A LOOK AT SOME PAGES OF HISTORY

 Inspired by a speech by Doctor Varinder Pal Singh, an esteemed Agriculture Scientist who refused to accept an award in December 2020, showing his solidarity with the farmers. Please listen to his humbling speech about having pride in our “Virasat”-Heritage. His twitter handle @VPSPAU

This post may not directly be linked to the Farmers protest but in my head, it does seem linked to chaos that that our country is in.

In 1809 when Lord Metcalfe came to Amritsar to sign the first Treaty with the Lion of Punjab, he was astonished to see the level of education, the progress in Maharaja Ranjit’ Singh’s Punjab. They had solar watches everywhere. Time was of the essence. Every citizen in the village had an education. The Maharaja had made it mandatory to have a school attached to every religious monument .The anna had more value than the English shilling.Every village had its own panchayat, completely robust with its weapons and its own voluntary army to look after its village .This panchayat was not even answerable to the high command. Power lay in the hands of the people. This combined with education and discipline had set the benchmark of the civil society extremely high

The British Government felt threatened by this level of progress and instructed a professor from Kings’ College London called Dr.GW Leitner to annihilate it. He was given 50 years and unlimited resources to do that. But it took him all of 33 years to decimate this system. Every household was paid 6 annas in exchange of one book and 3 annas in exchange of a weapon to be confiscated by the British. It was reported that more money was given for the books because the books contained the teachings of the Guru Granth Sahib that spread positivity and peace and the British wanted to destroy this moral fabric of the country from its grass roots .

They succeeded in their Machiavelli intentions and within 33 years the number of educated people (as an example) in a village called Sialkot dropped from 1500 to a meagre 11.

Maybe, that is why were enslaved by the British for so long.

But sadly, the current state of the country has regressed to exactly those times; we are a country that that has chosen an uneducated tyrant to form the government. He has reduced the country to abysmal depths. It is heart-breaking.

This is what tyrants can do to a nation. We regressed then and we are regressing now.

In a land that boasts of one of the oldest civilizations, of millions of people living in harmony we have come to point when 80 year old war veteran gets beaten up by police, when ministers brush aside deaths of farmers mockingly , when the suns of soil get called parasites , when people get lynched for the food they eat, when the cannot love and live with whoever they want to .But most importantly where free speech is curtailed and our farmers are treated with utter contempt. And are being stripped of what they hold most dear…Their land and Their dignity.

We all should collectively stand up for them and have a voice. Let us speak up!

मौजौ की इितहाद का आलम ना पूछिये , कतरा उठा और ऊठ के समुन्दर बना दिया

“Maujon kee itihaad ka alam na pucheye ….Katra utha au uth kei samunder utha diya

Translated –

Do not underestimate the force of the waves, A small wave can cause a storm in the ocean