Captured heroes

Pancanadira shore
Shire queue muff
Seeing Guru Mantra
Sikhadda is awake
Fearless brutal.
Gurujira voice of Joy
Dhbaniya took part.
Sikh new watch
At the dawn of a new Sun
Asked steadfast.

"Alakha Niranjan '

Maharaba gone, then ties up
Bhayabhanjana it.
Dark side of the chest in joy
Aussie punk resounding.
Garaji Punjab was today,
"Niranjan alakha!"

He arrived one day

Fear of not knowing parane
Does not loan anyone.
Life Death foot servant,

Carefree heart.
Ten banks pancanadira ghiri
One day he arrived.

Dilliprasadakute
Hotha repeatedly badasajadara
Yeteche running nap.
Who's Gagan churning,
Compact midnight tute
Who masale nice sky
The fire has been exposed!

Pancanadira shore
Bhaktadehera raktalahari
What Ray was free!
Bust of splitting
Flocks lives paksisamana
Nijanire the running.
Heroes jananire
Raktatilaka foreheads paralo
Pancanadira shore.

***

Bandi Veer / The Captive Brave

By the banks of the five great streams

Binding their long hair upon their heads
By and by harking to the words of their saints
The Sikhs arise from their dreams
Merciless and brave beyond compare.
A thousand voices raised in prayer
Shaking the earth to its very ends.
The newly awakened Sikhs
Gaze on the dawn of a brand new day
Unblinking and steadfast in every way.

"Alakh Niranjan"
A great noise breaks every shackle
And banishes all fear from the soul.
By each breast in savage unison
The sword rings out in song.
For today is the day that the Punjab roars
"Alakh Niranjan!"
A day such as this has never been seen
A million hearts know not what fear means
Nor feel that they owe another.
Life and death are but servants at one's call,
The soul worries about nothing at all.
By the ten banks of the five great streams

Such a day has only been seen in dreams.

Atop the palace in Delhi
Over there lives the prince of the realm
His sleep is racked by thoughts unseemly.
Whose voices are these that roil the skies,
driving the darkness of night way Whose torches are those that bring a burning light
To the darkened brow of deepest night!
By the banks of the five great streams
That river of blood that flows in brave hearts
Are they being set free!
Cutting open a million hearts
Souls fly true like birds in quest
Seeking home in their own nest.
The brave sons bow to their mothers
Smearing blood across foreheads proud
By the banks of the five great streams.

An excerpt from Bandi Veer, Rabindranath Tagore

(Translation, mine)

banda

The original poem by Tagore was called Bandi Veer or the Captive Brave and described the exploits of
Sardar Banda Singh Bahadur, who was blinded and maimed before being put to death by the Mughals in
1716. While he had his sight, his four year old son was put to death while on his lap and the Mughals

tried to force him to eat the child's flesh. Death came from red hot pincers and the executioner's axe.
Seven hundred other Sikhs were put to death as well.

CRWilson, a Bengal civilian, has given in his Early Annals of the English in Bengal the following
description of the entry of the Sikh captives into Delhi:

"Malice did its utmost to cover the vanquished with ridicule and shame. First came the heads of the
executed Sikhs, stuffed with straw, and stuck on bamboos, their long hair streaming in the wind like a
veil, and along with them to show that every living thing in Gurdaspur had perished, a dead cat on a pole
. Banda himself, dressed out of mockery in a turban of a red cloth, embroidered with gold, and a h eavy
robe of brocade flowered with pomegranates, sat in an iron cage, placed on the back of an elephant. "

These are not stories made up by some rabid follower of the faith. The representatives of the East India
Company in Delhi, John Surman and Edward Stephenson were invited to witness some of these events
and saw enough to observe in a letter to the governor of Fort William:

"It is not a little remarkable with what patience Sikhs undergo their fate, and to the last it has not been
found that one apostatized from his new formed religion. "

Alakh Niranjan was a cry that came from Guru Gorakshnath. It meant the god without recognizable form
or Nirguna Brahma, a concept embedded in the Upanishads.