kelari

most of anyones questions should have been answered by my last post.

i think.

we know the guru ramdas jee wrote the lavan to replace vedic scripture but whos wedding were they first sang?

www.bwtorrents.com

Is anybody a actual member of this website. The bollywood torrents actually has some very useful files that I need to download and some especiallly good tabla and classical indian music that desi torrents doesnt have.

Please let me know if you can give me an invite if you are a member. I reallly need one.

amazing video. especially roop singh. really inspiring. But does anybody know whether the singhs of the guys side are actual nihang singhs that have vidiya and proper tradition or they are simply nihang khalsa bana wearing singhs that look like nihangs. ?

just wondering.

Khalsa Bir-Ras Shastar Vidiya

Institute of Sikh Martial Heritage

info@shastarvidiya.org

info@nihang.com

An Introduction To Sikh Shaster Vidiya

Shaster (weapon) Vidiya (knowledge or science) was

essential military training for the Sikh warrior - the Akali

Nihung Singh Khalsa. The present day descendants of

the Akali Nihungs, the Budha Dal, trace the origins of

Sikh Shaster Vidiya to the founder of the religion, Guru

Nanak himself. According to their oral tradition, Guru

Nanak was summoned to the divine court of God

where, alongside receiving the holy Gur mantra, Vah

Guru, he also received Shaster Vidiya.

Guru Nanak passed this martial knowledge on to his

trusted Sikh, Baba Budha Ji, with the stated intention of

claiming it back in his sixth form. It was the sixth Guru,

Guru Hargobind, who received Shaster Vidiya from

Baba Budha Ji at an early age. Baba Budha Ji also

trained an army of twenty two hundred Sikh warriors

who were the soldiers of the Akal Boongah (the

Immortal Fort, built in 1606), and known as the Akalis

(Immortals).

The Akali army was called the Akal Sena or Akal Fauj

but was informally known as the Budha Dal or army of

Baba Budha Ji. It's primary function was to defend

Sikhism and all who sought the protection of the Sikhs

from the then oppressive Mogul empire which had tor-tured

and executed the fifth Guru, Arjandev. It was his

son, Akali Guru Hargobind with his army of Akalis

engaged the Mogul forces in four battles and gained

four successes.

With successive Gurus after Guru Hargobind, the Akal

Sena was maintained in its original form until time of

the tenth Guru, Akali Gobind Singh Ji. At some time

before creation of the Khalsa in 1699, he altered the

structure of the Akal Sena with the effect that, from

then on, only a high ranking soldier of the Akali Sena

was to be known as an Akali. A low ranking soldier was

designated Nihung, or one who is not attached to life

nor fears death.

He quickly realised that in order to defend Sikhism it

would not be enough just to rely on the Akal Sena so

he decided to make the whole of the Sikh nation (with

exception of certain Sikh groups such as the Udasis,

Sewa Panthis and the Nirmalas) into a martial nation.

Thus, in 1699, the Akali Nihung Singh Khalsa came

into being.

After Guru Gobind Singh, it was a successful Khalsa,

led by the Akali Nihung Singhs,

who fought a life and death

struggle for nearly a hundred

years against both the Mogul

Empire and the invading

Afghans hordes. They forged

out independent kingdoms in

the far-reaching region of the Punjab in the late 18th

century.

Even when the great Sikh kingdom of Maharaja Ranjit

Singh fell to the British Empire in the hard-fought Anglo

Sikh wars (1845-46 and 1848-49), the majority of

Sikhs, to this day, know it was not their ancestors' mar-tial

prowess which let them down. The historic evi-dence

strongly points to the fact that they actually won

on the fields of battle but lost the wars due to betrayal

of their treacherous Dogra Generals.

Following the annexation of the Punjab in 1849 and the

establishment of the British Raj, the traditional Sikh

martial traditions and practitioners suffered greatly. In

order that the British authorities could establish their

Raj in the Punjab, they adopted several severe meas-

ures, the most significant of which was the effective

disarmament of the whole of the Sikh population. Even

every-day tools and farming implements which could

be used as weapons were banned. A few, such as the

Akali Nihungs , who refused to surrender their weapons

were hunted down and killed or driven into hiding by

the British authorities. It was at this critical juncture that

the traditional martial knowledge, Shaster Vidiya, previ-ously

maintained to a high standard by the Sikhs,

almost ceased to exist in the Punjab.

In 1857, the Indian Mutiny erupted. By that time, the

British had significantly crushed all resistance to their

Raj in the Punjab. Sikhs who had collaborated with the

British had been fully established as the leaders of the

"new" Sikh nation. Thus, in 1857, the Sikhs on whole

greatly assisted the British in crushing the mutiny.

As a consequence of the martial assistance provided

by the Sikhs, restrictions on martial practices were

relaxed in the Punjab but tightened in North Eastern

provinces of India where the

mutiny had been strongest.

However, the Shaster Vidiya

which re-emerged after 1857 in

the Punjab had changed. This

new form of Shaster Vidiya was

a product of the changing times which had also seen

the general Sikh populace of that period begin to

accommodate the British Raj by divorcing itself from

the sanatni boh-Panthi (traditional pluralistic) Sikhism of

the pre-British period. There was a stark contrast

between this pluralistic Sikhism (consisting in the main

of Udassis, Seva Panthis, Nirmalas and Akali Nihung

Singhs) and the British Raj-accommodating Sikhism,

or Angrej Sikhi, which was later developed and encour-aged

by the Tat Khalsa Singh Sabhias.

The new Shaster Vidiya was no longer the lethal art

designed to produce soldiers to defend the Sikh nation.

Instead, during the 1860s, it had evolved into an inof-fensive

and ritualistic martial art popularly known as

Gatka (derived from the name of the main weapon

used, the sword training stick). Gatka was mainly practised in the barracks of the British Indian army and was

diligently taken up by Sikh and other Indian soldiers.

Later, as Sikh colleges opened in the Punjab during the

1880s, European rules of fencing began to be applied

to Gatka. This innovation led to two forms of Gatka

developing, namely rasmi (ritualistic) and khel (sport)

Gatka.

After first speaking of the great

Shaster Vidiya of the past, the

historian, Giani Gian Singh,

lamented the state of the

Vidiya in the 1890s:

"There was talk of such a science of archery and stick

fighting only a few years ago in the Punjab that hearing

about it, the English-educated young (Sikh) men will

consider it astonishing… In sincerity, I believe that the

young men of today might just consider these skills and

Shaster Vidiya generally an impossibility because they

have not even seen those bows, never mind having

strung them. Similarly, many sciences and skills have

declined after attaining their heights. Before 1857, many

quivers full of arrows, matchlocks, flintlock guns, swords,

lances, spears, sang (long metal lance), katars (punch

daggers), peshkabj(Afghan armour-piercing dagger), pis-tols,

shields and other weapons, armour and many

types of chain mail were found in every house. All the

people in theirhomes both learnt and taught Shaster

Vidiya and became complete soldiers.

"Now no one even speaks of these skills and the sons of

brave warriors are becoming engrossed in making

money. Even to those of us who have employed Shaster

Vidiya, it is becoming as if it were a dream. In another

fifty years or so this Vidiya will have dried up and people

will say it was but all lies."

('Twarikh Guru Khalsa' , Vol.1 , pgs 36-37)

Apart from putting the date of the decline of Shashter

Vidiya a decade or so after the annexation of the

Punjab (so as not to offend the British-backed patron,

the king of Patiala), all that Giani Gian Singh writes is

correct. The main ingredient that Gatka lacked (which

made Shaster Vidiya a true battlefield art) was chatka

(to kill with a single decisive cut, shot, blow or wrench-

ing motion).

A veteran of the Anglo-Sikh wars, Akali Nihung Baba

Sawan Singh Bangroo of the Budha Dal, has been

credited to have single-handily kept alive the original

traditions and principles of chatka. To distinguish his

Vidiya from the then popular sport and ritualised forms

of Gatka, he termed his Shashter

Vidiya, Chatka Gatka, which he

passed on to his select shigirds

(students).

This Chatka Gatka (also known as

Chatka Vidiya) is not merely an amalgamation of

ancient Indian or Sikh fighting techniques and strata-gems.

It is a complete military scientific system which

traces it's origins back to Sat Yuga (the first of the clas-sical

Indian ages or eras) through it's khat-ang pentra

(the six forms of battle strategy). It took years of dedi-cation

to master under the tutelage of a good Ustad

(teacher).

Chatka Vidiya is composed of the following three ele-ments

(shown in order of importance and priority):

1. Bbeck-abbeck dee katha - The paradoxical philosophy

which grants mokhsh (salvation).

2. Ithaasak shatria maryada - Historical martial traditions

which harness martial spirit and give the context to battle

(before fighting it is important to know what to fight for).

3. Dao pech - Traditional Sikh martial techniques com-prising

both platha-baji (unarmed combat) and ayudh

vidiya (hand-to-hand weapon combat).

As mentioned above, Giani Gian Singh had predicted

that Shashter Vidiya would become extinct by the

1940s. His prediction has almost come true. At present,

the ritualistic and sport forms of Gatka flourish (in a

manner of speaking) within the Sikh community, both in

India and in the diaspora. Being dismissive of Shaster

Vidiya/Chatka Gatka, some have begun to refurbish

their Gatka repertoire with techniques from other mar-tial

arts, including Japanese, Chinese, Filipino systems,

in an attempt to create an effective fighting art. This

will ultimately only serve to undermine the uniqueness

of Shaster Vidiya and associated Khalsa warrior tradi-tions

(e.g. the study and worship of the knowledge

contained in the Dasam Gur Granth and Sarbloh Gur

Granth of Guru Gobind Singh, which teach the princi-ples

of Shaster Vidiya).

The original Chatka form of Shashter Vidiya, the mili-tary

system to which Giani Gian Singh referred to, is

now almost extinct and its knowledge is known to pos-sibly

only a handful of Akali Nihung Singhs and even

fewer Udassis. However, with the sanction of the 13th

Jathedar of the Budha Dal, Akali Nihung Baba Santa

Singh, a resurgence of this traditional Sikh combat sys-tem

has recently begun in England.

Chatka Gatka Ustad Nihung Nidar Singh Das Shironmi

Akali Nihung Singh Khalsa Panth Budha Dal

(Taken from a Adobe Acrobat File named Education of a Sikh Warrior)

If you can tell me a way to add a adobe file to the message board I will.

i didnt mean to sound insulting. Jeet Kune Do is highly respectable. But I do think that Tommy C. the guy in the video doesn't have the capability to beat Niddar Singh. But that is besides the point.

Sikher, thats the best and an awesome way to look at it. I like your perspective. thanks.

you may not think so, but the speed and agility that niddar singh has is far swifter than this guy. honestly. hes QUIICK. This guy uses several common martial artisitic concepts of fighting but through one of his finger jabs or anything else he does, none of these guys can pass by loh mushti. They'll completley shatter your wrist before you attack. But even withought the use of loh mushti in simple platha hand to hand combat niddar singh has the intellegence needed in fighting. That is why he has not been defeated through his open challenge. The challenge was even put in englands top martial arts magazine last year.