भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

Delhi sent a big army to Punjab. Resorting to the guerrilla warfare, Baba Banda defeated it at various places. But as ill-luck would have it, the Khalsa Sikhs began to be jealous of the epithet ‘Hindu commander’, which Baba Banda Bairagi had chosen for himself. Ultimately, that jealousy grew to such an extent that the united Hindu army of Veer Banda broke into two factions, and the one consisting of the Khalsa Sikhs deserted him. The Khalsa Sikh faction was by itself not able to conquer the Muslims. Naturally, the Moghal army grew stronger and in a desperate action, valiant Banda Bairagi fell into the Muslim hands with his only son and close followers. The Muslims were haunted by a false fear that Veer Banda possessed some magic power, and the higher Muslim officials, too, feared that even when he was bound hand and foot with strong iron fetters, Veer Banda Baba would transform himself into a cat and would escape through the ranks of a powerful army. So, he was sent to Delhi, locked in a strong cage, like a wild beast, along with many other captive Hindu warriors. What a horrible scene it was when he was, brought in the presence of the Emperor! How hellishly inhuman the torture of Veer Banda, his only son and his hundred or so Hindu followers, and the streams of blood that flowed! Veer Banda was not beheaded or killed straightway. He was pierced scores of times with red-hot iron bars and lumps of his flesh were cut out every time with a view to making him suffer extreme torture before he died —but there is no scope to describe this harrowing scene here. But every true and grateful Hindu should rather read it from the books written by the Sikhs and Muslim writers themselves. 977. The History of the Sikhs Written by me—I am very sad that I cannot refer the reader to the History of the Sikhs I had written years ago. It is necessary that the reason be explained here. Round about the year 1909, in the thick of the revolutionay activities, when I happened to go from England to France, I stayed for a month or so with Madame Cama. During that short period, I wrote out in Marathi the thrilling history of the Sikhs, running to about two hundred pages or so, based on the proven material It had at my disposal at the time. I had studied almost all the Sikh literature right from the first book of Sikh literature, named ‘Bhai Balaki Janamsakhi’—the lifestory of Guru Nanak written by his disciple ‘Bhai Bala’—to the tenth book—Dasham-granth of the tenth Guru Govind Singh in the original, not to speak of the Histories of the Sikhs by Cunningham and other English writers. I had brought the account of the Sikhs up to the