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300 years after Baba Banda Singh
Bahadur, will we lose the battle at the same place?
WSN Network
 CHHAPAR
CHIRI (Mohali): On the sprawling grounds of Chappar Chirri, nearly
300 years after the battle that made the
Bari
and Chotti Chappar Chirri villages along Kharar-Banur road on the
outskirts of
Chandigarh
famous, a battle is on once again.
While the Sikh
force won the 12 May 1710 battle under the leadership of Baba Banda
Singh Bahadur, and Wazir Khan, the imperial faujdar of Sirhind, lay
dead, what reflected poorly on the Sikh Nation's notion of heritage
conservation was the fact that till 250 years later, there was
hardly any spot to mark the victory. Around 1950 a gurdwara came up,
thanks to some proactive villagers.
Now, with
urbanization pressures weighing down on the battle ground that
represents a glorious chapter in Sikh history, and notions of
heritage not having moved up exactly on our pririty scales, the Sikh
Quom is in danger of losing the battle. A few kms from Landran and
20 Kms from Sirhind, the grounds where the Khalsa avenged the
killing of the two younger sons of Sri Guru Gobind Singh, is now
yielding ground to a swank golf range under a regime headed by the
Akali Dal.
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Massive
Opposition
Local villagers are up in arms to oppose the Golf Club plans
drafted by Punjab Government's Greater Mohali Area Development
Authority (GMADA). Shiromani Akali Dal's working committee
member Gursev Singh Harpalpur, Palwinder Singh Saini Raipur,
Akali Dal Chandigarh's jathedar Gurnam Singh Sidhu, Akali Dal,
Delhi's Harmohinder Singh Dhillon, Shiromani Sikh Samaj
International's Col Gurdeep Singh, Institute of Sikh Studies'
Bibi Baljit Kaur Khalsa, Justice Ajit Singh Bains (retd), and
many other leaders said they will mount the kind of pressure
that the Akali Dal-BJP regime will not be able to withstand. |
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The recently
approved master plan of Mohali will wipe away the battle ground
where the quom punished the the subedar of Sirhind who had ordered
the killing of Sahibzada Zoravar Singh and Fateh Singh by bricking
them alive. Khan was put to death and his body dragged to Sirhind,
about 25 km from the village, before the Khalsa army proceeded to
decimate the town.
Sikh historians
are unanimous in their observation that this was the most important
victory against the Mughals as it paved the way for a number of
similar triumphs across several towns in Punjab. Yet, except for a
simple board, bearing a history of the place, outside the local
gurdwara, there are no memorials even though the place, spread
across 14-15 acre of dense forests, has been visited by many VIPs,
including CM Parkash Singh Badal, SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar
and his predecessor GS Tohra.
The gurdwara
displays five handmade iron weapons and turban rings (chakkar) which
were dug out by a farmer while installing a tubewell. ‘‘We’ve heard
from our ancestors how the Khalsa forces, despite being outnumbered
and ill-equipped, used the forest and guerrilla warfare tactics to
defeat a far superior army,” says Zora Singh, a former sarpanch,
whose ancestors’ participation in the war has been documented in
books on the battle.
The forest area,
located at a higher altitude than the rest of the battefield and
village, used to have nearly 30/40 foot high sand dunes that were
believed to have been used by Baba Banda Singh Bahadur to witness
the war. These dunes were flattened in early 1990s by some people
who bought part of land to set up a cooperative housing society
against periphery norms of
Punjab
government which later put a hold on construction. On the lines of
several battlefields, including Kurukshetra and Haldi Ghati which
have been preserved in India, villagers now want this place to be
similarly treasured with an appropriate memorial as the tercentenary
of the battle draws near.
23
September 2009
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