Banda Singh Bahadur

The ascetic at Nanded

Born Lachman Dev in 1670 at Rajouri in the Jammu hills, he was a hunter who renounced the world — the tradition says over a doe killed with her fawns — and wandered India as the ascetic Madho Das, settling on the Godavari at Nanded. There in 1708 the dying Guru Gobind Singh sought him out. The hermit gave himself as the Guru’s banda — his slave — and received arms, counsellors, and a commission: justice for the Punjab.^1,2

Six years of sovereignty

What followed is told in the era that bears his name: the peasantry in arms, Sirhind broken at Chappar Chiri in 1710, coin and seal struck in the Gurus’ names, and — the chronicles suggest — tenancy turned to ownership for the cultivators of his territories. The empire required five years and its best armies to starve him out of Gurdas Nangal.^1,2

The unbroken end

Paraded through Delhi in a cage in 1716, offered life for conversion daily as his companions were executed in their hundreds, he refused to the last and died under torture in June 1716, his small son murdered before him. Mughal and European witnesses alike recorded the prisoners’ serenity. The state he improvised did not survive him; the proof that the Khalsa could rule did.^1,2