However, what is worthwhile to bear in mind is that, despite these innovations, this new community, the Khalsa Panth, remained an integral part of the Hindu social and religious system. It is significant that when Tegh Bahadur was summoned to Delhi, he went as a representative of the Hindus. He was executed in the year 1675. His son who succeeded him as guru later described his father’s martyrdom as in the cause of the Hindu faith, ‘to preserve their caste marks and their sacred thread did he perform the supreme sacrifice’. The guru himself looked upon his community as an integral part of the Hindu social system. Ch. 8

Govind Rai, the tenth and last guru (1676 — 1708) and the only son of Tegh Bahadur, was a man of whom it had been prophesied before his birth that ‘’he would convert jackals into tigers and sparrows into hawks." He was not the person to leave his father’s death unavenged. [...] Govind steadily drilled his followers, gave them a distinctive dress and a new oath of baptism... “Mother dear, I have been considering how I may confer empire on the Khalsa. ’ ’ And, again, “I shall make men of all four castes lions and destroy the Mughals.’’

The Mughals, however, had captured a prize in the two sons of the Guru [Guru Goving Singh] who had got separated from him when he had escaped from the Mughals at Kot Nahang on the Sirsa. They were asked to embrace Islam and at their natural refusal were executed at Sirhind. Their martyrdom was very much utilized by Banda in his campaign against the Muslims in the Punjab.

Though Govind Singh is considered as the founder of the Khalsa order (1699) who 'gave his Sikhs an outward form distinct from the Hindus', he too did things which Sikh separatists would dismiss as 'brahminical'. As Khushwant Singh notes, 'Gobind selected five of the most scholarly of his disciples and sent them to Benares to learn Sanskrit and the Hindu religious texts, to be better able to interpret the writings of the gurus, which were full of allusions to Hindu mythology and philosophy.'

Guru Har Rai Ji had two sons, Guru Har Kishan Ji and Ram Rai Ji. Then, guru-ship was given to Har Kishan. After him, guru Tegh Bhahdur became the guru. By caste Khatri Sodhi Sahib Ji of Kaushish gotra, worshipper of Naina Devi and a native of Vatan ( Suba ) Lahore. Bhoj Raj Ji the prohit of Shri Prag Raj ( Tribeni / Allahabad ), whosoever from the line of the Sodhis and a Sikh of the guru, visiting ( Prayag ) will honour him ( Bhoj Raj prohit ), he will be blessed. Signed Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji.

Before he died, Guru Govind Singh had commissioned Banda Bairagi, a Rajput from Jammu to go to the Punjab and punish the wrong-doers. Banda more than fulfilled his mission. He was joined by fresh formations of the Khalsa and the Hindus at large gave him succour and support. He roamed all over the Punjab, defeating one Muslim army after another in frontal fights as well as in guerilla warfare. Sirhind, where Guru Govind Singh's younger sons had been walled up, was stormed and sacked. The bullies of Islam who had walked with immense swagger till only the other day had to run for cover. Large parts of the Punjab were liberated from Muslim despotism after a spell of nearly seven centuries. The Mughal empire, however, was still a mighty edifice which could mobilize a military force far beyond Banda's capacity to match. Gradually, he had to yield ground and accept defeat as his own following thinned down in battle after battle. He was captured, carried to Delhi in an iron cage and tortured to death in 1716 A.D. Many other members of the Khalsa met the same fate in Delhi and elsewhere. The Muslim governor of the Punjab had placed a prize on every Khalsa head. The ranks of the Khalsa had perforce to suffer a steep decline and go into hiding.

In the entire range of Sikh history, the account of Banda Singh Bahadur has remained almost an enigmatic phenomenon for the historians. Most scholars have not been able to perceive how an ascetic of some credibility, engaged in exercise of occult powers made an instant decision of joining the Khalsa-fold after a short but fateful meeting with Guru Gobind Singh in his own hermitage.

One paper after another highlighted some quotes from contemporaneous writers in praise of Aurangzeb. These are easy to find, as he had the last say over their success or marginalization, even over life and death. On Stalin too, you can easily find many contemporary sources praising him, and then silly academics concluding therefrom that he can’t have been so bad. Thus, one of the sources was Guru Govind Singh’s Zafar Namah or “victory letter”. If you quote it selectively, you might think he was an admirer and ideological comrade of Aurangzeb’s. But the Guru was strategically with his back against the wall and had to curry favour with the man holding all the cards. So he wrote a diplomatically-worded letter and held his personal opinions to himself (and here is one case where personal relations must have trumped ideology). It is entirely certain, and academics cover themselves with shame if they cleverly try to deny it, that Govind hated Aurangzeb from the bottom of his heart. Aurangzeb was responsible for the murder of Govind’s father and all four sons. Any proletarian can understand that in private, Govind must have said the worst things about Aurangzeb. You have to be as silly or as partisan as a South Asia scholar to believe that the Guru meant to praise Aurangzeb. [...] I heard an “academic” describe how contemporary Hindi writers praised Aurangzeb, the dispenser of their destinies. Well, many eulogies of Stalin can also be cited, including by comrades fallen from grace and praising Stalin even during their acceptance speeches of the death penalty; but it would be a very bad historian, even if sporting academic titles, who flatly deduces therefrom that Stalin a benign ruler. Govind Singh’s “Victory Letter” to Emperor Aurangzeb was, in all seriousness, included among the sources of praise, leaving unmentioned that Aurangzeb had murdered Govind’s father and four sons. Every village bumpkin can deduce that Govind hated Aurangezb more than any other person in the world, and that he was only being diplomatic in his writing because of the power equation. Academics laugh at kooks who believe in aliens, but it took an academic, no less, to discover an alien who actually admired the murderer of his father and sons.

I base my opinion on historical evidence. After Guru Gobind Singh's death, Sikh peasantry rose in arms under Banda Bahadur. Then Jats in the Sikh Misl [armed groups] fought all through the 18th century to establish Khalsa raj [rule]. Out of the 12 Sikh misls, 9 were headed by Jat chiefs. In this struggle, they made tremendous sacrifices. If one generation was wiped out, the next generation took up arms. Finally, they emerged victorious at the end of the century.

Nor are you the first Sikh to be sanatanized. Guru Nanak was a Sanatani Hindu. All the Gurus were. Tegh Bahadur & Govind Singh explicitly invoked Hindu Dharma. But then McAuliffe & other Brits came to bribe you & turn you against Sanatana Dharma. So you profitably became McSikhs.

The Mughal rulers of the Punjab were evidently concerned with the growth of the Panth, and in 1605 the Emperor Jahangir made an entry in his memoirs, the Tuzuk-i-Jahāṅgīrī, concerning Guru Arjan's support for his rebellious son Khusrau Mirza. Too many people, he wrote, were being persuaded by his teachings, and if the Guru would not become a Muslim the Panth had to be extinguished. Jahangir believed that Guru Arjan was a Hindu who pretended to be a saint, and that he had been thinking of forcing Guru Arjan to convert to Islam or his false trade should be eliminated, for a long time. Mughal authorities seem plainly to have been responsible for Arjan's death in custody in Lahore, and this may be accepted as an established fact. Whether death was by execution, the result of torture, or drowning in the Ravi River remains unresolved. For Sikhs, Arjan is the first martyr Guru.

Listen All! Said Tegh Bahadur: Those who stick to their Dharma are called brave. I know my Hindu Dharma to be the best. How can I forsake that which is very dear to me? It (Hindu Dharma) gives immense joy in this world and the next. Even life is trivial compared to honor. The fool whose intellect is corrupted, That idiot alone will forsake it. I will endure harm to establish Hindu Dharma in this world. It will never be destroyed even if you try.

In the very first year of his reign, he [Jahangir] tortured Guru Arjun Dev to death. His contempt for Hindus comes out clearly in his Tuzuk-i-Jahãngîrî: “A Hindu named Arjun lived in Govindwal on the bank of river Beas in the garb of a saint and in ostentation. From all sides cowboys and idiots became his fast followers. The business had flourished for three or four generations. For a long time it had been in my mind to put a stop to this dukãn-e-bãtil (mart of falsehood) or to bring him into the fold of Islam.” According to other accounts, he asked the Guru to include some sûrahs of the Quran in the Ãdi Grantha, which the Guru refused to do. In the eighth year of his reign, he destroyed the temple of Bhagwat at Ajmer. He persecuted the Jains in Gujarat, and ordered that Jain monks should not be seen in his kingdom on pain of death. Finally, he sent Murtaza Khan to Kangra for reducing that city of temples. The siege lasted for 20 months at the end of which he himself went to Kangra for slaughtering cows in that sacred place of Hindus, and building a mosque where none had existed before.

March 23, 1931. Time: 7.30 pm. Place: Lahore Jail. It was a Monday. On this day, Bhagat Singh aged 24, Sukhdev 23 and Rajguru 23 were hanged to death by the British. This cruelty and heartlessness of the British Raj was directed towards instilling fear in the hearts of other freedom fighters, but in vain. A thousand Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev sprang up from across the country.