On the Battle of Amritsar, Diwali 1762
October 17, 1762: A total solar eclipse passed over northern India on Diwali. Ganda Singh, citing various sources, claims it lasted 18 gharis— over seven hours. Modern calculations place it between one and four in the afternoon. It was ‘in the grey light of a sun in total eclipse’ that the Sikhs and the arriving Afghans fought the Battle of Amritsar, ending with the Afghans retreating ignominiously ‘when the sunless day was blacked out by a moonless night.’
— — -
The previous evening, the Singhs, led by the formidable Sardar Jassa Singh Ahluwalia, had gathered in the holy town of Amritsar and, through common consent, decided to give the invading Afghans battle. To appreciate the gravity of this battle call, one must remember that barely a few months had passed since the Afghan forces, led by Ahmad Shah Abdali, had perpetrated upon the Sikhs the Vadda Ghallughara, the Great Holocaust. Having suffered the cruel, indiscriminate massacre of tens of thousands of unarmed children, women and men, the Sikhs had, in less than a year, consolidated their strength and congregated in Amritsar: about sixty thousand ‘horse and foot strong,’ armed, vengeful, and tyar-bar-tyar.
— — -
Extant manuscripts of Rattan Singh Bhangu’s Sri Gur Panth Prakash give a glimpse of the orgiastic, bloody rituals that the Singhs relied on to prepare for battle. The memetic ‘Devi complex’ (so to speak) that suffused the symbolic universe of eighteenth-century Sikhism is conspicuous here as well. A translation of the pertinent passages follows:
ਆਨ ਸਮਗ੍ਰੀ ਇਕ ਥਾਂ ਧਰੀ। ਬਿਧ ਹੋਮ ਬਨਾਈ। ਕੀਯੋ ਕੁੰਡ ਮਧ ਅਗਨ ਜਗਾਈ। ਪੜਿ ਪੜਿ ਚੰਡੀ ਆਹੁਤਿ ਪਾਯੋ। ਪੂਰਨ ਆਹੁਤ ਵੇਲੇ ਆਯੋ॥੧੫॥— All the paraphernalia was heaped together, the hom1 was prepared. Fire was kindled in the altar; reciting scripture, Chandi was evoked. The moment of oblation approached.
ਵਹੀ ਮਹਿਖਨ ਲਾਇ ਕੈਦੀ ਕੋ ਸੰਧੂਰ ਲਗਾਇ। ਦੁਇ ਵਲ ਹੋਏ ਸਿੰਘ ਖੜ ਖੰਡੇ ਸੂਤ ਕਰਵਾਇ॥੧੬॥— A bull was brought and anointed with sindoor2. Two Singhs stood on either side of the beast with khandas3 unsheathed.
ਜਬੈ ਕਾਰਿਕ ਹੋਮ ਆਗਿਆ ਦਈ। ਸਿੰਘਨ ਖੰਡੇ ਲਾਏ ਧਈ। ਪ੍ਰਿਥਮ ਇਕ ਸਿੰਘ ਖੰਡੋ ਚਲਾਯੋ। ਉਸੀ ਠੋਰ ਸਿੰਘ ਦੂਏ ਲਾਯੋ॥੧੭॥— When the fire officiant permitted, the Singhs swung the khandas. First a Singh struck the bull with his khanda; immediately, the second too swung his blade.
ਮੀਸ ਦੀਯੋ ਉਨਿ ਖੂਬ ਉਤਾਰਿ। ਪਰਿਯੋ ਜਾਇ ਸੋਊ ਕੁੰਡ ਮਝਾਰਿ। ਜੈ ਜੈ ਕਾਰ ਸਬ ਪੰਥਿ ਉਚਾਰਯੋ।— The head had been severed magnificently; it went tumbling into the fire-altar. With jubilant battle cries the whole Panth resounded.
— — -
Rituals and ceremonies are but technologies to bring-forth, harness, consolidate and reinforce particular aesthetic, social, psychological patterns. Here one finds the Singhs making use of the Devi complex at its most practicable: the mythic association of the bull (ਮਹਿਖਨ— mahikhan) with the buffalo demon Mahishasura, the khanda as a form of the Devi; the slaying as a transaction within the sacrificial economy of the Devi (an economy of bloodshed, death and sacrifice, literal and metaphysical, all governed by bliss and beatitude: ਭਿਰੇ ਸਾਮੁਹੇ ਮੋਖ ਦਾਤੀ ਅਭੰਗੀ ॥—He who falls before you is granted salvation, O unbreakable one), as well as a ritual re-presenting of Chandi’s mythic defeat of Mahishasura. Chandi, astride a lion, repeated the primordial contest between the lion and the bull (cf. Theseus and the minotaur, Mithra and the bull, Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven).
One may stretch this set of associations further and recall the Near Eastern goddesses Innana and Ishtar, whom Parpola associated with Roman tutelary goddesses. Commenting on the three ballads of Chandi in the Dasam scriptures, Rinehart likewise suggests that the figures of Indra and the gods, their celestial kingdom besieged by demons, resonates with the position of the Guru and his Singhs in Anandpur, surrounded by the Mughals and their vassals: Chandi, who saved the gods, similarly protects the Singhs (among the many poetic names the Sikhs assign to the kirpan: Bhagauti).
— — -
It is within this conceptual space that we now place the Singhs on the eve of Diwali. The primordial impulse of what Heesterman terms ‘the heady excitement and terror of sacrifice’ had reached its dissipation, and they stood ecstatic and berserk, having sought and won the protection of the cosmic spirit of war, the very force that the Guru had once stirred into the iron vessel as he birthed the Khalsa. Chandi had mounted her vehicle of the lion (ਸਿੰਘ—Singh). The Devi’s wrath was reinvigorated in the Khalsa’s veins.
Sri Bhagauti ji sahai.
— — -
The next day, as the Sun climbed the peak of noon, the Singhs, brimming with bir-rasa, the ‘flavor of bravery,’ greeted the arriving Afghans with spirited, reckless battle. A little before half past one, the Sun disappeared from the sky: a total eclipse swallowed it. Ganda Singh notes that “it became so dark during the day that the stars became visible in the sky.” As households lit by lamps and candles prepared to welcome the exiled god-king Rama, the heavens too, it seemed, had connived to welcome the Singhs, with the gothic majesty of a black sun heralded by a lightless ocean of stars.
The Sikhs construed the eclipse to be a favorable omen: how could they not, having propitiated and secured the favor of God’s boundless potency in the form of Chandi? To the Afghans, on the other hand, it presented a menacing portent. Aided by the black sun and the auguries of Fate, the Singhs forced Abdali’s unnerved men to beat a retreat back to Lahore, putting paid to his designs on Amritsar.
— — -
In February of 1762, the Sikhs had been nearly wiped out of existence. A Singh who had survived the massacres, his leg amputated, stood among the dead bodies and uttered a prayer of thanks to Maharaj: ਤੱਤ ਖਾਲਸੋ ਸੋ ਰਹਯੋ ਗਯੋ ਸੁ ਖੋਟ ਗਵਾਇ।– Now the pure Khalsa survives, the unripe have been discarded. A severely clear-eyed worldview, the virtue of faith, of accepting His mysterious ways as bhana, as cherished gifts, the good and the bad, the good with the bad. To lunge heroically into the blind forest of chance: the highest affirmation of the hand of Fate.
Within five years, the Singhs had reoccupied Lahore and taken the whole of Punjab. Abdali never crossed the Jhelum again.
— — -
fire ritual
vermillion red powder; usually indicating marital status, it’s use is also recorded in sacrificial rituals.
a double edged straight sword, from the root khaṇḍ “to break, divide, cut, destroy." An essential motif in the Sikh symbolic universe.