Mai Bhago
Shamed forty deserters into returning to the Guru, led them into battle at Muktsar and survived to serve as one of his bodyguards.
Mai Bhago was a woman of Jhabal in the Majha, near Amritsar, born into a Dhillon Jat family. In 1704, during the long siege of Anandpur, forty Sikhs of Majha, worn down by hunger, signed a disclaimer, a bedava, saying they were no longer the Guru's Sikhs, and went home.
When they arrived, Mai Bhago shamed them, telling them to stay home and wear women's clothes while the women went to fight. Led by her and by Mahan Singh, the forty returned. In 1705 they met the Mughal army pursuing the Guru at the pool of Khidrana in the Malwa desert and fought until they all fell. Mai Bhago was wounded. Mahan Singh, dying, asked the Guru to tear up the bedava, and the Guru did.
Mai Bhago stayed with Guru Gobind Singh as one of his bodyguards, dressed as a man, and went with him to Nanded. After his death she lived in meditation at Jinvara near Bidar. She is the great woman warrior of Sikh history.
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.
Forty Sikhs from Majha who renounced the Guru during the Anandpur siege, then came back and died defending him at Khidrana. He tore up their letter of desertion.
Mai Bhago was the first woman in sikh history to take up arms to fight opressors.Wikimedia Commons · SikhHeritageMuseum (by unknown photographer) ↗