We Remember the Shaheeds in Ardas. Are We Wasting Their Sacrifice?
They gave everything so Sikhs could remain under the Guru. What are we handing to the next generation?
Plain-English renderings of Gurbani are mine. Gurmukhi remains primary.
ਪੁੰਨੀ ਪਾਪੀ ਆਖਣੁ ਨਾਹਿ ॥
ਕਰਿ ਕਰਿ ਕਰਣਾ ਲਿਖਿ ਲੈ ਜਾਹੁ ॥punnee paapee aakhan naahi
kar kar karnaa likh lai jaahuPlain-English sense: Virtue and wrongdoing are not settled by words alone. What we repeatedly do writes the account we carry.
Japji Sahib, Pauri 20, Ang 4, Guru Nanak Sahib Ji.
Verify: SearchGurbani · SriGranth · Dekho Ji · Sikh Samridhi /Darpan
Every day in Ardas, Sikhs remember the Singhs and Singhniyan who gave their heads but did not surrender their Sikhi:
ਜਿਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਸਿੰਘਾਂ ਸਿੰਘਣੀਆਂ ਨੇ ਧਰਮ ਹੇਤ ਸੀਸ ਦਿੱਤੇ ... ਸਿੱਖੀ ਕੇਸਾਂ ਸੁਆਸਾਂ ਨਾਲ ਨਿਬਾਹੀ
jinhaan singhaan singhaniaan ne dharam het sees ditte ... sikhee kesaan suaasaan naal nibaahee
From the Sikh Ardas (excerpt). SGPC Sikh Rehat Maryada
We remember those who were cut limb from limb, scalped, placed on spiked wheels and sawn apart.
They do not need our praise.
We need their measure.
Ardas is not a museum of Sikh suffering. It brings the sacrifice of earlier Sikhs into the life of the Sikh standing today. It asks what we are doing with the freedom they preserved.
We remember them. But are we wasting their sacrifice?
What did they protect?
Their sacrifice preserved more than the survival of a people called Sikh.
It preserved the freedom to live under the Guru.
Again and again, Sikhs refused the ruler’s claim to decide Sikh belief. They refused the mahant’s claim to own the Guru’s house. They refused to exchange Sikhi for comfort, office or release from prison.
The Gurdwara Reform Movement did not settle for kinder treatment from hereditary mahants. Sikhs organised, accepted imprisonment, faced lathis and gave their lives. They created a representative Sikh institution before the British Raj enacted the Sikh Gurdwaras Act.
They understood something we are in danger of forgetting:
A custodian is not an owner.
An office-holder is not the Guru.
A government does not become the author of Sikh religious order because it possesses the power to make laws.
The new surrender
Today, some leading Sikh voices discuss only which clauses of government control should be changed. They ask for better definitions, safer procedures and consultation before the next law is written.
Far fewer ask the first question:
Why should any government hold permanent power to write Sikh religious administration at all?
No government can control Shabad Guru. But a government can control elections, appointments, statutory institutions, registers, property systems and the legal machinery through which people claim to speak for Sikhs.
That power shapes public Sikh authority.
Changing harmful clauses may be necessary now. Granthis, paathis, committees and ordinary Sikhs should not remain exposed to dangerous provisions while the larger question is settled.
Seeking immediate protection is not defeat.
Treating amendment as the final answer is.
Defeat begins when controlled people accept the controller’s permanent right to control them and ask only for kinder terms.
Did the shaheeds sacrifice so that we could negotiate the terms of our control?
We inherit duty, not credit
A Sikh does not inherit the courage of the shaheeds through family, appearance or name.
Japji Sahib does not let us become virtuous merely by calling ourselves virtuous. Our actions write the account.
The word “Sikh” does not place the moral credit of earlier generations into our account. Their sacrifice places a duty into our hands.
This is not a judgment on every Sikh living today. The present generation contains courageous families, lawyers, human-rights workers, researchers, sevadars, journalists and young Sikhs trying to understand the history and institutions they have inherited.
Leadership cannot be judged by office alone. Some of the most important Sikh work has been done by people without high office, often at great personal cost.
The Sikh account is not empty. Sikhs won real victories, built institutions, preserved records and pursued justice.
But the account becomes overdrawn when leaders claim authority without a clear mandate, accept promises without securing delivery, and pass the cost to ordinary Sikhs and the next generation.
The question is not whether every Sikh today is unworthy.
The question is whether our institutions, leaders and public voices are worthy trustees of what earlier Sikhs placed in their care.
What are we leaving behind?
The next generation may inherit institutions that Sikhs cannot renew without government action.
Religious offices may remain tied to committee payrolls and political appointments.
Panjab, Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra and Bihar may continue under separate systems, with no trusted worldwide Sikh process joining them.
And leaders may become skilled at negotiating clauses while forgetting to ask who has the right to write them.
That would be a terrible exchange.
Earlier generations handed us institutions built through sacrifice.
We would be handing our children institutions trained into dependence.
The diaspora also stands before this test
Sikhs outside India must not condemn Sikhs in Panjab from a safe distance. Panjab carries risks that many in the diaspora do not.
The diaspora also has its own failures: permanent committees, donor control, caste networks, personal rivalries and gurdwaras treated like private possessions.
But freedom creates responsibility.
Sikhs outside India possess legal protection, education, independent media, professional knowledge, money, technology and access to institutions in many countries.
These strengths should not be used to control Panjab from abroad. They should be used to work with Sikhs in India and help build one trusted worldwide Sikh process under Shabad Guru.
The answer is not Delhi control replaced by diaspora control.
The answer is a worldwide Sikh process that no single government, party, family, committee or country can own.
Our duty is different
Bhai Teja Singh Samundri Ji faced prison and died there.
The reform generation faced lathis, firing and death.
Some Sikhs in India still face serious risks for speaking and organising. But many of us, especially in the diaspora, are not being asked to pay the price earlier generations paid.
We are being asked to read, tell the truth, keep records, fund independent work, organise across countries, build institutions that can be trusted, and refuse the claim that government control is permanent simply because it has lasted for a long time.
Earlier Sikhs paid in blood because easier routes had been closed.
For many of us, the price now being asked is much smaller.
If we refuse even that price while praising those who paid with their lives, the question of worthiness begins to answer itself.
The test before us
The present Sikh generation is not condemned.
It is being tested.
Every generation faces a different duty.
Their duty required endurance and resistance.
Ours is to understand the system, end permanent government control over the laws and machinery of Sikh institutions, organise worldwide and leave stronger Sikh institutions to those who follow.
The shaheeds did not sacrifice so that we could inherit their honour.
They sacrificed so that Sikhs could remain free to live under the Guru.
Ardas keeps their sacrifice before us.
Our actions will decide whether we honoured it, or only repeated the words.
Source note
The detailed historical and legal case concerning government control of Sikh institutional machinery is set out in Amended by Empire, Province and Parliament. Never by the Panth.
The longer audit of authority, leadership, unfinished settlements and the cost passed to ordinary Sikhs is developed in The Account Is Overdrawn (forthcoming). It argues that the Sikh account contains real courage and achievement, but becomes overdrawn when unfinished obligations and preventable costs are passed to ordinary Sikhs and the next generation.
Correction note
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Strong disagreement is welcome. Contempt is not.
Bhul chuk maaf karni Ji.
Gurjit Singh Sandhu
PanthSeva
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