Of all the territories and potentates that offered the stiffest resistance and challenge to the Mughal incursions, the three most significant were the Marathas in the South, and the Rajputs and (slightly later) the Sikhs in the North-West. The valiant Maratha leader, Chhatrapati Shivaji, and a whole series of Rajput kings including Rana Pratap and other legendary warriors, established a history of inflicting defeat and humiliation upon the Mughal invaders into their realms.
Since the time of the establishment of their religion (as an amalgamation of Hinduism with other reformist influences) by Guru Nanak (1469-1539), the Sikhs in India's Punjab province became known as a highly disciplined and martial community with strong adherence to their identity and territorial integrity. The story of the Sikh hero, Banda Singh Bahadur, whom Rabindranath Tagore commemorates here, is centered around his assuming the discipleship of one of the most celebrated Gurus of the Sikh Takht- Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708)--the 10th Guru since Nanak. Guru Gobind Singh's life story is every bit as larger than life as that of Banda, the hero of this narrative poem. Gobind Singh's father, the highly revered Guru Tegh Bahadur, was beheaded for refusing to convert to Islam (part of the dark history of proselytizing faiths) when Gobind was only nine. Gobind Singh established much stricter militancy into the Sikh way of life by introducing the five Ks as symbols of their martial discipline as Khalsas, and before long had a vast retinue of dedicated followers.
What is most ironic about Banda's story is the fact that by the time of his rise to adulthood, the Mughal dynasty had been seriously weakened by the sectarian and fanatical rule of Aurangzeb, who essentially dismantled all the integrative efforts of his grandfather Akbar, during whose considerably more enlightened reign the empire had reached its zenith. Perhaps it is not difficult to understand the considerably more brutal actions by the rulers in Delhi, post Aurangzeb, since the foundations of the empire had been greatly shaken by Aurangzeb's sectarian rule, and there was desperation in the attempt to keep it from collapsing.
Most interestingly, Banda was born a Minhas Rajput in Rajouri, Jammu--and went by the name Lachman Dev. In his youth, following a hunting expedition whereupon he witnessed the death of a doe and her writhing fawns, he turned into an ascetic, and commenced the life of a sadhu invested with the name Madho Das. For several years, he practiced austerities in a hermitage by the Godavari river near today's Maharashtra. It was at this stage that Madho Das made the acquaintance of Guru Gobind Singh, who happened to be traveling through the adjoining area with his entourage and in the company of the Mughal emperor of the time, Bahadur Shah. Upon extended conversations with the Guru, Banda was induced to embrace the Sikh way of life, dedicated to bringing justice to the oppressed and tyrannized people of Punjab, specifically under the tyrannical governance of Nawab Wazir Khan in the Sirhind district. When Guru Gobind's efforts to find favorable intervention from the emperor failed, and his mother and two young children were savagely killed, he deputed the newly-anointed Banda Singh Bahadur (where the word Banda literally stands for a servant--here implying servant to justice) and five Sikh warriors to begin a campaign of militant resistance, around 1708-09.
Before long, Banda had gathered around him a sizable group of fierce fighters, and in the years following his initial deployment, he exacted a great toll upon the oppressors and tyrants, wresting from the regional territorial usurpers several fortresses and recovering considerable embezzled treasuries. Not surprisingly, Banda's relentless aggression and associated success made him an avowed enemy of the Mughals and their vassals. Finally, after a long drawn-out siege at the fortress in Gurdaspur, despite many pleadings by his devotees to escape the siege and regroup for another battle, Banda chose to face the tormentors with his fellow warriors. Thereafter, these seven hundred prisoners were marched to Delhi where they were visited upon by the most gruesome and vicious death by the executioners of the reigning Mughal of the time, Farrukhsiyar (1685-1719).
Tagore's poem commemorating Banda and his heroic force, which is incomparably gripping with rhyming metaphors to valiance, is essentially self-explanatory, and I believe does not require further explanatory elaboration. The associated brutality, one must remember, is characteristic of most colonial and imperial conquests anywhere in the world (including, and rather often greatly exceeded by, the blood-drenched history of European and Euro-American colonialism to this day), and clearly exemplifies the savage barbarity humans are capable of -- a beastly characteristic that would give pause to any poet and idealist wishing to see the dawn of a higher human civilization centered upon camaraderie and brotherhood. Finally, it must be mentioned that the moving memorializing by Tagore of their hero contributed to a bond of kinship between Bengal and Punjab (a bond shared even more in view of the wounds of partition suffered by these two provinces, which resisted the British colonial occupation of India most valiantly).
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