Shield of India: Guru Tegh Bahadur and the Martyrdom That Shaped a Nation

Guru Tegh Bahadur’s martyrdom 350 years on remains a defining moment in the subcontinent’s battle between power and principle.

Painting depicting the execution of Guru Tegh Bahadur.

On November 24, India marks 350 years since the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Sikh Guru, who was executed in Delhi in 1675 on the orders of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. His death, seared into memory as an act of serene defiance, reshaped the religious and political landscape of northern India. To his followers he remains ‘Hind ki Chadar’ (the Shield of India) and ‘Dharam ki Chadar’ (the Shield of Religion). His martyrdom was not only a Sikh tragedy but a turning point in the subcontinent’s story of resistance to authoritarianism.

From the narrow lanes of Chandni Chowk, where he was publicly beheaded to the plains of Punjab, where the severed head of the Guru was secretly cremated by devotees at great personal risk, the events of November 1675 sparked a transformation. They stirred the imagination of a nine-year-old boy in Anandpur - Gobind Rai - who would grow into Guru Gobind Singh, the creator of the Khalsa. Though the Khalsa was formally inaugurated in 1699, its psychological foundations were laid on that winter day in Delhi.

Guru Tegh Bahadur was born Tyagmal in Amritsar on April 1, 1621, the youngest son of Guru Hargobind, the sixth Sikh Guru, and Mata Nanaki. His childhood joined two strands of Sikh tradition: the contemplative spirituality of the early Gurus, and the martial discipline introduced by his father, who had created the miri–piri doctrine or the inseparability of temporal power and spiritual duty.

Renamed Tegh Bahadur after displaying extraordinary swordsmanship in the Battle of Kartarpur, he exemplified the ideal of the saint-soldier. Trained rigorously in archery and horsemanship, he was equally steeped in the Vedas, Puranas and Upanishads, a rare confluence of Indic scholarship and martial training. In 1632 he married Mata Gujri, and after Guru Hargobind’s death he moved to Bakala near Amritsar, living quietly in meditation for years.

His elevation to the Guruship was sudden. In 1664 the dying, eight-year-old Guru Harkrishan named only ‘Baba Bakala’ as his successor - a cryptic hint that drew a swarm of pretenders. It was a Sikh trader, Makhan Shah, who singled out Tegh Bahadur for his calm authority and installed him as the ninth Guru. He soon took to the road, travelling from Assam to Dhaka and Varanasi to Patna to strengthen scattered Sikh communities and spread Guru Nanak’s message. It was during these travels, in Patna in 1666, that his son Gobind Rai was born.

The Guru’s travels were not only spiritual. They served a political purpose: sustaining fragile communities of Sikhs scattered under Mughal scrutiny, encouraging them to maintain discipline and dignity, and expanding the network of langars - community kitchens that embodied egalitarian service. His moral authority made him an arbiter of disputes; in Assam he brokered peace between Raja Ram Singh and the Ahom ruler Chakradhwaj Singha.

On his way back he accepted an offer from Rani Champa of the Himalayan foothills to sell him a tract of land for 500 rupees. There he founded Anandpur Sahib, today one of the holiest sites of Sikhism. It was a peaceful settlement then; in decades to come it would witness the thunderclap moment of 1699 when the Guru’s son gathered thousands and created the Khalsa.

Gathering storm

By the late 1660s, the Mughal empire under Aurangzeb had become increasingly zealous. While historians debate the consistency of Aurangzeb’s religious policy, contemporary and Sikh sources agree that the persecution of non-Muslims in several provinces had intensified. In Kashmir, Iftikhar Khan, the Mughal governor, pressed Kashmiri Pandits to convert, sparking panic among a learned but vulnerable community.

Desperate, a delegation of Pandits, led by Kirpa Ram, sought divine guidance at Amarnath. According to tradition, the deity appeared in a dream, directing them to the Sikh Guru. Their arrival at Anandpur Sahib, recorded vividly in Sikh chronicles, showed the extent to which Sikhism had come to be seen as a refuge for the oppressed. The Guru listened in silence, then prepared to confront Mughal authority with the weight of his own spiritual presence.

He set out for Kashmir, but was intercepted, arrested at Ropar and confined first in Sirhind and later transferred to Delhi in November 1675.

At Aurangzeb’s court the Guru was asked to perform a miracle or convert to Islam. Either act would symbolically legitimise Mughal supremacy. The Guru declined politely but firmly, telling Aurangzeb he was free to convert the Kashmiri Pandits but only after he first succeeded in converting the Guru himself.

The emperor responded with theatrical cruelty. Three of the Guru’s companions were executed before his eyes. Bhai Mati Das, a Mohyal Brahmin, was sawed in half while standing upright. Bhai Sati Das was wrapped in cotton and set alight. Bhai Dayala was boiled alive in a cauldron. Each maintained their composure, reciting the Japji Sahib, refusing to submit.

Tegh Bahadur’s own composure in the face of barbarism turned the imperial spectacle into a moral indictment of Mughal authority. Contemporary Persian accounts note that even some in the court were unnerved. The Qazi of Delhi, Abdul Wahab, tried one last persuasion on the day of the execution. Here the Guru issued his immortal reply: a Sikh who recites the Japji Sahib cannot be forcibly converted. Then, finally, he was beheaded at Chandni Chowk.

That the body and head of the Guru were preserved at all is itself extraordinary. One Sikh, Lakhi Shah Vanjara, burned down his own house to cremate the Guru’s body, bypassing Mughal prohibition. On that site stands Gurdwara Rakabganj today.

Another devotee, Bhai Jaita, transported the severed head all the way to Anandpur Sahib, evading Mughal patrols. There it was cremated with honours. Gurdwara Sisganj in Punjab marks that spot; Gurdwara Sisganj Sahib in Delhi marks the place of execution. Each stands as a monument not only to martyrdom but to the ordinary courage of those who defied the empire’s might.

The Guru’s death sent ripples across Punjab. In its aftermath young Gobind Rai absorbed a lesson: tyranny must be confronted, not pleaded with. Over the next two decades he sharpened Sikh identity, codified its ethics, and in 1699 transformed the community into the Khalsa - a collective of initiated Sikhs bound by a code of courage, equality and resistance.

The seeds of that transformation were planted on the day his father died. The Khalsa’s creation was both theological and strategic: a disciplined fellowship of saint-soldiers who rejected caste hierarchies, embraced sacrifice, and were trained for organised resistance. It was the antithesis of Aurangzeb’s vision of absolutism.

The consequences were far-reaching. In the eighteenth century the Khalsa misls (confederacies) emerged as the only organised force capable of resisting Afghan invasions. Their military and political consolidation culminated in 1799 with the coronation of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, whose empire stretched from the Khyber to Kashmir to the outskirts of Delhi. Afghans still say that the only foreigner who ever truly ruled them was Ranjit Singh. The spiritual spark behind that extraordinary geopolitical arc was lit by Tegh Bahadur’s martyrdom.

Why does the Guru’s martyrdom matter 350 years later? Because it is an instructive case in the politics of conscience. It demonstrates how moral authority can outlast imperial power. Aurangzeb’s empire fragmented within decades of his death; the Sikh movement surged.

Tegh Bahadur did not die for a sect but for a principle: that no ruler has the right to coerce belief. His sacrifice made the Sikh tradition one of the world’s few major faiths with a martyrdom at its institutional foundation. It is this universality that has kept his memory alive not merely in Sikh households but in the wider history of the subcontinent.

As India pauses to commemorate the 350th anniversary of his martyrdom, the story remains starkly contemporary. In an age where questions of identity, power and religious freedom continue to roil democratic societies, the equanimity with which Guru Tegh Bahadur faced an empire is a reminder that the shield he offered was not fashioned from steel, but from steadfastness.

(The author is a political commentator and a global affairs observer. Views personal.)