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Life And Times Of 1450's Punjab

Before reading the Sakhis of Guru Nanak, it is important to understand the context of life and times in 1450's Punjab.

Background

In India, muslim inroads began from about the middle of the seventh century. The worst woes began from those days. The wealth was carried off by foreign invaders. Thousands of sons and daughters were driven away to serve as slaves to the greed, lust and passions of the conquerors. These campaigns against the 'Infidels' were, no doubt, looked upon as 'holy wars', waged in the 'cause of God'.

Having been assured by their Prophet that 'a drop of blood shed in the cause of God was of more avail to the faithful than two months of fasting and prayer', the frenzied muslim invaders shed seas of blood as an act of faith, and in confident hopes of winning God's grace and pleasure, and securing seats in paradise. 'Their fierce fanaticism, which regarded the destruction of non-muslims as a service eminently pleasing to God, made them absolutely pitiless,'.

Afghan Raids

After the Arabian conquerors came the Afghan plunderers. The raids of Mahmud of Ghazni spread veritable ruin and horror in the land. Others followed him. Temples were destroyed, and idols were broken and trampled upon; hindu schools and libraries were burnt, houses were plundered, women were abused, such hindus as offered the least resistance, or gave even the feeblest vent to any resentment, were put to the sword exultingly, and the survivors-men, women and children-were driven abroad and sold into slavery worse than death; all this 'for the glory of Islam'!

After centuries of such raids for plunder, pleasure and devastation, the Muhammadan invaders resolved to establish their rule in this land of inexhaustible wealth and pleasures. The Muhammadan occupation of the land, and its attendant conversion at the point of sword, forced on the people a foreign, despotic rule and a foreign culture.

Punjab History Map

Invaders

The Punjab was the first to be conquered. The proselytizing zeal of the conquerors only increased with their conquests. Invaders came in quick succession. For a little over three centuries, this struggle for suzerainty was hot and furious. Half a dozen dynasties tried to become Sultans of Delhi. But all of them failed to establish anything like a settled government. Whatever sway they had was limited to a small territory round about the capital. The rest of the country was in the hands of independent Nawabs, who were a law unto themselves. Miserable, indeed, was the condition of the people during this period. The hindus suffered the most.

After the Tughlaks came the Sayyids and the Lodhis. All of them were fierce bigots, 'Their reigns, too, offer little but scenes of bloodshed, tyranny, and treachery.' This brings us to the times in which Guru Nanak was born. Bahlul Lodbi was then the Sultan of Delhi (1450 to 1488 A.D.). By the time that the Guru grew to manhood, Sikandar Lodbi (A.D. 1488 to 1517) had ascended the throne. Under him, the state assumed a thoroughly 'theocratic character and officially imposed Islam on the hindus.' He was firmly attached to the Mohammedan religion and made a point of destroying all hindu temples and places of learning.

We have to remember that it was during the reign of this 'ferocious bigot' that Guru Nanak began his crusade against the tyranny of irresponsible bigots and autocrats, and the corrupt practices of Islam, and declared from the housetops that all human beings were the sons of the same Father and, hence, equal in all respects, 'in race as in creed, in political rights as in religious hopes'.

The Lodhi Dynasty

The Lodi dynasty (Lodhi) was an Afghan dynasty that ruled parts of northern India and Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of modern-day Pakistan, from 1450 to 1526. It was founded by Bahlul Khan Lodi when he replaced the Sayyid dynasty.

Lodhi dynasty's reign ended under Ibrahim Lodi, who faced many attacks by Rana Sanga of Mewar, Rana Sanga defeated the Lodhis several times, which weakened his kingdom. Lodhi's reign finally ended after he was defeated by Babur, the Turco-Mongol invader from Ferghana, in modern-day Uzbekistan, who later established Mughal dyansty in northern India.

India at that time was mostly under muslim rule. Nominally, the Sultan of Delhi was the Emperor of India. But actually, the country was divided up among several governors who were quite independent in their own provinces. Every one of them did with freedom and impunity, what he considered to be right in accordance with his whims and pleasure, or his own conception of morality, justice, and theological laws. The rulers and their agents and officials, big and small, were licentious and haughty despots who rode roughshod on the subjects.

Bara Gumbad

Lodi Gardens is a park in Delhi, India. Spread over 90 acres it contains,
Mohammed Shah's Tomb, Sikander Lodi's Tomb, Sheesh Gumbad and Bara Gumbad.

In the year 1459, the Afghans established the Lodhi dynasty of Sultans at Delhi. They were bitter persecutors of the hindus and their religion. They broke down temples and built mosques in their place. Hindus and Muhammadans did not see each other as equally acceptable in the eyes of God.

The Afghans have left a bad name in India. Their passion for revenge has become a proverb. No man is said to be safe from the revenge of an elephant, a cobra, or an Afghan.

Guru Nanak described the political and religious atmosphere as follows:

"Kings are butchers, cruelty is their knife and sense of duty has taken wings and vanished. Falsity prevails like the darkness of the darkest night, and the moon of truth is visible no where."

Political Anarchy and Lawlessness

Apart from the political anarchy and lawlessness prevailing under the Afghan rule, society was hopelessly divided in that period. Lawless Afghans had over-run the hindustan, and were quite uncontrolled by Government. They were bitter enemies of the hindus, among whom they had settled and over whom they exercised great control.

Each man did what was right in his own eyes, and whatever he could do with impunity appeared to him right. Widows and orphans could find no help against the powerful neighbours who divided their lands amongst themselves at their pleasure.

The hindus, on the other hand, were again hopelessly divided among themselves. Sunk low in the depths of ignorance and superstition, they had become spiritual slaves. It was a horrible sin, in consequence of the rigid and stereotyped character of the caste system. For a Shudra to hear a Sanskrit shlok, could only be adequately punished by pouring molten lead into' his ears.

Spiritual Slaves

The hindus have been pre-eminently a religious people. India has been the birth-place of many religions and systems of religious philosophy. Even at the time when other peoples were immersed is savage ignorance, the hindus in India could boast of a civilization of a very high standard. But, unfortunately, the Hindu society took a wrong turning in quite early days. A strange division of labour was devised by its scholars, who were called Brahmins. To ensure perfect leisure and comfort for themselves they invented varnashrama dharma or the caste-system.

Brahmins alone could study the scriptures, they would not instruct others. 'The worst aspect of the caste-system was that a large part of the people were denied the solace of religion and prayer, or a direct approach to God and gods. God was not for them. Religion was not their concern. They were not permitted even to hear the sacred hymns or approach the idols and temples. Savage and severe were the punishments prescribed for such of these wretched people as transgressed the law. They had to rest content with serving the higher classes. Their touch or even shadow polluted the 'Twiceborn', as the higher classes called themselves.

Such was the miserable lot of the unfortunate Shudras. That of Vaishyas was only a little better. They, too, had to toil and moil for others. They, too. could not study the sacred books. Brahmins did that work for them. Hence the toilers had to support the Brahmin scholars. Thus the caste-system came to be a source of much evil and misery, and an excuse for manifold tyranny.

A hindu could not associate with a hindu and it was deemed an act of pollution to partake of food prepared by another hindu, or to eat at the same table with him. Intermarriage was inconceivable to the thoughts of hindus. Moreover, no man, under this system, could make his position. His ambition could not be higher, other than to follow the profession of his father and to work in it exactly on the same lines with them. No improved methods of work were to be introduced. Thus life and energy were fettered, nature had for ever settled for him.

Mughal Art

After the Afghan Lodhi's came the Mughals, the hindus remained as spiritual slaves

Into his caste a man was born, and bound to it for life, without regard to poverty or riches, talents, character or skill. Human dignity and human feeling were bound up in separate castes, and political progress was impossible. When the scions of the Afghan nobility settled among these hindus, the latter were even more depressed and cowed, and became little more than slaves.

Meaningless Rituals And Ceremonies

There was no less corruption among the religious systems which prevailed in the country during that period. Purity of heart and faith were no factors in the popular religious systems. Hinduism or Muhammadanism, both had become a set of formalities and ceremonies, which were performed by their votaries, as if, automatically. The root and object of these formalities were no longer understood or sought to be understood. God was no longer an object of worship or faith.

The hindu, like the hindu of the primitive times, worshipped the elements and various other gods and incarnations or God in various forms. And the Mussalman, with all his symbols and ceremonies, only deemed it necessary to attend at the Musjid, to bow down in the 'House of God,' to repeat a certain set of Arabic words, without understanding, or seeking to understand, their import, and to convert as many others to his pretended faith as he possibly could do, with fair or foul, humane or inhuman, means.

Otherwise, there were few honest religious men, with faith in heart, recognising none but God, although, like the Pharisee of old, people pretended to be righteous, religious and pious. Nor, is it said, was the current of reform quite absent. The wave of religious revival had set in throughout India, and was not Brahmanical in its orthodoxy.

This religious upheaval was heterodox (not in accordance with established or accepted doctrines or opinions) in its spirit of protest against forms and ceremonies and class distinctions based on birth. And ethical, in its preference of a pure heart, and of the law of love, to all other acquired merits and good works. This religious revival was the work of the people, of the masses, not of the classes.

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