CHANTS OF LIBERTY

The Khalsa verily issued from the head of Guru Gobind Singh, as Minerva from Jupiter. We, the Sikhs, had our Resurrection en masse at the Master’s word sung in our ears in the battle-fields. War gave us the fiery baptism of God’s warm blood. We died. And that is how our Master said we should live. There is no other door to everlasting life but through death, like this, through love, and obedience like this. Very little life is in the ego of man; all is there in the shining sun of His soul. He knew all about the after-death. He led us on.
Those who lay too much stress on peace and non-violence have yet not got rid of the ignorance which shuts them away from the Realities of the Unseen beyond the wall of Death. Their ethics are not cosmic and “spherical,” but only “geometrical” and hence mere artificial and conceptual ethics, which have no relation with life, its growth and destiny. These miserable ethics of the “geometrical” conceptual minds like those of the hair-splitting moralists and philosophers of yore are but lifeless rules and regulations, so made to soothe the excited intellects of those who are gods to themselves, and who wish to cast the cosmic processes of the universe in their own thinking. Our Guru, in communion with the cosmic processes, concentrated his consciousness on the problem of making man alive, natural and free. “I announce natural persons to rise; I announce the justification of candour and pride.” It is not the so-called ethical conduct that shall be counted, but the character of life that shall be formed by passing through a thousand fires and waters and hells of vice and heavens of virtue. Small and miserable are those conceptualists who conceive the moral law in terms of their likes and dislikes, their oughts and ought-nots. The moral law is cosmic, and it prevails in spite of our wars and peace, in spite of our vice and virtue. Seeds are scattered here by the winds and the blossoms burst forth on the tree of life in the Unseen. Those who know of this and that side of death do not take any account of the man-made artificial ethics, for these all partake of human ignorance.
We Sikhs- the soldiers of the Master- are already on the march on the open road and we feel the war poems of Walt Whitman indistinguishably mingle with the chants of our Master. It is difficult to translate our chants, what with their rousing sounds and martial rhythms. The one below seeks to capture the poetry of arms:
Khag, Khand, bihandang khal dal khandung,
Ati run mandang barbandang,
Bhujdand akhandang teg parchandang
Jot amandangang bhan prabhang
Sukh santang karang durmat darning,
Kil bith harang, as saranang
Jai jai jag karnang srista ubarang
Mum pratiparang jai tegung

Thou art the Destroyer, the Annihilator
of the hosts of ignorance and evil,
the Embellisher of the battlefield.

Thy punishment is stern and inexorable,
They aspect refulgent, thy glory and splendour
dazzle even the sun.

Thou bring’st happiness to the holy,
Thou crush’st the wicked and scatter’st sinners,
I seek thy refuge.

Glory, O Glory to thee, O Sword,
The Primordial Promoter, Guardian
of the Universe, my Protector and Sustainer.

In the chants of our Master, the cannon boom, the arrows fly, the swords clash. And the very repetition of his chants makes us fly like flames, crying liberty, liberty, liberty.