Religious Problem in India

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

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THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM IN INDIA
apparently without any reason, or for a reason which really was no reason at all, was accused of sympathising with the rebel son. I say "no reason," because the root of the accusation appears to have lain in the anger and the jealousy of the powerful minister to whom he had refused his child in marriage; and this minister, stirring up the suspicions of Jehangir against him, induces the Emperor to seize the Guru and imprison him. He dies from the hardships of the imprisonment.
There is the point where the community, which was purely religions and peaceful, begins to be led by this aggression on its teacher and its ruler, into the path that will make it a great military body. Jehan-' vir is followed by Aurangzib, and thing's grow worse and worse under that fanatical ruler. The succeeding Gurn, the sixth, Gurn Har Govind (1606-1615) begins definitely in self-defence to organise the Sikhs; he binds them into a body apart alike from Hindū and Musulmā, no longer a body to join the two, but a body apart and separate from both. The State of the Sikh is beginning to grow up, and now commence warfare and struggle, scattered skirmishing, scattered fighting, a sharing in the fights around thein, ever welding the Sikhs more and more together as a fighting body. The seventh Guru, Guru Har Rai (1615-1661), of whom little is said, is quiet and peaceful, but around are more struggles, still increasing war, increasing strife, increasing nilitary spirit, util the religious side, as it were, almost goes into the background, save