The companion to this article ('An Empty Pitcher Makes Noise', Jan 05) examined the start of the 12 o'clock syndrome. Let us now examine how this got strengthened with the passage of time and how un-grateful the non-Sikh communities of today have become towards the Sikhs.

Post the return of Nadir Shah to Persia, Zakhriya Khan went on a rampage against the Sikh movement and killed 10,000 of them in a few days.

Between 1748 & 1765, Ahmad Shah Abdali the ruler from Afghanistan rampaged India nine times. Again, the Sikhs in Punjab attacked his returning convoys during the peak summer heat and freed two thousand two hundred women and escorted them back to their homes. Yet again a heroic act at 12 noon, which unfortunately the others perceived as a maddening act, therefore further strengthened the 12-noon syndrome. These acts of the Sikhs aggravated Ahmed Shah Abdali, who swore to take revenge at an appropriate time.

During his sixth invasion he caught the Sikhs unawares and 25,000 of them were killed in a few days. But the spirit of the Sikhs remained high as one Nihang Sikh of that time commented "only the soft and unbaked ones of us have fallen off".

Finally, Sikhs under Ranjit Singh in 1798 brought to an end the eight hundred years of foreign invasions into India through the Khyber Pass, by bringing it under their control. This was the best gift the Sikhs gave to the Indian nation, which finally allowed the rest of India to breathe in peace.

Hari Singh Nalwa, who manned the Khyber Pass for years, became a household name in Afghanistan. Even today, the Afghani mothers put their children to sleep with the threat of Hari Singh Nalwa's name.

It was Ranjit Singh who bought back to India the world famous Kohinoor diamond, which was earlier looted by Nadir Shah and taken to Persia.

If not for the Sikhs, who captured Kashmir in 1819, today it would have been a part of Afghanistan.

Ladakh, which earlier was a part of Tibet, owes its existence on the map of India to Zorawar Singh, who captured it in 1836.

Sikhs were the last to surrender to the British in the sub-continent and were the first to raise arms against them.

It was after two bloody Anglo-Sikh wars that the British managed to bring Punjab as the last kingdom on the map of the British-India Empire. It is an irony of fate that the Sikhs had to fight against their own Purbia, Bengali and Madrasi countrymen, who were then a part of British forces, in saving the last glowing flame of India, the Punjab, from British annexation. It was not due to lack of courage and conviction that the Sikhs lost the wars against the British, but a treachery by Gulab, the Dogra prime minister under Ranjit Singh, who joined hands with the British in exchange for the title of Kashmir on winning the war.

British records say about the Sikhs "….such a mass of men, fierce and untamed in their dying struggle, who fought like Lions and ran right on the bayonets and struck on their assailants when they were transfixed".

In spite of the loss of empire to the British, the spirit of freedom amongst Sikhs was soaring high. Whereas the British would daily fire a canon at 12 noon by the East India Company time, which was Calcutta time, the Sikhs refused to recognize the British time. There is a one and a half hour time difference between Calcutta and Lahore time and therefore the Sikhs maintained their firing of the Canon at 12 noon Lahore time.

Amongst the general public there was a confusion as to which canon denoted the 12 noon and therefore at the fire of the first canon the public would say "12 o' clock of British" and on the second fire, an hour and a half later, they would say "12 o' clock of…Sikhs."

Soon, the spirit of defiance and freedom was forgotten by fellow Indians and they started linking the 'madness' demonstrated by them during Nadir Shah and Abdalis' invasions at 12 noon to the act of defiance during British period and there took place the 12 o' clock jokes.

Much before 1919, when Mahatma Gandhi issued the call for satyagraha (boycotting English goods), the Sikhs under Baba Ram Singh had started the boycott movement in the year 1863. Eighty-two Sikhs were tied to canons and blown apart by the British for this act of defiance, much before Mahatma Gandhi even stepped on Indian soil.

Sikhs were the only Indian community to be internationally acclaimed as early as 1897, for their heroism and valor. Where in the history of warfare can you find the instance of heroism as demonstrated by twenty-two Sikh soldiers manning the signal post of Saragarhi in Northwest province, against the invading Afghani army, with no ammunition back up. All twenty-two of them fought till the last bullet had been fired against the Afghan army of seven thousand warriors. The twenty-two soldiers then charged with their kirpans (sword for personal defense) to be eventually cut down to pieces. The easier way out would have been to surrender, but the spirit of Sikhs has always made them do what Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru had said,

"Grant me this boon, O Lord, at last when the end of life is near, I may die fighting in the battlefield for the sake of righteousness".

The Sikhs won the first battle of Indian independence from the British Empire when, after the loss of many lives in 1929, they were able to take over the charge of their Gurdwaras from the British. On this victory, Mahatma Gandhi sent a telegram to the Sikh community saying,

"The first decisive battle of Independence of India WON - CONGRATULATIONS".

Where in the world can you find an act of sacrifice like that of Sikhs in 1922, willing to offer the lives of their wives, children and themselves by lying on the rails to stop a train of freedom fighters who only had to be fed because they were hungry. Against the orders of the British Government the train had to finally stop after killing a few Sikhs who sat on the tracks. But to the Sikhs their lives were less important than having won the battle of defiance of British orders and having fed the freedom fighters.

Not many can claim the valor with which Bhagat Singh offered himself at the altar of Indian freedom in 1931.

There is not another instance of bravery as shown by Udham Singh in 1940, when he went to London and shot dead Sir Michael O' Dwyer at a public meeting, as a revenge for the Jallianwala massacre.

Out of 42,000 recruits in the Indian National Army under the command of Subhash Chandra Bose, 28,000, or sixty-seven percent, of its soldiers were Sikhs.

Not many words are required to illustrate the contribution of Sikhs, who are less than two percent of the Indian population, in the freedom struggle against the British.

Partition of India in 1947 brought innumerable deaths to Sikhs and was the greatest disaster known in the Indian history. Surely the Sikhs paid the heaviest price for the freedom of India.

Punjab lost its most fertile lands to Pakistan during the partition. However, today due to hard labor of Sikh farmers, the Punjab in India produces much higher quantities of food grain than the fertile Punjab in Pakistan. Punjab contributes forty percent of rice and fifty-one percent of wheat into the central pool of food grain of India.

Post partition, many of the landless Sikhs who settled in the jungles of the Terai region in the state of Uttar Pradesh have today made the area as fertile as Punjab.

The contribution of Sikhs towards the Indian Defense Services is the highest with respect to their tow percent population size. The Sikh community has also won the maximum number of gallantry awards since independence - five Param Vir Chakras (PVCs), forty Maha Vir Chakras (MVCs) and two-hundred and nine Vir Chakras (VrCs).

During the emergency of 1975 imposed by Indira Gandhi, no organized protest was made across the country by any section of community, except for the Sikhs who conducted daily morchas (peaceful protests) in which forty thousand Sikhs courted arrest. Only the Sikhs chose to sacrifice their freedom for the sake of protecting the freedom of their fellow Indians.

You will never find a Sikh begging in a nation (India) where begging flourishes as a parallel economy. In-spite of being uprooted and made homeless many times, the Sikhs have demonstrated the ability to rise back from scratch. Each one of them believes in actively contributing towards the nation building. Almost thirty years ago, Nobel prize winner American Economist Professor Milton Friedman on his visit to India humorously remarked, "Lease out India to the Sikhs for a while and there will be no problem of development."

Could there be any greater compliment to the Sikh spirit and enterprise?

In spite of the endless contributions made by Sikhs towards nation building, our friends find them to be a laughing stock. Well, it makes no difference to the Sikhs as their pitchers are filled with unparallel acts.

As a nation, Indians may lack sense of humor but the Sikhs are a rare species, with a great sense of humor. This is the community that has learnt to fight, succeed and laugh.

It is time for my friends to do a bit of introspection.