Word: sikhs
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Sardar Tara Singh had no cause to love the Moslems. For two bloody centuries his Sikh people had fought them for mastery of the Punjab in northern India, and in those wars, many of his ancestors died martyrs' deaths. One of them, Bhai Mani Singh, fell into the hands of the Great Mogul Aurangzeb, who first chopped off Bhai Mani Singh's fingers, joint by joint, then lopped off his limbs, one by one. Another, Baba Sukha Singh, died under Moslem knives after assassinating a Moslem chieftain who had turned the Sikhs' holy Golden Temple at Amritsar...
Under British rule, Sardar Tara Singh and his Sikh compatriots lived in uneasy peace with their Moslem neighbors. But when the British left and India was partitioned, religious violence broke out once more. Five million Sikhs abandoned their ancestral homes in west Pakistan and fled to the East Punjab, and an equal number of Moslems fled westward. Fanatics on both sides organized themselves into bands and killed as many of the fleeing civilians as they could. White-bearded Sardar Tara Singh shook his head over this massacre of the innocent...
...Kill Her!" From one such slaughter Sikh warriors returned to Tara Singh's village of Sunam, now in India, with a seven-year-old Moslem girl. Her name was Hasan Bibi, and she stood tense and terrified among them while they debated what to do with her. "Kill her," advised a Sikh refugee from Pakistan, "just as they slaughtered my children in Lahore." A man of piety disagreed: "Convert her to our holy religion and let her marry a brave Sikh boy when she comes...
...will bring the sweetest revenge upon the wicked Moslems." he said. "I will bring her up as a Moslem, and restore her to her relatives when she grows up. And she will be as pure as the white snows of the Himalayas. That will teach the Moslems that a Sikh is pious in peacetime, just as he is invincible...
...Last week Tara Singh and Bibi journeyed to a town near the Pakistan border to meet him. Bibi was afraid, for despite her careful Moslem upbringing, she had absorbed some Sikh prejudices. "If I go to a Moslem household," she cried, "I shall have to bear the offensive smell of tobacco and eat beef!" But Tara Singh loaded her with presents and new clothes and reminded her of her duty...