Martyr.

Indians have always been a tribe that makes adjustments and are tolerant of other religions and cultures, as evidenced even during the Mughal and British rule. Martyrdom is when we give up our lives for a religion faith or ideology an indicator of inflexibility and absolute surrender, refusing to budge and dying for a cause. Devdutt Patnaik takes us down the earliest labyrinths of martyrdom which began with the Judaic faith. The Greek Selucid Empire went about “Hell raising” all lands including Judea home of the Hebrew tribe. The Jewish clung to their faith despite pressure to change refused to eat pork or make offerings to foreign gods. Judaism is synonymous with martyrdom as Judas insisted on keeping the Sabbath and circumcising male offspring. In Christianity both Roman slaves and nobility faced the wrath of the establishments. Jesus was a martyr as he refused to give up his faith. The early Christians were burned on the stake or fed to the lions for dissent. In Islamic tradition a martyr is called Shaheed meaning witness “to Shaha da” (there is no god but Allah). The first martyr was a woman Sum Ayyah bint Khayyat. In Shia the observance of Moharram ,where suffering is emulated by self flagellation for Hussain who died in the battle of Karbala. In Indian Vedic tradition there is no Sanskrit word for martyr. Though some saints and Sikh gurus suffered persecution, at the hands of the Mughals. However during India freedom struggle from the British rule ‘Shaheed’ become popular amongst the revolutionaries. Defending ones country is seen as a noble and upright cause. Bhagat Singh become a martyr inspiring freedom fighters when he walked into the gallows singing the song “Mere Rang de Basanti” (Color me saffron, the color of sacrifice) dying for ones motherland. I am reminded of an opening dialogue from the movie by General Patton of the US Army “You don’t win wars by dying for your country; you win wars by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country” Questions haunt us about color of sacrifice.