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MCLEOD & FENECH AS SCHOLARS ON SIKHISM AND MARTYRDOM
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II
Fenech’s thesis Playing the Game of Love : The Sikh Tradition of
Martyrdom opens with a 500 word abstract of 3 paragraphs which seek
to present the theme in “context of the past ten years” from operation
“Blue Star” in June 1984 “and the subsequent anti-Sikh pogrom”. This
was followed by a sustained campaign of Sikh genocide at the hands
of “an intractable merciless foe” which reminded the people of the
situation in the 18th century. Then Fenech makes the startling
statement attributing it to ‘popular history’ (wherefrom he gets this
stupid ‘popular history’ he does not disclose, neither do any
contemporary sources disclose this so-called popular history) that
people in 18th century saved themselves “by renouncing their faith
and external insignia with which it is associated”, to say that
contemporaries could adopt “a similar alternative to ensure one’s
continued survival”.
He qualifies it in the next paragraph by saying that, “This is,
however, one alternative which the majority of eighteenth century
Sikhs had never chosen.” He implies that some of them discarded
“the external insignia”, and throughout his thesis, or the works of
McLeodian scholars, there is nothing from contemporary or near
contemporary history to give that meaning or that sort of reporting.
McLeod himself quotes the case of a boy, among Banda Singh
Bahadur’s group of prisoners, who disowned his mother and kissed
the scaffold. The Mughal persecution slowed down the process of
Khalsaisation of the Sikhs but no Khalsa in 18th century renounced
his faith or external insignia. Let McLeod and his cronies interpret out
clearly whether the Sikhs did or did not renounce their faith! There
can be no midway in the two propositions.
My first reaction in reading this was to use for the author a much
stronger expression. But since it is generally advisable to keep the
literary criticism in somewhat restrained language, I will prefer to term
him a McLeodian puppy, shorn of his brain-power, the need to use his
brain. I, however, would make it a soft one. Even Kabir in Adi
Granth says, “We are puppies in Thy mansion. We speak to Thee with