Guru Tegh Bahadur

Tyag Mal was born in Amritsar in 1621, the youngest son of Guru Hargobind. At fourteen he fought beside his father at Kartarpur in 1635 with such courage that his father renamed him Tegh Bahadur, 'brave of the sword'. Yet for most of his life he lived in meditation, for many years almost in seclusion at Bakala near the Beas.

When the dying Guru Har Krishan said 'the Guru is at Bakala' in 1664, twenty-two members of the Sodhi family set themselves up there as Guru. Makhan Shah Lubana, a sea-trader who had vowed five hundred gold coins to the Guru when his ship was saved in a storm, went from one to another offering two coins each. Only Tegh Bahadur asked where the rest were. Makhan Shah climbed on the roof and shouted 'Guru ladho re', I have found the Guru.

The Guru travelled widely in the east, to Assam, Bengal and Bihar, where his son Gobind was born at Patna in 1666, and in 1665 he founded the town of Chakk Nanaki, later Anandpur, in the Shivalik foothills. He wrote 116 hymns of great beauty on detachment, death and fearlessness; his saloks at the end of the Guru Granth Sahib say that the one who frightens no one and is afraid of no one is truly wise.

In 1675 a group of Kashmiri Pandits led by Kirpa Ram came to Anandpur. The Mughal governor of Kashmir was forcing conversions, and they asked for help. The Guru told them to say that if Tegh Bahadur could be converted, they would all follow. He was arrested on his way to Delhi and imprisoned with his companions Bhai Mati Das, Bhai Sati Das and Bhai Dayala. He was told to embrace Islam or to perform a miracle. He refused both. Before his eyes Mati Das was sawn in half, Dayala boiled in a cauldron and Sati Das wrapped in cotton and burned.

On 11 November 1675 Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded in Chandni Chowk, Delhi, where Gurdwara Sis Ganj now stands. A storm blew up; in the confusion Bhai Jaita carried his head to Anandpur, and Lakhi Shah Vanjara carried his body away in a cart and burned his own house to cremate it, on the spot where Gurdwara Rakab Ganj stands. Guru Gobind Singh wrote that his father gave his head but not his faith, to protect the frontal mark and sacred thread of others. He is called Hind di Chadar, the shield of India: a Guru who died for the freedom of a religion not his own.