Dalbir,

Look you got me all wrong, I’m saying say ‘eff you’ to all sides here. By this I mean the whiteists jerks and Islamo fascists

Fine, I have exactly the same attitude towards these two groups. However, the mass of ordinary innocent Muslims is a very different matter, especially those who are Asians. You and I both know that, in the majority of cases, the latter have absolutely nothing to do with the “Islamofascists”.

Other quoms have enough capable people looking after their own interests…..But we NEED to NOT get stuck neck deep (yet again) in other people’s political/theological battles and stick to our own for a change.

That’s the equivalent of non-Jews in 1930s Germany standing back and doing nothing to intervene; in fact, unfortunately that’s exactly what happened in huge numbers of cases. That kind of self-centred cowardice isn’t what the Khalsa is about. I’m sure you’re also aware of Guru Tegh Bahadur, his message, and the reasons he sacrificed his life – which he would also have done if the circumstances had been reversed and it was actually innocent Muslims suffering from religious persecution (or indeed ordinary people from any other religious background).

I doubt many Sikhs had an idea of what was going to follow the mutiny.

But we DO know exactly what’s going on in 2010, including what will follow if the BNP and similar far-Right groups are successful. That’s the difference. And it’s also why we have to unite with the majority of non-extremist Muslims and everyone else that the BNP are targeting –- because keeping us divided is exactly what they want, EIC-style.

Let me draw a historical analogy to make things really clear: The group plotting our destruction is already camped on the other side of the river, they really are hostile to all of us even though they’re lying that this isn’t the case, they’ve already infiltrated the Sikh population and have acquired Trojan Horses such as Rajinder “Singh”, they’re deliberately lying about the “threat” posed by the mass of ordinary Muslims, and they’re deliberately trying to keep all Asians divided so that they can pick us off one by one (especially as they know that Sikhs are one of the strongest groups capable of taking them on).

Think this through, because here in 2010, exactly the same group with exactly the same mindset is playing exactly the same game with exactly the same targets. They’re gunning for all of us.

The BNP isn’t just opposed to Muslims. They’re opposed to non-white people full-stop – which includes Sikhs. Which means that — regardless of their public claims to the contrary — they’ve already declared war on the Khalsa. We’re not “neutral” even if we wanted to be.

Anyway, remember that this isn’t a private conversation. This website is actively read by senior members of the BNP, and I’m sure you don’t want the BNP to be taking notes and exploiting anything we say for their own nefarious purposes. We’ve both made our respective points, so I think we should now draw a line under this discussion and leave it at that.

PS – I’m sure you’ve heard of the beheading in Pakistan.

Yes I’m aware of the recent murder of at least one Sikh (possibly three) by the Taliban in Pakistan. Indian news channels such as NDTV have been covering it heavily.

But, there was no way Sikhs were going to support the restoration of the Mughal empire, after their experiences post Jahangir.

Jahangir was obviously erratic and inexplicably hostile towards Guru Arjan in particular, but it was during Aurangzeb’s reign that the problems really escalated. During the intervening period, Shahjahan had obviously had no problem with Mian Mir being the spiritual instructor of his appointed heir Prince Dara Shukoh, despite the fact that Mian Mir was so close to the Sikhs.

You need to read the account of Rattan Singh Bhangu (which has been partially translated from Gurmukhi), written in the period immediately prior to the attack on Sikh sovereignty by the Brits. He explicitly refers to the misinformation being supplied from Mogul sources, to whiteists, about the Sikh kingdom. They [Moguls] were essentially hoping that whites would bring Lahore back under Mogul jurisdiction again, being incapable of it themselves.

That’s an interesting assertion, considering that the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’, was one of the most non-political of his entire dynasty and actually had zero interest in ‘restoring the Mughal Empire’ beyond the boundaries of Delhi (by this time, the limits of his actual jurisdiction). The notion was essentially unilaterally imposed on him by the mutineers who turned up on his doorstep in 1857 and declared him to be their figurehead. In fact, Zafar was half-hearted about his support for the mutineers throughout those events, and was certainly not the despotic, bloodthirsty warlord that the EIC and their supporters claimed him to be during their propaganda efforts. To a great extent, Zafar’s lack of military and political acumen was why he lacked the ability to effectively defeat the EIC – something various British sources also recorded after his eventual capture and imprisonment.

In fact, there is a huge amount of British historical material confirming that the EIC was actively involved in deliberately feeding misinformation about Zafar and the Mughal administration of the time in order to justify their own actions, both during the period leading up to the conflict of 1857 and during the violence afterwards. You recently made a very good point yourself about certain people with a certain mindset lying in order to justify aggression against alleged “threats”, especially if the latter have something they want.

The EIC had systematically been diminishing Zafar’s authority for decades, and had actually been plotting his overthrow and the extinction of the Mughal line for a long time. On top of all that, technically the EIC were still the Mughal administration’s vassals (and had been for about a century) and there had been no formal bilateral discussions to alter this relationship, so from a legal standpoint the EIC were actually guilty of treason.

Asides this, the heavy support received by the wasp armies from supplicant poorbias/Bengalis sepoys in attacking Sikhs, who were the ones now making noise about fighting the wasp ‘feringhees’ wouldn’t have been lost on the many Sikh veterans of Anglo-Sikh wars.

Yes, which is why the correct course of action would actually have been for both counterparties to put aside their differences and unite against the third-party which was actively & insidiously involved in shafting both of them. The fact that various Indian populations didn’t do this (including those that really had the power to make an impact) was exactly how the subcontinent ended up being subjugated and exploited for 250 years, regardless of whether the targets actively opposed it or did their best to stay “neutral and independent”. In the end, the latter made no difference.

Bahadur Shah was actually involved in, if not the actual instigator of Guru Gobind Singh’s assassination. Documentation of an award given to the family of the slain assassin from his darbar is still extant.

Allegedly. Other accounts of those events – including one of the Sikh versions of the story – state that Wazir Khan of Sirhind was becoming threatened by Guru Gobind Singh’s amicable relationship with the new Emperor Bahadur Shah (especially after the Guru provided military assistance and was subsequently formally & publicly applauded by the emperor), and therefore sent assassins due to fears about Mughal punishment for his involvement in the murder of two of the Guru’s sons.

Besides, we can see what eventual conclusion Guru Gobind Singh drew on Bahadur Shah’s justice after months of liaison with the Banda Singh story.

By all accounts Guru Gobind Singh was indeed disappointed that, in his view, insufficient actions were taken by Bahadur Shah to deal with Wazir Khan. However, one thing he certainly did not do was tell Banda Singh Bahadur to destroy Sirhind or inflict any harm on its civilian inhabitants; Banda Singh Bahadur himself was aware that his actions completely violated the Guru’s ethical & humanitarian message, and regarded his own eventual fate as divine punishment.

Go read the British National Party website and make your own mind up.

We don’t need to do that, because we’ve got access to dozens of policy-related answers directly from the BNP’s senior leadership, in writing.

Do not listen to these anti-democracy liars

“Anti-democracy”, eh. If the BNP are so different, then presumably they would have no reservations in supplying full details to the public about precisely how they plan to reduce Britain’s non-white population from 10% to 1%, since they’ve allegedly abandoned their “voluntary repatriation” plans. The silence is deafening.

So who do we trust?

I think a high level of scepticism all round is in order myself. You can tell who has the agenda of trying spread their shite all around. Vote for us and you will be saved they say, worship as we do and you will be saved they say. Take your vibe and shove it up your arse I say.

Stalin, who are you talking about? Come on spit it out. Are you suggesting we go and visit the BNP site so that we may be enlightened?

COME, listen to the righteousness of one who KNOWS he is in the right-always.

NEVER, make your own informed choice based on your own perception.

LET, a random internet clown do your thinking for you.

Wait a minute, in second thought…

No.

Go read the British National Party website and make your own mind up. Do not listen to these anti-democracy liars and crooks with monetary/political interests in seeing the usual cabal of usual parties in.

Whatever, any Muslim can ‘reconstuct’ Islamic history in India to push their own agenda, just like Whiteists justify their own bullshit.

They certainly can. But Sikhs can also do the same with their history? So who do we trust?

This is even more ironic considering that, during the war of 1857, the Sikhs of the time took the diametrically opposite position to Guru Gobind Singh and allied themselves with the EIC against the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’ II,

The situation is complicated as you know. But, there was no way Sikhs were going to support the restoration of the Mughal empire, after their experiences post Jahangir. If later Moguls pursued a peaceful policy it was more likely to be due to their military impotence than anything else. You need to read the account of Rattan Singh Bhangu (which has been partially translated from Gurmukhi), written in the period immediately prior to the attack on Sikh sovereignty by the Brits. He explicitly refers to the misinformation being supplied from Mogul sources, to whiteists, about the Sikh kingdom. They [Moguls] were essentially hoping that whites would bring Lahore back under Mogul jurisdiction again, being incapable of it themselves. They were too dumb to realise that Brits were busy eying up the place for themselves (weren’t we all! lol). Don’t be naive, those later Moguls just weren’t in a position to inflict damage on Singhs by that time. An inability to attack doesn’t equate goodwill. Asides this, the heavy support received by the wasp armies from supplicant poorbias/Bengalis sepoys in attacking Sikhs, who were the ones now making noise about fighting the wasp ‘feringhees’ wouldn’t have been lost on the many Sikh veterans of Anglo-Sikh wars. It could have gone anyway Jai. Sikhs could’ve supported any side and still not have been in the wrong. I doubt many Sikhs had an idea of what was going to follow the mutiny.

Anyway, there is another important factor you need to consider before you make quotes like above. Bahadur Shah was actually involved in, if not the actual instigator of Guru Gobind Singh’s assassination. Documentation of an award given to the family of the slain assassin from his darbar is still extant. Pretty damning. So there is another lesson we can learn post-experience. Besides, we can see what eventual conclusion Guru Gobind Singh drew on Bahadur Shah’s justice after months of liaison with the Banda Singh story.

Look you got me all wrong, I’m saying say ‘eff you’ to all sides here. By this I mean the whiteists jerks and Islamo fascists (and any other manipulative scheming group cosying up to Sikhs). Go back to independent proSikh views instead of jumping into bed with other Tom, Dicks and Harrys. We aren’t harming anyone. We don’t want to dominate the globe. Other quoms have enough capable people looking after their own interests. Sure we should give support to the less fortunate where we can, like this:

http://unitedsikhs.org/haitiearthquake/videos/haiti_relief.html

But we NEED to NOT get stuck neck deep (yet again) in other people’s political/theological battles and stick to our own for a change. Don’t be pawns/sycophants for ANYONE. That IS the way we need to break the cycle.

PS – I’m sure you’ve heard of the beheading in Pakistan.

and the few Mogul rulers who weren’t despots can cover that up.

The majority of the Mughal emperors were not hostile towards Sikhs. A minority, however, obviously had a very different attitude, and they had a disproportionately destructive impact in comparison with their actual numbers during the reign of the Mughal dynasty.

It is also worth bearing in mind that Guru Gobind Singh would not have provided military support to Bahadur Shah I during the war of succession after Aurangzeb’s death if he intrinsically opposed Mughal rule in India. This was obviously not the case – and it’s connected to two basic aspects of Sikh history and theology, namely Guru Nanak’s eventual blessing of Babur on the condition that he and his successors ruled justly, and Sikhism’s fundamental principle that the content of a person’s character and their actions are what matters, not their religious affiliation (or ethnicity etc).

This is even more ironic considering that, during the war of 1857, the Sikhs of the time took the diametrically opposite position to Guru Gobind Singh and allied themselves with the EIC against the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’ II, who was actually the most liberal, tolerant, inclusive and pluralistic member of his line since Akbar, and had been actively involved in promoting a heavily Sufi-influenced spirit of religious inclusiveness in his remaining territories; he had even actively opposed the attitudes of the more ultraconservative and bigoted members of the Muslim clergy in Delhi.

The irony continues to mount when you bear in mind that a massive region of Sikh territory had recently been invaded and annexed by the EIC after two wars of aggression, coupled with the overthrow of Maharajah Duleep Singh; but the wreckage of the Sikh population at this time was a very far cry from the period of Maharajah Ranjit Singh’s reign, or the nobility of the Sikhs during the 18th century, and most of all compared to the glory of the Khalsa under Guru Gobind Singh. Some historians have stated outright that colonial rule in India would have been terminated if the Sikhs had joined the war against the EIC. Instead, it continued for another 90 years.

It’s a classic example of “out of the frying pan and into the fire” and, especially, taking the principle of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” to catastrophically destructive extremes. But the concept of using Asians to subjugate and even kill other Asians by exploiting and inflaming existing fissures (whether religious, political or territorial) was nothing new to the colonial authorities; it had been going on since 1757. Remember also that the soldiers pulling the triggers in Jallianwalla Bagh, Amritsar in 1919 weren’t European (although their commander obviously was).

It doesn’t mean we should whitewash any aspects of pre-colonial Indian history, and we definitely shouldn’t ally ourselves with the Anjem Choudary-types and their historical counterparts in some kind of misbegotten spirit of “brown solidarity, no matter how nasty our ‘allies’ are”. But simultaneously we can’t fall into the trap of calculated efforts by certain racist third-parties to separate groups, play them off against each other, demonise their targets en masse, and pick them off one by one. It’s this cynical principle of “divide and rule” which we all have to be aware of, not least because the BNP and the EDL are playing exactly the same 250-year-old game with all of us and have found their modern-day sycophants in the form of people like Rajinder Singh and Amit Singh. Time to break the cycle.

Islam generally sucked for Sikhs.

In that case, “Christianity” sucked even more for Sikhs, considering that the two Anglo-Sikh wars and the subsequent annexations occurred during a period when the British (including the East India Company) were heavily influenced by an explicitly fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity, and the members of the EIC itself believed they literally had a God-given right to subjugate and exploit India and its inhabitants, by any means necessary. It’s been 150 years and Sikhs have never regained their independence or power.

Assuming that people are going to use generalised terms like “Islam” and “Christianity” in these discussions, of course. I think it would be inappropriate to do so, because these religions aren’t monolithic, static, homogenous blocks and neither are their respective followers.

No highlighting Sufism (which prospered under Sikhs)

Sufism did indeed flourish under the Sikhs, not least because of the considerable historical links (and, to some extent, theological overlap) between Indian Sufism and Sikhism; and Maharajah Ranjit Singh himself employed Muslims at the highest levels of his administration, including the military. Going much further back, Sufism was already prospering in Delhi, Punjab and Sindh in particular during the Delhi Sultanate (and in some of the regions concerned, during the period immediately preceding it), although the major Sufi figures involved obviously had a different attitude towards non-Muslims compared to some of the rulers concerned, especially the founders of those dynasties.

Later on, Sufism continued to flourish because most of the major Mughal emperors and their immediate families were affiliated with various Sufi orders.

Yes but you lot are proved incessant porky pie merchants par excellence. So your own people’s ‘on the ground’ reports were highly likely to contain whoppers galore….as per predilection of the whiteist mind….see impending WMD threat for a more recent example.

If we believe your people’s historical shite, every fucker they encountered were a hostile threat…………especially if they had something worth taking.

Anyone can select single examples to prove a point.

Whatever, any Muslim can ‘reconstuct’ Islamic history in India to push their own agenda, just like Whiteists justify their own bullshit. Islam generally sucked for Sikhs. No highlighting Sufism (which prospered under Sikhs) and the few Mogul rulers who weren’t despots can cover that up.

I’d rather trust my own people’s ‘on the ground’ account than the whitewashed one you provide.

The point was that Muslim intervention, in what is now known as India, in all its forms, was no ‘champagne popping’ event for the people of the subcontinent.

The millions of lower caste people rescued from the caste system may disagree with you

“When the Muhammadan armies poured into Bengal it is hard to believe that they were not welcomed by the hewers of wood and drawers of water, and that many a despairing Chandal and Kaibartta joyfully embraced a religion that proclaimed the equality of all men, and which was the religion of the race keeping in subjection their former oppressors. Hinduism had prohibited the outcast from residing in the same village as the twice-born Brahman, had forced him to perform the most menial and repulsive occupations, and had virtually treated him as an animal undeserving of any pity; but Islam announced that the poor, as well as the rich, the slave and his master, the peasant and the prince, were of equal value in the eyes of God. Above all, the Brahman held out no hopes of a future world to the most virtuous helot, while the Mulla not only proffered assurances of felicity in this world, but of an indefeasible inheritance in the next.[27]

James Wise, Notes on the Races, Castes and Traders of Eastern Bengal, 2 vols. (London: Harrison & Sons, 1883),

And you think the hordes under Nadir Shah and Abdali Shah did the Indian economy big favours?

Some of us have heard of the caravans of looted items including slaves they tried to take back with them through Panjab.

You ever notice how certain types like to justify their ‘own people’ lording it over others?

Not at all. The history of Muslim rule of India is just that -history. And I never said it was perfect or without faults. It is only because of its misuse by extreme anti-Muslim forces in India -(such as affected the genocide of the Muslims of Gujurat) to stir up extreme hatred that its even an issue now. Anyone can select single examples to prove a point.

How do you know that India wasn’t even better off prior to Muslim invasions?

Clearly India must have been wealthy to attract Muslim empires to it. But the point is that, as Jai showed, it was STILL extremely wealthy after Muslim rule