tonyhp32

The book is the highly biased " The Sikhs in action" published by the Pakistan government in 1948. The page he was reading was page 30. The whole book can be read here-; https://ia601601.us.archive.org/12/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.71854/2015.71854.The-Sikhs-In-Action.pdf Page 33 is interesting in that it relates to an attack by a Jatha on Qadian. What the propaganda book fails to mention that between the transfer of power on 15th August and the announcement of the Radcliffe award on 17th August Gurdaspur was widely regarded to have gone to Pakistan and as a result in those two days the Muslims of Gurdaspur district attacked the Sikhs and Hindus but when the Radcliffe award gave Gurdaspur to India the tables were turned and the attack on Qadian is the retaliation for Muslim attacks on Sikhs and Hindus during those two day.

I saw the first programme. The Muslim guy whose father was a member of the Muslim league in Ambala and who went with his son to see his old house showed how the well off Muslims who were the main drivers in the creation of Pakistan were able to leave safely but left the poorer Muslims to fend for themselves. There was quite a few obvious mistakes in the programme. It referred to present day Ambala as being in Punjab and it also called someone called Parkash Chand as a Sikh when he was clearly a Hindu. The Bhaiya Muslim scholar in Ambala tried to present the Muslims as the victims of partition an the massacres he referred to were the ones after the partition line had been drawn and Sikhs realised that half their population was to become dhimmis in an Islamic state.

Be honest. It teaches that women and children are not to be killed unless they fight back against the Muslims when attacked. So if they do not resist then they can be enslaved rather than be killed for fighting back. For the children it is slavery and for the women it is sex slavery. Hardly the best moral philosophy in the world is it? Mohammed himself had sex slaves captured through war and allowed his followers to rape captured women. ISIS are probably the only Muslims who are following the teachings of Mohammed to the letter. As for a right of return. Nehru and Liaqat Khan agreed that none of the refugees had a right to return. The only ones who did return were some Meos who migrated to Pakistan but came back when they saw that they weren't going to get much for what they left behind in India. No non-Muslim would want to live in a state like Pakistan or Bangladesh where they have no equality and are treated worst than cattle.

Believe it or not but at one stage the Maharajas were more in favour of Sikhistan than the Akalis! The success of the Sikh mobilisation into Jathas to counter the Muslim aggression was in part due to the participation of the Sikhs states with their manpower and their organisational ability. It was only after the plan to create Sikhistan out of the Sikh owned areas of Punjab failed that both the Akalis and the Maharajas acted like India's greatest desh bhagats!

I agree with the other posters, for someone from a non-Punjabi speaking background, BoS is the best resource available to as it says on the tin get the basics of Sikhi. The next step would be to get into a good sangat, if you live in London then volunteering with Sikh organisations such as BoS, SWAT, Khalsa Aid etc would be the best way to get to know some young Sikhs and see how ideally Sikhi should be lived in practice. Also download and listen to the amazing amount of Kirtan that is available online and try and listen to the daily Sikh prayers on a daily basis. Lastly, Congratulations on finding Sikhi and good luck in your journey.

Wow that's a trip down memory lane! I remember reading the whole set of these books during the early 80s all borrowed from the local Gurdwara library.

Some Pakistan writers will write some excellent descriptions of the state of the Gurdwaras and their history in Pakistan but I they will still add their anti-Sikh views within these articles.

Multan is a district of Punjab and Sindh is a province although they are contagious. The author is writing about the Lahore district and the Multan road he is describing is the road to Multan that traverses the Lahore district. It is not surprising that the Lahore district has such a strong historical Sikh imprint even 70 years after the Sikhs were driven out. The Sikhs owned over 60% of all the land in the district prior to 1947. The Gurdwara they visited is called Chhota Nankiana and is associated with both Guru Nanak and Guru Hargobind.

The Mounties should be on the look out for someone with a very good sense of humour!

The area showing a Sikh majority population is Faridkot state.

Some or one in particular seems to have more bad than good

That's a small incident considering that her fellow Muslims in ISIS have been enslaving and raping non-Muslim Yazidis and other Muslims are shooting LGBT people in nightclubs.

For someone who complains about Sikhs not knowing their history, you have a very low grasp of Sikh history yourself. The Jats didn't dominate Sikhi just after the Singh Sabha, they had become a majority in Sikhism by the time of Guru Hargobind. A majority of the Misl leaders were Jats, the ones in Sialkot and Gujranwala fought and beat both the Muslim Jats and Rajput to take over these areas. The ones in Doaba beat Muslim Rajputs and Afghans to control Doaba and the ones in Malwa beat Muslim Rajputs in Sirsa-Hissar area. The Hindu Rajput of Doaba was sitting on his backside changing one master for another. As for the battles between the Brars and Sikhs, the Sikhs would have been for the most part Jats from Majha.

Firstly get over your Rajput pride BS. You Rajputs especially you Ghorawaha idiots are well known to have helped Mahmud of Ghor when he invaded India and as Rajputs you have excelled others by giving your women to the Muslims. Over 90% of you Ghorawaha haramzadas are Muslims so what happened, did your family not follow the herd? Its quite amusing to see some a person belonging to a religion of cowards give his opinion on which other communities are better fighters than another. You are a joke.

So you think that having ex-military men in a community under attack does not allow that community to have a better chance of defending themselves or even a better chance of moving to a safer place in a more cohesive manner? Ramadan finished a few days after the Radcliffe award (14th August) was announced and yet these Muslim convoys were still badly led and badly organised into late September. The fact was that majority of the Punjabi Muslims who were in the military were from areas of West Punjab. The leaders of the Jathas were for the most part ex-soldiers who had joined paramilitary organisations under the Akali Dal. There might have been Sikhs from the Sikh states organising some convoys but from the ones that came from the canal colonies especially ones whose members I have talked to which came from Khanewal in Multan which was a canal colony area, these convoys were led by ex-soldiers. These ex-soldiers would know how to select defensible positions for the convoys to rest, have knowledge of organising reconnaissance, organise food rations etc. Churchill was in no position to offer anything as he was out of power and Attlee was making the decisions. Churchill had already given his consent to the Independence of India. Had Churchill felt so strongly about giving the Sikhs a state, Baldev Singh was not the only Sikh he could have dealt with. Churchill could have used his sources in India to liaise with Master Tara Singh or Gyani Kartar Singh or others. It wasn't a small brigade of Jews. The Jews had better support than the Sikhs could ever hope for.. For one they had contacts in the White House which influenced Truman to support the partition plan. They also used their money power to bribe the smaller countries to vote for the partition plan. But the most important difference between the Jewish and the Sikh situations were that the Jews were able to get the world community to gift them an area of land in which they were a minority and of which they had only 10% of the land. There is a big difference between defending and retaining a country which has been recognised by the world community and fighting for a land which has already been split between two states. Whatever the precariousness of the governments of both India and Pakistan it would have been a much harder struggle for the Sikhs than the 1948 war was for the Jews. For one both governments had hundreds of thousands of troops at their disposal. The Pakistan government had managed to retain the services of British generals. Do you think the Sikhs with their ex-soldiers and the troops from the Sikh states have managed to fight with one of both governments to keep hold of areas that the partition line had robbed them of? As for Haifa, it was a NOT predominantly an Arab city. It was one of the ports where the refugees ships docked and by 1947 the Jews outnumbered the Arabs there. If the Sikhs had the same population advantage in Lahore as the Jews did in Haifa then Lahore would have had a different future than it had since 1947. Sikhs were less than 10% and the Muslims 64%. The Hindus had pretty much abandoned the city a month before the partition boundary was announced. So do you expect that 10% can hold a city against 64%? This might happen in the 18th century but we are discussing the 20th century. I asked for a reference that the Sikh leadership had agreed to the Jathas being bombed from the air. You have just given some reference that Mountbatten had such a plan. Where is you proof that the Sikh leadership approved of it? So you support the belief that some people are more martial then other? The British also conquered most of India and the Punjab with regiments made up of Bhayyas. The Pathans and Baloch as well as Muslim Rajputs were considered at par with the Sikh soldiers. Jinnah could have supplied the British with twice the number of Punjabi Muslims to replace the Sikhs. This was why the Sikh leadership broke with the Congress and supported the war effort. As for VCs, I can see numbers are not your strong point but the Gurkhas who are recruited from a few particular tribes in Nepal and thus are smaller in number than the Sikhs have had more VCs (10: 5) than Sikhs up to 1947. The fact is that had not the Sikhs taken the opportunity to join the British army then another group would have done and the Sikhs would have been in a worst position in 1947. Your contention would make sense if the Sikhs in the army at that time suddenly refused to fight, that would have affected the British war effort. If you that think that the British could not have replaced the Sikhs with another community then you are deluded.

Yeah and Obama is your massarh and you are Modi's sala. Give it a rest man, you're becoming a joke.

Sant Jarnail Singh was Brar Jat but then so was the traitor who took Gandhi's order to attack the Golden Temple. There's good and bad in all. It wasn't just some Jats of Malwa that were bad, there was quite a few Jat Chaudhris of Majha from the time of Mir Mannu who had made common cause with him and used to hunt for Sikhs in their areas and send them to Lahore for execution.

JungChamkaur the keyboard Hindu soorma from Nawashahar

It must be that day again when they let the mental patients out of the hospital? Go back to sleep Hindu, you have been countered many times but like a bad smell you keep lingering. You are a typical dumb Hindu who does not know his own history yet want to give your views on others. FYI Jodhpur and a number of other Hindu kingdoms were considering joining Pakistan and other wanted to remain independent kingdoms so much was their love for 'Hindustan'.

It;s not about expending men in a war for the chance of possessing a few guns. It is about having men who can both fight back as well as have experience in military tactics. You glossed over the fact that a lot of the Sikh convoys from West Punjab were more organised and travelled in formation with armed guards compared to the Muslim convoys which were disorganised and open to attack. The only ones which were organised would have been ones which contained former soldiers from Punjabi Muslim regiments recruited from East Punjab. I did not say that the Yazidis would have been able to defeat ISIS but between the option of fighting back and taking some of your oppressors with you or meekly submitting to having your women raped and become sex slaves.. which option is the better one? The Kurds have been able to take on IS because they have a military tradition outside of the Iraqi army namely as a rebel force which has a history of having rebelled against the governments of the three states that they reside in. There is no record of any offer of a Sikh state either from Churchill or any other British statesman. It;s fanciful to make such claims and the only offer of any substance which might have given the Sikh some autonomy was the one by Jinnah of an East Punjab as a unit in Pakistan equal to other units such as West Punjab and Sindh with the Sikhs having a role in the Pakistan army. There is no doubt that the Sikh leadership was outplayed by both the Hindu and Muslim politicians. The Sikh leadership should have had only one demand and that was a Sikh state. The nucleus of a Sikh state already existed in the from of Sikh states like Patiala. The Sikh leadership should have convinced the Sikh Maharajas to agree to a merger of their states by giving them some power or honorary status in the new Sikh state. Patiala Maharaja could have been made President etc. With this nucleus already in existence then the only matter left was to decide which districts of Punjab would be merged into the Sikh state. In the end the only option the British gave was for the Maharajas to agree to cede their states to either India or Pakistan. But if the Sikh Maharajas had argued that hey wanted to unite then there would not have been anything that the British could have done. Nehru had to struggle and threaten the Maharajas across India to give up on their scheme for becoming Independent rather than joining either India or Pakistan. The Sikh state union might even have led to a much more balkanised India with separate states made up of the former kingdoms. Where did you get the idea that the Sikh leadership had agreed to the bombing of Jathas by the British? Some reference would be helpful. With regard to the Jews, their situation was a lot better than the Sikhs. They had just been allocated over 50% of the land of Palestine with just 30% of the population and with Jews just owning about 10% of the land. Contrary to what you stated the Jews had made full use of the British army by having their own Jewish legion during the first world war and a Jewish Brigade in world war 2. I read that 35 members of the Jewish brigade became generals in the Israeli army. The Jews were members of the Palestine police as well. You state state the non-Sikh Indian army would not have achieved as much because of the non-participation of Sikhs. Let's be honest here, do you think that 200,000 Sikhs in an army of millions would not have been able to get replacements for these Sikhs. Jinnah was an avid supporter of the British war effort and he could easily have got even double the amount of Muslims recruited to replace the Sikhs. My contention is not that the Sikhs saved the British empire in both world wars but that the contribution by Sikhs at least made them more ready to face the Muslim onslaught as well as being made one of the three parties consulted on partition. If the leadership was unable to use this effectively doesn't make the contribution any less significant. How exactly would you have seen the partition play out had there been no Sikh participation in world war 2?

The Yazidis may not have the same military history as the Sikhs but they would have been in a much better position to fight had they had military training. Your contention that they would have been cannon fodder may or may not have come about. Saddam was a tribalist and a sectarian. He was against any individual or group who he believed were capable of overthrowing him. The rank and file in the Jathas may have held the belief that they were fighting the Muslims in East Punjab to secure their rear in case of a Muslim attack from West Punjab but the leadership was aware that the intent was to create a compact Sikh area. The general belief especially among the Sikhs was that Pakistan would collapse very quickly and with or without Indian government assistance the Sikhs would be able to take back the lands lost to Pakistan. At every forum where the Sikh leadership had put forward their claim to an independent Sikh state, they were universally answered with the simple question..demarcate the area of Punjab where the Sikhs are in a majority. The Sikh leadership learnt their lesson from these incidents. They knew that without a clear majority in a compact area a Sikh state would never be conceded. This is not to say that they did not think of fighting like the Jews were to do a year later in Palestine but at some stage they decided that securing a Sikh majority area was a better option. Even after the loss of Nankana Sahib and the canal colonies became apparent, they stayed focussed on the plan to evict the Muslims from East Punjab. The loss of these just added to the fury with which the plan was carried out. I doubt that had Lahore, Nankana Sahib and the canal colonies been given to East Punjab that they original plan would have changed. The Muslims would just have been evicted from these areas as well. The lack of a Sikh majority area was the biggest frustration of the Sikh leadership and something which in their view led to them not being able to take advantage of the British departure. The only two options that would he resulted in the East Punjab Muslims being allowed to stay put would have been of an undivided Punjab in united India or an East Punjab with special status in Pakistan. Your opinion on what the Sikhs should have done in 1849 is unrealistic. How tens of thousands of Sikhs whose military pay from the Lahore Durbar used to pay the land revenue demands for their villages find a livelihood? Such an option may make sense when faced with enemies like the Mughals and Afghans where local rivalries and jealousies among the enemy can be taken advantage off but do you really that was possible against the British? If the Sikhs were to remain aloof from the British army who do you think would have taken the place of the Sikhs? Punjabi Muslims including the Pathans who incidentally took the same advantage between 1919-1930 when the British limited Sikh recruitment due to the Akali movement. The Punjabi Muslim went from 17.4 % of the British Indian army to 29% in 1930 while the Sikh percentage reduced from 17.4% to 13.6%. Without the Sikhs in the army the Punjabi Muslims would have been in a better position to browbeat the non-Muslims onto accepting the whole Punjab as a part of Pakistan.

Lol, it's always the Jats' fault. So it was the big bad Jats that forced Dal's family to migrate to whitey-land!

If by Lahore you are referring to the city itself, it would have been difficult to hold Lahore especially as the Sikhs there were only about 7% while the Sikhs in Amritsar were over 15%. Also the rural areas around Amritsar were Sikh dominated whereas the ones around Lahore were Muslim dominated. The Muslims were 64% in Lahore and only 47% in Amritsar. The Sikh population of Lahore district was also concentrated in the South of the district in Kasur and Chunian Tehsils rather than Lahore itself. Half the Kasur Tehsil was given to East Punjab anyway and the intention was to concentrate the Sikhs in East Punjab and get rid of the Muslims from there. Because the violence in Lahore had been going on since March 1947, the Hindus had started to leave after their largest locality Shahalmi was destroyed by Muslim arson and by the time of the boundary award the city had been emptied of non-Muslims.

If they were that skilled and talented then they could have made a living anywhere, even in Punjab. So what apart from whitey's money brought them over here?

What are you on about? We got here because the British were handing out visas to ex-soldiers. We didn't need to clean any toilets. How did your family get here?