William Wallace and Banda Singh Bahadur

“It is the privilege of the brave to die for a good cause.” Guru Nanak (1469-1539)

The story of WILLIAM WALLACE (1270-1305) and BANDA SINGH BAHADUR (1670-1716),  the bravehearts of Scotland and Panjaab, is remarkably similar!

“I will tell you, whenever men become so corrupt and wicked as to relinquish the path of equity and to abandon themselves to all kinds of excesses, then the Providence never fails to raise up a scourge like me to chastise a race so depraved; When the tyrants oppress their subjects to the limit, then God sends men like me on this earth to mete out his punishment to them." - Banda Singh Bahadur



Both led armed uprisings against the powers which ruled over their peoples. Both provided courageous and inspiring leadership. Both fought ardently and uncompromising for their nations independence, and achieved short-term independent self-government. Both demonstrated that, with courage and sacrifice a people can push off the misery of oppressive governments and form their own governments.

Both took on mighty powers and shook those powers severely. Both were captured and subject to torturous public executions by the oppressive government, who sought to punish and avenge their daring and resistance. 

Both figures shine out like glaring lights in the trail of history, as figures whose example and story is immortal. Their courage, principle and self-sacrifice is something that we all can apply now in the modern world of continuing corruption, manipulation, exploitation and subjugation. Yes, we need William Wallaces and Banda Singh Bahadurs today. Do we have it within our inner strength to be like these rare beings, rather than just be part of mass mainstream which seeks to fit in and conform with the general power-structures and general trends of life. According to Sikhi, these individuals are the 'virli kehi kehi', the few amongst the few, the rarest of rare.

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle...Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will....Without a struggle, there can be no progress."

"In a composite nation like ours, as before the law, there should be no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights and a common destiny."

"I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."

"What to the Slave is the 4th of July?"

"The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous."

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)