Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The battle raged, Mughals against Pathans, and the swords clashed on the field.
One side took aim and fired their guns; the other attacked with their elephants.
And those whose letter had been torn in the Lord's Court — their time had come, brothers, and they died.
A war-reporter's verse: guns against elephants — one of the first records in South Asian sacred literature of gunpowder deciding a battle, the old world and the new killing each other on one field. And beneath the smoke, the hymn's quiet accounting: the torn letter in the Lord's Court. Whichever army a man wore, his span was written elsewhere. The verse does not glorify either side; it watches both through the one lens that levels them — mortality under Hukam. "O Siblings of Destiny," Nanak calls us, even here: the dying of strangers is family news.
Does it change how you see a conflict when you remember that both sides are mortal?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI