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82
ABSTRACTS OF SIKH STUDIES : APRIL-JUNE 2005 / 537 NS
In connection with the last days of Guru Arjun or the early ones
of Guru Hargobind, Fenech talks of “Jat castes”, the “militant nature
of Jats” without any authority or justification. McLeod’s own work
The Evolution of the Sikh Community, 1995, containing some untenable
doctrines about the Jats, had not yet been published, and it does not
find mention in the bibliography. Obviously, Fenech went by direction
of his guide, McLeod, whom he could not refuse, though as stated
earlier, Dr. Trilochan Singh, would have us believe that Jats at the time
constituted hardly five per cent of the Sikh congregation.
Guru Hargobind’s battles were fought only around 1634-35;
therefore, the question of “highway men and robbers” joining Guru’s
army at that earlier stage of Akal Takht, Lohgarh Fort or introduction
of Dhad (martial) instrument, i.e. all before 1611, does not arise. The
author mistakes Guru Hargobind’s construction of a mosque at
Hargobindpura with the one at Kiratpur. All the way through Fenech
goes on talking about ‘tradition’, ‘tradition’ and ‘tradition’, as if the
Bhat Vehis even did not make history, or he thought it inadvisable to
consult them.
Fenech now talks of martyrdom of the ninth Guru Tegh Bahadur
as if the fifth Guru, who was earlier martyred, was not a Guru. He
garbles the account. He gives reference to Guru Tegh Bahadur’s
compositions, without understandings their meaning. He mentions
Guru Tegh Bahadur’s month long incarceration at Delhi in 1665, but
does not elaborate on the only discussion he had with Aurangzeb. He,
thereafter, immediately brings in the Kashmiri Brahmin’s delegation
at Makhowal, though it was after another decade that that happened.
Then follows the garbled version of Guru Tegh Bahadur’s martyrdom.
The author brings in the peroration which later formed part of
Bachitar Natak on the significance of Guru Tegh Bahadur’s martyrdom
as a unique act, performed for the sake of religious liberty and freedom
of conscience. Fenech unnecessarily busies himself in time devoted
to one Guru against another, without going into the import of what
he said. However, Fenech is conscious that all the Sikh Gurus are
“manifestation of the one divine light.” The word ‘tradition’ occurs
several times without his conceding that Guru Gobind Singh’s writings