Max Arthur Macauliffe had written a celeberated six-volume historical chronicle about Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikh religion, and all its later Gurus under the title “The Sikh Religion”.
It was published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford in 1909. It is a well researched authentic historical record of what crimes Islam and its heroes have committed against Hindus and Sikhs, and their temples in India. In introduction to the first volume of his book he writes thus:
Amir Khusrau writes in his Tawarikh Alai or Khazain-ul-Futuh that when the Emperor Firoz Shah Tughlak (A.D. 1351-88) took the city of Bhilsa in Bhopal, he destroyed all its Hindu temples, took away their idols, placed them in front of his fort, and had them daily bathed with the blood of a thousand Hindus. Firoz Shah twice plundered the country of Malwa, and took away everything he could find except earthen pots.
Farishta relates that a Brahman called Budhan, who dwelt in a place called Kayathan or Kataen near Lakhnau (Lucknow), was put to death by Sikandar Khan Lodi for stating that as Islam was true, so also was the Hindu religion. The saint Kabir lived under Sikandar Khan Lodi, and was tortured by him. The Emperor Babar’s cruelty to the inhabitants of Saiyidpur we shall find described by Guru Nanak, who was an eye-witness. Both he and his attendant were taken prisoners and obliged to work as slaves.
The Guru thus describes the Muhammadan rulers and the state of India in his time : This age is a knife, kings are butchers ; justice hath taken wings and fled. In this completely dark night of falsehood the moon of truth is never seen to rise. I have become perplexed in my search ; In the darkness I find no way. Devoted to pride, I weep in sorrow ; How shall deliverance be obtained ?”
There is a glamour of romance cast round the person of the Emperor Jahangir, partly owing to the poetry of Moore and partly owing to his possession of Nur Jahan, the most beautiful and gifted woman of the East ; but Jahangir’s memory is entitled to no historical commiseration. His father Akbar was disposed to free thought in religion, and it was believed that in this he was encouraged by Abul Fazal, the famous Persian historian.
Jahangir caused Abul Fazal to be cruelly assassinated. After his accession he compassed the death of Nur Jahan’s husband in order to possess her. He tells in his Memoirs how he disposed of robbers. “I accomplished about this period the suppression of a tribe of robbers, who had long infested the roads about Agra ; and whom, getting into my power, I caused to be trampled to death by elephants.”
Sir Thomas Roe, the British Ambassador at his Court, gives the following further information regarding Jahangir s method of dispensing justice : “A band of one hundred robbers were brought in chains before the Great Mogul. Without any ceremony of trial, he ordered them to be carried away for execution, their chief being ordered to be
torn in pieces by dogs. The prisoners were sent for execution to several quarters of the city, and executed in the streets. Close by my house the chief was torn in pieces by twelve dogs ; and thirteen of his fellows, having their hands and feet tied together, had their necks cut by a sword, yet not quite through, and their naked and bloody
bodies were left to corrupt in the streets. The trials are conducted quickly, and the sentences speedily executed ; culprits being hanged, beheaded, impaled, torn by dogs, destroyed by elephants, bitten by serpents, or other devices, according to the nature of the crimes ; the executions being generally in the market-place. The governors of provinces and cities administer justice in a similar manner.
The following gives Jahangir s treatment of harmless lovers : Happening to catch a eunuch kissing one of his women whom he had relinquished, he sentenced the lady to be put into the earth, with only her head left above the ground, exposed to the burning rays of the sun, and the eunuch to be cut in pieces before her face.”
Sir Thomas Roe describes how Jahangir vented his displeasure on some of his nobles : Some nobles who were near his person he caused for some offence to be whipped in his presence, receiving 130 stripes with a most terrible instrument of torture, having, at the ends of four cords irons like spur-rowels, so that every stroke made four wounds. When they lay for dead, he commanded the standers-by to spurn them with their feet, and the door keepers to break their staves upon them. Thus, cruelly mangled and bruised, they were carried away, one of them dying on the spot.
Jahangir s son Khusrau rose in rebellion against him, and it is not a matter for surprise that he found many adherents.” After Khusrau’s arrest he was brought before his father, with a chain fastened from his left hand to his left foot, according to the laws of Changhez Khan. On the right hand of the Prince stood Hasan Beg, and on his left, Abdulrahim. Khusrau trembled and wept. He was
ordered into confinement ; but the companions of his rebellion were put to death with cruel torments. Hasan Beg was sewed up in a raw hide of an ox, and Abdulrahim in that of an ass, and both were led about the town on asses, with their faces towards the tail. The ox’s hide became so dry and contracted, that before the evening Hasan Beg was
suffocated ; but the ass’s hide being continually moistened with water by the friends of Abdulrahim, he survived the punishment. From the garden of Kamran to the city of Lahore two rows of stakes were fixed in the ground, upon which the other rebels were impaled alive ; and the unhappy
Khusrau, mounted on an elephant, was conducted between the ranks of these miserable sufferers.
Further on we shall see that Jahangir caused Guru Arjan, the fifth Sikh Guru, to be tortured to death, partly on account of his religion and partly because he had extended to Prince Khusrau a friendly reception and hospitality.
Jahangir s grandson the Emperor Aurangzeb was brought up a very strict Muhammadan. The following, according to the Mirat-i-Alam of the historian Bakhtawar Khan, shows how he treated Hindus and their temples for the honour and glory of God and the success of what he considered the only true religion : ” Hindu writers have been entirely excluded from holding public offices ; and all the worshipping places of the infidels, and the great temples of these infamous people have been thrown down and destroyed in a manner which excites astonishment at the successful completion of so arduous an undertaking.
The following is from the Maasir-i-Alamgiri : It reached the ears of His Majesty, the Protector of the Faith, that in the provinces of Thatha, Multan, and Banaras, but especially in the latter, foolish Brahmans were in the habit of expounding frivolous books in their schools, and that students, learned Mussalmans as well as Hindus, went there even from long distances, led by a desire to become acquainted with the wicked sciences there taught. The Director of the Faith consequently issued orders to all the governors of provinces to destroy with willing hands the temples and schools of the infidels, and to put an entire stop to the teaching and practice of idolatrous forms of worship.
It was subsequently reported to his religious Majesty, leader of the Unitarians, that in obedience to his orders, the Government officers had destroyed the temple of Vishwanath at Banaras. In the thirteenth year of Aurangzeb’s reign this justice-loving monarch, the constant enemy of tyrants, commanded the destruction of the Hindu temple of Mathura, and soon that stronghold of falsehood and den of iniquity was levelled with the ground. On its site was laid at great expense the foundation of a vast mosque.
There arose a sect called Satnamis founded by Jagjivan Das, a native of Awadh (Oude). They appear to have taken many of their doctrines from the Sikhs. Their moral code is thus described : ” It is something like that of all Hindu quietists, and enjoins indifference to the world, its pleasures or its pains, implicit devotion to the spiritual guide, clemency and gentleness, rigid adherence to truth,
the discharge of all ordinary, social, or religious obligations, and the hope of final absorption into the one spirit which pervades all things.”
The Muhammadan historian thus describes this pious sect and their treatment by the Emperor Aurangzeb : A body of bloody miserable rebels, goldsmiths, carpenters, sweepers, tanners, and other ignoble beings, braggarts and fools of all descriptions became so puffed up with vain glory as to cast themselves headlong into the pit of destruction. Aurangzeb sent an army to exterminate and destroy these unbelievers. The heroes of Islam charged with impetuosity and crimsoned their sabres with the blood of these desperate men. The struggle was terrible. At
length the Satnamis broke and fled, but were pursued with great slaughter.
General Khan Jahan Bahadur arrived from Jodhpur bringing with him several cartloads of idols taken from the Hindu temples which had been razed to the ground. Most of these idols, when not made of gold, silver, brass, or copper, were adorned with precious stones. It was ordered that some of them should be cast away in cut-offices and the remainder placed beneath the steps of the grand mosque to be trampled under foot. There they lay a long time until not a vestige of them was left.
In 1090 A.H. (A.D. 1680) Prince Muhammad Azam and Khan Jahan Bahadur obtained permission to visit Udaipur. Two other officers at the same time proceeded thither to effect the destruction of the temples of the idolaters, which are described as the wonders of the age, erected by the infidels to the ruin of their souls. Twenty Rajputs had resolved to die for their faith. One of them slew many of his assailants before receiving his death blow. Another followed and another until all had fallen. Many of the faithful also had been dispatched when the last of these fanatics had gone to hell. Soon after Aurangzeb himself visited the Rana’s lake and ordered all its temples to be levelled with the
ground. Hasan Ali Khan then made his appearance
with twenty camels taken from the Rana, and reported that the temple near the palace and one hundred and twenty-two more in the neighbouring districts had been destroyed.
He was rewarded by the emperor with the title of Bahadur. When Aurangzeb went to Chitaur, still one of the most beautiful of all ancient cities, he caused sixty-three temples there to be demolished. The Rana had now been driven forth from his country and his home, the victorious Ghazis had struck many a blow, and the heroes of Islam had trampled under their chargers hoofs the land which this reptile of the forest and his predecessors had possessed for a thousand years. Aurangzeb’s iconoclastic fury knew no bounds or moderation.”
Abu Turab, who had been commissioned by him to effect the destruction of the idol temples of Amber, the ancient capital of Jaipur, reported in person that three score and six of these edifices had been levelled with the ground.
We shall further on see that it was Aurangzeb who put Guru Teg Bahadur, the ninth Guru of the Sikhs, to death in Dihli. According to the author of the Dabistan the emperor ordered the Guru’s body to be quartered and the parts thereof to be suspended at the four gates of the city.
Aurangzeb also persecuted Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth and last Guru of the Sikhs, and forced him to fly from the Panjab ; and it was a result of the same monarch’s tyranny that Guru Gobind Singh’s four sons lost their livesn and that none of his descendants survived.
Many earnest thinkers and reformers lived under the above and other Muhammadan emperors of India, but they were either executed and none dared record their teachings and their fate, or accounts of them belong to Hindu religious history, and lie beyond the scope of the present work.