The Source Book On Sikhism

The Two Princes Betrayed

The Brahman cook Gangu, who took Mata Gujri and her two grandsons - Fateh Singh and Zorawar Singh - to his village on their flight from Anandpur turned traitor and handed them over to the Nawab of Sirhind. The grandmother was kept in a prison cell separate from her infant charges. The little ones, pale and livid with many days’ privation, were produced in the Nawab’s court as princes, with absurd theatricality. The Nawab made a speech, in which he asked them to embrace Aurangzebian Islam or die. In the former case, he promised them all kinds of honours and joys and riches and comforts. The pale faces of the two Princes blushed red at the insult offered. Fateh Singh the elder, asked the younger to remain quiet when he himself replied, “We are sons of the Master, Gobind Singh, and grandsons of Tegh Bahadur. The joys of Senses are for dogs and asses; sacred Death, good Death, for us.” Day after day there were harassed with similar temptations in the court; the Nawab trying to be kind to them, if they would accept Islam. When nothing availed, and the little heroes stood firm as a rock, the Nawab called two Pathan youths whose father had been killed in a battle by the arrows of the Guru, and wished to hand the two boys over to them for any vengeance they like to wreak on them. But the Pathan youths declined to do any injury to the two infants, saying, “No, sire, we will fight the enemy in the battlefield, but will not, like cowards, slay these two innocents.”

After many days, a very cruel form of execution was devised by the Nawab. The wall of Sirhind was thrown down for about three yards, these young ones of the Master were made to stand a yard apart from each other, and the order was given to build the wall little by little on their tender limbs; repeating at every foot and half foot of construction, the same alternative, - Death or Islam? The Princes stood with their eyes turned upward, seeing their heavenly ancestors come to bear them away and remained calm and speechless until the cruel wall entirely covered them.

Mother Gurjri expired in the prison on hearing of the tragic end of her two beloved grandsons. Gobind Singh heard of this heart-breaking tragedy as he was passing across the country near Sirhind. He closed his eyes, and sent to Heaven the prayer embodied in his famous hymn - The Message of us, the Disciples, to the Beloved.

“Give him, the Beloved, the news of us, the disciples!

Without Thee, the luxury of soft raiment and sweet rest is for us, all pain;

And these high palaces creep toward us like snakes!

The lips of the wine cup cut us like thin-edged poniards,

And dry as dust this jug of wine when Thou art not with us!

The pallet made of pale straw is Heaven for us, if Thou be there!

Burnt be the high palaces if thou be not there!”