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FROM CROWN TO THE CROSS-ROADS – SIKH HISTORY GOES FULL CIRCLE65into the majority Hindu religion, apostasy and atheism among the youth,degeneration into various sects, babadoms, derawaadism, rituals andsymbols, in other words, slip into total oblivion or once again <strong>March</strong>towards the Crown, maybe not in the same physical kingdom <strong>of</strong> BandaSingh Bahadur /Misls/or Maharaja Ranjit Singh, but to the sense <strong>of</strong>Pride in our fine religion, our fine credentials, as we become the World’sFifth largest religion, with 25 million followers worldwide.We need to re-think, re-evaluate, re-invent, rejuvenate and reempowerourselves to make ourselves relevant. We need to pullourselves out <strong>of</strong> the quagmire <strong>of</strong> the Western thinking wherebyeverything goes according to rules, regulations, by-laws, enactments,etc, etc. This is no body’s fault, we have been living in a westernizedsociety for so long that we have forgotten or neglected our ownhomegrown solutions – solutions that have proved SUCCESSFUL, solutionsthat led us up the right road towards the Crown, once before. I amvery sure those same solutions and practices if adopted can lead usback to the Crown we cherish so much and which is our birthright.Guru Gobind Singh created the Khalsa in 1699, a fighting forcethat rivaled the finest soldiers <strong>of</strong> the land. Before he left this earth,Guru Gobind Singh gave us two guiding principles – Complete andtotal Faith in the Guru Granth (Gurbani) and the Democratic-Republican Punj Piara System <strong>of</strong> Rule by Consensus <strong>of</strong> the GuruKhalsa Panth. Total dedication by all our leaders to these two Principlesin the past led us towards the Crown.Banda Singh was sent to the Punjab by Guru Gobind Singh tocarry forward His mission. He took this seriously and shook the Mughalgovt to its very foundations. Many others who were not <strong>Sikh</strong>s alsojoined his forces against the govt, some for the opportunity to loot,others to taste freedom, but majority <strong>of</strong> the <strong>Sikh</strong>s out <strong>of</strong> a sense <strong>of</strong>religious duty. Baba Banda Singh’s force uprooted the Govt Law andOrder in many places, and Banda Singh was able to have a semblance<strong>of</strong> a rival Govt in small plots <strong>of</strong> territory. As a Devout Khalsa, Banda’sGovt struck coins in the name <strong>of</strong> not Banda, but the Guru. Alas! itwas too early in the day for a sustainable Govt <strong>of</strong> anti-Mughals, andthe Banda Govt soon collapsed, but the <strong>Sikh</strong>s had tasted freedom andwouldn’t let go <strong>of</strong> it so easily. Defeat merely drove them deeper intothe struggle. The next person on the stage, Ahmad Shah Durrani, the
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