Guru Nanak and Babur

Convinced of the Pathan victory many miracle working pirs had assured Emperor Ibrahim Lodhi that their spells against the Mughal invader, Babur, would work wonders. All the Mughals would be rendered blind. Once again, giving, a study of contrast of the tragic fate of Pathans against the false hopes and assurance of charlatans and magic mongering pirs and astrologers, Guru Nanak Says;

Guru Nanak Says;

Hearing Babur was coming,

Pirs and divines used spells;

Assuring they would blind the invader;

Babur came all the same,

He burnt and razed to the ground their mansions;

He cut the nobles to pieces,

Their heads rolled in dust.

The spells and charms of pirs did not work.

They whose hour had come,

Fell and lost the battle.

Wives of the Hindu, Turk, Bhatti, Rajput Soldiers, Tore down their veils in despair,

And went in search for their dead.

How would they, whose husbands would never return Pass their days and nights ?

Lord's Will is such,

He alone knows the cause of all that.

STRATEGIC OFFENCE & TACTICAL DEFENCE: PANIPAT, 1526

In war, it's advisable to advance into a region that's strategically valuable and, once there, to defend a strong tactical position and force the enemy to make a costly attack. Babur, the ruler of Kabul, set out to defeat Lodi, the sultan of Delhi, but he had just 12,000 men against 100,000, and though his force was armed with gunpowder weapons, their slow rate of fire made his men vulnerable to Lodi's cavalry. Babur advanced rapidly to Panipat near Delhi, knowing this sudden threat to his opponent's capital would prevent him from seeking refuge behind its walls. He selected the battlefield carefully and formed a barrier of wagons, and Lodi's men made a series of fruitless assaults. Having inflicted heavy losses, Babur counter-attacked, then resumed his offensive into India.

Thus, in spite of the assurance of the astrologers and miracle working pirs, the Afghans were not only routed but they were cruelly treated. Their rock like mansions were destroyed, their palaces set ablaze. Princes were hacked to pieces and trampled under dust. Guru Nanak clearly points out that wealth and luxury, the pursuit of physical pleasures sapped the vitality of the Indians and weakened their will and strength to defend themselves. Nations and political powers are born stoic but they die epicurean. So thorough was the destruction, and so complete the route, that Babur could now make up his mind to live and rule India.

It appears that after the battle Guru Nanak went to the battle field. He saw the spectacle with his own eyes. Out of his deeply moved heart came the poignant cry and a question to the generation that lives in disgraceful luxury and dies in despair and humiliation. It is a question he put to the civilization of his own times. It is a question that can be asked on the battle-fields of any war of wanton destruction;

Where are the stables and steeds ?

Where are bugles and drums that beat ?

Where are the buckled sword and arms ?

Where are the scarlet uniforms ?

Where are the mirrors and handsome faces ?

Thou, O Lord of the earth,

In a moment Thou createst,

In a moment Thou destroyest.

Babur ( February 14, 1483 – December 26, 1530) was fourteen years younger than Nanak. He became king of Farghana almost in the same year in which Guru Nanak received the call and the apostolic sovereignty of God at Sultanpur.  When Babur conquered Kabul in 1505 and aspired to conquer India Guru Nanak left Punjab for the moral conquest of the world. The Qadihya Dastgir Pir of Baghdad called Nanak, intoxicated dervish with a rare charm. In a downright earthly way Babur, who like Nanak, loved music and poetry wrote:

A Book of verses underneath the bough,

A jug of Wine, a loaf of bread, and Thou

Beside me singing in the wilderness,

Oh ! wilderness were Paradise enow.

Man, being reasonable must get drunk;

The best of life is but intoxication.                                                                          

The reign of Ibrahim Lodhi had been an unvaried scene of confusion and revolts. His haughty and cruel temper, joined to the impolitic arrogance with which he had treated the Afghan nobles, who considered themselves as having raised his family to the throne, and as being still placed not very far below it, had completely alienated their affection. 

Many of his discontented nobles had retired beyond Ganges and the whole of the eastern provinces were in the hands of the rebels. The Punjab was held by Daulat Khan, and his sons Ghazi Khan and Dilawar Khan, who Afghans themselves, were alarmed at the fate of the Afghan nobles in other parts of the empire and were eager to deliver themselves from the power of the emperor. They felt it was safer to rebel than to continue in subjection to a prince whose violent and unrelenting disposition added new terrors to the harsh maxims of his government. All these things had destroyed their confidence in him. Guided by their fears, they sent envoys to offer their allegiance to Babur to beseech him to march to their succor. No circumstances could have been more in unison with the wishes of Babur.

Guru Nanak had time and again warned the rulers that nemesis would overtake them. His warning given again and again had gone unheeded. His reflections on the times speak volumes on the political and cultural degradation: But we find from the writings of Guru Nanak, that he was an eye witness to the third, fourth and fifth invasions. He roundly condemned Babur's cruelty and treatment of innocent citizens, particularly women of the conquered cities. The first song of Guru Nanak is about the sackage of Syedpur (now known as Eminabad), the second is about the rape of Lahore in the fourth invasion, and the third is about the terrible slaughter and aftermath of the battle of Panipat, which the Emperor of Delhi lost in spite of the assurances of astrologers and miracle working pirs. Guru Nanak points out that it was a battle between arrows of Afghans showered from the backs of elephants by the Afghans and the artillery of Mughal army.

Ravage and Plunder of Syedpur

In 1919 when Guru Nanak was with Lallo at Syedpur on his third tour of Punjab, Babur came like a whirlwind in his third attempt to conquer and subdue India. “He advanced to Sialkot, the inhabitants of which submitted and saved their possessions; but the inhabitants of Syedpur, who resisted, were put to the sword; their wives and children carried into captivity, and all their property plundered”⁴ Streams of innocent blood flowed in the city and the whole of Syedpur was a city of corpses. Guru Nanak sang this song of protest and lamentation and even poignantly blamed God, for this sufferings of the iambs in the hands of wolves, though he felt God would not take any blame on H imself. God had saved Khurasan, but terrorised poor Hindustan of Guru Nanak.

The Rape of Lahore

Babur gave a stunning defeat to the Afghan nobles. “When he entered Lahore in triumph he set fire to the bazars, a superstitious practise common among the Mughals. Babur remained only four days in Lahore, before he proceeded against Dipalpur. The garrison having forced him to risk an assault, he put the whole to the sword, as he did at Syedpur.

The sensitive mind of Guru Nanak vividly brought the miserable lot of the women prisoners of noble families contrasting it in tragic contrast to their normal life before capture. Many times he had warned that someday this city of wanton lust and destructive revelry would suffer from the inevitable results of utter moral degradation. The point to be noted is that Guru Nanak does not accuse Babur of any iconoclast zeal, nor particularly of any anti-Hindu crusade. Both the Hindu and Muslim women were the tragic victims. Their men had been put to the sword, or were away in some other battle. In the whole of this hymn the most touching and pitiable condition of the women of high families is brought to the fore. They had lost their character. They had lost their courage. They lost their freedom and were treated worse than captive slaves were ever treated. Guru Nanak adds:

If these folks had taken heed to the future,

Need they have been reduced to such plight?

Pursuing worldly love and sensual pleasures’,

Desecration and desolation follow in the footsteps;

Of the great Mughal Babur.

From Lahore Babur marched rapidly to Panipat, capturing the Lodhi posts on the way and defeating two detachments sent by Ibrahim in advance of himself, one north-west of Delhi and the other eastward in Doab. Against such a swift-paced compact enemy force Ibrahim Lodhi moved in the lordly Indian fashion, making one march of two or three miles and halting for two days. His camp was one vast disorderly moving city.”⁸

Babur’s forces according to Wolsely Haig were estimated to be 25,000 men. Ibrahim Lodhi is said to have moved with one thousand war elephants and one lakh men. Later historians have given lesser figures. Babur used artillery, which Jadunath Sarkar calls light guns mounted on carts. Afghan nobles felt secure on the howdahs of their elephants and fired arrows and spears. Giving a vivid portrayal of this study on contrast of the modes of fighting Guru Nanak writes about the battle of Panipat thus;

Mughal pathana bhai ladal ran meh tegh vagai,

oni tupak tan calai Oni hast cadhdai.

Ferocious battle raged Between Mughals and Pathans

The sword flashed and clashed in the battle-field,

The Mughals fixed and fired their guns,

The Pathans fought riding their elephants.

If there was one single material factor which more than any other conduced to his ultimate triumph in “Hindustan” writes Rushbrook Williams, it was his powerful artillery.” Describing this battle Jadunath Sarkar writes: “The elephants on which the Indians chiefly relied proved of no use; their drivers were shot down or galled with arrows and the beasts wounded and forced to turn back, treading down their own men. The matchlockmen of Ustad Ali Quli (centre front) and the carted guns of Mustafa Khan Rumi (left of the centre) worked havoc among the densely crowded Afghan ranks. The Indian army was now entirely surrounded and pushed back into a disordered circle. The Afghans fought with desperate fury of trapped beasts; some of their captains even attempted counter charges here and there. But it was all in vain; the mischief of wrong tactics and inferior arms could not be remedied, though six thousand of their men fell in circle round their dead king Ibrahim Lodhi. Then their host broke up in flight; a relentless pursuit followed in which slaughter, plunder and abduction were carried to the very gates of Delhi. Pyramids were built with the heads of the slain.

*Note these are the events centred around Babar encounter with Lodis before encountering his most decisive battle against Rana Sanga which sealed his fate in India in Battle Of Khanwa fought on 16 March 1527 .