Baisakhi: Celebrating the harvest season and birth of Khalsa

This Baisakhi, Tribune Correspondent Manmeet Singh Gill and lensman Vishal Kumar took a round of the city and nearby villages to bring to you the joyful celebrations on this auspicious day marking the harvesting season…

For Punjabis, Baisakhi — colloquially known as Vaisakhi — is not merely an annual wheat-harvesting festival, but over the centuries, it has acquired far wider religious and political connotations.

Here, two big events on Baisakhi need special mention — first, the 10th Sikh master Guru Gobind Singh had formed the Khalsa on this day in 1699; and secondly, hundreds of people who had gathered at Jallianwala Bagh were massacred in the indiscriminate firing by the British troops.

Both events had far wider implications on the political history of the region. If the first event enabled the peasantry to fight against the Mughal empire under the leadership of Baba Banda Singh Bahadur, the second forced Punjabis, especially Sikhs, to fight against the British and within less than next three decades, a strong freedom movement in the region earned country its freedom.

For Punjabis, Baisakhi is a mix of several emotions — joy, devotion, sacrifice and hope and it is this hope that fills most with joy. Joyous celebrations on the day are no secret, as fairs are held in almost every town and big village, where people gather in large numbers and celebrate.

Amid all of this joy and celebrations, here is an environmental concern too! Not many decades ago, Baisakhi was a festival to celebrate the completion of harvesting. There is no bigger testimony than the famous poem ‘Vaisakhi’ by legendary poet Dhani Ram Chatrik. In this poem, which has acquired the status of folklore, Chatrik depicted how farmers celebrated the festival after harvesting the wheat crop.

However, in the present times, with change in climatic conditions, a large number of farmers, especially in Majha region, are still waiting for their crop to ripe.