The Bandai and Tat Khalsa Settle

Two Khalsas

Banda Singh Bahadur was executed in 1716, and the movement he had led did not simply end with him. His followers — the Bandai Khalsa — held that his authority had been real and continuing. Against them stood the Tat Khalsa, the “true” Khalsa, who held that the Guruship had closed in 1708 and that Banda had claimed more than was his to claim.^1,2

The dispute was not abstract. Both groups wanted Amritsar, and with it the offerings made at the Harmandir Sahib — the Bandais claiming half of that income, the Tat Khalsa rejecting the claim outright. They used different salutations, which in the conditions of the time functioned as a recognition signal and a declaration of allegiance.³

By Vaisakhi 1721 the two camps were fortified against each other at Amritsar and expecting to fight.

Mani Singh’s arrangement

From Delhi, Mata Sundari had already moved on it: she sent Bhai Mani Singh to Amritsar to take charge of the Harmandir Sahib, along with Mama Kirpal Singh, an uncle of Guru Gobind Singh.^1,3

What Mani Singh proposed was that the question be put to the Guru rather than to either party. Two slips of paper were written, one bearing each faction’s salutation, and dropped into the sarovar, the pool. Whichever surfaced first would carry the verdict.

The Tat Khalsa slip surfaced. The bulk of the Bandais accepted it and merged; the few who would not were driven out.^1,3

Why this is in the chronicle

It looks like a small thing, and it is one of the more consequential episodes of the century.

A community with no living Guru, no state, and a price on its members’ heads came within a day of civil war over money and legitimacy, and instead settled it by a procedure both sides had agreed in advance to be bound by — and the losing side largely stayed inside the result. Twenty-seven years later the same Panth was capable of organising itself into the Dal Khalsa at the same place, which would not have been possible had 1721 gone the other way.

It also shows the shape of authority in those years. The decision was brokered by a scholar, on the instruction of a woman in Delhi holding no office anyone had defined, in the absence of anything resembling a government.

Worth noting about the sources. The account of the lots comes from the Sikh tradition rather than from any external record, and the tradition transmitting it is the one descended from the winning side — the Punjabi chronicles are consistently hostile to Banda and the Bandais.⁴ That the split happened and was resolved around 1721 is well attested. The mechanism is the tradition’s own telling of how.