Abstract
Religion preaching fraternity, coexistence and welfare of humankind serves the human race but it also causes unremitting and irrecoverable loss when it is abused and misinterpreted. Muslims appeared throughout the Subcontinent securing a huge mass conversion from the Hindu society. Sikhism emerged in the 15th century with followers mainly from the Hindu folk. The Muslims became the ruling community of India but with a scattered position throughout the region while Sikhs were concentrated mainly in the Punjab, a north-west region of India. After the British advent, the Muslims and Hindus at all levels in India were engaged in political contest while in the Punjab the Muslims and Sikhs were enthusiastically doing the same, as rival communities. Identity and the political activities rooted in religion as three major communities, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu, had launched their activities on religious grounds. Mughal rulers persecuted the Sikh spiritual leaders (gurus), which affected the peaceful living as Sikhs attributed to every social or political point the atrocities inflicted on their religious heroes by the Muslim rulers. This attitude created a sense of hatred among the Punjabis and resultantly, religion became a hate-generating mechanism between these close social partners. No serious effort was made by any government to curb this hatred and the apathy hardly let both the communities come to settlement under any kind of dialogue rationale. This antagonism not only divided the people of the same cultural and racial origin but also caused a heavy death toll of innocent Muslims and Sikhs on different occasions. This paper is an endeavour to explore the elements of the religious hatred which widened gulf between the Muslims and Sikhs in the Punjab. The study mainly deals with the nature of Muslim-Sikh relationship in the early period of Sikh history.
Dr. Akhtar Hussain Sandhu . (2014) RELIGIOUS HATRED IN THE EARLY PHASE OF SIKH HISTORY: FOCUS ON THE MUSLIM-SIKH RELATIONSHIP DURING MUGHAL ERA , Pakistan , Volume 50, Issue 1.
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