भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

Delhi sent a big army to Punjab. Resorting to the guerrilla warfare, Baba
Banda defeated it at various places. But as ill-luck would have it, the Khalsa
Sikhs began to be jealous of the epithet ‘Hindu commander’, which Baba
Banda Bairagi had chosen for himself. Ultimately, that jealousy grew to
such an extent that the united Hindu army of Veer Banda broke into two
factions, and the one consisting of the Khalsa Sikhs deserted him. The
Khalsa Sikh faction was by itself not able to conquer the Muslims.
Naturally, the Moghal army grew stronger and in a desperate action, valiant
Banda Bairagi fell into the Muslim hands with his only son and close
followers. The Muslims were haunted by a false fear that Veer Banda
possessed some magic power, and the higher Muslim officials, too, feared
that even when he was bound hand and foot with strong iron fetters, Veer
Banda Baba would transform himself into a cat and would escape through
the ranks of a powerful army. So, he was sent to Delhi, locked in a strong
cage, like a wild beast, along with many other captive Hindu warriors. What
a horrible scene it was when he was, brought in the presence of the
Emperor! How hellishly inhuman the torture of Veer Banda, his only son
and his hundred or so Hindu followers, and the streams of blood that
flowed! Veer Banda was not beheaded or killed straightway. He was pierced
scores of times with red-hot iron bars and lumps of his flesh were cut out
every time with a view to making him suffer extreme torture before he died
—but there is no scope to describe this harrowing scene here. But every
true and grateful Hindu should rather read it from the books written by the
Sikhs and Muslim writers themselves.
977. The History of the Sikhs Written by me—I am very sad that I cannot
refer the reader to the History of the Sikhs I had written years ago. It is
necessary that the reason be explained here. Round about the year 1909, in
the thick of the revolutionay activities, when I happened to go from
England to France, I stayed for a month or so with Madame Cama. During
that short period, I wrote out in Marathi the thrilling history of the Sikhs,
running to about two hundred pages or so, based on the proven material It
had at my disposal at the time. I had studied almost all the Sikh literature
right from the first book of Sikh literature, named ‘Bhai Balaki
Janamsakhi’—the lifestory of Guru Nanak written by his disciple ‘Bhai
Bala’—to the tenth book—Dasham-granth of the tenth Guru Govind Singh
in the original, not to speak of the Histories of the Sikhs by Cunningham
and other English writers. I had brought the account of the Sikhs up to the