PM Modi pays tribute to Guru Gobind Singh – inspiration for the rise of New India

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has paid rich tribute to Guru Gobind Singh, lauding the 10 the guru of the Sikh faith as a monumental figure who will continue to inspire generations.

“On the sacred occasion of his Parkash Purab, I bow to Sri Guru Gobind Singh Ji and recall his contribution towards serving humanity. His unparalleled courage will continue to motivate people for years to come,” PM Modi tweeted.

This is the second occasion in the last three days that the Prime Minister has lavished praise on Guru Gobind Singh for his massive contributions to deepening the ideological foundations of a rising New India.

On December 26, while observing the Veer Bal Diwas—children’s day that commemorates the supreme sacrifice of the Guru Gobind Singh’s two minor sons—PM Modi had stressed that the memory of India’s real, rooted to the soil heroes, would instil genuine pride and help countrymen discard the slavish mentality that would otherwise keep India backward.

He had pointed out that decolonising the mind was part of “five resolutions” that he had aired during his August 15 address. Pursuit of these resolutions were central to usher India’s rise as a fully developed nation by 2047, the year marking a century of India’s independence. PM Modi has described the 25-year period of India’s surge into the developed league as “Azadi ka Amritkaal”.

“If we wish to take India to greater heights of success in future, then we must break free from the narrow views of the past. That’s why, in the ‘Azadi Ka Amritkaal’, the country has taken a resolution of ‘freedom from the slave mentality’. ‘Veer Bal Diwas’ is like the soul of those ‘five-resolutions’ of the country.”

PM Modi had spotlighted that the Sikh Guru tradition is not just a tradition of faith and spirituality. “It is also a source of inspiration for the idea of ‘Ek Bharat Shrestha Bharat’.”

“Our sacred Guru Granth Sahib is the best example of this. It contains the sayings of 15 saints and 14 composers from different corners of India along with that of the Sikh Gurus. Similarly, if you look at the life journey of Guru Gobind Singh; he was born in Patna in eastern India and worked around the mountainous regions of North-Western India. His life’s journey culminated in Maharashtra. Guru’s Panch Pyare were also from different parts of the country, and I am proud to say that one of the Panch-Pyares was also from Dwarka, Gujarat, where I was fortunate to be born.”

The Prime Minister said that the Guru Gobind Singh’s life journey showed that, “‘Ideology is bigger than an individual & the nation is bigger than Ideology’ and the mantra of ‘nation first’ was the firm resolution of Guru Gobind Singh ji.”

“When he was a child, a great sacrifice was needed to protect the nation. He told his father – “there was no personality greater than you, so you make this sacrifice”. When he became a father, he did not hesitate to sacrifice his sons for the cause of the nation with the same promptness. When his sons were sacrificed, he looked at his people and said – ‘चार मूये तो क्या हुआ, जीवत कई हज़ार’. That is, so what if my four sons have died? Several thousand of my countrymen are my sons. This tradition of ‘Nation First’, is a great inspiration for us. Today the responsibility of strengthening this tradition rests on our shoulders.”

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