These Havan Kunds
Kapur
Singh
The
final phase for the struggle for Punjabi Suba was a ten-day fast by Sant Fateh
Singh and his threat of self-immolation by burning himself alive if the
government of India
The
ten days of agitation and government of India
Yet
the controversy aroused by them has far from died down. Those opposing the
retention of the Kunds feel that the
facts surrounding the Kunds expose
the whole Sikh people to ridicule and, what is worse, they constitute a perversion
and a negation of the Sikhs spiritual doctrine and values. Their point of view
finds an extremely competent exposition in Sardar Kapur Singh’s ensuing
article.
While
deciding upon the publication of this article, The Sikh Review, the only Sikh English monthly magazine and an
infant journal at that, was not unmindful of the risks it was taking. Yet in
the lives of religions, there come moments when the whole basis of the values
promulgated by the particular religion have left. It is in the context of these
postulates that The Sikh Review has
considered the question of the Kunds.
It feels whatever the price The Sikh
Review or, for that matter, any other Sikhs individual or institution has
to pay for it. And it is, for this reason, necessary that it may once and for
all be settled whether the retention of the Kunds
as memorials offends against or is in keeping with the Sikh religious doctrine.
To
help maintain a constructive and purposeful discussion, The Sikh Review will welcome articles or letters expounding other
points of view. It will, of course, publish only letters and articles as embody
a completely impersonal, dispassionate academic and well-reasoned exposition of
the subject and scrupulously avoid recrimination. The object of The Sikh Review is to establish not who is right but what is right.
Truth
and, even above that, truthful living are the highest Sikh values. No belief,
however, cherished, no symbol, however dear, no institution, however
prestigious should command our loyalty when it is found to conflict with truth
or truthful living, as expounded, in matters spiritual, by the Sikh doctrine,
the validity of which has been tested through centuries of travail and
suffering. Editors
Within the history rich and
numinous precincts of the Golden Temple at Amritsar
2. These structures are loosely called, havan kunds or agni kunds, nobody
knowing how to designate them properly in the context of their origin and
significance. It is claimed by the creators of these monstrosities and the
present controllers of the S.G.P.C that these structures have been set up as a
memorial to those who claim to have passed through the Valley of Death to
achieve a unilingual Punjabi State and that for this reason these memorials can
justly be erected and maintained within the divine precincts of the Golden
Temple and in rude rivalry to the holy Akal Takht.
Simultaneously, it
is asserted that a unilingual Punjabi State never was a demand of the Sikh
panth, the mystic Collectivity of the Sikh People, and that the present
Punjabi-speaking State has nothing whatever to do with Sikhism or the Sikh
people as such and that is entirely a State carved out on the wholly secular
basis of a language, meant to satisfy the aspirations of those, Sikhs and
non-Sikhs alike, residing in the new Punjab.
How can a purely
administrative and political and secular demarcation of State be memorialized
in the numinous precincts of the Harimandir and in audacious rivalry to the
Holy Akal Takht is a matter which does not seem to worry the present
controllers of the S.G.P.C.
3. Sometime ago, when Sikh feelings rose in crescendo against the
hypocrisy and sham that these structures perpetuate, the President of the S.G.P.C.
stage-managed, what he called, a World Sikh Convention. An objective enquiry
into the religious and social backgrounds of the “delegates” of this
Convention, the countries of their origin and from where they were actually
picked up by the President of the S.G.P.C., who has, since, formally claimed
for himself the status and prerogatives of a sovereign, infallible Pope, thus
rendering any such future World Sikh Convention unnecessary, of not altogether
superfluous, will furnish most interesting material to those interested in
study of typologies of modern decadent political communities. This Convention
passed a unanimous resolution favouring retention and maintenance of these
structures in perpetuity, while one of the delegates, the current Chief
Minister of the Punjab , a retired Judge of a
High Court, offered to have these structures encased in marble and covered with
gold plates at State expense. This, the present controllers of the Sikh
gurdwaras, say, is their sanction for perpetuating these structures.
4. Two questions arise before inquisitive minds in connection with these
structures:
(1) what are the roots, in the context of Sikh history and doctrine and
the Indian cultural traditions, out of which these structures have grown?
(2) what is the validity of the sanction, being accorded to them through
the tamasha of a World Sikh
Convention?
5. Let us take the second question first. It is certain, that there is
no precedent whatsoever for a World Sikh Convention of this kind in the Sikh
historical tradition. There is the doctrine of the Sarbatt Khalsa, the Collectivity of the Sikh People, and there is
the doctrine of the gurmata. The
latter of these doctrines, originates from two distinct cultural traditions,
the one, Aryan and the other, Semitic. The Aryan doctrine it embodies in the
concept of the pancas which goes back
to the Veda. On this is based the Aryan concept of democracy. Its essence is
that contingent matters of common interest and secular nature must be decided
by the ‘representative will’ of the people.
It is to be
emphasized that this doctrine of the pancas,
as adumbrated in the Veda, is operative not in the domain of things spiritual nor
of postulates and principles of things secular but apples only to matters of
day to day implementation of the principles. The point is that no panchayat can pronounce on matters of
religious doctrine or postulates of politics or social organization, that it
may only apply the accepted practices and postulates to a given situation.
Then there is the
Islamic doctrine of ‘ijma’, i.e.
universal consensus. This ‘ijma’ is a
source of Muslim jurisprudence along with certain other sources. The principle
of ‘ijma’ is that in matters not
covered by the other sources of Muslim jurisprudence, such as Koran or hadith, ulema, the pious
intellectuals of the community, who are competent to judge the matter in a
given age, may pronounce upon the matter in a given age, may pronounce upon
them through consensus. It is the essence of ijma that only those acknowledged as competent to judge to make the
pronouncement, and its also the essence of ijma
that such a pronouncement cannot be made in an ad-hoc assembly, and certainly
not by demagogy followed by votes; it must be made naturally, freely and in
response to an urge of the Muslim people and not as result of a formally
convened process.
The Sikh gurmata is an amalgam of these two
traditions and doctrines, that of pancas
and that of ijma. A Sikh gurmata cannot pronounce on matters of
fundamentals, or on doctrine or on postulates. It is to operate as a
representative of the entire Sikh people, and not to function as an ad-hoc hand
picked assembly of special invitees convened by a party of party or a faction
or a self-styled Pope. Its decisions are not to be made by counting of votes
and they must represent the general consensus of those intellectual and pious
Sikhs who are competent to judge the matters under reference. This is the true
nature of a gurmata of which a
farcical and crude display was made by the magnates of the S.G.P.C., recently,
in the form of a Sikh World Convention, to pronounce upon the validity of
erection and maintenance of these structures within the precincts of the Heat
of Sikhdom, the Golden
Temple
6. Fortunately and unfortunately, both the proceedings of this World
Sikh Convention have been preserved in the official publications of the S.G.P.C.
Any person who has come respect for logical reasoning and who has some
acquaintance with the Sikh doctrines and traditions can see for himself how
trivial, and cussed have been the reason advanced in favour of the creation and
maintenance of this insult to the Sikh dignity, called, the havan kunds. Unfortunately, the
posterity will have authentic material to feel ashamed at the low level of
intelligence and the low moral sensitivity to which many Sikhs have sunk during
the second half of the twentieth century. There is not a single serious or plausible
argument advanced on the subject matter before this, so called, World Gathering
of representative Sikhs, and the entire proceedings consist of pervert demagogy
and foolish irrelevancies.
So much for this
All World Sikh Convention.
7. Now, coming to the first point, it is seen that there are at least
five distinct and heterogeneous elements of Hindu cultural tradition and Sikh
historical practices that lie at the back of the melodrama which certain Sikh
leaders have played recently, of going on a fast unto death and the easing out
of it on some pretext or other. It is to commemorate the last of such acts that
the structures under discussion have been raised.
8. Why are they called havan
kunds or agni kunds and why has
not a definitive name been given to them? The answer is that those who have
raised them up have neither any educational background, nor the intellectual
equipment to name correctly their confused antics, which they sub-consciously
and vaguely wish to relate to some great tradition of the hoary past.
9. The five strains which have gone into this overstrained, silly and
sentimental drama are the following:
(i) Students of the Mahabharata
will recall that on the eleventh day of the battle, Kaurvas formulated a
strategy of capturing Yudhistra alive, and Drona, the Commander of the Day,
undertook to do so. The chief of the Pandavas, Arjuna, frustrated all attempts
of the enemy to capture Yudhistra alive, and thus, on the twelfth day of the
battle, Karna told Duryodhana that Yudhistra could not be captured alive as
long as Arjuna was by his side. It was at his stage that the chief of
Trigartas, the modern Himachal Pradesh and Jammu Krishna , see the Trigartas standing, cheerful
under the high intoxication of their solemn oath, knowing that they go to
certain death. Indeed, they are full of high exaltation of the swarga at hand.” Not a single samsaptak flinched or fled from the
battle field and not a single one of them returned alive to claim public
acclaim and votes in his capacity as a zindah
shahid, living martyr.
This is the first
element in the melodrama, which the Akalis presently in control of gurdwaras, have taken up as their own,
but only after suitably modifying it to suit their personal convenience,
retaining the word agni kunds and the
element of a ‘vow’ only.
(ii) Then there is the ancient and hoary tradition of the Hindu priests,
the Brahmins, that of spiritual blackmail by threatening to commit suicide
unless a specific demand is met by the other party, Throughout the Indian
history, and up to the middle ages, a large number of instances are on record, where
a Brahmin made some demand of the another, and threatened to die by burning himself
alive or by starvation or some other means, unless this demand was met. In the
event of the demand not being met, the Brahmin would invariably commit suicide
as threatened and then the person responsible for causing the Brahmin to do so
would be guilty of the most deadly sin, the brahmahatiya.
No Hindu dare commit the brahmahatiya
and thus the Brahmin would, almost always, succeed in his demands.
As late as the
concluding decades of the 18th century, a brahmin from a village near Kasur, threatened to burn himself alive
on a wooden pyre, unless the Sikhs assembled at the Akal Takht, invested Kasur
to rescue the brahmin’s daughter abducted by the Pathan price there. As
students of Sikh history know, the Khalsa yielded before this threat, and
against heavy odds attacked Kasur and sacrificed over two thousand Sikhs to
satisfy the brahmin’s bidding, but the brahmin had his way and the Khalsa
avoided brahmahatiya and in the
bargain, upheld its royal titles and pretentions of being the Protector of the
poor, garib nivaj, the friend of the
underdog, nima-nian-da-man, and the
Upholder of Righteousness, dharam-rakhayik.
Out of this ancient
Hindu practice, Gyani Fateh Singh concocted his special brand of fast-unto-death,
and realising the basically selfish character of it, yoked it to satyagraha postulating truth and
altruism as a necessary prerequisite of the practice. Whatever its form, however,
it rests on the assumption that the social relations and their ethical
foundation constitute a common ground between the parties, and, in any case,
undertones of coercion and blackmail can never be eliminated from such
practices. Out of this tradition comes the second element of the drama certain
Akali leaders have played in the recent past.
(iii) The third strain has been picked out by these Akali leaders from out
the recent practice of certain devout Buddhists to burn themselves alive, at
various places in South East Asia, to pin-point certain fundamental political
controversies or issues. In these acts of self-immolation, there is never a
prior proclamation of their intention to immolate and it is only after the
gruesome deed is over that the public become aware that thereby the person
sacrificing himself has pin-pointed a certain political controversy or issue
asserting through a cheerfully accepted death that the other party stands in
immediate need of rethinking its position on the issue. The operative ideas behind
this type of self-immolations are two: one, that the self-immolating person,
through his death declares that he refused to co-exist with that which is
basically evil, namely, the stand taken up by the other party. The other, that
he, by laying down his life, makes a moral exhortation to the other party to,
reconsider his erroneous stand. It is this third strain, and the high publicity
that it necessarily causes which the present Akali leasers have incorporated in
the antics of making loud noises about their determination to immolate
themselves unless this or that condition is fulfilled.
(iv) The fourth strain in this affair comes out of the Sikh history
itself. There is a firm tradition in the Sikh history of individuals and groups
of Sikhs making a resolve to die fighting against a tyrant who interferes in
their religion or way of life, Baba Deep Singh, Shaheed, and Baba Gurbax Singh,
Shaheed, are the instances in point. The essence of this Sikh tradition is that
is meant to assert the fundamental Sikh right to tyrannicide at the cost of
their own lives. In this Sikh tradition, there is no vow taken except a simple
and impersonal declaration of the aim, accompanied by a humble prayer to the
God Almighty, “to help His humble servant preserve Sikh integrity with the last
sacred hair of his head in tact and till his last breath” — sikhi tod nibhaiye Kesan Sang vas. There
is no turning back, in this Sikh tradition; on any pretext whatsoever, and
there is no desire for self-publicity or public acclaim. It is an irrevocable
covenant between the Sikhs and his Lord, the Akalpurakh. Both, the principle and the methodology of this purely
Sikh practice and tradition derive from the guide line and testament given by Guru
Gobind Singh himself and it is not a derivative of or based on any previous
Hindu or Semitic doctrine or tradition. The Sikh fundamental right to
tyrannicide is explicit in the divinely sanctioned target of the Khalsa: “to
destroy root and branch, injustice and tyranny along with those who practice
them from the face of the earth.” (dust
sabhan kau mul ukkharan). The methodology is laid down in the Guru’s
injunction, “to die fighting on the battle field, when the final issue is
joined against the forces of evil,” (jab
avi ki avadhi nidan banai ran main att hi tab jujh maran.)
Out of this Sikh
tradition, the present mimics have extracted their practice of performing,
ardas with solemn vows, within the Golden Temple and before the Akal Takht,
which vows were never intended to be kept from the very beginning and which
vows are invariably made with come unbecoming mental reservation.
(v) To these four strains extracted out of ancient Hindu cultural traditions
and the history of the Sikhs, these neo-Akalis have grafted a fifth strain, to
provide a base to the other four, this fifth strain comes out of basic atheism,
agnosticism and nihilism of these Sikhs who know little of and care less for
Sikhism or what it stands for. Their basic creed is that this earth, and the
senses through which they perceive it, is the only ultimate reality. It is
their unshakable conviction that there is no intrinsic difference between truth
and falsehood except that gullible people accept the first and reject the
second. They are firmly persuaded that as long as they can get away with it,
everything is possible. It is out of this total perversion of the Sikh creed
that the utter lack of shame is born of those who have been indulging in these
melodramatic antics, consisting of sacramental ardas, a religious vow, leading
to building of agni kunds and then seeking to perpetuate them as integral parts
of the Golden temple and the holy Akal Takht.
10. Being basically village rustics, without educational background or
intellectual equipment, and being godless materialists, they lack the capacity
to describe their antics and deeds in proper phraseology. They have heard the
word, havan kund, in which their neighbours,
the Arya Sama-jists, throw good ghi
and other sweet-smelling substances, and they are persuaded that havan kund is something good and
respectable. They have called theses structures as, havan kunds in addition to agni
kunds.
11. During the last three decades or so, the Sikh leadership has fallen
into hands of such people that it is difficult to say whether, in their words
and deeds, it is buffoonery which predominates or baseness.
12. The Sikh masses have become altogether unconcerned to matters of
quality or standards in public affairs. The present condition of the Sikhs is
not that of a people who have gone to sleep, which would be a tragedy anyhow,
but which tragedy could be redeemed by sincere and earnest leaders. The tragedy
of the Sikhs, at the moment, is that they are a people who have gone completely
pervert and cussed.
Now, only a miracle can save them.
Reprinted from
The Sikh Review Vol. XVII October ’68 No. 183
Celebrating the Life and Works of Sirdar Kapur Singh
http://sikhdigitallibrary.blogspot.in/p/celebrating-life-and-works-of-sirdar.html
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