THERE ARE, IN THIS WORLD, men who are endowed by nature with infinite capacity for attaining perfection. In peace time they work for the welfare of mankind and strive to smoothen the way to progress. In adversity they unite the people and lead them to glory. and glorious life. While executing the ideal into practice they remain stoic to the shocks of misfortune. They endure untold mortifications and sufferings, but stick fast to their ideals, and cheerfully make supreme sacrifices. Perceptive people in this turbulent world would point to Guru Gobind Singh as one such Man.

His dreams and deeds wrought a wonderful change in his own time in religious, social and political life of the people. His personality was so fascinating, so bewitching, so dynamic, so momentous and so unforgettable that we are seized with wonder at the changes that took place in North India within one year and a half of his death (Banda Singh's devastating Sirhind on 10 May, 1710). He was a Master who consumed itself to light the world. He was luminous like the sun, and he had conquered death, serving the timess Lord, Akal Purukh.

There are two ethical ideas, the pleasant the good. The man without discrimination chooses pleasure as the goal and he perishes in his effort to attain it. The man of wisdom examines both the pleasant and the good. He makes the latter the supreme purpose. He is never satisfied with the passing finite things of the world. His hunger is for the infinite. Guru Gobind Singh strove after such an ideal. He possessed a rare combination of so many excellences: supreme self-denial, marvellous intellect, superhuman will-power, stout heart and limitless energy. He examined life and sought its real meaning and the true goal. He came to grips with this fundamental question. He realised his deep bond to humanity. He was moved by the sufferings he saw around him. He decided to help man find freedom.

Guru Gobind Singh was not destined to have peace in his life time. He was born in conflict, he lived in conflict and died in conflict. Conflict was thrust upon him by the force of circumstances and he had full measure of it. He aimed at regenerating a decaying people. He endeavoured to create a new nation. He planned to lay the foundation of a society based upon justice and freedom of conscience. He designed to promulgate the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.

At the age of nine, Guru Gobind Singh had his father sacrificed in the cause of religious freedom. Between the age of 9 and 39, in thirty years he had to fight as many as twenty battles, nine before the creation of Khalsa and eleven afterwards. He had hostility all around. He had little resources in men, material and money. Within a week in December 1704, he laid at altar his mother and all the four of his sons. Besides all the five cousins (sons of Bibi Veero), maternal uncle, Kirpal, and thousands of his beloved Sikhs were martyred into eternity. Eventually at the young age of 42, he shuffled off his mortal coil in the cause of freedom and in the service of humanity. Can there be a greater and noble sacrifice than this? The legacy left by him was that of sacrifice, service, self support and self respect.

Bulay Shah, a celebrated Muslim sufi saint of Punjab was a contemporary of Guru Gobind Singh. He pays a glowing tribute to the Guru thus: "I neither say of the past, nor do I speak of present, but I talk of the time of Guru Gobind Singh and declare:

"Na kahun abh kee, na kahun tab kee, agar na hote Guru Gobind Singh, to sunnat hoti sab kee"

But for Guru Gobind Singh, all the Hindus would have been converted to Islam. (vide Dr. Hari Ram Gupta and Dr. Gopal Singh)

That is the story of a man who was born mortal, but who, through sheer force of character and grace of God, became immortal, who was born a prince but chose to remain his whole life of a holy mendicant, a saint whom circumstances turned into a warrior, who yet remained ever a saint at heart, who battled and won, but did not acquire an inch of territory. He gave to Indian people the concept of nationhood, a concept which embodied dedication in every detail of life and purpose to the supreme Ideal, i.e., God and yet did not shirk earthly obligations. He became a Guru who was sought to be worshipped as God, but who denounced this cult of personality in such severe terms as no one before or after him has done. "He who called me God will for sure burn in the fire of hell. I am but a slave of the Supreme Being come to witness His Play."

Son of a martyr, great grandson of a martyr, he laid at the altar of the Supreme not only himself but whosoever called him his very own. He abolished succession by heredity and resorted to the people for the first time in history till then, what he thought, belongs only to them - sovereignty - both spiritual and temporal. He gave a new meaning to life by popularising death for a cause. He abolished privilege by caste, birth, station, creed, and raised the lowest equal in all ways to the highest. He restored to man his manhood, to woman her womanhood. He perfected a new religion of discipline and, when obliged to fight the others, yet disparaged not different creeds nor divided man from man. "The Temple and the Mosque are both holy," he said. After him the life was not the same in the Subcontinent. Freedom, Freedom, resounded from every heart. He did it in a short span of life all too brief, i.e., two scores and two years. Such a man has, perhaps, never walked on the surface of earth so far. His deep faith in God can be guaged from these lines of Muslim wandering fakir who saw the Guru going from place to place in Malwa region after battle of Chamkaur, thus:

"Na Dhalla, na Malla, te Guru ikala"

The Guru remarked:

"Guru nal Allah, Guru kadey na ikala"

(Dhalla and Malla have deserted the Guru, who is left alone, to which Guru replied: he always has the blessing of God and thus never is alone.)

Sir Jadunath Sarkar, renowned historian of the Mughal and Maratha period, observes:

"The astounding superiority in man-for- man over all others fighting forces of India was due to the Sikh character, training and organisation."

Thus writes Swami Vivekananda: "Guru Gobind Singh by a flash of his sword filled the dying soul of India with life-giving light and truth, and Lo! It shone in its glory again the life of new born Khalsa! The light of reality had kindled the spark of life again in the dying soul of India.

Said Dr. Gokal Chand Narang: "The creation of Khalsa is the culmination of Guru Nanak's genius."

Ibbetson writes: "In Indian history any religion became political power and a community came to existence who was rare in many respects. India has not seen such a community (Sikhs), low caste, scavangers, barbers, washermen who had never touched weapons, who were trampled on by high caste under their feet acquire traits of fearlessness under Guruji's command and they were ready to sacrifice their body for protection of down trodden people.

Sayed Mohd. Latif said about Guru Gobind Singh: "He was lawgiver in the pulpit, a champion in the field, a king on the masnad and a fakir in the society of the Khalsa."

Two hundred and nineteen years after baptism of Khalsa in India, the Russian revolutionary Lenin founded the community party in Europe and he claimed with great pride, that such communes had been created for the first time in the world. But in 1952, the world famous historian Arnold Toynbee said in his History of the World, that the "forerunner of the communist principle was the Khalsa of Guru Gobind Singh and the community party cannot claim as the first in the ideology." Toynbee also predicted that on the Doomsday only Khalsa of Guru Gobind Singh will survive."

Let all who believe in the tenets of Guru Gobind Singh pledge on his 334th Agman day to try to imbibe the ideals set forth by him. Let Sikhs, in whatever profession or avocation, dedicate themselves to the ideals bequethed by the illustrious Tenth Master. Only then we can deserve to be `Nayaras.'

Guru Gobind Singh was a paradigm for intellectuals, a Colossus among warriors, a pinnacle among glorious and most saintly among saints. It is for such a multi splendoured personality for whom Shakespeare's observation applies:

"The elements were so mixed in him that Nature stood up and said `Here is a Man'.