How the history is written?

How the history is written?

History. One of the essential parts of the humans which helps us to drive the present and future. It’s also one of the toughest and trickiest parts of anything that’s been done by humans.

History is the most important part of a group which survived the oppressors and tyrants of the past. A group which didn’t protect its history will never survive in the world. The names and the incidents will always be manipulated by the rulers if it’s unavailable to the world.

As it seems easy to read a history book, but writing history takes so much efforts and research and sometimes that can be manipulated by the historians or the sources that are gathered. The very essential part of history is the source. History can always be judged from the sources which were gathered by the people to write history.

We are living in the 21^st century. And from the prospective of a Sikh, I can say it very bluntly that history on the Internet (usually) these days is nothing but lies for the amusement of the masses. Though we can never reject all the parts of the history. These days only the senseless information will be called the ‘truth’, and meaningful messages will be labelled as wrong facts or distorted history.

Here we are on a Sikh blog, so we are surely talking about the Sikh history or history in general. There are certain ways in which history is written.

1. The presence was there: This is one of the greatest and most trusting part of the way of writing history, that’s why it’s at the top on the list. Think of an incident happening in the past and you are already available there and writing it down. This is just so simple to write. All the people and their ways of executing the plans and talking over the matters which concerned them the most.

This category is further divided into two parts:

You were told about it (i): Think of a king that you are writing about and the king is telling you how he is going to conquer the territories and plans and the army that will be responsible for doing all the activities. This is the first-hand information that you are going to get directly from a person that you are going to write about. How the world is going to look at the history book that you are writing, say if the king is callous, will be totally different. They will just be responding to the execution of his plans. Maybe the other side of the people will say the king was but a killer. They might be right too if he’s killed so many people. And to a certain extent the book that you are writing will be saying that too but using different words to lessen the effect, or to shield the bad side which you might have ignored or thought would be good side. Because eventually it will come to morality.

Now that first-hand information is the actual source that you have to tell the world about the king and nobody can refute that. But never forget this is the 21^st century and people just read history for entertainment or to refute an incident which might have hurt their sentiments. This will always be there among the people who hate what their ancestors did and now changing the history by saying how some certain ‘people’ changed their religious books. The thought behind it is from the articles written by those who want to merge Sikhism into Hinduism. When you tell some ‘Hindus’ that the caste is bad and all the rituals that were supposed to be done according to the Vedas do not make sense to the people living in this era, they will jump and say the British changed their history. Caste was introduced by the British. How lame the argument can be seen from some people, not only limited to Hindus, some Sikhs and Muslims are also there who don’t make much sense while talking of history and I would call them fake religious people, that they do not like history much. To mitigate the effect of their ancestors’ doing, they call upon the fake stories of men and women and how they influenced to change much part of the history. Let’s not go there in deep, will talk much at the last part of this article about it.

You observed (ii): This is the second part of the first type. This is a little tricky and your judgement is involved in this part. You are in the past, observing an incident, your observations are written in the form of history, which can or can’t be true, depending upon who you are.

Sometimes an observation of a person can’t be called as a fact.

Thought of a person who is going to get executed for so and so reason, and you as an observer might think he’s getting killed by the king, so the king is inhuman. Your judgement comes first after the observation and it changes the whole course of the incident. Maybe he was a traitor or killed tens of innocents, so getting his head cut off. Judgement without reasoning but purely on observation is not right while writing history.

There can also be a situation when you are writing history and you are relying on a person’s statement about some incident. I remember reading a book named ‘History of the Indian Mutiny,’ which was from the prospective of an Englishman. He clearly mentioned in the preface he interviewed many soldiers to evaluate the situation and how they handled it. He also wrote he neglected some incidents too which he couldn’t agree on because the person might be lying or just want to have his name written in the book.

The research is very much important while writing history, which many Internet-historians are lacking. They are just working for the propaganda to spread lies. Someone said there are three stories to tell. Your story. Their story. And the truth. I do not agree with that. I believe there are two types of stories. Your story. Their story. And only one of them is correct or holds the truth.

Being an observer might not give the clear understanding of the events that you are witnessing as a person who is going to write history. Sometimes it’s correct, sometimes not. That is where the subjectivity comes into picture and changes each incident and interpretation of the observer.

2. You have the sources: The second part is the most of what the historians follow. You rely on the sources which are already available for you and you judge the past based on those sources and write your book of history. That’s where the correctness of the old historians, who might have written the books that you are relying on, is checked.

Bhai Santokh Singh

If you talk about the Sikh history then the main granth, which is very famous i.e. Gur Partap Suraj Granth, is written by Bhai Santokh Singh ji. It’s a very big tome which holds the lives of Guru Sahib. He himself mentioned how he gathered the sources and used them as sources to write the granth. However, there are some certain incidents which are not according to gurbani and many Sikh scholars stated that Bhai Santokh Singh wrote what he got. Sometimes those incidents are just the subjective thoughts that lead to decide the correctness of the incident.

For example, Chandi Pargat Hona, this was written in Gur Partap Suraj Granth in detail. Scholars believe the first time when this incident was mentioned was in the book of Koer Singh in ‘Gurbilas Patshahi Dasvi.’ This book written before the starting of Gur Partap Suraj Granth might be the source of the incident.

Bhai Vir Singh

 Prominent scholars like Bhai Vir Singh ji and Giani Gian Singh ji disregarded this incident and said it’s not according to Sikhism. You can follow the below link to read more.

Did Chandi show up while doing the yajna?

However, there are other gursikhs who said it’s a real incident but the way of understanding Akaal Shakti was different.

The other sources that Bhai Santokh Singh had was the history written by Bhai Gurbhaksh Singh ji (Ram Koer, the name before taking amrit), who was present at the time of Guru Gobind Singh ji and heard the stories in Guru Darbar and seen the life of Guru Gobind Singh ji very closely and used his shakti to tell the gursikhs about the lives of Guru Sahib. All the pothis were present at the time of Bhai Santokh Singh ji. He used all those pothis to have the history in chhanda-bandi.

Many Sikhs, especially those who do not believe in Dasam Guru Granth Sahib ji, do not want to read this granth. The reason being to take the Sikhs away from the history and gurbani. The only way these misguided ‘Sikhs’ attract the crowd is by taking few incidents from the granth and turn the Sikhs against their own history. The latest video on the YouTube channel of these gur-nindak suggested not to read any granth apart from Guru Granth Sahib ji. And the irony is they don’t believe in the whole bani of Guru Granth Sahib ji.

There were some incidents in Gur Partap Suraj Granth where Bhai Vir Singh ji gave his comments by taking the examples from gurbani that how the incident was not according to gurmat. He was not only a Sikh scholar but a devoted Sikh who spent his life talking and writing the books on Sikhi.

3. Changing the history: This is the most dangerous way of writing history. The facts will not be discussed, definitions will be changed, false information will be used, and a detailed biased information will be provided to have a history book.

In recent weeks, few books were published on Sikhism by the Sangh (RSS) to tell that the Sikh Gurus were Hindus, or they had the Hindu blood. It was not only disrespectful but distortion of facts and rewriting the history with false stories. Many Sikhs took a stand and protested and asked to unpublish those books.

Sometimes the history will be deliberately changed without letting the people know that it’s been changed.

In one of the speeches of a Sikh scholar, I heard him say that a political party in the US changed the history book in the early 19^th century to justify slavery. They said how it’s good because ‘they’ were getting the jobs by working under them. Getting food to eat. Roof above their head and what not. It will be so easily change the perception of the people if provided carefully.

Many times, when the people are not very well proud of their ancestors, they change the history by saying this was ‘poisoned’ by the rulers of different times. They couldn’t stand the fact that this was the real history of their group. You as a Sikh might be thinking, can it be true for us also? Is it possible that we also say that some incidents didn’t happen in the Sikh history because we think the same? The answer is no. We Sikhs have the ultimate truth i.e. gurbani. If gurbani says something and the history says a totally opposite thing, we will always follow gurbani. But if we talk about a religion, say ABC, they would say their all books were changed. If they don’t have a book to evaluate the veracity of the story, then they will never know if it’s the truth or a fake story.

But just to give satisfaction to their minds, they always come and say, yes, it’s changed. The reason behind is because they are ashamed of their ancestors. And in the 21^st century, nobody will believe in the rituals performed by them. Bring new stories forward then, to mass-brainwash the people of that religion.

In one of the debates, I heard the ‘Sikhs’ say that we should only read Guru Granth Sahib ji. These are the people who are manipulated by some big sharks in Sikhs who are controlled by those who are trying to destroy Sikhi deliberately by using these Sikh-looking people. They ignore the bani of Guru Gobind Singh ji and as well as the history written down in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. They just want to judge the history by ignoring everything that’s been penned down by different scholars using the sources available then.

Bhai Vir Singh really did a great job to put his comments in Gur Partap Suraj Granth. With his detailed analysis and by giving proper examples from gurbani, it becomes very clear to say if something is right or wrong (although sometimes people do not agree with other scholars, but we can at least have another perspective of looking at the incident.) Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha wrote the same in his book ‘Hum Hindu Nahi’ that if something is not according to the teachings of Guru Sahib, it’s not true. Maybe it’s a known story so was written, or someone changed it after the death of the author. But we can’t ignore the whole granth.

Without the granths of seventeenth and eighteenth century and bani of Guru Gobind Singh ji, we will not be able to tell the names of Sixth, Seventh, Eighth and Tenth Guru. We will not be able to tell the history of the Sikh Gurus and the names of their parents. We will not be able to tell the creation of the Khalsa Panth. We will not be able to tell the battles of Sikh Gurus against injustice. We will not be able to tell the date of birth of the Sikh Gurus. We will not be able to say anything related to the Sikh Gurus if we completely ignore the granths.

People have been trying for ages to destroy the Sikh literature and history. Even in 1984, the Reference Library was torched down by the army. Brahmans and Arya Samaji of early 19^th century tried their best to have the Sikhs included into Hinduism by convincing them that their gurus were Hindus and doing what the Hindus did. Recently we have the terms like ‘Hindu Blood’ and ‘Gau Bhagat’ coined to prove that the Sikh Gurus were no different than Hindus.

People who can't be taken seriously

Remember this, to control Sikhs, the agencies will always look for those who look like a Sikh. Do you really think if a non-Sikh comes and translates gurbani the Sikhs will take him seriously? No. Although answers will be given. Most of the times we will say he is a non-Sikh, so he doesn’t know about Sikhi.

But the people who are controlling the anti-Sikh forces know it very well that Sikhs can be controlled by Sikhs only.  After the partition of Punjab in 1966, do you know any Chief Minister of Punjab who was a non-Sikh? This is a common policy of many political parties in India. In India, there are multiple cultures. And based on cultures, states are divided. You will never see a Chief Minister of a different state to be the Chief Minister of another state. The Chief Minister of Punjab will not be someone from Gujarat, Maharashtra, or Tamil Nadu. Nor theirs be from Punjab. It’s the policy which keeps the political parties stabled for years.

When it comes to Sikhs, they have the same plan. You want to stop the Sikhs reading gurbani or gur-itehaas, bring the Sikh-looking people forward to do the propaganda. Can it be Darshu, Kaala Afghana, Dilgeer, etc., they have one thing common. They are uneducated worms who are not gursikhs at all but telling the Sikh history from their perspective. It’s like a failed teacher trying to teach students about Maths. 😐

Be aware of these people, because the attacks on the Sikhs will not be from Mughals or the Chieftains of Hills. They will be Sikh-looking people, controlled by those who know what the Sikh history and gurbani can teach the Khalsa Panth.