Guru Gobind Singh's Death at Nanded Examination of - Vidhia.com

74 AN EXAMINATION OF SUCCESSION THEORIES
in response to the prayer of the Kukas in jails sentenced
to death for the murders of butchers, the Gurus and a
number of Sikh martyrs of the eighteenth century appeared
to them in their last moments. But they were visible only to
the Kukas and to nobody else. There is, however, a difference
in the appearance of the imaginary Guru Gobind Singh
to the Maratha dacoits imprisoned in the fort of Satara and
to these Kukas in the Panjab jails. While the spirit of the
Guru had rescued the dacoits from the fort and had flown
them off to a place of safety in the Vindhyachal mountain
over two hundred and eighty miles away to the north, those
who appeared to the Kukas only blessed them and then
left them to their fate at the hands of the hangmen. [Shahid
Bilas, 50-51; Panth Prakash, 86.]
17. BABA AJAPAL SINGH WAS NOT GURU GOBIND SINGH
No objective student of history, who has studied the
life of Guru Gobind Singh in some detail, can be persuaded
to believe that an insensitive Sannyasi-like ascetic living in a
jungle, away from his people and dead to all feelings of
human sympathy for his countrymen, as Baba Ajapal Singh
is described to be, could be Guru Gobind Singh. Within two
years and a quarter of the death of Guru Gobind Singh in
October 1708, the infuriated Mughal emperor issued on
December 10, 1710, an edict for a wholesale massacre of the
Sikhs wherever found—Nanak-prastan ra har jd kih bayaband
ba-qatl rasanund [Akbarat-i-Darbar-i-Mualla]. The Sikhs were
engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the Mughals and
were besieged at Gurdas Nangal for eight long months (April-
December 1715), reduced to extremities, with nothing to eat
except leaves and skin of trees, but 'Ajapal Singh' was not
moved to go to their help. In March 1716, the Sikhs were
executed at Delhi at the rate of a hundred a day (March 5-13)
and on June 9 Banda Singh and his leading companions were
led out for execution near the mausoleum of Qutb-ud-Din
Bakhtiar Kaki where his flesh was torn with red hot pincers
and he was cut to pieces limb by limb. His four year old son
and other Sikhs were tortured to death. But 'Ajapal Singh'
T GURU GOBIND SINGH'S DEATH AT NANDED 75
remained unmoved in his slumbering samadhi. The old order
of a general indiscriminate massacre of the Sikhs was repeated
during the reign of Emperor Farrukh Siyar (1712-1719) and
for thirty-six years thereafter the Sikhs were hound ed out of
their homes and hearths to seek shelter in jungles, hills and
sandy deserts and were executed in their hundreds and
thousands during the governorships of Abdus Samad Khan,
Zakariya Khan, Yahiya Khan and Mir Mannu when neither
saint nor scholar, neither woman nor child, was spared. But
Baba 'Ajapal Singh' did not stir out of his hiding to make
his existence felt. This was certainly not in keeping with the
character, spirit and tradition of Guru Gobind Singh.
In 1757-62, the Darbar Sahib temple at Amritsar was
sacked and demolished, and the sacred tank was filled with
its debris and with the dead bodies of men and animals. In
February 1762, the Durranis led a devastating attack against
the Sikhs who lost over ten thousand lives, including old men,
women and children, in the Wadda Ghalughard on February 5.
Baba 'Ajapal Singh',' however, remained hidden in the jungle of
Nabha and did not raise even his little finger for the protection
of his people. Could indifference and callousness go any
further ? Could such a spiritless man be Guru Gobind
Singh ? This kind of attitude was clearly against the spirit
and mission of the Guru's life dedicated to the service of the
suffering humanity and the succour of injured innocence. It
was wholly inconsistent with the years of his life which history
records. The Guru could not have sat in silence while his
people groaned under the heel of oppression. He would not
have remained in anonymity when the struggle against oppression
he had himself started had grown in intensity and had
reached such a crucial point. To imagine that in those stirring
times Guru Gobind Singh, who had lived so fully and vigorously,
would have sought the safety of withdrawal and, abjuring
his mission, passed his days like a maunl ascetic unconcerned
about the fate of his Sikhs, unmoved by cataclysmic events
and unmindful of the great destiny towards which the movement
he himself had initiated was advancing, would be to