Er. Rajesh Pathak
The great Battle of Chamkaur was fought in 1703. With just 40 courageous warriors, Guru Gobind Singh put the far more powerful Mughal army in a rather precarious position. Guru Gobind Singh had four sons, but unfortunately two of them, Ajit Singh and Jujhar Singh, died fighting on that battlefield. Thereafter, on 27th December 1704, Wazir Khan, the Nawab of Sirhind and commander under Mughal emperor Aurangzeb — who wished to see India rid of its Hindu population — deceitfully captured Guru Gobind Singh’s two younger sons and had them imprisoned. Barely eight years old, Zorawar Singh, and about six years old, Fateh Singh, were then given the choice of converting to Islam or facing death. Both boys chose to uphold their faith and embraced death instead.
History offers many such inspiring instances of talented and courageous young boys — Eklavya and Veer Haqiqat Rai, to name just two. Yet in this country, “Bal Diwas” has long been celebrated on the birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, a politician. No comparable instance is recalled of any glorious act performed by him in his own boyhood that might inspire other boys or girls at that stage of life.
To correct this imbalance in public life, the Modi government later declared “Veer Bal Diwas” to be observed nationally in sacred memory of the martyred Zorawar Singh and Fateh Singh.
Not only this — in the same spirit, the country’s highest sporting honour, the “Khel Ratna” award, previously named after Rajiv Gandhi, a politician, was renamed after the legendary player Major Dhyan Chand. This step struck at a mindset that, instead of merit, had long given priority to personal connections or political interest — whether in selecting recipients for government assistance or in naming public places after public figures. At one time, when it came to granting government pensions and other benefits to freedom fighters, the resulting list of names ended up tarnishing the sanctity of the entire freedom-fighter community in the eyes of the public. The truth, in fact, was quite the opposite: the family members of Sardar Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad, Batukeshwar Dutt, and others were left to live lives of hardship and neglect because of rejection by the establishment of that time.
This year, continuing that same shift toward rewarding performance over personal vested interest, the list of Padma Shri awardees includes Professor V. Kamakoti. The merit he has demonstrated is itself enough to show how deservedly this honour has been conferred. Having once failed to clear the JEE — scoring as low as 1 mark in Chemistry — he went on to study at a college affiliated with Madras University, earning an engineering degree in Computer Science. He later completed his PhD from IIT Madras (now IIT Chennai) and began teaching there.
He would go on to become Chairman of the very same JEE examination in which he had once failed. He has also served as a member of the National Security Advisory Board and, notably, became president of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Task Force.
These examples reflect how the erosion of values in public life has begun to be checked. However, those accustomed to glorifying figures like Babur, Aurangzeb, and Ghazi Masood Ghaznavi, along with other anti-Sanatan voices, are unlikely to welcome this shift. It is little surprise, then, that they seize every opportunity to join hands with anti-Sanatan forces, who can be seen staging demonstrations time and again over manufactured issues.
( The author is an engineer by profession and a freelance writer from Bhopal)
