Baba Deep Singh
Scholar and warrior who led the Shaheed misl. In his seventies he marched to free the Harmandir Sahib after Afghan desecration and died near its precinct.
Deep Singh was born in 1682 at Pahuwind near Amritsar, a Sandhu Jat, and took amrit from Guru Gobind Singh at Anandpur in 1699. He stayed with the Guru, learned to read and write Gurmukhi and Persian under Bhai Mani Singh, and became a scholar and a warrior.
At Damdama Sahib after 1706 he helped prepare the final text of the Guru Granth Sahib and later made several handwritten copies, sending them to the takhts. When the Dal Khalsa was organised he led the Shaheedan misl, and he fought with Banda Singh.
In 1757 Ahmad Shah Abdali's son Timur Shah desecrated the Harmandir Sahib and filled the sacred pool with rubble. Baba Deep Singh, then seventy-five, drew a line on the ground at Talwandi Sabo and called for volunteers willing to die. Thousands crossed it. He marched on Amritsar and met the Afghan army at Gohalwar, five miles from the city.
Tradition says that in the battle his head was cut off, and that he held it in his left hand and fought on with the khanda in his right until he reached the parikrama of the Harmandir Sahib, where he laid his head down as he had vowed. Gurdwara Shaheed Baba Deep Singh marks the spot, and his double-edged khanda is kept at the Akal Takht.
Battles
Connected
Tenth Guru, warrior and poet. Created the Khalsa in 1699, fought a long war with the Mughals and hill rajas, lost his four sons and mother, and named the Guru Granth Sahib as the final Guru.
Led thirty Sikhs out of the Akal Takht to face Ahmad Shah Abdali's army in December 1764 rather than leave the Harmandir Sahib undefended.