This is the first of a two-part se­ries on the life and con­tri­bu­tion of Baba Banda Singh Ba­hadar. We dis­cuss here his role in the vic­tory of Sirhind. The sec­ond part will talk about his strug­gle against abo­li­tion of the  Za­min­dari sys­tem and his supreme mar­tyr­dom.

Baba Banda Singh Ba­hadar is an unique per­son­al­ity in his­tory. He is a per­fect idol of de­vo­tion and sac­ri­fice. His val­our and stern ini­ti­a­tion lib­er­ated the peas­ants from the bondage of feu­dal­ism. His supreme mar­tyr­dom with 740 of his as­so­ci­ate Sikhs in Delhi was in­com­pa­ra­ble in the an­nals of his­tory

The episode of mar­tyr­dom of Banda Singh and other Sikhs are mile­stones in Sikh his­tory -an out­stand­ing tes­ti­mony to the high­est work­ing spirit of Sikhs and wit­ness of the spir­i­tual mag­i­cal power of ‘Am­rit’.  They cer­tify that the choice of Banda Singh as a Gen­eral by Guru Gob­ind Singh was the best and eter­nal. Banda Singh Ba­hadar was a man of vi­sion. In a short span of just eight years, he ma­te­ri­al­ized the dream of Guru Sahib, of es­tab­lish­ing an in­de­pen­dent Sikh State in 1711. Banda Singh par­tic­u­larly laid down the foun­da­tion of Khalsa Raj and made Lo­hgarh as its cap­i­tal. There are in­nu­mer­able facts to be dis­cussed but I will only throw light on three im­por­tant events of his life, i.e. vic­tory of Sirhind, strug­gle for the op­pres­sive Za­min­dari sys­tem (feu­dal­ism) and his supreme mar­tyr­dom.

Banda Singh Ba­hadar was the most valu­able and ap­pro­pri­ate choice of Guru Gob­ind Singh. Born in a Ra­jput fam­ily at Ra­jouri, Jammu, he spend the ini­tial years of his life in search of eter­nal peace. In his search he changed many spir­i­tual mas­ters, out of whom one of them changed his name as Mad­ho­das Bairagi from Lach­man­das. He trav­elled from Jammu to Ma­ha­rash­tra, armed with the spir­i­tual and mag­i­cal pow­ers he learnt a lot but yet could­n’t ac­quire eter­nal peace.

“It is clearly vis­i­ble that Guru Sahib showed a high level of in­tel­lect and far­sight­ed­ness in choos­ing Banda Singh as the Sikh na­tion’s Pan­thak leader. Dr. Ganda Singh, a promi­nent Sikh his­to­rian says that ‘It was a mir­a­cle to change an use­less pas­sive vagabond by the power of Am­rit to a true Sikh and the great­est com­man­der of mar­tial Sikh race in a few days’.”

In 1708 Guru Gob­ind Singh vis­ited Nanded and met Mad­ho­das. It was a mys­tic meet­ing, in a few sec­onds he was trans­formed. Mad­ho­das Bairagi re­nun­ci­ated  bairag -soli­tude and par­took Am­rit and be­came a true Sikh of Guru by the name of Gur­bakhsh Singh but very pop­u­larly called as Banda Singh in his­tory, the ti­tle ‘Ba­hadar’ (the brave one) was con­ferred by Guru Sahib him­self on him. From Nanded it­self Guru Sahib sent Banda Singh on the mis­sion of Pun­jab and gave him five ar­rows, a Nishaan Sahib, five of his beloved Sikhs and a Na­gaara. On the way to­wards Delhi in Ra­jasthan, Banda Singh re­ceived the un­for­tu­nate news of Guru Sahib’s demise, it was an heart-break­ing mo­ment but he bowed down his head in sub­mis­sion to the Lord’s will and de­cided to re­al­ize Guru Sahib’s dreams. He made the ful­fill­ment of Guru Sahib’s wish, as the mis­sion of his life and pro­ceeded on to the Pun­jab. 

It was the time of po­lit­i­cal tur­bu­lence in the sub-con­ti­nent, though at the cen­tre Mughal Em­peror Ba­hadur Shah was in rule but orig­i­nal power was de­cen­tral­ized. Ra­jputs, Marathas, Pathans on the North-West fron­tiers were try­ing to set them­selves as the supreme au­thor­ity. 

Wazir Khan, the Gov­er­nor of Sirhind had an im­por­tant po­si­tion in Pun­jab. He had per­sonal en­mity with Guru Gob­ind Singh, though Guru Sahib never es­tab­lished any king­dom. His field was so­cio-re­li­gious re­for­ma­tion and strug­gle against tyranny. But Wazir Khan -the tyrant that he was, raged a bat­tle against Guru Sahib and the Sikhs. In 1704 he laid siege around the fort of Anand­pur, the con­tem­po­rary cen­tre of Sikh ac­tiv­i­ties and the place of ori­gin of Khalsa. The siege con­tin­ued for long and Guru Sahib had to aban­don Anand­pur with his fam­ily and as­so­ci­ates. His two el­der sons laid down their lives fight­ing in the bat­tle­field of Chamkaur Sahib. Guru Sahib’s mother Mata Gu­jar Kaur (nearly 70 years) and two of his mi­nor sons (aged 5 and 7 years) were put to death by Wazir Khan. These two brave chil­dren were bru­tally tor­tured and bricked alive. Guru Sahib was peace­ful and main­tained ex­treme calm­ness.

“It is clearly vis­i­ble that Guru Sahib showed a high level of in­tel­lect and far­sight­ed­ness in choos­ing Banda Singh as the Sikh na­tion’s Pan­thak leader. Dr. Ganda Singh, a promi­nent Sikh his­to­rian says that ‘It was a mir­a­cle to change an use­less pas­sive vagabond by the power of Am­rit to a true Sikh and the great­est com­man­der of mar­tial Sikh race in a few days’.”

In 1708 Guru Gob­ind Singh trav­elled to Dec­can with Ba­hadur Shah. Wazir Khan’s spy fol­lowed him till Nanded and stabbed Him fa­tally. Af­ter a few days, he left for his heav­enly abode. Be­fore leav­ing the world Guru Sahib be­stowed spir­i­tual Gu­ru­ship to Sri Guru Granth Sahib and the Pan­thak lead­er­ship to Baba Banda Singh.

It is clearly vis­i­ble that Guru Sahib showed a high level of in­tel­lect and far­sight­ed­ness in choos­ing Banda Singh as the Sikh na­tion’s Pan­thak leader. Dr. Ganda Singh, a promi­nent Sikh his­to­rian says that ‘It was a mir­a­cle to change an use­less pas­sive vagabond by the power of Am­rit to a true Sikh and the great­est com­man­der of mar­tial Sikh race in a few days’. It was in­deed a mir­a­cle which hap­pened on the soil of Ma­ha­rash­tra, chang­ing a non-vi­o­lent bairagi to the most pow­er­ful com­man­der and a de­vout mar­tyr in his­tory.  

Once ded­i­cated to Guru Sahib, even the mis­eries, atroc­i­ties, bru­tal­i­ties and death were un­able to move him from his path. Just a few days com­pan­ion­ship with Guru Sahib trans­formed Banda Singh. As told by Guru Sahib, Banda Singh left Ma­ha­rash­tra for the mis­sion in Pun­jab. Be­fore the mar­tyr­dom of Sahibzadas too, there were in­tense sac­ri­fices of Guru Ar­jan Dev and Guru Tegh Ba­hadar but Sikhs never re­tal­i­ated, they bore every­thing peace­fully. How­ever noth­ing could be more bru­tal than the killing of in­no­cent 5 and 7 year-olds. Af­ter the sac­ri­fice of Sahibzadas -the younger sons of the tenth mas­ter -Guru Gob­ind Singh, in 1704, it was time to teach the tyrant a les­son.

Banda Singh read­ily ac­cepted this and pro­ceeded fur­ther. He raided many ar­eas which were ei­ther ruled or owned by the Pan­thak de­fault­ers and con­quered them. He reached Pun­jab in 1709 and gave Guru Sahib’s ‘Hukam­na­mas’ to all Sikhs who were wait­ing for Guru Sahib’s next call for ac­tion. 

It was a tough task for Banda Singh Ba­hadar, be­cause dur­ing the time of the Gu­rus, they them­selves vis­ited the spir­i­tual cen­ters to unite the Sikhs. They had a com­mon fac­tor ‘GU­RU’ to join hands with each other. But now prac­ti­cally when Guru Sahib was not pre­sent in hu­man form, this be­came a chal­lenge.  

Be­ing a vi­sion­ary, Banda Singh Ba­hadar very read­ily stud­ied the sit­u­a­tion and suc­ceeded in unit­ing Sikhs in the name of the Guru. He raised the mar­tial spirit of Khalsa for a great sin­gle cause ‘The vic­tory of Sirhind’. In me­dieval times Sirhind was the most pros­per­ous and strate­gi­cally im­por­tant Mughal city on the Delhi-La­hore route. It’s pros­per­ity, beauty and art was ad­mired by the vis­i­tors. In Wazir Khan’s charge, the city reached the pin­na­cle of its glory.

How­ever, from the day when young in­no­cent Sahibzadas and Mata Gu­jar Kaur were ex­e­cuted, Sikhs named it as ‘Guru-maari Sirhind’ which means Sirhind is the slayer of Gu­ru’s fam­ily. The en­tire Panth was stunned by Wazir Khan’s bru­tal act. Banda Singh made the Sirhind mis­sion a com­mon goal and suc­ceeded in re­unit­ing the scat­tered Khalsa and raised them as one unique mar­tial race again.

Though from the times of the sixth mas­ter Guru Har­gob­ind Sahib, Sikhs had started us­ing war tech­niques, it was for the first time in Sikh his­tory that be­fore the war of Sirhind, Banda Singh di­vided the army into bat­tal­ions and that too in a pure sec­u­lar way with­out any dis­crim­i­na­tion. Each bat­tal­ion was as­signed with a spe­cial task. Sikhs were one-tenth of Qazir Khan’s army and far too low in arms and am­mu­ni­tion. With the bless­ings of Guru Sahib on their side, they were ready to fight till their last breath. In May 1710 A.D. the ul­ti­mate bat­tle be­tween Suba Sirhind Wazir Khan and Sikh troops led by Banda Singh took place.

It was to­tally an un­equal war in all as­pects but ul­ti­mately the supreme novel strate­gic tech­niques of Banda Singh and ex­treme will power of Khalsa tri­umphed. Wazir Khan was killed in the bat­tle. The pros­per­ous city of Sirhind was plun­dered and to­tally de­stroyed into ru­ins. How­ever, un­der strict or­ders of Banda Singh, no re­li­gious place was harmed. Even to­day those me­dieval mosques and shrines are stand­ing at their re­spec­tive sites. Af­ter the land­mark vic­tory of Sirhind, Banda Singh de­feated sev­eral other op­po­nents too. He laid down the foun­da­tion of Khalsa Raj. He then con­cen­trated on stream­lin­ing his ad­min­is­tra­tion and es­tab­lished Lo­hgarh as the first Sikh cap­i­tal. To com­mem­o­rate the vic­tory of Sirhind he started a new cal­en­dar, minted coins of Sikh king­dom in the names of Guru Nanak and Guru Gob­ind Singh and pub­lished the first seal of the Sikh state in Guru Sahib’s name.