In this sec­ond part of the two se­ries ar­ti­cle on the first ruler of the Sikhs -Banda Singh Ba­hadar, the au­thor nar­rates the so­cial rev­o­lu­tion ush­ered in by him and the bru­tal tor­ture meted out to him and his com­pan­ion war­riors.

Banda Singh treated the en­tire op­pressed class as one, re­gard­less of their re­li­gion, caste, colour or clan. Dur­ing his days as a vagabond, he had stud­ied the so­cial and eco­nom­i­cal con­di­tion of the masses. He was deeply moved by this and wanted to do some­thing ab­solute for them. Now that he was a pow­er­ful gen­eral of the Khalsa, he di­verted his mind to­wards them.

Ac­tu­ally, in me­dieval times feu­dal­ism had taken deep roots, though the In­dian feu­dal sce­nario was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the Eu­ro­pean one. In me­dieval times, gen­er­ally all over the In­dian sub-con­ti­nent, the prac­tice of Ja­gir­dari sys­tem pre­vailed. Em­per­ors, Kings and princely states adopted a pol­icy of giv­ing a cer­tain land area as ja­girs to their min­is­ters, of­fi­cers and gen­er­als in­stead of cash pay­ments. This pol­icy fa­cil­i­tated the state to save hard cash in cru­cial times but ig­nored the wel­fare of its sub­jects. These ja­gir­dars col­lected rev­enue from the sub­jects and de­posited it in the gov­ern­ment trea­sury but as the time passed, this pol­icy be­come an in­stru­ment of ex­ploita­tion of poor peas­ants and traders by their feu­dal lords. Ja­min­dars use to col­lect the rev­enue on their own will from poor peas­ants. In the sit­u­a­tion of non-pay­ment, their land hold­ings were forcibly mort­gaged and af­ter some­times con­fis­cated. The poor peas­ants be­comes pau­pers with­out land and were forced into bonded labour for­ever.  

Just af­ter es­tab­lish­ing Lo­hgarh as cap­i­tal, Banda Singh con­cen­trated on so­cial re­forms. First of all he put a ban on pro­duc­tion, trade and con­sump­tion of all sorts of in­tox­i­cants and to­bacco in his ter­ri­tory and passed strict or­ders against them who were forcibly con­vert­ing the re­li­gion of masses. But the most im­por­tant thing he did was that he abol­ished the Za­min­dari sys­tem in his ter­ri­tory and de­clared that “the land be­longs to the tiller” He  spoke di­rectly to the feu­dal lords and con­vinced them about his so­cial­is­tic poli­cies, those who op­posed were crushed with might. From Pun­jab to Soni­pat, Pa­ni­pat, Kaithal and till Pilib­hit in the far east, Banda Singh wiped out the blem­ish of the Za­min­dari sys­tem. He could have an­nexed those con­quered re­gions in Khalsa Raj but be­ing gen­er­ous he gave the ad­min­is­tra­tion of those re­gions to lo­cal peo­ple. 

In north­ern In­dia, Banda Singh emerged as an eman­ci­pa­tor of the op­pressed and down­trod­den. Ob­vi­ously it was dif­fi­cult for the tyrant rulers and feu­dal lords to tol­er­ate such a dy­namic change. Their leisurely lifestyle was halted. Hence they all united against him but then too could­n’t match his strate­gi­cal and in­tel­lec­tual might. Banda Singh was feared by the tyrants. Only a call of ‘Banda Aaya’ was enough for the op­po­nents to flee away from the bat­tle­field and this fu­eled a new life in Khalsa troops. Af­ter the de­feat of Sirhind they had no other refuge ex­cept the cen­tre- Delhi. 

From 1710-1712 Ba­hadur Shah -the con­tem­po­rary Mughal em­peror tried a lot but could­n’t con­trol Banda Singh’s so­cial­is­tic ex­pe­di­tions. Farakhshi­yar suc­ceeded af­ter him on the throne of Delhi and worked with the sole mis­sion of con­trol­ling Banda Singh- dead or alive.  He put up all his might against him. Prac­ti­cally the whole of north In­dia (even the Hindu hill-chiefs for whom Guru Tegh Ba­hadar Sahib had sweetly sought mar­tyr­dom) joined hands against Khalsa. Every now and then Banda Singh had to change his head­quar­ters and at last in 1715 with nearly 10,000 de­voted Sikhs, Banda Singh took refuge in the so called fortress of Gur­das Nan­gal but even that was seized by the fol­low­ing Mughal and as­so­ci­ate troops.

This seize pulled along for more than eight months. Mean­while the sit­u­a­tion in­side the fortress wors­ened. Apart from arms and am­mu­ni­tions, even the ba­sic ameni­ties were ex­hausted. Sikhs were starv­ing and strug­gling hard for sur­vival. They ate leaves, barks and roots of the trees, when it was up they were forced to eat the soil to sur­vive. Flesh of all sorts of an­i­mals was eaten raw as even fuel for cook­ing was not there. It was the hard­est time in Sikh his­tory. Ac­cord­ing to his­to­ri­ans in the be­gin­ning of De­cem­ber 2015, 8,000 out of 10,000 Sikhs died due to star­va­tion, the re­main­ing suf­fered from fa­tal dis­eases and phys­i­cal dis­or­ders. Even Banda Singh him­self had not eaten for nearly two and a half months. Above all the se­vere win­ter made the con­di­tion for sur­vival com­pletely im­pos­si­ble. 

On 7th De­cem­ber, Baba Banda Singh and the re­main­ing Khalsa de­cided to come out and fight till their last breath and they did so. The clash was to­tally un­equal.  On one hand was more than 60,000 well trained and healthy com­bined army on the other hand just 2,000 Sikhs who were starv­ing since last two months and who were not even able to stand prop­erly. But when they fought, what a valiant scene it was! With the cry of Bole-so-Ni­hal they fell upon the op­po­nent army and slayed more than 5,000 sol­diers. An im­pos­si­ble look­ing am­bush lasted sev­eral hours and out of 2,000, 1800 Sikhs laid down their lives in that bat­tle­field. Ul­ti­mately, the Mughal army cap­tured the fortress. It was the most un­for­tu­nate day in Sikh his­tory when Banda Singh- a name of his times was ar­rested alive along with 200 of his as­so­ci­ates. In­hu­man atroc­i­ties and hu­mil­i­a­tions were heaped by the the Mughals. 

In­tox­i­cated with their vic­tory, the Mughals crossed all lim­its of hu­man­ity. To pop­u­lar­ize this im­pos­si­ble and un­ex­pected vic­tory they de­cided to hurt and hu­mil­i­ate Sikhs in every pos­si­ble way and dis­played the ar­rested Sikhs pub­licly. So Sikhs were taken in the form of a pro­ces­sion. They trav­elled from Gur­daspur to La­hore, from La­hore to Sirhind and fi­nally from Sirhind to Delhi, where Sikhs were pub­licly hu­mil­i­ated by mobs and bru­tally tor­tured by sol­diers. Many in­no­cent Sikhs were ar­rested on the way from sur­round­ing vil­lages to show the num­ber of ar­rests from the fort was a big­ger num­ber. Prin­ci­pal Sat­bir Singh, a promi­nent Sikh scholar de­scribes that ‘Mughals en­tered Delhi in the form of a grand pro­ces­sion dis­play­ing Banda Singh Ba­hadar in a cage,  tied all over with heavy iron chains and other Sikhs tied in­hu­manly on camels and hors­es’. 

In March 1716 all 740 Sikhs were killed in the batches of 100 each every day. In June 1716 Banda Singh ji was bru­tally mar­tyred in Delhi by rip­ping every inch of flesh from his body with hot iron rods and gorg­ing his eyes. Even his son Ajay Singh of just four years was bru­tally mar­tyred and the kid’s heart was re­moved and thrust into Banda Singh’s mouth.  

Baba Banda Singh gave his supreme sac­ri­fice but did not re­frained the path of truth and Sikhi. His tri­umphs made him the most pop­u­lar per­son of his time in just a span of eight years and his supreme mar­tyr­dom made him an un­par­al­leled Hero in Sikh his­tory. A jour­ney in Sikh an­nals which started from Ma­ha­rash­tra ended in Delhi via Pun­jab and other north­ern re­gions cre­at­ing an en­dur­ing im­pact on the con­ti­nen­t’s his­tory in gen­eral and Sikh his­tory in par­tic­u­lar. No one can re­pay his debts but the only trib­ute we can pay him is to give him his proper recog­ni­tion.

It’s an hum­ble re­quest that when we are com­mem­o­rat­ing an his­tor­i­cal per­son­al­ity of such an ex­tra­or­di­nary per­sona we should at least give him his au­then­tic recog­ni­tion. Banda Singh Ba­hadar is of­ten ig­no­rantly or pur­posely called as ‘Veer Banda bairagi’ by non-Sikhs. There is no per­son named Banda Bairagi in en­tire global his­tory. Un­til he was bairagi his name was ‘Mad­ho­das’. Once he par­took Am­rit from Guru Sahib, he gained the name Banda Singh Ba­hadar. Some­times even Sikh preach­ers call him Banda Ba­hadar. The least we can do is to name him cor­rectly. Re­call­ing his val­our, po­lit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tion and so­cial rev­o­lu­tion­ary work would bring ho­n­our to the Sikhs, even to­day.