Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji
1621–1675 · Ninth Sikh Guru, martyr
Who founded the town of Anandpur and was executed in Delhi in 1675 for defending the right of Kashmiri Hindus to practise their religion — a martyrdom for freedom of conscience.
The sword’s name, the hermit’s life
Youngest son of Guru Hargobind, he fought as a youth in the battle of Kartarpur in 1635 — earning, tradition holds, the name Tegh Bahadur, “brave of the sword” — then withdrew into two decades of meditation at Bakala. When the dying child Guru pointed the community there in 1664, impostors set up shop; the tradition of the merchant Makhan Shah, who found the true Guru among them, is a favourite of the sakhis. He became ninth Guru that year.1,2
Travels and a new town
His Guruship was itinerant: long journeys through the eastern country as far as Bengal and Assam, congregations revived, wells sunk in a drought-stricken countryside. In 1665 he founded Anandpur in the Shivalik foothills — refuge, capital and, in his son’s time, cradle of the Khalsa. His hundred and fifteen hymns, austere and consoling on mortality and detachment, entered the scripture at Damdama.1,2
Hind di Chadar
In 1675, answering the appeal of Kashmiri Brahmins facing forced conversion, he staked his life on their freedom of conscience and was beheaded at Chandni Chowk in Delhi. Remembered as Hind di Chadar — the shield of India — he died defending a faith not his own; his nine-year-old son became Guru Gobind Singh.1,2
In the chronicle
Before you go
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