Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The Hindu women, the Muslim women, the Bhatti women and the Rajputs —
some had their robes torn from head to foot; others fled to live among the cremation grounds.
Their husbands never came home. How did they pass their night?
Once more the evenhanded catalogue — Hindu, Muslim, Bhatti, Rajput, every community's women named in one line of shared devastation, because grief does not check religion and neither does Guru Nanak's compassion. Then the hymn does something almost unbearable: it stops describing and asks us a question. How did they pass their night? We are not allowed to remain spectators; the verse hands us the widow's night and makes our imagination finish it. That transfer — from watching suffering to feeling it from inside — is the whole moral education the Babar-vani exists to give.
How did they pass their night? Sit with the question the way the hymn asks you to.
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI