Religious Problem in India

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

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THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM IN INDIA
with kindness and favor; remembering the murder of his own father, he pities the sons whom he has made fatherless; be takes them into service and confidence, and when he knows that his time is come, there is a strange scene. He speaks to one of these sons abont the duty of revenge, about the slaying of the slayer of the kinsman, until at last he provokes him to strike him his own deathblow; he saves the young man from the anger of his followers, saying that he has but avenged his father's blood, and he must go free. He bids them follow the Scripture, bids them be faithful to the Khälsa, and dies.
Then, after he is gone, there is no more the Teacher; but, as I said, the real authority is the idi Grantha Salals, with the conncil of chiefs, and the Khalsa, the whole commity of the Sikhs, wherein there was to be no difference of caste, no difference between man and man, all were to be brothers and were to be equal.
Theu a brilliant story of military struggle and military success, crowned at last by the splendid victories of Ranjit Singh, the Lion of the Panjab (1797), who makes the Panjal, practically the Sikh Empire. He dies in 1839. And then, ah! then, the saddest bustory of treachery, of betrayal, of brave warrior-sonlord and gallant men deceived and sold, struggling on desperately against all. The saddest of all stories, but the story of India over and over again, where brother has sold brother, where friend has sold friend, where Indian has betrayed