharaja actually dies, cannot be explained awayon the basis of any rational logic. Could a balcony of the castlecollapse just as the Kanwar was passing under it by accidentor even as a result of a conspiracy? The issue is still beingdebated with heat and passion. But was the accident not highlyunusual? Nothing else except the balcony collapsed. And as tothe conspiracy theory Raja Dhian Singh, who, they say, wantedto promote his son's claim to the throne, could have been theculprit. But was he ?This question gains further significance fromthe fact that Udham Singh the other youngman who died withKanwar Nau Nihal Singh was none other than his own realnephew. Then the only possible explanation, as Shah Mohammedsays, is that a messenger of death had already made himself

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perch on the balcony to carry out the orders of the Lord of Death,Dharma Raj. The use of just one word Dhanna Raj makes it anexample of the divine wrath at work.

A list of those who were put to death within six years wouldenable the reader to fonn some idea of what really was to follow.The list is as under:

1. Chet Singh, a very close friend ofMaharaja Kharak Singh, wasmurdered in his very presence at the mourning ceremony ofMaharaja Ranjit Singh itself. The young and ambitious Kanwardid not want to share power with anyone else.

2. Passing away of Naunihal Singh and Udham Singh in thecollapse of the balcony of the gate under which they werepassing. It happened just after the cremation of Kharak Singh.

3. Murder of Rani Chand Kaur, the widow of Kharak Singh,with the connivance of Sher Singh, the new Maharaja, andthe maids attending upon her. She had earlier been internedin the palace by her brother-in-law.

4. Murder of Maharaja Sher Singh and his son Pratap Singhby the Sandhawalia Sardars through treachery. Dhian Singhwas also murdered by them on the same day.

S. Killing of both Lehna Singh and Ajit Singh, the SandhawaliaSardars by Hira Singh, the new Prime Minister who wasthe son of Dhian Singh. This was done in an open battlein which the Khalsa Darbarwas vertically divided into twocamps. Many a grandee died in this fight thereby renderingthe Darbar leaderless.

6. Killing of Jalla and Hira Singh by the Khalsa anny whilethey were giving them a slip on their way to Jammu.

7. Killing of Jawahar Singh, the brother of Maharani Jindan,who had been elevated as the new Prime Minister.

All this happened due to a strange and collective death wishoperating at that time. This resulted in three things: One, thedemoralisation of the wise and senior Sardars who left the Darbaron one pretext or the other; two, the anny whom ShahMohammed had described pejoratively as Burchhas which

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means those who become a law unto themselves, and who hadbecome irresistible and utterly avaricious; and three, theMaharani who decided to break the stranglehold of the armyby getting them destroyed in a war with the British.

It appears that Ranjit Singh, the benevolent despot, hadfailed to create any lasting institutions which could sustain theState. Certainly, the British must have played their treacherousimperial game to perfection by sowing the seeds of disaffectionwithin the court and promoting lawlessness in the ranks. But thatcannot be the whole explanation. We must learn to apportionblame where it is due and it was the lack of an institutionalapparatus which in the circumstances described should havefilled the vacuum. Otherwise, how come that the same Burchasdrew the highest praise from the same poet when they went outto war, measuring sword with the British and laying down theirlives in the highest tradition of the Khalsa. In fact, their recklessvalour was the subject of high admiration even among the Britishcommanders for a long time. Shah Mohammed summed up theentire battle just in one line in the Stanza 92, Says he:

"0 Shah Mohammed! But for one Sardar 1,

]be forces lost the battle they, in fact, had won."

Similarly, we may have to revise our opinion aboutMaharani ]indan. For example, dispossessed of everything,including even the nearness of her son, she not only saw throughthe British game but also gave them quite a tough time. Anyway,the indisciplined. army and the Maharani fuming with revenge,are the immediate causes for the showdown with the British whoin pursuit of their imperial ends were, in any case, itching fora battle in a calculated way.

Perhaps, the most perceptive part of the poem is theconcluditlg half a dozen stanzas. An ordinary mind and a lessermortal could have easily succumbed to the lure of pleasing theway the masters and the poets as a class are generally known

1. The original word used by the poet is Sardar and not Sarkar. This is according tothe fIrSt published text which was in Persian script and whkh is in possession ofProf. Gurtej Singh, the National Professor of Sikhism, Chandigarh.

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to tum sycophants at the drop of a hat, singing panegyrics of thevictor. One such poet is our great Mirza Ghalib, who also wrotehis Fatehnamah, running into 42 verses of high falutin Persianon one of the battles of this very war. We shall come to it later.But here what is important is how Shah Mohammed respondedto the new masters. In this connection, stanza 98 is worth a closereading. Hence, I reproduce below this stanza in full :

In this way, the Feringhee became the protector of the Mai.7bey stationed their own contingents in Lahore.7bey assumed the overlordship of the trans-Satluj regions,Establishing their advanced post in Phillaur.7bey took over the control of Lahore and Ferozepur,Besides apportioning the revenues accruing from the trade

route of Nanda Chor.

o Shah Mohammed! Kangra too was usurped.

In short, they did everything a thief does.

The important part of this stanza is the courage of the poetin calling the British thieves. Not just that. In the very next stanza,Shah Mohammed says:

'The country now passed into the hands of company

functionaries,As well as the sons of men of means. "

Almost in the same vein, the poet reiterates in stanza 103summing up in these words :

"0 Shah Mohammed! All wealth is today garnered,By the sons of moneylenders and 'gumashtas' in the main."

Nothing can better describe how the sons of the lowermiddle classes, particularly constituting the monas. Le. those notkeeping long hair, after learning a few words of English and skillin cajolery, became the errand boys of the Company bureaucrats.This, in the main, explains how a rich area like Punjab becamepoor within a matter of years. One can presume this kind ofperceptiveness only on the part of a genius. And even withoutthe knowledge of subjects like economics and history, Shah

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Mohammed said it all. It must have pained him a great deal thatas an anny of occupation, the victors had laid waste the entirecountryside and robbed it of its riches between Ferozepur andLahore besides usurping so much of territory and revenue. Thishad never been done by an Indian king. Ranjit Singh did manageto establish an empire through conquest but that was invariablydone with the full concurrence and reconciliation of the defeated.Otherwise, as between the Indian kings, suzerainty was alwaysthe only issue. And once it was decided, all enmity ceased.

III.It is a heroic poem which stands out even in India where

there is a long tradition of heroic poetry in as much as heroismor bravery is one of the nine rasas (sentiments) which a poet­to-be must learn to cultivate and evoke. There is, therefore, nodearth of poets who have tried their hand at this genre. But theclassical Vir Rasa is altogether a different poetic category. Itborders usually on exaggeration. For example, the war scenesin the Ramayana and the Mahabharta. Then, in the Rajput times,there was a class or caste of itinerant singers of heroic poetrycalled Charans and Bhatts whose function it was to singpanegyrics of the great acts of bravery and chivalry of their patroneven if he happened to be a total coward, so as to be rewardedin accordance with the custom. Sometimes, these Charans andBhattswere employed to recruit soldiers for the campaigns whichthe kings fought during periods of emergency. In fact, theirpoetry generally came impromptu and would be so redolent ofheroism that it would create a psychosis in which youngmenwould be swayed to join the battles to come.

But Shah Mohammed is not a poet of this genre. He is veryparticular that he describes the whole thing in an undertone,seldom using a hyperbole or an extra word. Hence, while hefully praises the gusto with which the soldiers fought, he no lesslampoons the cowardice with which they beat a retreat. Perhaps,this happens in every great battle or series of battles in acampaign. Indeed he does not mystify or mythify for the sake

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of it. His account of battles is summed up in a few apt similesand metaphors which continue to haunt one for a long time.

Another great virtue of this poem is that it has beencomposed in the baint metre, the king of Punjabi folk metres,greatly popularised by Waris Shah. I am sure that those who havelistened to the lilt of Heer would easily vouchsafe the kind ofeffect it has on Punjabi audiences when sung full-throatedly.Only a man with a real range of voice can sing it. But whenit is sung that way, one immediately wants to respond to themood of the passage being sung. Shah Mohammed is also noless a master of the baint and, th~refore, this ballad is sung alongwith Heer with almost equal effect, though the thought patternand the subject matter are entirely different.

Its total effect is not elevating but depressing. It creates amood of helplessness and even tragedy in as much as it is apoem of defeat-defeat of a soldiery which lost the battle noton the battlefield but elsewhere. However, the mood of dejectionthat this poem does engender, is nevertheless full of patriotism.And one only wishes how it would have been different if onehad been alive at that time and participated in some of thoseactions. Even a man like me who remained far away from hisPunjabi roots for the greater part of his life, used to respondpatriotically to some of the lines that I happened to hear in mydistant childhood.

However, for me the uniqueness of this poem lieselsewhere. This is the only piece of literature or folk literaturewhich is so full of Punjabi togetherness and even Punjabinationalism. It appears that the poet and his audience hadreached a stage of identification with the Khalsa Darbar to suchan extent that his poetry seemed to completely reflect theaspirations of both the Hindus and the Muslims of the land offive rivers. Having been born in the late twenties and lived allmy life in the communalised atmosphere of the mid-twentiethcentury, I must confess I never came across this type ofexpression of Punjabi togetherness anywhere else. In my presentmood, it is music to my ears. But then it raises some very

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important questions of contemporary reality. For example, theamount of disinformation that our history books dish out on thecommunal question. Whatever be the degree of regret, it hasbeen constantly droned into our ears that the Hindus andMuslims have always been hostile to each other which meansthat they were inveterate enemies and Panipat was perhaps theonly possible meeting point. It is this that led to the 'two nation'theory which formed the basis of the Partition of India.

Not just that, it is this kind of inexorable communal logicwhich is paving the way for the trifurcation of the Punjabi societyin as much as the Hindus and the Sikhs of Punjab today arealso in the process of becoming two separate nations with twoseparate destinies. For example, in the entire eighties, a virulentmilitant movement for creating a separate Sikh state of Khalistanin the Punjab on the lines of Pakistan, was fought with tears andblood. And if the tragedy has been averted for the time being,it is only because the silken bonds of shared Hindu-Sikh onenesshave not yet been wholly snapped in spite of overt and covertmachinations of several groups at several levels. Anyway, it isthe greatest tragedy that could have hit Punjab, at least for themen and women of my generation.

I once had the occasion of partaking the wisdom of thelate Dr. M.S. Randhawa on this point. He told me that somehowwe ourselves had destroyed the human ecology of Punjab and,therefore must now pay for it. When I asked him to elaborate,he said that he could not conceive of a Punjab in which thePunjabis were divided communally. According to him, no pictureof a developed and prosperous Punjab could emerge withoutthe Hindus, the Sikhs and the Muslims fonning one homogeneouscommunity. I was not too sure if such a state of togethernessever existed until I read Shah Mohammed in 1995.

I placed my entire Hindu identity on the anvil so as tounderstand how and why communalism appeared in this form.And my pet subject has since been that the process began withthe increasing alienation of the Punjabi Hindu from thecollectivity that Ranjit Singh had forged. It is he who moved away

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from his organic roots, setting into motion a whole range ofcommunally surcharged chain reacJons. I wanted somethingmore definite to prove myself correct. Going over the wholegamut of political, social, cultural, economic and linguisticalienation of the Punjabi Hindu from the rest of the Punjabicommunity, I found out that the Punjabi Hindu had done quitea bit to breed and promote communalism in Punjab. In fact, itmade communal thinking among the other communities a morerational, and more fashionable way of projecting themselves. Yet,the third party which means the British, of course, contributedno less to this process. Hence, I blame the reform movementsthat first affected the Hindus for authoring this kind of tragedy.How?

In my kind of analysis, it is the Bhadra Lokas, which meansthe Anglicised Hindus who found it a godsent opportunity toape the white Sahibs in order to go up the ladder of life. Onthe part of the new rulers, there was also a clear reward andpunishment policy set into motion. Those who adopted theEuropean model of the Renaissance and the Reformation as thebasis of progress, soon came to dominate the society. On thecontrary, those who resisted this change were relegated to muchlower positions, socially as well as economically. Thus, theAnglicised Hindu immediately started reforming the Hindureligious tradition by making it into a competing religion. ThechurcWessness of the traditional Hindu now began to appear tohim as a sign of backwardness. This however took away thecementing base of Hindu pluralism that had kept the Punjabisociety together for so long in spite of the pulls and pressureof Islamic domination.

After coming across the picture of the society thrown upby Shah Mohammed, it does appear that the Punjabi society hadachieved that homogeneity which could have made theemergence of a Punjabi nation possible. And to this nation, boththe Hindus and the Muslims would have gravitated with almostequal zeal. I, therefore, regard the forces of the Renaissance andthe Reformation unleashed both by Raja Ram Mohan Roy and

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Swami Dayanand as the main reasons for the trifurcation of thePunjabi society.

The catholic Sanatanist ethos of the Hindus and Vaishnavismwhich was the religion of love, both came under attack fromthe reformed Hindus with unremitting fury. Instead, the newHindus, whom I call Namasteji Hindus, wanted the Muslims andlater on the Sikhs to reach out to them on their terms only. Andthe answer was a foregone conclusion. They, in tum, refusedto oblige the pretenders, particularly when the British had startedshowing an olive-branch to them in preference to the Hindus.How sad that not a single Hindu in Punjab could read the writingon the wall. That is why I say that while the Punjabi Hindu threwup all kinds of professionals, he did not produce even one manfrom among them whom one could call a man of vision ordestiny. It is this jilted Hindu who, as a reaction, became thefirst nationalist of India and filled the ranks of the Indian NationalCongress. But by the same token, this alienated the Muslims andlater on the Sikhs from embracing the Congress brand ofnationalism.

I, however, must clarify that the outline of the thesispresented above has emerged from a very complex historicalthought the nature of which is almost civilisational. It is basedon the presumption that Hinduism is a cyclic civilisation whichmakes it that much more enduring, though incomprehensible.But, by the same token, it has survived many a vicissitude ofhistory, keeping its own role fully well-defmed as the finaldeliverer of the human race when the linearity of socialexperience of the western man ceases to be a factor in the destinyof man on this earth. It also presupposes that, time after time,in every crisis, Hinduism has the capacity to renew and restateitself.

I personally believe that Sikhism is the last restatement ofHinduism that we know. It is, therefore, a higher and simplerform of Hinduism, brought into being to save Dharma. And sinceSikhism is at this time Punjab-specific, it follows that the Punjabmust stand in special relationship with rest of the country. And

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what is that special relationship? It is that overtime Sikhism willonce again emerge as that broadbased form of Punjabinationalism which will enable Pakistan to join back India in aconfederation at some future date. I know that this is a digressionof sorts but I do hope that it would be considered permissiblein the light of what Shah Mohammed has to tell us.

N.

Let us see where Shah Mohammed is absolutely unique. Inour times which are obsessed with the so-called scientificsecularism, his statement of a situation we can scarcelycomprehend. He talks of Hindu-Muslim oneness not assomething to be achieved but which is already an incontrovertiblefact of life, nay, the highest value which is worshipped allaround. In fact, Shah Mohammed thinks that anything likely tointerrere with this oneness cannot but be a scourge.

In this connection, his third stanza is worth mulling over.TIlls is a quintessential stanza-most crucial to understand as towhy he sang his entire ballad. Imagine the scenario of his twopals, one a Hindu and another a Muslim asking him how thethird caste (for him the Hindus and Muslims are no less thantwo castes, always destined to live together) which means theFeringhee descended between them as a scourge of sorts. Nowwhat is the dramatic irony? It is that soon their happytogetherness would become a thing of the past due to themachinations of this scourge. At that time, which means almostwithin months of the defeat of the Khalsa Darbarforces, it couldhave been no more than a foreboding of something sinister tocome which means which would hereafter not let them livehappily together. How prophetic! The exact words conveyingthis prognostication are as under:

One day as I was sitting in Batala 1, wholly lost

The 'Feringhee' became the subject of our talk.

1. A town in Gurdaspur district.

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Hira Lal and Nur Khan, two of my bosom friends­Suddenly did they accost me, asking:

How in the midst of Musalmans and Hindus, living happily

togetherHad a scourge of sorts descended from nowhere?For, 0 Shah Mohammed! Never in the PunjabWas a third caste ever known to have come.

Was this a mere instinctive reaction of a poet which meansa higWy sensitive mind in tune with reality or was he readingit as a writing on the wall? Well, it could be both.

After going over all the ups and downs of the First PunjabWar which leaves him almost broken, he fmds an abiding rayof hope in this divinely-coordinated Hindu-Muslim togetherness.In a way, he rounds off his ballad on this very hopeful note.Says he, in stanza 103:

God willing, good things shall happen again.What if the soldiers have lost the lustre of their mien ?

Great commonality does exist between the Hindus and theMusalmans.

None should ever dare break this common silken bond.The new rulers have no ear for anyone.Drunk with themselves, oblivious they're of our paino Shah Mohammed! All wealth is today garnered.By sons of moneylenders and 'gumashtas' in the main.

This happy togetherness peers out from each of his linesin the entire narrative of the ballad. The conduct of the Musalmanarmies and the public at large was that of the highest order. Therewas not even a remote suggestion that the Feringhee was thedeliverer of the Muslims from the yoke of the Sikhs, somethingwhich became such a fact of life not long afterwards. Did theBritish not try this card? Yes, they did. Let us see how.

Here we must refer to the Wahabi movement which theBritish had engineered in India to cause disaffection among thePunjabi Muslims against the Khalsa Darbar which, to all intentsand purposes, could be identified as a dangerous Hindu revival

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against the Muslims. This Wahabi movement had given a callfor jehad for all the Muslims to unite for a religious war so thatthe Sikhs did not subdue the Pathans. The British had allowedthe fire-eating Maulvisto organise the Muslims of V.P. and Biharand even placed large funds, ammunition and volunteers at theirdisposal. It is enough to understand that the Wahabis wereallowed to reach N.W.F.P. through Sind so as to be able to fightthe advancing Sikhs. Not just that. They were able to incite manyof the Pathan tribes to join them in the jehad. They were alsofully supported by the Amir of Kabul. Now all this could nothave come about without the active connivance of the British.For, this is how Sir Syed Ahmad Khan later on defends theWahabis and the general Muslim disaffection for the British.

But then it is remarkable that not a single Muslim chief ofany standing from the Punjab joined them. Not just that. Thismovement did not distrub the even tenor of life in Punjab evena small bit. What does this mean? It just means that the Muslimsat large had not only fully reconciled themselves with the Sikhoverlordship of the Punjab but also believed that they were, infact, equal partners in the Lahore government. Does this fact notgive a lie to this vile propaganda that the Muslims can neverallow themselves to be governed by anyone other than their ownco-religionists? It fully negates the 'two nation' theory which wassupported even by the communists, who advocated self­determination for the Muslims. It destroys the entire raison d'etreof the formation of Pakistan. But then we proved to be unworthysons of the Punjabis inhabiting the land of the five rivers onlya hundred years ago.

Only two things could have influenced the Muslims tobelieve in the manner they did. One, that they had got fed upwith their own Nawabs and feudal lords who visibly fleeced themin all possible ways; and two, the rule that Ranjit Singh gavethem, was really so benevolent that they had seen nothing ofthe same kind happening under the Muslim dispensation.Possibly both things were working in their mind at the sametime. But even so, this cannot be the entire explanation. Then

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what can be the explanation? The explanation lies in the genesisof the rise and growth of Sikhism. It appears that Sikhism, apartfrom other things, also led to the revival of Punjabi nationalism.Possibly the Muslims themselves saw in the Sikh Gurus deliverersof the common man in Punjab and the Muslims certainlyconstituted the majority in Punjab.

Well, this thought is not mine. Khushwant Singh was thefirst to articulate it. He was able to do so perhaps because hehad much more intimate knowledge of the Muslim psyche inPunjab. The kind of interaction he had had with them in Lahorebefore Partition must have told him that all that the Muslimswanted was to be approached differently, which means on thebasis of the universalism of the Sikh Gurus. The Hindusorganising themselves as a nation and the Sikhs under the Akalisdoing likewise and that too in a theocratic manner which meanswith the aim of cutting the Muslims to size, must have fmallydriven them into the arms of Mr. Jinnah. And it happenedbecause the British also wanted it to be so.

Otherwise, Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan was no less a protectorof the Hindus. It was he who not only banned the Khaksarmovement in Punjab, but also brutally rained bullets on it,unmindful of how the Muslims in general might react. Hedefended the police action of invading the Bhatti Gate mosquein Lahore and killing the Khaksars inside it because they hadtaken refuge there by creating lawlessness through an engineeredcommunal fracas. In fact, there are many more instances in whichhe acted as an utterly patriotic Punjabi, not caring for theconsequences. Only one more example will suffice.

During the later years of the Second World War, some Yankysoldiers who had forcibly lifted a girl of the Fateh Chand College,were killed right on the Nicholson Road in Lahore by some Hinduand Muslim college boys who were playing a hockey match inthe University grounds at that time. There was great panic andconsternation in the air. No one knew how the military authoritiesmight react. The Defence of India Rules were still in force. ButSir Sikandar stood his ground manfully. He refused to take action

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against the boys because he said right on the floor of the PunjabAssembly that in the face of such a provocation, even he wouldhave done the same thing. What I mean to say is that he wasnot against the common Hindu of Punjab. All he was againstwas the money-worshipping Hindu trader who exploited thepoor Muslim in so many ways. But alas! The Arya Samaj Hinduwho dominated the media and the Punjab Congress with the helpof the Akalis who had long resiled from the Ranjit Singh kindof secularism, not only ditched the Unionists but also destroyedthe country in general and the Punjab in particular.

But even so, the description of the Hindu-Muslim onenessof the Shah Mohammed kind cannot be explained away withouttaking into account the fact that the Punjabi Muslims could neverforgive their law-givers, the acts of tyranny that they wouldperpetrate on the Sikhs at the smallest pretext, particularly whenthe suffering Sikhs were just about as much a people of the bookas they themselves were. As against that, the Sikhs were so fullof reverence for the Muslim saints and faqirs with whom the SikhGurus had very cordial relations. An example; it was Saint MianMir, a Sufi, who was given the honour of laying the foundationstone of the Darbar Sahib at Amritsar. Besides some of theMuslims actually saved Guru Gobind Singh from being arrestedby the Mughal forces.

Not only that, the personal conduct of the Sikhs was sounimpeachably high, whether individually or collectively, thatnone could question their gentleness and correctness ofdemeanour. Besides, the martyrdom earned by some of theGurus and their followers must have left a lasting impression onthe Muslim mind, resulting in the utter damnation of those whoheartlessly prosecuted them. Hence, the Muslims in general couldperhaps never condone the fact that someone was to bepersecuted by the State for the only fault that he did not worshipin the same way as they did themselves.

The two Gbalugbaras (both major and minor genocides)must have pained them no less. And then it was Ahmad ShahDurani who had ordered the sacred tank of the Golden Temple

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to be ftlled up with debris and with the desecrated blood ofthe cows specially killed for that purpose. What I mean tosuggest is that the mute suffering of the persecuted who wasbeing hounded out like a mad dog and who as a man wasotherwise a hundred times superior to the one who persecutedhim, must have shaken the sensitive among the Punjabi Muslims.For example, just as the carnage of the innocents at theJallianwala Bagh proved to be the last nail in the coffm of theBritish imperialism, the genocide of innocent Sikhs would havemade not a few of the Muslims wish that the tyrannicalgovernment of the day should meet its end soon. And then thebricking alive of two young Sahibzadas of Guru Gobind Singhis a crime wholly unparalleled in the annals of any civilisedsociety, which the Nawab of Malerkotla wanted Wazir Khan ofSirhind to desist from.

And yet the Sikhs were not offensive towards them onaccount of religion. Banda had destroyed Sirhind root andbranch. But in the heart of hearts the Punjabi Muslims might havejustified it as God's own wrath on that accursed town in whichsuch a heinous crime against humanity was perpetrated. Afterall, the Punjabi Muslims were themselves no less the men ofconscience. It, therefore, stands to reason that the Muslims musthave been suffering from a collective sense of guilt on thataccount. Not just that. Not a few of them must be wishing theSikhs to emerge as fmally victorious. For, that alone could justifywhy the Muslim grandees themselves had offered the keys ofLahore to Ranjit Singh. The benevolence of his rule must havecompleted the rest of the process.

Another reason. The Muslim peasantry must have alsobeneftted no less from the agrarian reforms of the Banda. In fact,he was the ftrst to parcel out land among the actual tillers. Thatthe reigning mode of land settlement in Punjab is still ryotvandates back to that time only. Hence, while the Banda destroyedthe vestiges of feudalism in Punjab, the Muslim peasantry musthave felt pleased at such a tum of events. It needs to bementioned at this stage that the Sikhs stood for a qualitatively

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different society where no one was persecuted on account ofhis religion and everyone was assured of the fruits of his labour.It looks that this revolutionary change convulsed the Punjabisociety and welded it into having a Punjabi worldview whichtotally subsumed different religious and communal denominations.However, there is no denying the fact that Sikhism as an integralpart of Hinduism was the state religion under Ranjit Singh thoughthe Sikh priests had as yet little or no say in its affairs.

For example, Ranjit Singh had banned cow slaughter in hisdominions. But somehow the Muslim subjects of the LahoreDarbar never perceived it as an anti-Muslim act so much so thatin one of the placatory communications to Ranjit Singh, the Amirof Kabul too had informed him that he had banned cow slaughterin Afghanistan. Perhaps the Muslims at large did not as yet takecow slaughter to be one of their basic religious rights; perhapsthey, or at least a good majority of them, too held a venerableattitude towards the cow, say, out of regard for the Hindusensitivity on the point.

v.But by far the most conspicuous aspect of this kind of

Hindu-Muslim oneness as described by Shah Mohammed is thathe has as yet no consciousness that the Hindus and the Sikhsare two. It appears that right until the end of the reign of theSikhs, the Sikh identity was a part of the larger Hindu identity;perhaps till then they were politically, socially, culturally andreligiously one. Perhaps the rise of the Sikhs was in actualpractice seen as an organic aspect of the revival of Hinduism.Here, it may be useful to dwell on the communal or say thedemographically-valid communal composition of the populationof Punjab under Ranjit Singh.

Islam being an exclusive and proselytizing religion withalmost all the civilisational inputs built into it, along with itsmilitary conquests, practised religious conquest as well. Sowherever Islam went, the Muslim population grew. And oncesomeone was converted to Islam, he could almost never go back.

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So, converting this country which means India from 'Dar-ul-Harb'into 'Dar-ul-Islam' was one of the more important objects of theMuslim conquests in India. Anyway, the upshot is that not onlythe N.W.F.P. which was more or less considered a part of thelarger Mghanistan, Islam, through the centuries of its dominance,had converted huge populations right upto the river ]helumexcepting perhaps of Khukhra ins, the Hindu townsmen in thesalt range. In fact, all major tribes of Punjab up to ]helum hadbecome Muslim to a man. But beyond the ]helum, or moreprecisely speaking, to the east of that river, there were importantpockets of Hindu influence.

However, in the Rachna Doab which means the Doabbetween the rivers Chenab and Ravi, the Hindu-Sikh populationwas large enough not to be considered marginal. And beyondthe Ravi, the Hindus and the Sikhs started preponderating. Thisdemographic composition was almost intact right up to thePartition of India. And if the Hindus and the Sikhs had settledin the towns of extreme Western Punjab as willing agents of theBritish for the purpose of trade and commerce during thecomparatively peaceful times of the British rule, the mainpurpose of it was to open up the country for commercialexploitation.

But one important change did seem to have defmitely takenplace. The Muslims of Punjab had started looking uponthemselves as no more than a separate caste and not acommunity. That the Muslims were a separate nation did notoccur to them at all. It is this position that Shah Mohammed statesin the stanza quoted earlier. In point of fact, the concept of castehad been so deeply ingrained in the common mind that ShahMohammed looked at the Feringhee as yet another caste nowintruding upon the Hindu-Muslim oneness. Now what does itmean?

Going by my personal experience in childhood in one ofthe more important mother villages of the Hindus of the RachnaDoab viz., Eminabad, the Muslims had themselves startedlooking upon the Hindus as a separate and superior caste. I often

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heard the Muslims say (In my childhood I grew up mostly inMuslim homes, and a Muslim lady, of her own volition, actingas my foster mother, nursed me from her breasts), "Dewanji, howcan we be your equal? While you did not change your Dharma,we (here they meant the lesser mortals) could not protect it."Not just that. They respected our taboos and sensitivities. Forexample, they would not let me touch their food lest itpolluted me.

Another example. Some of the more well-off Muslimfamilies had continued to maintain social relations with us. Theywould make it a point that they sent us only the Kutha rasad,which meant the uncooked food which we could cook ourselvesand give them the satisfaction that we had joined in theircelebrations, mainly on the occasion of marriages or the birthof sons. Similarly, only a generation before, the Zaildar of thetown who was quite an important and wealthy Muslim of thearea, would move away from the carpet of Dewan Gobind Sahaiwhen the latter was to take even a glass of water. And thoughmy father was not a,big man, I heard some old Muslim lagis(lagis were those who offered customary menial services to the/ajmans) often telling my father that they would or could notshare a seat with him on his cot because "it is not our Dharma."

What I mean to say is that caste consciousness was deeplyingrained among the Muslims so much so that they stronglybelieved in many aspects of caste Dharma which is the sameas Geeta's Sva Dharma. In fact, the small-time Muslim converts(who constituted the bulk of the Muslim population) were nomore than a caste of the larger Hindu world, having all theconcomitants of the caste from which they had been converted,once upon a time.

That Sikhism was a schism of the Hindus or reformedHinduism or even a new religion, was as yet not so wellappreciated, particularly among those who were non-Hindus.For, in all situations of a communal nature, the Sikhs alwaysacquitted themselves as much better Hindus. This was so rightuntil my childhood, for, ours being a Mona-Sikh family, the

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common supposition among all our relatives was that even theMonaswere Sikhs i.e., the SehajdhariSikhs, while the Sikhs andthe Monas were Hindus only, yet, in an overall sense.

Our general belief was that every Sehajdhari family shouldbaptise the first born son into the Khalsa as the protector of theDharma. Even as late as the sixties, one of my Sikh unclesspecially brought for me the Prasadam from Rameshwaram for,he had gone thither on a pilgrimage. When I asked if he stillbelieved in it, he said that in his youth, he had done piligrimageto all the other Dhams. Now this alone was left. So he felt thatlet it also be completed before he breathed his last. 'Was itnecessary to do so in this old age?' I asked him. He said hehad done so because he knew it would give solace to the soulof his late mother. He was related to us through his mother.

But was there really no Sikh, as one could come to imagineafter reading Shah Mohammed if he were not aware of the Mona­Sikh oneness which was a special feature of Punjab's sociologynot so long ago? No, it is not so. But Shah Mohammed usedthe term Singh for all those who had unshorn Keshas on theirheads. And in the context of jangnamah, somehow theyhappened to be all soldiers, fighting the battle of Dharma. Henceall their descriptions come from the field of battle. In fact, inthe course of all the 105 baints or stanzas that this poem consistsof, there is only one mention of the word Sikh and that too ina higWy distorted manner. That is when Shah Mohammed makesLord Hardinge brag as to how he would go and fight the Sikhsand conquer Lahore in three hours. In my childhood, nobodyparticulary the Sikhs, resented such distortions. In a way, it wasa measure of the sense of humour that the Sikhs had. Of all thecommunities I came across in life, it was the Sikhs who had thistype of extraordinary capactiy to laugh at themselves.

Anyway, in the context of Shah Mohammed, even theopposite is about as true. For example, there is not a singlePunjabi Hindu who fmds mention in the jangnamah in anycapacity. Even so no one should infer therefrom that the Hindusor the Monas for that matter were insignificant in the scheme

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of the Khalsa Darbar. For, the fact is that Ranjit Singh conductedmost of the affairs of the state with the help of the Hindugrandees drawn from the Rachna Doab and near about whichmeant his own area of influence. In this respect, one can mentionthe Nayyars of Kunjah, Chopras of Akalgarh, Malvais and Nandasof Eminabad, Puris of Ghartal, Dutt Chaudhuries of KanjrurDattan, Kapurs and Chopras of Hafizabad, etc. In a way, mostof the important state functionaries generally came from someof these chosen families. And some of these families later cometo be counted among the Punjab Chiefs.

However, the only Hindus in the battlefield as mentioned,are the Rajput kings of Punjab hills who joined the battle in theirtraditional way as highly skilled swordsmen, of course with theexception of Maharaja Gulab Singh of Jammu whom ShahMohammed describes as a despicable kind of self-seeker. Fromthe way Shah Mohammed mentions him, it appears that he washand-in-glove with the British in bringing down the KhalsaDarbar in order to consolidate his position. So, he appears inthe poem only when the British enter Lahore. Yes, he too hadbeen humiliated by the Singhs who had brought him in chainsfrom Jammu to Lahore and therefore was about as revengefulagainst them as, say, Rani Jindan.

But it looks he was equally afraid of the Rani and hencekept his own counsel, though the kind of position the Dograshad had in the Khalsa Darbar, he should have fought and diedin action to save the good name of Dogra dynasty. But he couldnot be true to his salt, particularly when the crunch came. Hadthere been one such energetic soldier which means thecommander of the army of Khalsa Darbar, the battle might haveended differently. In fact, in the Second Punjab War too, he couldhave tilted the balance in favour of the Punjab forces. But alas!He was neither Dhian Singh nor Hira Singh. He certainly provedto be a lesser mortal who stabbed the Khalsa Darbar in the backas most of the Sikhs generally believe to this day. And, ShahMohammed seems to share their views.

Now let us tum to the second caste which means the

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Musalmans of Punjab. We have discussed them at length inrespect of how they had joined the Hindus including the Sikhsto weld all the Punjabis into one nation much before the ideaof a nation-state could be conceived of or projected in India.What was their contemporary role in the battle? Under thenormal communal reflex, the Muslims should have gained muchby ditching the Khalsa Darbar. But that's what we think afterthe 'two nation' theory divided India.

However, the fact remains that while the Sikh commanders,particularly Tej Singh, the Commander-in-Chief, and Lal Singh,the personal adviser of the Maharani, both had sold theirconscience to the British, not one Muslim of any standing backedout of the battle. And mind you! they occupied a very crucialposition on the battlefield. They had almost the entire artilleryunder them. They were perhaps the best gunners on this sideof the Suez. Besides, they were so trustworthy that, during thewar, Rani Jindan had handed over Lahore to the care of theMuslim forces only. Can anyone imagine such a thing happeningtoday? Anyway, in this context, it would be appropriate toreproduce stanza 60 which is as under:

Mahmud Ali marched out from his Majha country,Taking awesome artillery pieces out of the City.The brigade of Sultan Mahmud also came outWith invincible Imam Shahi guns in tow.Elahi Baksh brought out his guns after polishing them.And showing them worshipful burning incense sticks.o Shah Mohammed! In such a way did the guns shine

As if these were the flashes of lightning, out to dispel darkness.

It looks as if Shah Mohammed had sufficiently intimateknowledge of how battles are fought. It is also said that he wasrelated to Sultan Mahmood, one of the artillery commandersnamed by him above. But apart from that, there is no gainsayingthe fact that he was a wide awake man who could analyse thediplomatic language and almost instinctively understand theimportance of the various goings on. Moreover, his sources of

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information were unimpeachable. TIlatls why what he has writtenis authentic to the core.

VI.We have talked much about Punjabi nationalism subsuming

the communal divisions in Punjab, particularly while discussingShah Mohammed. Now let us see the depth of this belief thatit was Punjab at war with Hind or India as under the East IndiaCompany and not the Sikhs. The title of the ballad itself leavesnothing to chance and underlines the point that it was a waras between two sovereign countries, viz. India under the EastIndia Company and Punjab as symbolised by the Khalsa Darbar.However, a few illustrations of a telltale nature of this kind ofPunjabi nationalism appear to be called for in order to buttressthis claim. Hence I reproduce below four stanzas to prove whatI say. For example, stanza 63 says:

All over Hindustan were heard great explosions of the battlesto come

Which rocked Delhi and Agra; Hansi and Hissar,Bikaner and Lucknow; and Ajmer and Jaipur :People across the Yamuna started running in panic.The entire PUnjab appeared to be on the offensive­As no count was possible of those joining the action.o Shah Mohammed! None could be stopped in that blinding

storm.The 'Singhs' now appeared determined to conquer Delhi.

The next illustration is from stanza 72. It says:

Regrouping the troops, the 'Tunda Lat' appealed:'7be honour of England is in your hands.The 'Singhs' have destroyed everything before them.They've not even spared Hindustani units, whetherfrom South

or East,

The British Isles are full of sorrow today.Full four thousand soldiers have perished in action."o Shah Mohammed! The Lat roared:"lts our turn now to taste the blood of the Singhs.1/

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Stanza 88 is a much more telling illustration in this respect.It goes like this :

In the meanwhile, the Sardars met and passed a 'Gurmata'"0 friends! Have your senses examined;It's the doings of the vandals that have cost us the battle.

Now the question is: How best to save our honour.The Punjab was strong as long as the fist was closed;Now they (the uncouth soldiers) have opened it and exposea

us.a Shah Mohammed! We shall die here, fightingSo that the cause of Punjab remains undefeated."

But it is the stanza 90 which must take the cake. It says:

The 'Feringhee' once again attacked after heavy bombardment.But the Singhs repulsed them with very heavy losses.Both Mewa Singh and Meghe Khan took them head on.Three attacks of the 'Feringhee' were broken and beaten back.Sham Singh, the honourable Sardar of Attari,Was resplendent in the battlefield despite his years.a Shah Mohammed! In that blinding action

The 'Singhs' spilled the 'Feringhee' blood like squeezing ripelimes.

The thread of nationalism which means Punjabi nationalismruns strongly throughout the entire jangnamah. What howeverreinforces this sentiment is the fact that not one discordant voiceis heard, much less even a feeble communal note. What mustimpress the reader is the fact that the present-day Punjabis evenof my generation never experienced this kind of communaltogetherness. Our leaders, our education and our institutionshave been thoroughly communalized in a matter of 50 years,or even less. We were perhaps far too eager to fall for such anappeal. And the tragedy is that we had started considering itas a natural outcome of what our history was.

While we, the Hindus, always considered the Muslimattitude to be the source of all communalism, the Muslims feltequally aggrieved that the Hindus were hell bent upon enslaving

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them due to their numerical strength in the population. But whatShah Mohammed suggests is that what we thought to be thegospel truth was, in fact, only a jaundiced view, indeed anaberration. For, Vaishnavism and Sufism had long worked toprovide regionaVnational platforms to their followers. This kindof nationalism is called sub-nationalism these days. But perhapsour national consciousness must subsist on this sub-nationalismonly.

However, not skirting the real issue, the change in thenational attitude started taking place when the age of religiousdebate got under way in the entire length and breadth of NorthIndia, particularly the Hindi heartland. The main question beingdebated in town after town was : Whose God is more true ? Byimplication what was suggested was that the other God was notonly true but actually false. And this debate generated a lot ofcommunal heat and fury within the society, defeating centuriesof communal integration. Let us tum the pages of the SatyarthParkash to know what I mean to say. And once thefundamentalist attitude came to acquire respectability, ecletic andegalitarian thought took wings. And it appears to have beenencouraged by the government of the day which could have noother stake in the matter than to divide.

In India, there is a very old tradition of having one's doubtscleared and the questions that disturb answered. After all, it isthe spiritual quest of man that lends so much meaning to lifeand culture. We have our own picture of what a Shastrarthashould be. It is a constructive discussion in order to arrive atvalid conclusion. And, the discussions have to be within well­defmed parameters only. That is the way the Upanishads werewritten, or more importantly, put together. Socrates also followedthis way for fmding out the truth and spread his message.Sometimes, he would himself raise questions and fmally answerthem for the audience. But now the Sbastrartbas took place withno holds barred.

The learned argument was quite often drowned in abuseand slander. Somehow questions of faith cannot be put to proof

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or argued over in this manner. For example, the Sanatana sideof the Hinduism that had sustained the faith for centuries andhad imparted pluralism as a sustaining quality to the society, hadto suffer mutely when it was lampooned. It could just not answerthings in the Billingsgate language!

For example, how could it defend Lord Krishna's dalliancewith the Gopikas? In fact, within Hinduism, the worst suffererwas Vaishnavism which came to be regarded as a licentious modeof worship. Not unoften were the Hindus described as the firstphallus-worshippers of the world. And as far inter-religiousdiscussion, it often came to the breaking of heads. What wasthe outcome? It destroyed the basic unity and cohesiveness ofthat spiritual experience which had made the Hindus pay respectto almost every canon of every religion. The spiritual health ofthe society was thus tom asunder in the streets. It was anextremely vulgar exercise, conducted in an equally vulgar way.At one stroke our rich mythological lore became an utterlyprimitive expression of men and women walking on all fours.

The new linear thought was that since the Hindus had nohistory, there was nothing worthwhile in India's past. Conversely,it also began to be said that our past was extremely rich. Butthen if we had fallen on lean days it was because of our disunityand inability to defend ourselves. Both ways, the past becamea subject of ridicule. It was this revivalist thought that alsoaffected the Muslims no less because they too started to feel that,had they been true Muslims, God would never have punishedthem in this way which means making them hewers of woodand drawers of water in their own home. The Sikh revivalistmovements also had the same argument to offer. They thoughtthat their proximity to Hinduism which was passive by naturehad deprived them of the fruits of the great heroism displayedby the Khalsa. The upshot is that once the process of suchrevivalist thinking started, every community began pulling in adifferent direction.

Overtime, the same argument went a stage further and thesecommunities graduated to be nations, always ready to pick up

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quarrels at the slightest possible provocation. This is what I sawin Lahore in the late thirties. Gods were becoming demons inas much as people had started losing all higher expressions ofcivilized norms of religious and social living. For example, nosingle Hindu or Sikh woman could pass through the Bhatti Gateor the Machi Gate in Lahore without passes of an indecent naturebeing made. The Hindu youngmen too considered it theirreligious duty to pay back in the same coin, particularly in theShah A/ami gate and Machhi Hatta.

A personal experience. In my childhood, I had a tuft of hairon the crown of my head as an announcement of the fact thatI was a Hindu. Exactly similar was the position of my elderbrother. And when we moved through the Bhaati Gate to goto our Sanskrit Pathsha/a, we had to daily suffer the humiliationof our tuft being plucked. We had been taught to defend thismark of our being a Hindu even at the cost of our lives. Butcould we? In any small quarrel between us and the Muslimurchins, even the elderly would join against us, gesticulating atus in several threatening ways.

What then is the upshot? It is this that we have provedwholly unworthy of Shah Mohammed as Punjabis. It is we whohave destroyed all the good work of the Vaishnavites, the Sufisand the Sikh Gurus in shaping a Punjabi society which couldsubsume our separate Hindu, Muslim and Sikh identities. It wasnot so yet in our own town, even though the Muslimspreponderated over the Hindus and Sikhs in the ratio of 3:1. Ourtufts were respected for what these stood. Nobody taunted ortormented us for that. Similarly, a daughter or a daughter-in-law,whether of a Hindu or a Muslim was considered sacred becausethen she was the daughter or daughter-in-law of the whole town.In other words, the more educated did we become, the moreboorish we turned out to be ! It is this upside down Parkinson'slaw that accounts for our communalism.

May be it is cynical to say so. But one cannot escape theconclusion that had we not been educated or civilized in themanner we have been, there would have been no purveying of

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communalism and the Partition of the country would not havetaken place. In that case, we would have remained Punjabis inthe same way as Ranjit Singh had left us. But alas! With ourmodern education, everything got changed, so much so thattoday there are either Hindus or Muslims or the Sikhs in Punjabbut no Punjabis. Perhaps through the modern educationalprocess we have learnt less and unlearnt more. At least we haveunlearnt the virtue of being truly civilized which means true,sensitive and tolerant human beings, wedded to a higher Punjabisense of solidarity and togetherness.

VII.

A brief discussion of the imagery used by Shah Mohammedis perhaps called for. The metaphors and similes used by ShahMohammed are patently Indian, if not Hindu. These figures ofspeech are used by poets to compress aeons of experience ina few words. These bring before the readers' eyes a whole dramabeing enacted or an entire episode being narrated just in oneword. The storehouse of such allusions inevitably are the Indianclassics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Normally, ahigh-born Muslim, connected with the Qureshi clan of Arabia,Shah Mohammed, would have used those figures of speech fromthe Islamic sources which means the Persian and Arabic classics.But that is not the way Shah Mohammed goes about his task.

He had no use for bamboozling the reader or his listenerwith his Himalayan scholarship or the knowledge of foreignlanguages. He, therefore, talks in the idiom of the people so thatthe import of his usage becomes instantly clear. It is such thingsonly which underline the rootedness of the poet to the soil whichhas nurtured him. However, it is difficult to imagine that anIndian Muslim could have become so much Indianised or, morecorrectly speaking, indigenised himself to this extent that almostall his metaphors and similes are taken from local sources. Well,it does not happen even today when there is so much of lipsympathy for the local idiom. And anybody who achieves it can

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do so after considerable hard labour. To write in the languageof the people with their usage intact in the main, is jnfinitelymore difficult than to write in a high-faultin, scholarly language.And Shah Mohammed can truly be cited as an example of thiskind.

For example, in the very first stanza, he talks of fourteenworlds. Now this is a purely Hindu concept. Muslims divide theuniverse into two worlds which means, 'Do ]ahan' as they callit. Again in stanza 9, the Lord of Death for him is Dharma Rajwho sends his messengers to this world for inflicting death asper his dictates. Similarly, he portrays Partap Singh, the son ofSher Singh, as performing Havan when the cruel Lehna Singhbeheads him, not knowing that he himself would not live a daymore. Then the Sandhawalia Sardars anoint the child-princeDalip Singh with the warm blood of Raja Dhian Singh who isjust dying and then circumambulate around him. This is almostthe way a Hindu ritual would have been carried out. Then instanza 39, he sings of the deeds of ]aimal and Phatta who haddefended Chittor against the mighty Akbar with legendarybravery and covered themselves with undying glory. He alsodescribes Sardar Lehna Singh Majithia leaving on a longpilgrimage on fmding conditions of complete anarchy prevailingin the Darbar. The usage of the word 'Desh' instead of 'Mulk'again and again conftrms his extreme fondness for the localusage even though the word 'Mulk' is also used with equal effect.

Not just that. Shah Mohammed talks of the destruction ofRavana who had one lakh sons and one and a quarter lakhgrandsons just because an insider had stabbed him in the back.Similarly, in stanza 60, he says, "Elahi Baksh brought out his gunsafter polishing them and showing them worshipful burningincense sticks." Could a Hindu gunner have done better? Again,in stanza 76, he says, "it was like the Kauravas and Pandavasreleasing their arrows." Perhaps it was the aptest simile for anIndian to describe the fire-balls raining. But it is stanza 102 whichtakes the cake. Hence it would be useful to reproduce the entirestanza.

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From the day one, women have had their way.For, they alone account for why Rama lost his sway.1be Kauravas and Pandavas too suffered at their hands.Ful/ eighteen armies perished in the Kurukshetra sands.1bey bridled even Raja Rhoj, the wisest ever KingWith their toes they mauled and befuddled him, in the ring.o Shah Mohammed! No wonder then that the queenlind KaUTHad the country /aid waste in its darkest hour.

1bis is perhaps the best way of describing how women inhistory are known to have led their menfolk to countlessmisfortunes. He makes a mention of not only Rama and theKauravas and the Pandavas but even of Raja Bhoj whose storiesportray him as a byword of cultivated wisdom.

Of course, Shah Mohammed also mentions Ali Akbar twice.It appears he has done so for two very good reasons. One, AliAkbar emerges as a model son who regains the crown of Kabulfor his deposed father by organizing the Afghans against theBritish and expelling the latter from Afghanistan; and two,scanning a whole century of British expansion in India, he isthe only one who by dint of arms, defeats the so-far undefeatedBritish. Perhaps Shah Mohammed while being a good Punjabi,was a hater of the British too; perhaps he wanted the Feringbeeto be crushed out of Punjab so that the Hindus and Musalmanscould eternally live together in peace. Hence, Ali Akbar isimportant to him as a symbol embodying certain values and notjust because he was a Muslim warrior.

He also mentions Dulla Bhatti, the Punjabi Robinhood whoas a jungle-king saved the honour of a Bralunin girl against thecarnal avarice of a Muslim Governor. Perhaps Shah MohammedfIrmly believed that it is men like Dulla Bhatti who shouldbecome symbols of the Hindu-Muslim oneness in Punjab. ThatDulla Bhatti is today the best known folk hero of Punjab andhis lays are sung both in India and Pakistan, is enough to justifyShah Mohammed in doing so. He also alludes to one Mir DadKhan Chauhan whose wives commit Sati in the best Rajputtradition. Hence that allusion is again very well placed as a

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common metaphor of Hindu-Muslim oneness.Now the question that arises is : Is it possible for a modem­

day Punjabi Muslim to be so well conversant with the similesand metaphors of Indian life? The answer may be in the negative.Why? The reason is that the new nation of Pakistan, which isconstituted mainly of the Punjabi Muslims, is bred on Hinduhatred, though some of them are still better Punjabis than us.But then, as long as the Punjabi language is a living link betweenthe two Punjabs, there will always remain an irresistible yearningamong them to know more about the Punjabis of India.

And if this yeaming is genuine, then there is always hopethat one day, there will be born what we may call the historicalPunjab. Shah Mohammed can then become a symbol of whatwe have of Punjab which means our great civilisational heritage.

VIII.

Before closing the discussion of jangnamah and its authorShah Mohammed, it will be useful to see how Ghalib handledthis subject in the Fatehnama~his Persian masanavi on oneof the battles of this war. As a poet, Ghalib is one of the greatestever born on the Indian soil. In fact, I am inclined to agree that,after the Rig Veda, Ghalib is perhaps the only original Indianvoice. But then Ghalib too suffers from the common weaknessof the poets which makes them sell their conscience in exchangefor small crumbs of state patronage. In handling this subject,Ghalib has done just that. I am not sure as to what he got outof this bargain. But obviously, his masanavi is an encore effortwhich prostitutes are known to make before their rich clients.In fact, Ghalib's literary prostitution not only angers his fans butalso fills them with dismay. Besides, this masanavi of his is sobereft of literary excellence that it goes to underscore that, oncea poet decides to sell himself for a price, the quality of his poetryalso goes down in the same measure. What it means is that itis a poor effort to poetise what could not have done credit toeven a literary hack.

In short, it is quite a diatribe of chosen invectives against

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the Sikhs whom even the diehard enemies have paid fulsometributes for their deeds against all odds on the battlefield, Ghalibnot only talks of the racial and cultural superiority of the Englishsoldiers but also describes the Sikhs as "a blot on the foreheadof a civilization, so profaned by the population of Dharma." Acurious aspect of this description is that the Sikhs are shown ascoming from the West and are to him no more than erring animalsor black Negroes. As against that, the British to him come fromthe East (where the sun rises) and are the repository of all light,knowledge and wisdom.

Of course, it may be considered a digression of sorts. Butwhy I have mentioned it is because it affords a comparisonbetween the two poets, one a committed Punjabi and the othera pure mercenary. Hence it enables one to know how ShahMohammed is several notches above the great Mirza Ghalib.Perhaps at that point of time in his .life Ghalib was trying topander to anyone, if only his pension could be restored by theBritish. Perhaps Shah Mohammed could have got anything bypleasing the new masters of Punjab. But then, it would have beenunlike Shah Mohammed. Only a poet who would nevercompromise on his poetic integrity, could have written such anunbiased account.

IX.

A word about why a rendition or translation into twolanguages, viz. English and Hindi. The reason is simple. As I havebeen a professional translator all my life, when I read this poemway back in 1995, I could not help translating it into English,the idea being that it ought to reach the vast English-readingPunjabis as an unrivalled piece of their cultural heritage.However, when I took it out now in order to revise it, I foundthat in my first attempt, I had scarcely appreciated that it wasa theme of both social and literary significance. I felt that I shouldtranslate it into Hindi as well because it was perhaps the bestpiece of poetry on national integration. It had come from thepen of a Muslim, which no Hindu could excel.

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In the context of Punjab, it became doubly importantbecause not long ago my fatherland had been divided on thebasis of the 'two nation' theory. And here was a piece of literaturewhich emphatically negated that theory. After reading ShahMohammed, it becomes abundantly clear that all communalismin Punjab was the handiwork of the third party, which meansthe British, whom Shah Mohammed has aptly described as ascourge. This view must go before the vast Hindi-readingaudience as well because the Hindus by and large think that itis the Muslims or the Sikhs who are communal. Let them knowthat the boot is on the other leg. Their communalism came asa reaction to how the Hindus themselves had started thinkingand acting. Hence this rendition in Hindi.

But there is another reason as well. It has for long beenmy ambition that, given the opportunity, I should translate thegreat Punjabi classic, Heer Wan's Shah. I do not know how Iwill acquit myself in handling that stupendous task. Hence, thisact of apprenticeship. If this translation is found worthwhile, Ishould feel doubly encouraged to undertake that muchbigger job.

Besides, I have attempted the Hindi translation in the bam/metre. The purpose is that even the non-Punjabi reading studentsof Punjabi extraction may have something to sing which is assoulful as the Heer. And besides, it would regenerate the spiritof Shah Mohammed-something essential to fight communalism.I want to see that day when all the Punjabis, Muslims and Hindusalong with the Sikhs realize the enormous historical folly ofhaving divided their fatherland. One day this folly is bound tobe realized. But can I be instrumental in advancing it by evenhalf a second?

273, Sector 17,Faridabad (Haryana)May 1, 2000

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P.K. NIJHAWAN

THE FIRST PUNJAB WARSHAH MOHAMMED'S ]ANGNAMAH

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1

First praised be Allah

Who fllls the nature with His redolence and playfulness;

Who adorns the fourteen worlds in a thousand ways supreme;

Who invests flowers with countless bewitching hues;

Who despatches the dead wood, verily, into oblivion;

Who fashions future paths for us, with His ever-renewing grace.

o Shah Mohammed! Him alone must we fear;

He makes beggars of kings without a tear.

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2On entering the stage called world, bemused we are

With endless beguiling guises that it does take.

Never last the youth, the fun and the parents;

Never lasts the innocence children do beam;Never last the wealth, the camel and the horse;

Never last the kings and their regal splendour.

o Shah Mohammed! never last the life and its myriad wonders.

And never last the black hair in youthful resplendence.

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3One day as I sat in Batalat j wholly lost,

The Feringhee became the subject of our talk.

Hira Lal and Nur Khan, two of my bosom friends,

Suddenly did they accost me, asking:

How in the midst of Musalmaans and Hindus,

living happily together,

Had a scourge of sorts descended from nowhere?

For, 0 Shah Mohammed! never in the Punjab,

Was a third caste ever known to have come.

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t It is generally accepted that Shah Mohammed was born at village Wadala (Virarn) nearAnuitsar. For details see : Sita Ram Kohli, Sewa Singh Giani, Var Sbab Mobammed,p.88, (Punjabi Sahit Akademi, Ludhiana, 1988); Piara Singh Padam, jangnamabSingban Ie Firangian, p. 11 (Singh Brothers, Anuitsar, 1997); Rattan Singh jaggi,jangnamab Singban Ie Firangian, p. IX-X (Punjabi University, Patiala, 1999).-PSK

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4The world is an inn, visited by travellers,

Some of whom gather pelf and power.

Shaddad, Namrud and the Pharoahs

All vanished without a trace, after proclaiming godhood.

Akbar, the Great, who once ruled Delhi,

Disappeared as no more than an itinerant merchant.

o Shah Mohammed! The true God alone shall survive;

The rest shall trumpet drums of falsehood and depart.

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(62)

5Then came upon the scene Ranjit Singh, the warrior king,

Whose mere name made the enemy tremble.

He conquered Multan and Kashmir; Peshawar and Chamba;

And Jammu and Kangra - and so on and so forth.

His name, like true coin, prevailed

Up to far-off Ladakh and Tibet and China.

o Shah Mohammed! For ftfty years on end did he rule

And whetted his appetite for glory and power.

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(63)

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(64)

6But when he breathed his last,

And all the courtiers gathered together to mourn.Chet Singh was put to sword by none other than Kaur,

'Twas an event that heralded the law of jungle.

For, Kharak Singh, the new king, wept like a child, saying:

"I've lost my pal of the yester years.o Shah Mohammed! I too shall die with him,This is my solemn promise unto my friend.

G

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(65)

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(66)

7

"They've murdered him in my very presence.

May this kingship too be destroyed.

No one shall rule after me.

I shall die after killing all else.

They murdered him for no fault of his.Mayall the Sardars meet the same fate!"

o Shah Mohammed! Death became so omnipresent after that,

It claimed one and all, one by one.

\9

1lt -w:R llm -m 7:JR lffl,~mm~mu~~;

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(67)

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(68)

8And lo! Kharak Singh fell seriously ill.He cropped off within a year of his friend's death.

When death comes to strike, who can survive?

He dissolved himself in Chet Singh's sorrow.

Now let's turn to Kanwar Nau Nihal Singh.He did not shed a single tear on his father's death.

o Shah Mohammed! lhe death of Kaur, nay of many more.

God-in-heaven decreed and sent his messengers thither.

~

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(69)

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(70)

9They lifted Kharak Singh's bier on their shoulders

For the cremation-Hre to consume his body.When Dharma Raj heard this news,

He forthwith sent his messengers to fulfIl the God's command.

The messengers descended as fast as they couldAs the death got ready to strike.o Shah Mohammed! See how the curse operated,

The fates of Udham Singh and the Kaur were sealed in no time.

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(71)

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(72)

10

A messenger of death in a flash as ifPerched on the balcony of the gate they were to pass under.

He had to fulftl in full

The bidding of the Highest, even though cruel.

And as they were returning to the palace,

Collapsed the balcony, smothering them in full.o Shah Mohammed! While Udham Singh died on the spot,

The Kaur was extricated from the debris, almost dead.

~o

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(73)

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(74)

11

For full one day 'twas kept a secretUntil Rani Chand Kaur reached the scene.

She had shed no tears for Kharak Singh, her husband;She had come, however, to bewail the death of her son.

"Now when he is dead, cremate him forthwith.

You had no business to delay the whole thing that long."o Shah Mohammed! Thus howled and ranted Chand Kaur

Whose lion-like warrior son lay there, dead.

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(75)

~~

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(76)

12Someone conveyed to Sher Singh this black news,

Who had lost his brother and nephew in this manner.

Post-haste he shot forth from Batala,

Caring little for rain or shine; night or day.And as he entered the city of LahoreHe lost all restraint, weeping like a child.o Shah Mohammed! The kinsmen console one another

in such an hour,

But not Chand Kaur, so vindictive had she turned.

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(77)

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(78)

13Secretly she had stationed four armed men with orders:

"If ever Sher Singh enters the fort,

Unload your deadly carbines on himSo that he falls dead that very moment. II

But the Raja had sent a message to Sher Singh:"You do not enter the portals of the dead.

o Shah Mohammed! You are not so strong at this time.

Wait for the moment when I invite you."

~~

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(80)

14Chand Kaur was not clean in her conscience.

'Twas treachery and treachery all the way.

Sher Singh immediately left Lahore

And went to Mukerian to set himself up there.

In the meanwhile, Chand Kaur ascended the throne,

Egged on by her courtiers and sycophants :

o Shah Mohammed! "Another prince won't be born.

The forts, the cities and the people are all yours."

~'lS'

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(81)

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(82)

15The Raja took the anny into confidence

With, verily, one question: How to invite Sher Singh ?"He is a warrior son of the Sarkar and victor of several battles.

Let's work out how to make him ascend the throne."

The anny only too eager to oblige him said: "Raja ji, you think best.

Just name anyone and we shall salute him.o Shah Mohammed! Let a word drop from your august mouth

And it shall be fulfilled that very moment."

~t...

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(83)

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(84)

16For twenty-two days, the Raja proceeded on leave,

His entourage leaving for Jammu, bag and baggage.But before that, he wrote a letter to Sher Singh,

"I've set the stage for you to come.

Make your triumphant entry into Lahore with the beat of drum.

All the Sardars shall greet you on arrival."o Shah Mohammed! All the officers shall receive you

As soon as you as much as near the city"

~~

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(85)

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(86)

17

On reading this missive, Sher Singh, the lion,

Moved with his forces forthwith towards Lahore.

The horses neighed as the bugles blared

And the dust they kicked up, formed clouds in the sky.

He camped near 'Buddhu Ka Aava'

Where armies set themselves up for the fmal assault.

o Shah Mohammed! The Darbar officers themselves came thither.

And it became a famous tete-a-tete in Lahore.

~\9

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(87)

~t:

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f;:m ~ ~ ~ ~ itlBTU~ ~ ~ f~'3 f81}{i" ~,

Eo fi:fur ~ aM ~w' fe'>fT it I

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(88)

18From 'Buddhu ka Aava' Sher Singh and his annies marched,

With great alacrity and promptitude, towards Lahore.

The Darbar armies themselves saw them through

The defences of the citadel of Lahore.

Simply irresistible was the warrior prince

As he laid seige to the Lahore fort.

o Shah Mohammed! The defenders not being able to contain him,

Were obliged to offer him the crown ofPunjab.

~~

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(89)

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(90)

19Sher Singh, on ascending the throne,Held Rani Chand Kaur captive in the fort.

See how God had made Sher Singh the king,

See how he had become the overlord of the dominion.But not a year passed when he felt uncomfortable in his heart

About Rani Chand Kaur, held in captivity.

o Shah Mohammed! Only after having removedthe Rani from the scene,

Could Sher Singh rule in peace.

~~

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m ft:rn" GR"lT ~ ~ ~ ~3lT I

(91)

~o

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k7. 1;1 ol:--v! Ul; L UV( vI ""_L ,~,..... .. ... .

(92)

20

Thus, God had made Sher Singh the king,

He having usurped the throne of the Rani.The Sandhawalias too had lost their foothold in Lahore.

And harsh were the paths they had to traverse.

Again, Ajit Singh hatched a conspiracy to kill Sher Singh

As truly he was the son of a bitch.

o Shah Mohammed! Seldom is there born an Ali Akbar,

The son who redeems his father and restores him to his lost throne.

";(0

m~ en) ~ -;) ~ ~,

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(93)

~ct

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(94)

21The maids that had killed Rani Chand Kauf,

Duly were summoned in the presence of the Raja.

In order to cover up the crime and placate the SinghsHe had their noses and ears chopped off.

This accomplished, he ordered the sentriesNot to let them be out of the jail.o Shah Mohammed! In addition, the maids were

divesred oftheirjewelle~

And had themselves humiliated by the blackening of their faces.

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(95)

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(%)

22Two years later, Ajit Singh had the king to inspect a guard of honour,

He stationed his troops at Bilawal near Lahore.

He came thither with a carbine of a foreign make.

Overtly, he wanted to show it to the king and win applause.

But just as the Prince raised his eyes,

He pressed the trigger and let go the fIre.

o Shah Mohammed! Sher Singh gasped for life, lying on the floor

When Ajit Singh severed his head with a sword.

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(97)

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(98)

23Now Lehna Singh, Ajit's brother, turned towards the garden

Where Prince Partap Singh was going through a religious ceremony.

When he saw the Sardar intent upon killing him,The prince begged for mercy in the name of God.

"I shall setve you loyally all my life, 0 Uncle."

He beseeched him with folded hands and in many more ways.

o Shah Mohammed! To no entreaty did Lehna Singh listen.

He just beheaded the young Prince with a sword.

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(99)

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(100)

24After killing Sher Singh and his son in this manner

The two Sandhawalias marched upon Lahore.

When on the way they met Dhian Singh, said Ajit :

"We have fInished Sher Singh and his lineage."

Then humouring the Raja with polite words,

they brought him to the fort.

For such was indeed their cunning and treachery.

o Shah Mohammed! Those who had killed Chand Kaur,

Were shown little mercy; they all got beheaded.

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(101)

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(02)

2SGunnukh Singh Giani then asked the Sandhawalias:

"Why have you to leave Ohian Singh alive?"Mehar Ghasita intervened to endorse it;

"Nothing better can we do now."

As if this was a good enough hint, an orderly shot Ohian Singh,

Making him snap his last link with life.

o Shah Mohammed! As he lay dying on the floor,

They summoned the young prince Dalip Singh to their presence.

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(103)

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(04)

26With the Raja's blood they annointed his forehead

And circumambulated around him four times, saying:

"We've done all this for your sake only.

We pray to God always to protect you.

We don't know what's going to happen the very next moment.

For, none knows who will be there to partake of the food to-night.

o Shah Mohammed! Let anyone cast an evil eye on you.

And despatched to the other world he shall be that very moment."

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(l05)

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(06)

27When Hira Singh came to know the fate of his father,

Forthwith he summoned all the loyal officers.

Then, with the beat of drum, he took the troops with himAnd seething with rage, he made his entry into the city.

The fme Rajput that he was,

He fought the Sandhawalias with reckless valour.o Shah Mohammed! Ajit Singh was killed in the battle itself.

While Lehna Singh they caught in trying to escape.

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(107)

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(l08)

28Both the sides that day were led as if by a death-wish.

With blinding ferocity they measured swords with each other.

Now had Sher Singh been living, he wouldn't have let it happen;For, what actually happened destroyed the whole country.

The Raja too was a protector of the people.

His removal from the scene brought endless troubles in its wake.o Shah Mohammed! Not each killed the other but himself,

For, many a great warrior fell in that unfortunate action.

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(109)

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(110)

29Everyone sings the lays of Dulla Bhatti

As also the feats of ]airnal and Phatta

In the harem of Mir Dad Khan Chauhan

The queens had committed suicide by knifmg themselves.

But never had anyone done what the Sandhawalias had done.

They had put to sword the very court they were required to serve

o Shah Mohammed! They died a warrior nevertheless.

They did not spare even their own lives.

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(111)

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(112)

30In the end, did everyone feel the difference

As all the Sardars began soberly to -think : What to do?

For, the real power now lay in the hands of louts

As the rule of jungle replaced the rule of law.

The rogues that with impunity can kill the kings,

Tell me, whose authority shall they ever respect?

o Shah Mohammed! The sword was now the sole arbiter

And not a single swish of it went without its prey.

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(113)

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(114)

31There was a very venerable Sardar in the Panth,

The one who could see the writing on the wall.He deliberated in his mind upon the deteriorating situation.

That many a head would still roll here, he sunnised.

Lehna Singh was a patriarch of the Majithia clan

And was, verily, an epitome of wisdom.

o Shah Mohammed! He chose to go on a long pilgrimage

After leaving behind every involv.ement of his.

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(115)

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(116)

32Dalip Singh, the child king was no more than a dummy on the

throne,

As Hira Singh now wielded the real authority.One lalla was now chosen a guide and mentor of the king,

But lalla couldn't care less for anyone in the kingdom.On every possible tum, he would pour scorn on his royal ward,

Besides wholly unpredictable was he in what he might do.

o Shah Mohammed! lalla became, verily, a tormentor of the Panth,And this destroyed his benefactor Hira Singh in the bargain.

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(117)

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(118)

33The Singhs now petitioned to Suchet Singh,

"The tormentor of us all, lalla, is not the right man.

Reach here early to take over Prime Ministership,

The Khalsa is just waiting for you."

The kings, as a rule, like nothing better than governance;

And Hira Singh? He is merely the son of a Sharik.

o Shah Mohammed! "Pray, cut the nose of Jalla.

Let him leave the scene, fully humiliated."

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(119)

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(120)

34No sooner did the Raja receive the letter,

Than his joy knew no bounds.

Said he to himself: "I've to reach Lahore post-haste."

He, therefore, immediately had the mounts ready.

He stationed his troops at Manji Kakrin

And then handpicked only twenty-two of his soldiers.

o Shah Mohammed! With them, thus, he reached Lahore,

And set up his camp at Mianmir, the main cantonment.

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(121)

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(I22)

35Hira Singh, as he came to know of his Uncle's arrival,

Quickly placated the anny and set his house in order.

Now the Singhs made a somersault, asking the Raja to go back,

For, he was not the man to control the army.

Replied he : "Singhji ! It's now difficult for me to return to Jammu,

The daughters of Rajputs will tease and taunt me no end."

o Shah Mohammed! "See, he has come back with

Prime Ministership,

Will be the common refrain of all the hill belles.'

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(123)

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(124)

36Collecting the heavy guns and taking the army with him,

Hira Singh now took the field against his real uncle.

When he found himself thorougWy encircled,

Suchet Singh took out the naked sword, flashing in his hand.

He took only Bhim Singh and Kesari Singh with him,

As he jumped fearlessly into that cauldron of fIre.

o Shah Mohammed! Thus, he won the admiration of the Singhs,

He fought againtst all odds with such a lionine courage.

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~ :l~Ul<\ !~~ cfrorr cn1,~~-q~~~GRtITI

(125)

=3"fi::fw t:R3 t ~ ;:r 30T ~ ,

feW ~ a~~"p- ~ ofl

"ftIT H3' 3' "fo m~ weft,~ "ito ~ ?)1(? aa i4:e ofl

orel ~ fu€" fuotH HI&,.g ~ §3cil"p- W om-~ ofl

~ ~ ~ ~ ~~,,b clH81 '=T ."' ~ I"4n ". a<!'4€ 01

r'~

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-j ,-.t,~ ~ tY I ~7

(126)

37But soon the Singhs again got fed up with Jalla.

They now harboured great anger in their hearts.

Previously their wages were seven or eight rupees a month.

Forcibly they had them revised to twelve rupees.Over and above, many demanded rewards in terms of gold

To adorn their necks with garlands of Buktis

a Shah Mohammed! To have Jalla killed

Each unit of army Panchayat summoned its meeting.

~\9

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m ~ "B~mf-iCfl(,1€l ~;

~ cfcR ~ ~ <:IT 3lTO m: m,~~ CfiU ~ ~ <:;44Cfl€l ~;

q;.qr~ "fcn~~ '4t GJ,~ ~~Ifd£fi ~ -q 'ilt?Cfl€l ~;

~ 1jt?U\<:; ! ~~ <:fiT ~ <:fiT,~ cn'·~ctl 3lT1l~ W ~ I

(127)

~t:

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t"'t\

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-J~ ,-.t,,~f Jt UI)/ U,J1'

(128)

38Hira Singh had on the move elephants,

Laden with troves of solid gold.

Towards Jammu he now repaired,

With the hope that the Singhs would beseech him to return.

But no substitute is strategy for wisdom,

And thereby he had dug his own grave.

For, 0 Shah Mohammed! The Singhs soon caught up with him,

With guns and muskets, spitting deadly flre.

~~

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(129)

=3ttitaT fi:fur ~ ~ ti }{TO ~ ;:IT,i"I~lud fi:fur ~ a~i~e nTl3o:G ~ ~ tT 5" ~,

tJTill Eo ~ }t'3i~e nTlQir <JTW~ fi:fur ~ ~,

ch5 ~ Pi ~ Offil ~ nTln • ......::ll. .....

W"J ~ ))fHT ~ ~ ~,

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rq

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-J ,-.tJ~ j'i LJ" J.- fi fi:

(30)

39After killing both Hira Singh and Jalla

Elevated they Jawahar Singh to Prime Ministership.

They then turned upon Jammu,

Rampaging the countIY far and wide.

They brought Gulab Singh to Lahore in chains,

Demanding gold necklaces (Kantbas) in reward.

o Shah Mohammed! "We'll now have bangles (Karas),"

They bluntly told Jawahar Singh on return.

~~

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~ ~tp·JOi<:\ ! ~ ~ ~ ~,

'JIql~< ~ q;l~f~ mffi I

(31)

80

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,~ J?,

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(32)

40What great depredations did they cause,

For whosoever sat on the throne had to be their puppet.

They demanded necklaces and bangles in addition to the enhanced

pay.Gone were the days when they were content with five or seven.

Some would even loot the city and its Bazaars instead.

o Shah Mohammed! Such had become the ways of Majhails

and mercenaries,They would have their demands met on the tip of their shoes.

~~ ~ 3lA 3l~ Sl(ffi,

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Cfi'4t -mU cf;- '<.'lG~ ~;

~ ~6Ui<:\ ! "1~~ ~,~, ~ ~ m~ ('1('1Cf({ ~ I

(33)

8ct

~ fuor HdO( 'd ~ ih3" r~'3Ml,

mft ~ ~ ~ }{TO HPWIfi:ful+ }{TO Hde i d i ~ 0TJl ofl"3T,F& or3C? W ~ ~ HPWIfRo i;:r ~ fcfiJT ?)T ~ ~,

W ¥30 ~ W!r ~ HPWIE'TO ~ ftrcJo Hde'd ~,

¥ Hm m ~ HPWI

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~ ~

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''-~ ~IJ/ cJ /1 1;,,1 o~"-u k-'" ~!? J 11 J~ .:;.; ;r.

(34)

41For just the absence of one SarkarAnarchy, loot and pillage became the order of the day.

The Singhs had so wholly demoralised the chiefs and generals,That each one appeared destined to be killed in his tum.

No leash now held the Singhs in check,

like a herd of ostriches they would run in any direction.

o Shah Mohammed! The Sardars now sought safety in hiding,

As these evil spirits ganged up just ready to strike.

~~

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'in1Oj:g(?(\ ~ ~ lft<:IT I

(135)

8~

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~~~~~~~,

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(36)

42Soon Jawahar Singh became the target of their ire,

Their foreheads being furrowed like those of murderers.

Summoned, he came to meet them with Dalip Singh in his lap;But as soon as he arrived, he was bayonetted and injured.

Then on a spear was he lifted straight from the elephant,

And from the howda thrown on the ground.

o Shah Mohammed! For mercy did he beg them;

But mercy they did show by just beheading him.

'g'~

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~ :l~Ui~ ! Cffl" Cfffif ~ ~,

CfilCT ~ ~ ~ ~ m ~I

(37)

8~

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(138)

43The Mai herself had been interned in her tent.

When she wept and wailed, asked they: "Whom are you calling?

Who is your sympathiser here to listen to your baleful cries?

Whom are you making these tearful appeals?

What's our crime? Have we killed a Sardar's son?

If not, then for whom should you be crying so bitterly?

o Shah Mohammed! On the contrary reward us suitably.

For, you are now ruling over Punjab by virtue of our might."

~~

~~-q........£~ .~• +11l? ~ 1

u~ U-U fc:R;rrq~ m- m?~~t-m()u~~,

~~~~~m-m?

~ ~ q;y tkT -m +lRT ~,

F-:il '8&i fuv: ~ (1 Cf)H ~ \ifI<:J m- m?

~ WP:0¥4~ ! 31Gf ~ -q~ ~,

mt ~ q;y ~~ m- mi"

(39)

88

lrel ~ ~ crr<!l ft::ftr c}a+,

fonf ~ * oH'SOd n".p- f7i"3' ~ I

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(Y(Y

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_,-Jj _J fJ U~I ~ L JI... ,,UI)I, (;)~ v! V,f 1;1 o~

_,-Jy' J"I ~ ! J IJ;: fi'~

(140)

44While grieving, Rani Jind Kaur remained mulling in her head:

"How shall I strive to do away with these armed, evil men?

They have butchered my brother in my very presence-

The one who himself had once commanded a thousand horse.

Shall I seek the help of the Feringhee?

Whom shall I tum to in order to smash and smother them?

o Shah Mohammed! I shall gladly give away my life to anyone ­

Who for me avenges the murder of Jawahar Singh."

'6'6

1FT-1FT m~ <{ cxrr~ men,"fur cnm -B" ~ Cfl<1nllli ~ ?m~ 11m ~ em mr,~ r\:il~<$ ~ ffi"@-~ ~;

.:L..:. '" .$I.: 'R. 'n "--..4.etl~ ~ 4-l ~.lf'l,( 141 q-, I,

>it ~ ail'~ ep:fs ~?

~ Ijtp·J:t<:; ! ~ ~ ~r~~I<l ~ 'tR,

~~ \ilT mr~ ~I"

(141)

84

~ ~ ~aFd§· ~de nT,~ ~ fuorH guE ~!

;:Rl ~ 3 qaT ~ am,m~~~w~~1

~ ?WT ~ ~ ~ ;:raT,

R<!" ~ ~ ~I

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WtJ ~ ~ ~ woTl

r'~

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(142)

4S"With angry, bloodshot eyes they singe me from all sides,

For nothing do they demand rewards and twelve rupees.

If I am aJat's daughter then I shall have the whole Punjab widowed.

Desolation shall reign supreme over this entire land.

They shall not be left honourable enough to enter Lahore­

Not just the officers but also the subalterns.

Their corpses shall rot in the foreign lands,

o Shah Mohammed! So thoroughly shall

I have this Desh destroyed."

~l.o,

~ ~ ~ ~ am -f) 'ffi,

~~~,m~;

~tm~~~,

m~ 'ffi ~~ -mu;

~~~-q~~,'"~~~ • qUem: -mu;

ffi~~ ~ -q~ m~,

~ ~a:t<; !~ c:p:J Q\Cfldl'(1 I

(143)

8EfReY wfcMr cjfu -& ciIcJ }faT,*~ ~Ui~'dn W m ~ 011l:J'TOri' ~ ~ P.l i Fe aT ~ ~,~~~w~o1l

.... ~ ... . ....¥ P.l ~(!dJ ~ 8u JdJ(!' 'e",

011, ~ ~ ~~ 011n ~.... ~ n ....

wu ~ tr<!OT ~ ~,

~ ~ li""I l a(!i ~ 011

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ff ' - L"& ~:.'.t!f- jj d j (jJ l..v ~V

-j vLi) v~li'? .. ~J1 Vj.AP-. .

(144)

46"Those who butchered my brother so very cold-bloodedlyI shall have them dragged by their sacred long hair, I swear.

Their cries shall be heard in far-off LondonWhen they too are butchered like sheep and goat.

Countless shall be the women to have become widows then,

Shorn off all their jewellery and ornaments.

o Shah Mohammed! A great cry of sorrow shall rant the air,When the daughters of Punjab so lose their husbands."

~~

lffiT ~ ~ f\il~I·~ i em: mr,jT4ClI'"51' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~;

m~~ fqclI4ct1· -q,~ cstCf1R4f ~ ~ ~ W~;

~ ~ ~ ~13HY C):;,

~ 1f~4i.~~~;

~ ~a:j<; ! ~ 1l<clI6G V:m,m ~ q\jllcst~· ~ ~ I

(145)

89

~ fmit ~ ~ ~ ~,

~ ~ Iftr ~ ~I

~ ~ * it:r ~ l1R?<it "p-,

~ cxoT ~ fucY ~ ~ ~I

F,.h);:$1 Bo ~ ~ H9 ~,~~ .... n ft ~I~ Iii ~ }f OId l d ~ ,,"'ell I

BTtT~ io (I)T~ lffi ~,

*?i ~ lP"3" uHt ~ I

(146)

47So, sent she a secret message to the Feringhee:

"First, I shall sacrifice my comfort and my happiness;

Then I shall send my army into your territory,

For you to smash brains out of their skulls.While you shall leave no stone unturned to decimate them,

I shall see to it that they don't get supplies on the battlefield.

o Shah Mohammed! I don't want them to return alive.

In fact, this is the wish of my heart too."

~

~ ~~ Cfl1 ~ fffisrr,u~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ar:RT;

'"ftR~ Cfl1~ am: mt,~~ ~~m G:ffi CfWrr;"lR mu WTRT 31tFft am: ~ g:l,

~~ ~'eR ~ ~-~;

~ ~tp::q~ ! ';f amt ~ ~'eR ~ ~,

~ ~ t ~ Cf'l,(I¥"ild CfWrr I"

(147)

8t:

~ If'CJ ~ ~ ~ Hg ~,.... ... ~ 9 ....

))fTtf l:fT CUW d t:f I l>1 i~ <:t aI I

Her 8~(*)al ~ mroo ~,H"w CRT Rae ia or iiS iu~<:tlall

mt ~ it:r * ~ ~,orel gi;:r l>1~ i(*)<il ~ i~<:tl al I

~ ~ we tft ~~,~ 05' 3al'e~ 8iu~<:tlall

(Y/\

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_L jJ1 V tJ lJ'" 1,)1 ~.,It

(l48)

48"First, you shall capture all our enclaves across Satluj.

This shall anger the Singhs suffidently to retaliate.

Those alone shall fight who are uninfonned or foolish.The Sardars shall not take up arms against you.Over and above, I've sown seeds of dissention among the ranks.Even so, some may behave differently but only by accident.

o Shah Mohammed! This way 0 Lord,

I shall settle all my quarrels and so be quits."

~{.

II~ 1:JR cfl~~ ~,

mfc:f;" ~~ bl~~j'( ~ 1R;

~~~ ~E:iCiH m,~~~awT~~;

.~~~~"tfiT6~t

~ ~ -aT ~ 1R~ 441·Cfi,( ?

~ 1j~A4<:: ! an ~ ~ 'Wrr m,1jCffi ~ m~~ ~I"

(l49)

at~ chlot ~ Focd'a fifcsl,~ ~ ~ ~ Madr, ;:IT I

~ we ~ ~ ~~,

mf ft:fuf ~ wfu ~ Madl' ;:IT I

uR "dlo }f "fiT ~ woT,'fuH lP3" }f ~ or~ ;:IT I

BTU ~ ~ ~ ~,

mf Bfuo ~ ~ Cii!adl i ;:IT I

f"q

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(50)

49In London, on receiving this message, the Company Sahib

Threw an open challenge as to which Lord would fight.

The gauntlet was picked by the Tunda Lat,

Bragged he: "I shall go to fight the Singhs.

I shall conquer Lahore in a matter of three hours.

And I swear there shall be no resiling from this solemn word.

o Shah Mohammed! Thus I shall enter the city of Lahore,

On the thirteenth day of Phagun.n

~~

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44~ ~ Cf;llR' ~ Cfltrrr \ift ?"

~ ~ (~ mWT) ~ (fcqr~~,

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(51)

40

<f;:ft ~ d~d Old<S8 ~,ft .... A .::h.."",~ ~ ()'T(?(iF.Po t11'n'

~~~~,

~da1o ~, )1lrea i o Hr>fT1~ ~ ~ (;t6ire~,

~ ~ ~ He-ro Hr>fT IBTU ~ ~ ~ EST,tf8q'" 1JTO ~ HlWw ))f'T(!" Hr>fT I

~.

~

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(52)

50With drums, tamborines and bugles;

With umbrellas, tents, barracks and flags;

With blankets, carriages, palanquins and guns;

With binoculars and telescopes and warships­

The Tunda Lat moved eastward from London

To set up his great canlp in the battlefield.

o Shah Mohammed! 'Twas the White, indeed who started the game

By confiscating the Punjab enclaves across the river.

~o

~~~~~31tR,

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~~mm~~;

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(53)

vI Uk'"")1VII J\:- u:-'t~.d U~zJ'

,:, l./..;? JL

4~

• ::I • "T"=" ~ ~_ ~ ... ,.Gd'A1H' (} 'IT~\J u""" ul~'11'

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"..m woTaT mr ~ lito ~ mI

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01

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-13. ul ~, V,f l;11 UL,.-f

(154)

51The French received secret instructions from the palace

To move forthwith in the direction of Kashmir.They protested in the name of both God and man

But the Mai was in no mood to listen.

"The trans-Satluj territory has been taken over by the Company;

We shall beat the pulp out of their brains.

o Shah Mohammed! The Feringhee are coming from all directions

And we've to check their advance this very moment."

u..~

~ emffi· cnT~ ~ ~ 3lTGIT,

"g;«'[ ~31T ~ ~ e:tl:? IOf1 '( lfi<;rr"t,;

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~-1ffi ~ fiR ~ ~,

~~~~ '1fu:~;

~ ~ut~ !~ ~ awl WI 'ifl,~~~~~~Itt

(55)

1.I~

HT'ET~ R9 ~ ;::J'T<!" W,~ Bfuo ~ ofue ?)T ~ ml=~ ~~d8i ofue ~,

~-~ mIT ~ ~ ml~:nT::l"' - ~0l8:an ~18~ ~ ~ l1tJCl,

"faT fur :oT<ihi ?)T ~ mI

~ ~ ~ tit ~~,~ fa<:j+ 8~'el~ ~ ~ mI

(56)

52The Mai now ordered the army to move and said:

"The city must be fully defended.

The Musalmaan forces shall protect it.

The cavalry is not to be bottled up.

The Kalagiwa/as shall fight in the vanguard;

The rest of the army shall be in reserve;

o Shah Mohammed! Those whose pay is thirteen rupees a month,

Shall take most brunt of the enemy fury."

t.,~

u;fT~: ~m~~·,

~~*~';f~~;

~:g<?1¥4I41 m·~~ ~,

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~ ~UiC; ! ~ f-i1'1CfiI etA ~,

b1¥4:g1'1 "CfiT ~~~ I

(157)

4~

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(158)

53Then summoning the entire Panth, she addressed them thus:

"All the money-chests of the kingdom are empty.

The enemy country up to the Yamuna is denuded of defences,

You can loot the British territory howsoever you will.

Conquer cities like Ferozepur and Ludhiana,

Uprooting the company fortifications as best as you may.

o Shah Mohammed! Return victorious in your best ever tradition;

And I shall reward you with Karas and Kanthas."

~~

W: "tf~ q;) m ~~ fcf;cn,

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~~ 3TU8RJ -m ~ t ~,

mc:r~~ CfiT ~ ~ ~;

~ ~ N>(h:t9><, W~,~ -mcRt~ <fuR m~;

~ ~t?ut<; ! m ~ ~ ~ 'tITan,~-~ ~ {ril, ~~ ~ ~I"

(59)

1.48

fJ::fuP" ~ Baidl ~ ~,

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n "' f. § "'WO ~ »fi1 ?)T i'i ,(! n,J:rT8T 1rel ~ msl UT3" )-fl1ft I..

(160)

54Inspired, the Singhs pledged: "We shall fight to the last.

You shall have to keep us informed of all what happens.

We shall serve you with our lives, we swear,

Unmindful of whether it's rain or it's sun."

The Singhs could not understand the devious game,That the Mai was out to play in order to destroy them.o Shah Mohammed! They just didn't know

That the hunger-whetting rice bowl was, in fact, empty within.

'"'~mer ~ "~ ~ mur 1R ~. ,~~WfT~W~;

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mer ~ ~ of.rq; m~ ~,

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~ Jffiug, ! ~ ~ m'iIRT ~,

~ ~ ~~ -quo, ~ I

(161)

44ft!3l HTEt ~ ~ Fe8aa1 groT,

mu.r ~ nl W ~ ~I

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00

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(162)

55Charmed and baited by the Rani in such away,

The Singhs felt flattered and charged up as never before.

Everything's in the hands of God alone;

Some He grants victory and some the shame of defeat.

With one Lakh sons and one-and-a-quarter lakh grandsons,

Even the invincible Ravana got killed when betrayed by an insider.

o Shah Mohammed! The whole world knew it fully well

That many a warrior was to fall in the battlefield.

to.to.~ ~ ~ ~ ~ r<\~CS4{) CfIT,~m~-mt~~;

~~ * m~ t 3lPT ~~,~ ~ ~ at)t ~~ ~;

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~~WtTm~1

(163)

4Eft:fucT wWW ~ ~ ofup-,

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(164)

56The Singhs got together and the congregation swore in a Gurmatta,

"We shall go and kill the Feringhee.

If ever they meet us in the battle,

In no time we shall do away with them.

We didn't spare the venerable Bhai Bir Singh

Feringhee are simply foredoomed as we never can be defeated.

o Shah Mohammed! After making a mince-meat of them at

Ludhiana,

We shall surely march into Delhi."

~G

~ ~ ~ fCfic:Jr 1Vhll -Q:m,"~ 3lTaTI~ q;) "JlR: 3lTlt;~<m:~~m~m,

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~ ~ ";{ Cfi'lT ~ ~ ~;

~ ~6Ai<:\ ! 1~ w~,

~.~ cfi csfrq~ 3lTlt I"

(165)

~-'

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(166)

57"We shall forefeit all the belongings the Feringhees have.

We shall bring back treasures in measures of maunds.

After that, we shall enter the women's quarters,

We shall bring here all the Feringhee women in chains.

Just as Ali Akbar, the Pathan, had done in Kabul,

We are sure to cut them into pieces, wholesale.

o Shah Mohammed! We shall get gold necklaces in reward

As also the brocaded fme silk apparel."

t..\9"~ cnt Wf l1T<.1 f.tfRPI~,. Cf;T,

~~ ~-~ ~ \ift;~ ~ \ill \ilO1H~I~ II ~,~'el ~ ~~~ \ift;~ -q. "tJOR ~ 3Tffi ~,~ ~ 71TU qfT ~. \ift.,~ S6"1<; ! ~ ~ ~ ~,

m~ ~ 31\' ~ qfT~ \ift I"

(167)

lft

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(168)

58Flags fluttered as the bugles played the marching tunes,

And the great waniors moved out with a rare elan.

Sons of Sardars, bubbling with youth and enthusiasm,

Emerged as the lion-cubs shoot forth from their dens.

All the Majhails as also all the Doabias marched forward, step-in-step,

Conquerers as they were of many an impregnable fort.

o Shah Mohammed! Moved out also the fearsome batteries

and heavy guns.When the orders were issued, none stayed behind.

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(169)

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(170)

59Sham Singh, the hoary general, moved out from his headquarters;

As also the ]allawalias, the heroes of many a legend.

All the Rajput kings too descended from their mountain haunts ­

Those who had unblemished reputation as swordsmen.

The Majhails and the Doabias came marching, closing their ranks,

As the Sandhawalias came, on their haughty mounts.

o Shah Mohammed! Also moved out the fearsome Akal Regiment

With flashing naked swords taken out from scabbards.

t...~

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~ m~ ~ ~ ~ "U'if,~ ~ ~ ~ fqCfl<I(1 ~;

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(171)

EOHtJ<JO ))fffi 3 }flU( W ~ otl3T,~ Bft:ro cit wuo F()Oli811)fi" 011~~ 8M3'?) lffutR" ~,~ ~ fuwH WU~ 011reM'ill m:ra~ ~ W,:r ~ ;:ft,

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(172)

60Mahmud Ali marched out from his Majha country,

Taking awesome artillery pieces out of the city.

The brigade of Sultan Mahmud also came out,

With invincible Imam Shahi guns in tow.

Elahi Baksh brought out his guns after polishing them,

And showing them worshipful burning incense sticks.

o Shah Mohammed! In such a way did the guns shine,

As if these were the flashes of lightning, out to dispel darkness.

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~ ~ tlt:'1dl1~ CJTffi,

~ m~ ~!4I!4~Iit? ~ ~;

~~~~CfiT~~,

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(173)

Ect!f<!" -a- mro ~ tT ~ ~,

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fuq ~Hd ~ ~ ~ ~I

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(174)

61On hearing the news ofthe Feringhee coming, not one stayed behind.

From every direction came marching one unit or the other.

Not even one stayed behind for the auspicious moment had come.

They were just leading or following one another.

Before them stood the Feringhee so adept in the use of guns;

And they were no bangle-jingling maidens.

o Shah Mohammed! Even if one were to counsel otherwise,

Could one stop such an awesome array of armies from colliding?

~~

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~ 9l~AOf~ ! ";f~~ ~ ~,

~~~~~~I

(175)

(9LI)

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62All the fine youngmen from the city of Lahore,

Marched out beating drums and making war-cries.

The two rivers could not slow their progress.

And in no time they ferried across to Ferozepur.

Where the Feringhee line stood pitted against them.

Now certain it was that not a few heads would roll on either side.

o Shah Mohammed! None was so coward as to run away from

action.

When warriors face warriors, tell me who can retract?

G":(

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(177)

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(178)

63Allover Hindustan were heard great explosions of the battles to

come,

Which rocked Delhi and Agra; Hansi and Hissarj

Bikaner and Lucknow; and Ajmer and Jaipur.

People across the Yamuna started running in panic.

The entire Punjab appeared to be on the offensive­

As no count was possible of those joining the action.

o Shah Mohammed! None could be stopped in that blinding storm.

The Singhs now appeared determined to conquer Delhi.

G~

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fuer~~ "Cfll l1R~ I

(179)

68~ 1mft~ WC'ffi ~,

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(180)

64The Feringhee wrote to the Khalsa:

"Why are you bent upon fighting like this?

We had a pact with your late Maharaja.

Then, why are you now stoking the dying embers?

You can take any amount of wealth from us;

If ever you wanted more, you would get it.

o Shah Mohanuned ! We are determined to defend our interests.

Why, for nothing, should you expend so much energy and

resources ?"

G~

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\ifR-~ cp:IT~~ wm7"

(181)

(2:80

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65Wrote back the Singhs to the Feringhee :

"We are sworn to kill you in the open battle.

We look with disdain at the money you offer us­

Even if it be a whole mountain piled up before us.

The Panth that conquered Jammu not long ago

Has now turned up to take you on.

a Shah Mohammed! You put your guns in front

And send your chosen soldiers to measure swords with us."

~~

~ -men ~ ~ &{PlllY Cfil,"=..t~ ~~~ ~I'(,·I ~ {"'l('1Cf)R ~I~I;

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~ 'j6Ui<:: ! ~ m-q~ o3lJ1T,~ ~~~ 'lfic:rjltt

(183)

(tBI)

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~~

66Panches of all the platoons wrote to the ranks :

"Our arms shall move on the offensive today.

We had killed the venerable Bir Singh by using guns.

You can see we do not spare even men of God.

Didn't we conquer all the forts around?

Didn't we level the citadels of Bhatinda and Kulu?

o Shah Mohammed! That alone shall happen

Which the Panth, in its wisdom, wills and decrees."

GGffi&T 1fql ~ "mU q (1 20'11" cnT,u~ 31F1T i ~ *r~~H ~;

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(185)

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(186)

67With the help of telescopes, the Feringhee scanned far and wide,

Counting all the armies arrayed against them.

They located the position of batteries and guns;

They pinpointed with accuracy the contours of each fortification.

And having done that, they distributed wine among soldiers­

Each one two bottles of the devil's own brew.

o Shah Mohammed! After consuming alcohol,

The devil in Tommies instantly got ready for the offensive.

~\9

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~ 1j~up; ! "tft-"tft~ Tilt,~ ~ coT TIm~~I

(187)

Et:fuq f1hr tT 7)T}f ;=t tfuoft m,W gal m UT<tt tft crc.r Hl>if+ I

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-u~ 1z?... e:,f L 1 "':-'""" u~i':

(188)

68There is a village by the name of Mudki

Where a moat filled with water separated the armies.

The freshly-recruited Akali horsemen

Had just planted their flags in the battlefield,

When the Feringhee guns started booming

And the bones and flesh of the warriors began to fall apart.

o Shah Mohammed! The Singhs had to beat a retreat,

Leaving behind their guns for the enemy to capture.

Gt.

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(189)

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(190)

69Regrouping in the camps, resolve they did:

"On Sunday we shall flash our swords and go on the offensive.

We have been waiting only for Teja Singh,

We shall not fight until he arrives.

But when he finally does

We shall not spare our lives.

o Shah Mohammed! Then launching a frontal offensive

We shall emerge victorious, destroying the enemy, root and

branch."

G~

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(91)

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(192)

70When Teja Singh did make his entry on the scene

Along with all the ranking officers of his staff, they said:

"Give us orders to take out our swords."The suppressed anger of the soldiers was apparent in these words.

Hungry falcons had sighted the heipless doves.

"Now you shall see how we prey upon them."

o Shah Mohammed! After obtaining orders from Teja Singh,

They worked out plans to go on the offensive.

\90

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(193)

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(194)

71The entire battlefield around Pheru Shahr

Got fllied with big guns like ordinary muskets.

The Singhs fought with such reckless valour,

That the Feringhee were soon reeling under.

The Tunda Lat then with great anger in his heart,

Ordered his soldiers to beat retreat.

o Shah Mohammed! London was filled with widows that day

As the Singhs started scything through the Feringhee line.

\9~

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(195)

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(196)

72Regrouping the troops, the Tunda Lat appealed :

"The honour of England is in your hands.

The Singhs have destroyed everything before them.

They've not even spared Hindustani units, whether from South or

East,

The British Isles are full of sorrow today.

Full four thousand soldiers have perished in action. II

o Shah Mohammed! The Lat roared :

"Its our tum now to taste the blood of the Singhs.1I

\9~

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(97)

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(198)

73Exhorted thus, the Feringhee now went on the offensive.

They brought their guns astride the river.

They burnt all the magazines and munitions they had,

The Singhs now started to run pell mel!.

They also left behind their tents and chow/daries.Not one thing now remained to be defended.

o Shah Mohammed! The Feringhee stood resolute and fmn.They did not resile from the battle they had won.

\9~

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(199)

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(200)

74But the Feringhee too saw the sony spectacle

Of their soldiers retreating and showing their backs.

After the great guns had fallen silent,

The battle of the small ann raged furiously.

Someone came and infonned the Feringhee:

"Your London is now no more than a widow.

o Shah Mohammed! Just go and see in the battlefield,

How the Tommies have lost their lives as also their honour."

\9~

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(201)

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(202)

75Pahara Singh was the friend of the Feringhee.

For, he bore enmity to the Singhs.

He left the field to tell the LatWhat, in fact, was a great secret :

'tThe Khalsa too have beaten a retreat,Taking in their two hands only the deer skin.o Shah Mohammed! The Singhs have left bag and baggage­

Leaving the empty field for you to conquer."

~

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~ ~ ~ ~ itG:R El"ffi I

(203)

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(204)

76This gave the Feringhee as if a new heart.

The fire balls started to rain afresh.

Huge smoke clouds billowed as structures clattered and creaked.

'Twas like the Kauravas and Pandavas releasing their arrows.

When the Feringhee thus showed their fangs

Not a few lost their nerve as also their lives.

o Shah Mohammed! The Feringhee won the day,

Capturing one hundred and twenty-three guns in the battle.

\9G

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(205)

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(206)

77When the fear had gripped them, in hushed tones

Did the young and inexperienced cavalryman talk:

"Now that Feringhees have beaten us hollow

Why not make good our escape at midnight?

Had we taken to farming, we would've had enough to eat.

After all, whose sons are we but farmers'?

o Shah Mohammed! We've land and irrigation wells.

Now with gusto we shall plough the fields again."

\9\9

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(207)

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(208)

78

Those who survived were simply overwhelmedWith pangs of hunger and bodily exhaustion.

"The Tommies are pursuing us like Jinns-The same ones we thought were spineless jelly-fIsh.We had put our hand in the honeycomb to milk the honey

Instead, the honey bees stung us, incensed."

o Shah Mohammed! There was no escape route left

Which the renegades could take to repair to safety.

\9{'

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(209)

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(210)

79"We had set out from our homes to kill the Feringhee.

But in the bargain lost our own cannon.

We disturbed the hornet's nest to get into trouble.

Not only did we lose the battle but also the honour.

We've lost the city we lived in happily;

We ourselves handed over its keys to the enemy.

o Shah Mohammed! Everywhere the people tease and taunt us :

'Singhji, What a great victory you have won!' "

\.9~

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(211)

t:ourcft' wfu ~ forR l)iTOT}{ ~ ,

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(212)

80

They reached their homes to take refuge

Some for a night and some for two.

But soon the Sardars summoned them back:

"Wherever there be a soldier, he should report back.

Where'll you hide yourselves, 0 Khalsaji?

Tell us: if there's an inch of space left for you?

o Shah Mohammed! Firmly unite again for the battle.The tents in your camps are only waiting for you.·

~o

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(213)

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(214)

81

When the armies gathered again on the Punjab side of the river

They were told that they were in action and not on leave.

There was a lot of breast-beating in the camp.

There was no fresh recruitment, nor was there a buyer for the grain.

After hours of idling, come back they would to their posts

To be able to partake of the food available at the camp.

o Shah Mohammed! Each little act of their bravery became known

to all.

For, the oft-repeated refrain was : 'Tell us Singhji what happened

at Ludhianal ?

~~

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(215)

t:~

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(216)

82

Sardar Ranjodh Singh, along with his soldiers,

Now moved swiftly from Ladwa

Where several of his kinsmen were being held captive,

Having been sent thither by the Feringhee.

He snatched away whatever he could lay his hands on

As there was none to contain his fury.o Shah Mohammed! He burnt down the Feringhee encampment,

Whose neIVe for a time did utterly collapse.

~~

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~ ~ ";J ~ -Q:m 3lR lir:rf;~ 4j~A:j~ !~~~ ~,

~~ ail' fJfit ~ ~ lir:rf I

(217)

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(218)

83Mewa Singh came down with four platoons in tow.

The Singhs once again took up the arms;They killed many a Feringhee soldier;

They looted numberless posts and camps ofGuns, camels, provision-laden elephants and horses­

The Singhs captured and unloaded them in their camp.o Shah Mohammed! Had the Singhs really pressed forward,

They might have on that day taken Ludhiana.

t.~

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~~ arcRT~~;

~ ~UiC:; ! fitEr ~ awl ~,~W~ m~"qR:~1

(219)

t:8

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(220)

84Mohkam Din Sardar too wrote to say:"You've looted some useful things in good measure.

Send them all straight to us-

So, these can be put to proper use in the battlefield.

You are victorious today with God's abundant grace.

The news of this victory has reached all the world over.

a Shah Mohammed! When enemy is around,It's always better to keep your presence of mind."

t..~

1j~Ui~ ~ ~ ~ fu"&T ~,II~ 3w:A ~ \itT~ i ~;

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G{ffi ~ ~ m:r m'Q;{A -q ~ I"

(221)

t:L1

Ro+ -&J+ ~ lfq m~,tJT3 as al3l ~ ~ ~ HP>fT I~ gT~ we i;~ ~,

FI9 iju ci ~ ~ HP>fT I~ ...... ~ ....~(,,)I ))1~da8 ~I l.J;::$d8 1 '0,

nfq Uffll 8;::$1 e1 ~ ~ HP>fT I" ~.r A"'"'wu ~ 111~ ~<::i~ iSfO,

qo ~ i; ~ ~ HP>fT1..

1\0

t';k"'..J If ~~ fJ U~/ ulJ-­-u~ jJ) ,-:J J! .,:.,lj Uilj

'of $ l;J; L ..:,., JJ ~ t.f OJ'

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-U~ jy? UJ JI} u;I ~)l,,-!$ L~ J- ,;J o~

-U~ j~ U~; L L; .I

(222)

8SLudhiana was a good sixty miles away.

But the Feringhee Lat covered that distance in just one night.

He invested and looted the victorious Sikh camp.

He snatched away everything and destroyed it.

The brunt was borne by the Avitabile forces

Which fought a furious action for quite a few hours.

o Shah Mohammed! While the Sikh camp had been fully ransacked,

There was no explanation of what had actually gone wrong.

0"

me m \ill ~ ~ W~,

mf-mf~~ 3lR men;~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~--tu,

~~~~~~;

Gfffi aifCldl~ (W'j Cfl1~~,

3lTm ~ ~ ~ bllOi~H ~;

~ ~~utc\ !~ ~ ~ ~

~ ~ ~ ~ q~llOil'1 ~ I

(223)

t:el.ffu"g ~rr8e· fi:fuf -;?r foac? m,~ ~ ~ ~ nTl~::r2 are- m oul fuor ~,wu+ ftJq ~ (I)Tg <!'SdIi~e nT I"rn ~ <!'Sa1il tl oR? ~,;:ftg ms+ lit' ~ ~ nTlBTU~~ ~ urcr funf+ -a:,~ mS fur fH~i~e 011

1\'1

,~)V ,j Yo ~ 'JJ ~_j ~;;,,," ~y ,i ~y ,i ;:,.,J;- J!. (j) ~)V rL £-jJ~;;'~ Jt '-J ...It 'JH~ <II .,,(;) : J UJ J,j J,J 'Jlr

-j ~;;,lI'J J/ v! ul)~ 4,ui Uh~ ./ L ~j ,;J a~-j ~;;,fy )~ ~;( v:. i

(224)

86The very fIrst onslaught and the Singhs started running,

Retreating in a wholly bedraggled condition.

They had lost everything sans the tatters they wore.

To feel warm, they hugged their chests with own crossed arms.

When the people at large asked them about the battle,

Sheepishly they kept their tongues well behind their teeth.

o Shah Mohammed! When they reached their homes-

Their families had virtually to reclothe them.

toG

~~ -q~ cf; -qfq ~,

~~~~~;

WJ ~ ¥§ GfTft Gm ~ ~,

~ mffi Cfil csrrm Cfil OR ~;

\ifG{ ~~ qft Gffil ~,

~ <:jffl cf; Gfrq~~;

:<W ~UiC:; ! <tlGM(!~ -ffii,-;;q ~ r~R11Q\ ~ 3lR~ I

(225)

1\'-

<t~ J/ ~ .& ~~~ ~u

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-13- ~)Jt~ ~j(,.- L (;),'I(;)~pj

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-13- ~)lP. ~)~pj U~ ~)/¢J V:-'~

<L.,l .Il? .n .n.l ,;1 o~

-13- ~..Jt" ~j(,.- ~' vi' ~j

(226)

87Said many, "We shall never go thither in our lives;

We shall never engage that scourge in the battle;

We shall spend our days somewhere in hiding,

However our comrades try to persuade us.

You say that we captured Ludhiana.

No. Each one fended for oneself. Rudderless.

o Shah Mohammed! Beware of them - the Feringhee.Those who haven't fought them yet, would know it to their cost."

~\9

~ -m- ";{ Cfl'=ft m '6'eR:~

~ ~ ";{ ~~ ~ -m-;~~ fuq ~ "'qR f<\;{ q;g,m~ ~ GA ~-~ "B -m-;aw:J~ ~ \iftm ~ W~,

~ ma mm ~"B-m-;

~ ~Uj~ ! 3lGf ~ ~1~14({ ~

m f~~ fqq:)<R"I "B -m- I

(227)

1:1:m *0 Hdeid i ~ oit::P",-&it ~ ~ otct re8 i t"l ~ I

"is~ ~ ~ "ih:r ~,llaT~ ~ ~ w;:r ~I

l.:fo Htit m ~ ~ ~ m,fuc)+ ~ ftr3T ~ l.(T;:r ~ I

BTU ~ }flO c} }fa' ~,

orel ar,:r (I)T ~ ~ ~ I

/\/\

'\:;f r;..I,r V'.l IJ/ ~ ~-'.I~ ~~ ,f IJ J' J/,JI ~ ",.JI,.- UJ U~.I: ~

-'.I~ ~1J ;f.; uJ v~j'J ~'J. tJ J _li'., v2 , (J J: ;;-'.I~ ~;.~, ~~ J/, U~,,~, ,/ L .lL ,;.1 o~

-'.I~ ~l? L Yl ,; ~'.I U/

(228)

88

In the meanwhile, the Sardars met and passed a Gurmatta.

"0 friends! Have your senses examined;It's the doings of the vandals that have cost us the battle.

Now the question is: How best to save our honour.

The Punjab was strong as long as the fISt was closed;Now they (the uncouth soldiers) have opened it and exposed us.

o Shah Mohammed! We shall die here, fighting

So that the cause of Punjab remains undefeated."

~~

m~ ~ ~HC=:I<l· -.t !lt~HlI fct;<:rr,

u~ rlS4~{'1 ";J cnt~ <m1;\ifl ~3lT m~ ~ cnRUT ~3lT,

~-~ ett ug;ft t ~ ~;

lJit ~ ~ tfif~ ~ ~,

ern-~ m~ ~. <m1;~ ~u:jC=: ! 3lGf~ 'IT 11rVf£ t,1fuJ~ m am~ ~Itt

(229)

t:t"3T;:it ~ 88oc'd ~ W ~,

'tre ~ ~ ~ HPWI=orlr~ or fi:ful+ i;~ crno+,wfuH ~ * W ;:roo HPW I= =~~ f. §. "' - ~(.mJ (') • a' Ciii! lJfT<!' or trcr I~ .0 • ,

ftp,fT ~ ~ ~ :630 HPW I=R'U ~ ~ ~ W<!" forij-,

~ afuo wmr ~ ~ HPWI

"'1',"-.II ::... L .J1dI .JIJ j;.

"I

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'U(j -::.- j L UrJ L U~ ~J-'-u~ .JJ/;' LYl uJ ~ (1$'~J .JJ) L 1;)1 U I JL U 1Y

.... ". ...... ,,.,-Ul-o .I;> ~! ,"-J UJJJ l,y,z..' I;)~ L Vi ,;j e~

-U~ .JJJ f- .JYl JJ ; U~ I

(230)

89For the third time, the Feringhee challenged and attacked

With drums and tamburines trumpeting.

The Singhs too girded up their loins

As they got ready to give battle to the Feringhee.The Feringhee mounted pressure on the left flank.The armies got berserk and fought.o Shah Mohammed! Where could they go to save their lives?For, lahore was far - too far from there.

~~

~ GIT{ <"'R1CflI< ~ ~ Tift,~,~~~~;

~~ m ~ 0Gf ft:icA -;f m,"ffi'q'"{ ~ "Cfll m «mf ~;GWt "t{~ "lR~ ~ ~,

d~I41~ -q~ "Cfll <ml ~;~ ~Ui~ ! ~ -at~ ~,

~ ~ ~~ fG4<.1@ld ~ I

(231)

e,"-)

~o

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~ ~ fifu.rt ~ ~ ~,

~ ~ RU ~ lRl=:: -

eL l.f;j L ~ ~~ ~~r

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tJ iel il)/ ;: (~

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-'I ,., I. ;::t'.k UI ~ .,.tl,

(232)

90The Feringhee once again attacked after heavy bombardment.

But the Singhs repulsed them with very heavy losses.

Both Mewa Singh and Maghe Khan took them head on.Three attacks of the Feringhee were broken and beaten back.

Sham Singh, the honourable Sardar of Atari,

Was resplendent in the battlefield despite his years.

o Shah Mohammed! In that blinding action

The Singhs spilled the Feringhee blood like squeezing ripe limes.

~o

ffi qk,i I~ q:;) 'B \iIGl ~ 71ft,~~ ~ men ~ ~ -m;W:rr futr ~' ~ m~ ~,

-aR~~ cfi~ -m;~ futr amU ett~ ~,

~ ~ -Fcn~ fq~~ -m;~ 4j6 Ai<=: ! 'fum ~ '7l1U cfi ~,cqffu~ cfi~ F-1~~ -m I

(233)

t<:tW ~pFCii!G· ~ ~ "io ~,

.1;aiRhi 3" fin} m WCJ lif"dll~ uff3>w ~ onfTO ala,~~ Hae'a i *~ l::('>l{T(ft I= - -"' ~.. OJ OJ ~'3W IHI..4 Haei(i yg ~ I~.::s',

urcft' ~ OT wfu fuo j;:r war I

wu ~ HOO F.IUTe" ~ ~,~ ... .... ~-...~

'))f3' wo OT oca(')al ~ 1(.1'11'01 I

(234)

91The Feringhee regrouped and attacked again

Where the French-trained soldiers and Cbaryari cavalary was.

They advanced in an arc-like fonnation.

But it was indeed a very difficult battle for the Khalsa.

For, Teja Singh had destroyed the bridge from behind

So that the army could not even retreat.

a Shah Mohammed! They could only die and earn martyrdom,

Unmindful of what happened to their lives.

~~

~ am: ~ "tlRY ~ ~ ~,

~ !lfli«l«l ~ alh ~ ~ 'lJTU;Cf)llR CfiT cqjfu (faT ~ ~ 3lT1T,~~~~0Gf~~;

~ tm' ~ W ~ ~ cnTCT,

W 3TI ';f ~ ~ • cqrft;

~ ~~Ul~ ! ~ ~ "m1c\ ~,m 'ifR ~ oAc:n '4t~~ I

(235)

t~

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~ l.J1df.l i J} iW ~ 011nft:r ~ RdC5( l d 3T tfg ~,

~~~3'm+~011

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qy

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-j U~,yl ~ ,-:J1 I ~,U'? ~ .J'(/ JI I;; 0(;-

-j U~J~ uJ ~I L ..~~ u~j

(236)

92The battle of Hind and Punjab now raged furiously.

On both sides were ranged huge numbers.Had the Sarkar been alive today, he would have certainly valued

The reckless bravery the Khalsa showed on the field that day.

Not just the men, elephants too got blown up

As they fell on the ground along with the bowdas.o Shah Mohammed! But for one Sardar

The forces lost the battle they, in fact, had won.

~~

~~~Cf1T~~,

G:AT am: ~ ?it m ~ ~;

3lT'iT ma~ or~ ~,

~~~~ ?it~~;

~cm ~ ~ ~ 3nfct4f ~,

~ ~ ~ fTrof ~ -qffi ~;

~ ~UiC:: ! -am ~ mc::R cfl ~,~m?it~cm~~1

(237)

~~

cret ~dH" }flO c} 1re ~,

ft::rc:j+ tili ott3 3:aT+~ -e- r

cffi:R' tUo c} ~~ ~,

~ HTfa€" i; "3W ~ -e-I~ ~ 0fTH ~ l)ffJT oft3l,~ ~ c} JlTCiPW~ -e-IBTU~ ~ (I)T ~ ~,

~ 'HoT -e- ~ .cg €Idfl".p- -e- 1

qr-

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~

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(238)

93Each one killed many a soldier before he fell,

Resplendent as blood-dripping sword flashed in his hand.Those who remained were encircled to be drowned in the river

As the Feringhee rained cannon balls into the water.

Not a few regretted: Why did we join anny,Just on the advice and prompting of the friends?o Shah Mohammed! Pray, God never bring us back

to fight the Feringhee,n

They were heard saying this only to themselves.

~~

~~q;)~~~,

~ m~ -q '*iT ot1qj{ lftc:li;\ill ~ ~ ~ c);~ ~,

eAt "ffi1:IT etr ~ CQr ~ ~;

'q'ffi fCfi'('if(1l(~ ~~ etr,~ 1Wf, m ~-~ ~;

~ ~t?Uj<:: !~ ';J ~m ~

m~~~c:J-;m:~1

(239)

~8

orel ~ -e- ifaa ~ ~ W,~ ~..r.... ~ . ~111 0 (") 011'11 • '3';:J' 0( <:: I d I)fT 0 1 1

ffrcy W ~ em (I)T f}ffi- ~ ~,

~~ fGao f~eiJl'>fT nTl~ ~ -e- fRat -e- ~ ~,

~ ~ 3 fGao f~eiJl'>fT nTlBTU ~ ~ Rd€'d ~,

~ crr;:r -e- ~~ nTl

ql"

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-J U~d'} '&-} ~J ~I.I U~

(240)

94Many a mother lost her son-Her heart having been pierced with bayonets.

The sisters who were never to meet their brothers again,

Were left to weep like helpless creatures.

The wives who lost their protectors in the world

Now roamed with loosened hair just as apparitions.o Shah Mohammed! Many a noble too had perished,

Leaving the kingdom wholly orphaned.

~~

~man~am~~~

~ ~ 'tR ~ Cf>2IRl4i~;

m~CfiT ~mm~,

Wit~ ~~ 4-qIRl4i ~;~ ftRY ~ ~ ~ Cf)llf ~

~ GfR1~ cSh:H?iRl4i~;

~ ~~Ai<:: !~ m<\R 1R ~,

~ ~ II~ ~ &:lIRl4i ~ I

(241)

tll~~ "O:aTTH CJT<!T f;:fe" cW,"&it ~ *~ mIT 8'~el ;:IT I~ .... -F. ~tI KIt::: I ~ ~ orcre8'ti OC~I,

~ 3W ~ ?)T ~ ;:IT I= -

Hal ;:[TO ~ cJlJ w ~ O'l?r,l..fT€' ~ ~ ~ 6; i~el ;:IT I

WU~ nfi:r * 1Ww ~,"'-, - ~ "'.. 9 ~>JfCJT ~ OCI Oli Q 9'~e t11 I

'10

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• , I·

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-J. j,lP! U / ':;'-.1 S .I~ Z.,

(242)

95Now Rani Jind Kaur wrote forthwith to the Lat:

"You shall not take a minute longer

To deal with the remaining soldiers in a suitable manner­

For, you alone can handle this unruly lot.

You and God alone are my protectors.

Station a contingent of your soldiers in Lahore.

o Shah Mohammed! I stand fully avenged today.

The rest now I leave to God."

~t...

*m ~~ f* Cfi'h: ~ ~,

"3W1 ~ '4t ~ ~1JIICl;fl ~;

~ ~ cnT~ ~ 3l'4t ~,

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~ Ciitq~~~~;

~ Ijt?AiC; ! ~ ~ ~~ ~,

~ <ilffi -m ~ CfiT~~ I"

(243)

te~ lfqT ~ ~ JfflO B<!" ~,

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~ ~ ~ ~~,

~ ~ 3 ~ FCOl'Fc!1)fT ~I

11'1

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,Uli); ~ L ~~ ~ u;rr_t:-J U~ilr U~ L; u u;t::,Z (jl./ ~; ,J o~_t:-J u~~ U,l) L J. J ~I

(244)

96On hearing from the Rani, the Feringhee rebuilt the bridge.After crossing the river, they plundered the countryside.

They entered Lahore with so much joy in their hearts.As victorious notes flowed from their bands, announcing their

arrival.First, Itwas the Pathans who greeted them with presents,

Then the headmen of the kingdom extended them a befitting

welcome.o Shah Mohammed! On their way to Lahore,They had divested all the towns and villages of their riches.

~~

f"14':j~oJ 'tJT,~ ~ efl'#:l ~ ~,

~ 'trn: Cfft, m-TJiq ~ ~;

~~ q;) llW q ~~,

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m 'tRJ ~ W:~ ~;

~ ~AiC; ! 71M ~ m:a ~,

';flR, ~ €ff(1lfl'1~m I

(245)

t"or,:rr ftww~ ft:fur >,fTtf~ ~,

w ~ mer~ BTlwfulr "5or m~ lrcJ~ oranl,~ 3T ))fTl.RT chr a<!i~el BT I

M3" ore- liM~el ~ m,~ ~ ... ~ .... fu· .....;:\.Ie;; ~ 111(.4' t:::1 ~Rol'~el ~I I

~ ~ ~ ~ ~~,

303 m-r * Offi o(di~el BT I- = = =

q~

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(' I I I-u I ,~ ,1/ ,(:;,t' 4J y 4J y' .:;., J1

(246)

97Raja Gulab Singh paid obeisance to the Lat with all obsequiousness,

He brought him into Lahore, holding him by the arm.

"0 Sahib! Have mercy on US,ff

By saying such meek words, he was serving none but himself.

He had all the Malvais and Doabias removed from the army,

Thus, weakening the Khalsa beyond retrieval.

o Shah Mohammed! After getting Kashmir in the bargain,

Gulab Singh repaired forthwith to Jammu.

~\9

"U'iIT ~~~ am ~ Cf11:,

~~~"il~~;

".nt~ ~ ~ 1R ~ q;v:rr",

W~~~~~~;

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~ c;c:Uf~4f cnT~ f~Cfl(i1cW:lI;

~ ~Ulc; ! Cfl~'"ll{ ~ 'B ~,

~~"Cffl"~~~1

(247)

~t:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~~,

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, .. rL '-,); JI'-NY ~ ,

(248)

98In this way, the Feringhee became the protector of the Mai.

They stationed their own contingents in Lahore.

They assumed the overlordship of the trans-Satluj regions.

Establishing their advanced post in Phillaur.

They took over the control of Lahore and Ferozepur.

Besides apportioning the revenues accruing from the trade

route of Nanda Chor.

o Shah Mohammed! Kangra too was usurped.

In short, they did everything a thief does.

~~

3lR ~ ~ -aR~ ~lijCf),

~~~~~;

~ til(1ClI "tffi Cf)T ~ mu,~~~~Nid<~;

i?J1f1Ch GR~ N>();;J:t9;< ~,

~ ~ ~ '1~I~h ~;

~ y;tp:"'i~ ! Ch iJ I~I 'Cf51c: "ffi'1T,Cffll~ \ill~ ~ -:qR~ I

(249)

ttf, " ~ .... ~~- ........a ~ei ~ .100011 ~ 1t.l'11' lR",

ci8T ~ .iiidafl".p- ~ i; I

wEt i-;:r i; wfu ~ ~,

~~vf.f,.""Itdl (')0(01 ~~iJl dl)fT (I) I

~ 'fl'Tg 'ffi'3T }fffii[ 0( 'ae I ai- ,r=-r.::::r::r+. ....... t:.....

'SJ:ld'~al 3 nor Hd'(dlifT (I) I

~ ~ fur O'<!l f,:fu cla+,~ ~ ~ Qt'll F;:S1)fT i; I

qq

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j/.J v:! I,

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· U"" ; ...0.: ~ ;i-L - .

(250)

99The remaining country too fell into the lap of the Feringhee

For, such were the orders they now promulgated.

The Mai sacked the Punjab army.

The ranks were demobbed as a consequence.

The country now passed into the hands of Company functionaries.

As well as of the sons of men of means.

o Shah Mohammed! One should behold the achievement

of Rani Jind Kaur.

Who broke the country and destroyed it wholesale.

~~

~ ~ m~ 3llffi "Il ~,

:we'~ Cf)l ~31T 0Gf ~ ~;

• 31tAt ~ m~ ~ Cfft,~ fil4'ql'if q;l c:cnT m~~;

~~ "Il alGf m ~Cf)<i?i161,

~31T ~ Q2qlU Cf)l ~ ~;

~ ~u:t~ !~ cfRR mlll,~ -rp;rr ~ -mu~~I

(251)

ctoo

ofurr~~ w CJT<tt f;fu ~,HW -eu+ llldEiJl'Jfi" ~~ al

~ 0Htr qo c} ))fTlJ otit ~,lRW~~~~al

ere ~ ~HI ftJa "5ilc CJT<tt,MEOld ~~ ~~ al

BTU ~ ~ ;::rut(') arn+,~~~~~al

I· •

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-LSI ~ jJ) ~J ~)J (s,} jf:J,U11' l.:Jl(. ~f ,;J e~

-LS' ~jji IJ u~ /' Utol

(252)

100Such a consummate act did the Rani play

Two governments now together ruled over Punjab.She had the country locked into knots, remaining herself high and

cityThus in no time avenging herself of her brothers assassination.

She had her courtiers downgraded as well,Throwing away the army into the floods of the river.

a Shah Mohammed! So wagged the tongues all over,

"She broke the claims of all pretenders and imposters."

~oo

3lG{ u;:ft ~ 31CR1 ~ CfiT1l ~,

m~ Cfil: t:J-~ CfiT ~ ~;

~~~~1R-m~,

~~~ <:11\:Jtql~ ~;

31lfR-~ "Bm~ m~,

• ~ CfiT ~ 1¥ Cfil'\if ~;

~ ~Ul~ !~ ~ 3lTl1 ~,

ll~ ~ l'~~~ 1fIc:r( I"

(253)

ctoct

~ ~ ~ fifup- ~ ~ ~,

fum ~ ~ t:rfuo ~ ~ wit I

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(254)

101

Only after the event, the truth dawned upon the Singhs

Of what deadly stuff was the Mai made.

"See! How she first marginalised us.

And then had us downgraded, beyond repair.

She pursued the revenge to the bitterest end.

Even then, she didn't let us retire to the peace of our homes.

o Shah Mohammed! We've lost our arms as well as our honour.

Today, not the resplendent uniform but a humble Kurti covers us."

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(255)

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(256)

102

From the day one, women have had their way.

For, they alone account for why Rama lost his sway.

The Kauravas and Pandavas too suffered at their hands

Full eighteen armies perished in the Kurukshetra sands.

They bridled even Raja Bhoj, the wisest ever king

With their toes they mauled and befuddled him, in the ring.

o Shah Mohanuned ! No wonder then that the queen Jind Kaur­

Had the entire country laid waste in its darkest hour.

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(257)

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(258)

103

God willing, good things shall happen again.

What if the soldiers have lost the lustre of their mien?

Great commonality does exist between the Hindu and the Musalmaan.

None should ever dare break this common silken bond.

The new rulers have no ear for anyone.

Drunk with themselves oblivious theyre of our pain

o Shah Mohammed! All wealth is today garnered

By sons of moneylenders and gumasbtas in the main.

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(260)

104TIlls entire sad drama, with my eyes, I've seen.

But who knows what's in the future's lap supreme.Does one know what's to happen the next moment?

Everyone does grope, waiting for light in God's scheme.The new generation among themselves did confabulate

The Feringhee's might we've seen as we deem.

o Shah Mohammed! None can ever be sure

What more things upon us are yet to beam.

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(261)

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(262)

105

'Twas the nineteen hundred and second year of SamvatWhen the war with the Feringhee broke out, an event so near.

The earth of Punjab was thirsty for so much blood indeed,

It turned blood-red. That's all but clear.

The dust that the earth kicked up, formed clouds in the sky

Just in the same way as a swooping kite from the sky does peer.

o Shah Mohammed! It's the soldiers brave who always offer their

heads;Never do they run away, nor their names besmear.

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(263)

INDEX OF PLACES

A

Agra-The Mughal capital town on the bank of river Yamuna in modemIndian State of Uttar Pardesh. Also known for the far-famed Taj.

Ajmer-Seat of Chauhan Rajput Rajas and the Dargah of Khwaja Muin­

ud-Din Chissti in the Indian State of Rajasthan.

B

Batala-A sub-divisional town in Modem Gurdaspur District of thePunjab. It was the ]agir of Sher Singh. It is presumed that ShahMohammed belonged to it. But not a few consider Wadala (Viram),a village near Amritsar to be his native place.

Bhatinda-A district town of the Punjab state.Bikaner-eapital of erstwhile Rajput State, now a district head-quarter

of Rajasthan.Bilawal-A cantonment of Maharaja Ranjit Singh near Lahore.Budhu-Da-Aawa-A viilage so named after a legendary devotee of the

fIfth Sikh Guru, Guru Arjan Dev ]i.

cChamba-A hill town on the bank of river Ravi and capital of an

erstwhile hill principality of the same name.

D

Delhi-Ancient capital city of India.

Desh-Desh means country and here it is synonymous with the Punjab.

F

Ferozepur-A British cantonment town on the bank of river Sutlej.

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H

Hansi-An important ancient town, now in modern State of Haryana.Hissar-A district town of Haryana.

J

Jaipur-Capital town of Kacchwaha Rajputs, now capital of Rajasthan.Jammu-The capital of Dogra hill principality.

K

Kangra-Capital town of an erstwhile hill principality of the Punjab,now in Himachal Pardesh. It was the seat of Katoch dynasty.

Kashmir-The enchanting valley bounded by Afghanistan, China andPunjab hills. It has been often called "Paradise on earth."

Kulu-A hill town in the Beas Valley. Also the name of the valley itself.Kurukshetra-A Hindu holy town, the place where the epic

Mahabharta is believed to have been fought. Also famous for LordKrishna's message of Bhagwad Geeta.

L

Ladakh-A high plateau in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, borderingTibet.

Ladwa-A Sikh principality in cis-Sutlej area (Modern Haryana). RajaAjit Singh of Ladwa helped the Khalsa Army against the British.Now a town in Haryana state.

Lahore-Capital town of Sikh Kingdom, now in Pakistan.Ludhiana-Headquarter of the British political Agency to monitor

events at the Sikh Court. Now an important industrial town of thePunjab.

M

Mudki-The site of a battle fought between Khalsa Army and theBritish.

Mukerian-A sub-divisional town of Hoshiarpur district on Jalandhar­Pathankot Highway.

Multan-A province of the Sikh Kingdom, now a divisional town of

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Pakistan. It is among the most ancient cities mentioned in the

Hindu mythology.Munawar-A small fort near Lahore.

N

Nandachaur-A village near Banga in Nawanshahar district of Punjab.

p

Peshawar-Noeth-West Frontier-Post town of Maharaja Ranjit Singh'skingdom, now in Pakistan.

Phillaur-An advance-eantonment town of Kingdom of Ranjit Singh onthe bank of river Sutlej, now a sub-divisional town of ]alandhardistrict.

wWadala-A village in district Amritsar. Villages of the same name are

found in other districts of Punjab also.

(267)

INDEX OF NAMES

A

Ajit Singh-0ne of the Sandhawalia Sardars, collaterals of Maharaja

Ranjit Singh.

Akal Regiment-A Regiment of Nihangsj traditional Khalsa warriors.Akalij Lit. Immortal-0ne who believes in Akal-Almighty God who

is timeless.

Akhbar-Newsletter or Newspaper.

Ali Akbar-Son of Dost Mohd. Khan, the Amir Shah of Kabul whose

gun-shot mortally wounded Hari Singh Nalwa.

Attari-A muffasil town 25 Ian north-west of Amritsar. Native place of

Sham Singh-the Hero of Sabhraon.Avitabile-The Italian Commander of Ranjit Singh.

B

Beli Ram Misr-Afavourite Courtierand confidantofMaharaja Ranjit Singh.

Bhim Singh-A petty Chieftain, also a Rana of Udaipur (Rajasthan).

Bhoj Raja-A legendary Raja of Malwa (Madhya Pardesh). He is a

byword of learning and wisdom.

Bir Singh-Popularly called Baba Bir Singh, the venerable Head of theGurudwara at Naurangabad in Amritsar Distt. Killed in the

internecine warfare of the Sikhs following the death of MaharajaRanjit Singh.

Bukti-A Sovereign like gold coin primarily used for necklaces.

cChand Kaur, Rani-Widow of Kharak Singh.Chauldaris-Tents.

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Chet Singh-A brother-in-law of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, murdered byRaja Dhian Singh. However Shah Mohammed blames KanwarNau Nihal Singh for this murder.

Company Sahib-The British East India Company.

D

Daud Khan Chauhan; Mir-A courtier of Sikh Ruler, Dalip Singh.Dharam Raj-Lit. courtier, Mythologically he is the god of death who

is supposed to deliver judgements on deeds of human beings afterdeath.

Dhian Singh, Raja-Dogra Chief, Prime Minister of Maharaja KharakSingh.

Doabias-Residents of Doaba-A tract of land between the rivers Sutlejand Beas (The districts of Jalandhar, Kapurthala and Hoshiarpur).

Dulla Bhatti-A legendary hero of Sandal Bar who sacrificed his lifefor saving the honour of a Brahmin girl.

E

Elahi Baksh-Artillery Commander of Sikh forces.

F

Fatta-A Legendary Rajput Hero who fought against Akbar.Feringhee-An European.

G

Gulab Singh; Raja-Qne of the Jammu Dogra Chieftains at the Sikhcourt, the founder of Jammu and Kashmir state.

Gurmukh Singh Giani-A Head Granthi of Darbar Sahib (GoldenTemple).

Gurmata-Ut. Advice of the Guru. Resolution adopted by the collectivebody of the Khalsa.

H

Hindu-A follower of ancient religion of India.Hira Singh, Raja-Son of Raja Dhian Singh; Wazir of Maharaja DaIip

Singh.

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J

Jaimal-A Legendary Rajput hero who fought against Akbar.Jalla Pandit-A protege of Raja Hira Singh Wazir.Jallawalias.-That which belongs to Jalla. In the poem it looks they were

men of some soldierly Sikh tribe.Jawahar Singh-Brother of Rani Jindan.Jind Kaur, Rani-Widow of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and mother of

Maharaja Dalip Singh. She was regent of her young son when thewar took place.

K

Kalagiwalas-Troopers of the Sikh Army trained on European Model.Kaur Sahib-Kanwar Nau Nihal Singh; son of Maharaja Kharak Singh.Khalsa-The collective body of the Sikhs.Kharak Singh, Maharaja-Son and successor of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

He ascended the throne in 1839.

L

Lat-Tundilat-Sir Henry Hardinge, the British Governor General ofIndia (1844-48).

Lehna Singh (Majithia)-A Sikh chief, courtier of Ranjit Singh whoretired to the British territory dUring the period of turmoil followingthe death of Ranjit Singh.

Louts-A derisive term used for the Khalsa soldiers of the post-RanjitSingh period.

M

Mai-Lit. mother, woman. Here Rani Jind Kaur, the queen motherDowager.

Majhails-The people who belong to Majha; the Central tract of thePunjab.

Majithias.-The Sikh chiefs belonging to Majitha (Amritsar).Malwai-People belonging to Malwa tract of the Punjab in the cis-Sutlej

area.Mewa Singh Majithia-A Sikh chief of post-Ranjit Singh period.Musalman-A follower of Islam.

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N

Namrud-A legendary ]ewesh king.Nau Nihal Singh, Kanwar-Son of Kharak Singh, grandson of Maharaja

Ranjit Singh.

p

Pahara Singh~hieftain of Faridkot who helped the British against the

Khalsa Army.Panth-Panth stands for collective body of the Khalsa as organised by

Guru Gobind Singh.Partap Singh, Prince-Son of Maharaja Sher Singh.

Phagun-A month in Indian calender year corresponding to February­

March.Pharoahs--The kings who once ruled over the ancient Egypt. However,

pejoratively it is used to describe a self-drunken man who thinks

he is God.Pheru Shah-A village in Ferozepore district where a fierce battle was

fought between British and the Sikh forces.

R

Raja-A Chieftain. In the poem it refers to Dhian Singh, the Prime

Minister.Rajput-Lit. son of a ruler, a caste of Hindu warriors.

Ranjit Singh-Maharaja of the Punjab 1799-1839.

Ranjodh Singh Majithia-A patriotic Sikh General of post-Ranjit Singhperiod.

Ravana-The legendary King of Lanka who fell fighting against the epichero Rama. He is the villain of Rarnayana.

sSandhawalias--Collaterals of Ranjit Singh.

Sarkar-An epithet by which Ranjit Singh was usually addressed by

his courtiers.

Sutlej-A river flowing through the Punjab which formed boundary

between the Kingdom of the British and Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

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Shahdra-Lit. the Royal gateway, a habitation outside Lahore on theright bank of river Ravi.

Sham Singh Attariwala-A Sikh general. Father-in-law of Kanwar NauNihal Singh.

Sher Singh Attariwala-A Sikh chief who rebelled against the British.Singhs-Members of the organised body of the Khalsa.Suchet Singh-Qne of the three Dogra brothers.Sultan Mahmud-An artillery officer of the Sikh Forces.

T

Tej Singh-The treacherous Sikh Commander-in-Chief.

uUdham Singh-Son of Raja Gulab Singh who died alongwith Kanwar

Nau Nihal Singh.

y

Yamuna-A river flowing along present states of Haryana and Delhi.It merges with the Ganges near Allahabad.

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