Arvind said:
S|kh veer,
During the pre-independant India, I would divide the masses into two classes: 1. Freedom-fighters (FF) and 2. British Servants (BS)
Naamdhari were the most politically active people during 1800s, and started movements ahead of time, and expressed non-cooperation. Those sikhs were assaulted by sikhs serving in then British Police Services.
When Kama Gata Maru reached Calcutta back, Sikhs serving in British police opened fire at those FFs coming out of the ship.
Just before World War, when sikhs were returning as a Garam Dal to India, to cut the chains of slavery, there were some detective sikhs, who were reason for the failure.
When Prince Daleep Singh, and Maharani were wooed to England, there were other sikhs in British army who went out with a bare kirpan and led the parade there in England, when our own India was a slave.
During World War, when Sikhs serving in British army went to China and other colonies, they created a havoc. What Chinese saw : Sikhs trying to make them into British colony, when sikhs's own homeland is slave.
Above are just a few examples. Look at the history with these two classes, and I feel bad about them. Let us decide one stand - whether we want to reward freedom fighters of India, or those people who were responsible to desert the FFs and their families. It is not possible to celebrate both the things at the same time.
Above are the reasons of my previous post.
Regards, Arvind.
Dear Arvind ji
You may be quite right
But still I would like to mention some thing
1st thing India never existed practically before british invaded whole peninsula nad then made a clolony out of india and the northern india including punjab was last to fall in their empire . I ndia was mere a concept and was never realised until unless british people rule whole of it
So when when british invaded sikh empire after fall of Ranjit singh sikhs fought as hard as they can but were defeated and after that homeland of sikhs become part of india
Now in that part of india ( now northern india ) British people recognised the fighter talents of sikh community and gave them preveliges and created a divide in society and the same thing was one of the cause people of hindu family would make on eof their son sikh to get benifit of these previlages
Now army was a very lucarative job for people at that time and they did it and they were good at doing it and there is no reason to think that people from rest of british empire were very dtermined freedom fighter and so they didnt join the army while the reason was people in that part of then india to weak ( mentally ) to do so
Now such a large no of sikhs serving british army was eventually going to give good chance to sikhs when british army was going to give freedom to his colony as sikhs could have got their homeland
But something else happened some very good sikh leaders justed wasted all done by sikhs in one go thinking every thing is going to fare in this new india but the reality every body knows , sikhs are still strugling to establish their identity officialy as seperate religion is alwyas under ( actual or fictios ) threat to their identity, punjab was the last suba ( state to be declared by indian government and that also after long strugle by many thousand sikhs .
I might have said too much but still i would say as last note sikhs were the big big losers in this whole game of indian independence whether they served as freedom fighter or whether they served britishers at end of the day they got nothing
So dear friend sikhs even today are serving indian government in thousands and there is has events in history that every body knows when they were pithched against sikhs themselves well some deserted army and some opened fire on them so it will be always difficult to say who is good and who is bad
The samethng as you mentioned about chinese , my collegues from pkistan and Azad kashmir say to me that sikhs are fighting with kashmiris in kargil and elsewhere when they themselves are homeless
I dont know actually but when I was writing this reply I was also bit confused what has happened and what will be happening in sikhs history
I tried to avoid writing this reply but could not hold myself
i am sure some people will find this unconfortable but honestly i dont have anything against anything
Jatinder Singh
