A mere glance at to­day’s In­dian Ex­press photo of In­dian PM Naren­dra Modi squat­ting be­fore the photo of  Hindu na­tion­al­ist leader Veer Savarkar in the once-dreaded An­damans prison, trig­gered mem­o­ries of the graphic de­scrip­tion of the lives and brav­ery of Sikh pris­on­ers in the An­damans jail, im­mor­talised in his speech to Sikh stu­dents in Van­cou­ver, Canada in 1974. WSN proudly pre­sents the ex­tracts.

Sikhs are a re­li­gious com­mu­nity and a po­lit­i­cal na­tion, si­mul­ta­ne­ously, and thus they are a unique so­ci­ety of the world.  The Sikhs are dis­tin­guish­able from the Hindu so­ci­ety, which is es­sen­tially a ter­ri­to­r­ial cul­ture-group.

Sikhism is a so­cial re­li­gion, non-eth­ni­cal, oe­c­u­meni­cal, grounded in a po­lit­i­cal so­ci­ety, di­rected and com­mit­ted to prop­a­ga­tion and es­tab­lish­ing of a plural world-so­ci­ety, tol­er­ant, open, pro­gres­sive and free in char­ac­ter.

Sikhism and the Sikhs form a unique re­li­gion and a unique so­ci­ety, which and who can be clearly dis­tin­guished from the other re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal so­ci­eties of the world.

When the ini­tial ef­forts of es­tab­lish­ing a Sikh re­pub­lic in the heart of north­ern In­dia failed, in which re­pub­lic the Sikhs tried to ap­ply the high prin­ci­ples of ethics and pol­i­tics enun­ci­ated by the Sikh Gu­rus, there comes a pe­riod of about half a cen­tury of re­lent­less per­se­cu­tion and geno­cide pogroms against the Sikh peo­ple by two con­tend­ing em­pires, the might­i­est em­pires of Asia of those days:  the Mughal and the Pathan Em­pire.

The Pathan em­pire per­se­cuted and tried to up­root the Sikhs and to de­stroy them root and branch, un­der the lead­er­ship of Ah­mad Shah Ab­dali, one of the great­est gen­er­als, of the stature of Chenghiz Khan, Ha­lagu and Nadir, the great­est gen­er­als which Asia has pro­duced.  Un­der his might and un­der his gen­er­al­ship, and that of his suc­ces­sors, for al­most fifty years, the Pathans as well as the Mughals tried their worst and tried their ut­most to cow-down the Sikhs, to fin­ish the Sikhs and to make them sub­mit.

The Sikhs with­stood this ter­ri­ble on­slaught.  They nei­ther sub­mit­ted nor aban­doned their harsh cry of “death or lib­erty”, a sen­ti­ment for­eign to and un­known in the East­ern so­ci­eties, an­cient or mod­ern.  This is a sen­ti­ment which is unique in the his­tory of Asia, though in Eu­rope you do find traces of it.  For fifty years, un­der the most cal­lous and un­der the most ter­ri­ble per­se­cu­tions where the aim was com­plete geno­cide, the Sikhs not only re­fused to sub­mit but re­fused to aban­don their cry:  “We want death or lib­erty!  We want death or lib­erty.”  And in the end they had their lib­erty.  Sikh su­premacy was then es­tab­lished.  And then it slid into the form of the Sikh Em­pire, which was called the Sarkar Khalsa that is “the peo­ple’s Com­mon­wealth” from the mid­dle of the eigh­teenth-cen­tury to the mid­dle of the nine­teenth-cen­tury.

“We want death or lib­erty!  We want death or lib­erty.”  And in the end they had their lib­erty.  Sikh su­premacy was then es­tab­lished. 

………..Now I come to the years be­fore 1947.  Be­fore the First World War, when the ideas of free­ing In­dia from the for­eign yoke started stir­ring the minds of the In­dian peo­ple, Sikhs were the spear­head of this move­ment.  It was from this place, Van­cou­ver, that as far back as the year 1913, a batch of about two-hun­dred Sikhs in all–there were two or three non-Sikhs, the rest of them all were Sikhs, sim­ple, man­ual labour­ers and peas­ants but gen­uine Sikhs, whose faith in the Guru and the teach­ings of the Guru was firm and un­sul­lied–these Sikhs sailed from Van­cou­ver with a plan to top­ple-down the British Em­pire through muti­nous ac­tiv­i­ties in the In­dian army.  They failed.

Most of them were ar­rested; they were hanged.  Many of them were sent to the ter­ri­ble An­daman Is­lands, and they spent their lives there, twenty years, twenty-five years; died there un­der con­di­tions of im­pris­on­ment which you can­not even imag­ine these days.  Such hard­ships and such ter­ri­ble con­di­tions of ex­is­tence they bore, and not a case of a sin­gle Sikh is known who ei­ther wa­vered or apol­o­gized, though many op­por­tu­ni­ties were of­fered them to just say one word:  “We are sorry for what we have done”; and they could come back to their vil­lages and to their lands and live a life of com­fort and ease as their other com­pa­tri­ots were do­ing. (Ap­plause).

It is recorded in the of­fi­cial records that when­ever these Sikhs were taken to the ex­e­cu­tion room to be hanged–some of you per­haps know how peo­ple are hanged, I know it.  I have su­per­vised some hang­ings as they used to be done dur­ing the British pe­riod.

“Are you now pre­pared to say, ‘I am sorry for what I have done,’ and the noose will be taken off your neck and you will be set free?”  Each one of them, with­out an ex­cep­tion is recorded as say­ing, “No, I am not sorry for what I have done, and when I take my next birth I will do the same.  I want the British to leave and free In­dia.”

You put black clothes on the per­son, pre­vi­ously giv­ing him an op­por­tu­nity to bathe his body, and then you tie his hands be­hind him, then you walk him to the gal­lows or ex­e­cu­tion room.  You make him stand un­der the gal­lows and put the rope around his neck and then a ques­tion is put to him: “Is there any­thing you want to say as a last word?”   First of all, “An­swer, are you so-and-so?   He says, “Yes I am so-and-so”.  Well, you are go­ing to be hanged for such-and-such crime; and now we are go­ing to pull the lever and the rope will kill you, suf­fo­cate you to death.  Is there any­thing you want to say be­fore your end comes?”  This is the ques­tion that is usu­ally put, and its an­swer is recorded.

But to these Sikhs an­other ques­tion was fre­quently put:  “Are you now pre­pared to say, ‘I am sorry for what I have done,’ and the noose will be taken off your neck and you will be set free?”  Each one of them, with­out an ex­cep­tion is recorded as say­ing, “No, I am not sorry for what I have done, and when I take my next birth I will do the same.  I want the British to leave and free In­dia.” (Ap­plause).

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And then the ques­tion would be put:  “Now, so-and-so, what are the last words you want to say be­fore your life on this earth comes to an end?”  In each case–I would­n’t vouch­safe for that but I have seen some of the files–maybe in one or two cases, very few cases, not, but gen­er­ally, they sang the fol­low­ing song:  Raj karega khalsa, aki rahe na koi, khwar hoe sabh milenge bache saran jo hoe. Dilli takhat par ba­hegi ap Guru-ki phauj, raj karega khalsa badi hoegi mauj. (Ap­plause).