The Birth of the Khalsa
How Vaisakhi 1699 came to be · 6 stops
The Khalsa did not appear from nowhere. This path follows the road to Anandpur — a founding, two martyrdoms, and the day the community was given its distinctive identity — and what the Guru did with it afterwards.
The first martyrdom, 1606 — the turn from quietism toward self-defence begins here.
Guru Arjan, the fifth Guru, died in Mughal custody at Lahore in 1606 on the orders of the emperor Jahangir — the first Sikh martyrdom, and the turning point toward the community's self-defence.
Guru Hargobind's answer: a throne of temporal authority facing the Harmandir Sahib.
Guru Hargobind raised the Akal Takht — the 'throne of the Timeless One' — facing the Harmandir Sahib, giving the community a seat of temporal authority months after his father was executed by the state.
The city where it would happen, founded by Guru Tegh Bahadur.
Guru Tegh Bahadur bought land in the Shivalik foothills and founded Chakk Nanaki, the town that became Anandpur — a defensible seat outside Mughal Punjab, and the cradle of the Khalsa a generation later.
1675 — executed for defending the freedom of others to practise their faith.
The ninth Guru was executed at Delhi in 1675 under Aurangzeb. His son's own account says he died for the tilak and the sacred thread — the rites of a religion that was not his own.
Vaisakhi 1699. The five volunteers, the amrit, the names Singh and Kaur.
On Vaisakhi 1699 at Anandpur, Guru Gobind Singh founded the Khalsa, initiated the first Panj Pyare, took initiation from them in turn, and gave the community a name, a discipline and an identity it has kept ever since.
1708 — the design completed: scripture as Guru, the Khalsa as the Guru's body.
Dying at Nanded in October 1708, Guru Gobind Singh closed the line of human Gurus and vested Guruship in the scripture and the community — a succession no rival could seize and no state could arrest.