Sri Guru Hargobind Ji

Sri Guru Hargobind Ji was the only child of Sri Guru Arjun Dev Ji and Mata Ganga, born in 1595 at Wadali outside Amritsar. Baba Buddha oversaw his education, which by tradition included riding, hunting and the use of weapons alongside the hymns. His father's message from custody, as the Sikh sources give it, was that the boy should sit on the throne fully armed and keep an army.

At his installation in 1606 he asked Baba Buddha for two swords rather than the usual seli, the woollen cord of a holy man. He named them miri and piri, from the Persian words for a ruler and a spiritual guide. The gesture declared that Guru Ji would exercise both kinds of authority.[EoS][EoS][EoS]

In 1606 he raised a platform facing the Harmandir across the pool, the Akal Takht or throne of the timeless one. Here he heard petitions, received horses and arms as offerings, and listened to ballads of heroism rather than hymns, while the Harmandir across the way kept to kirtan. The two buildings face each other to this day as the twin poles of Sikh authority.

He also built the fort of Lohgarh in Amritsar, raised a paid retinue said to number several hundred, and began the practice of going out hawking and hunting with his men. Followers with a grievance against the Mughal state began to collect around him.[EoS][EoS]

Jahangir had him detained in Gwalior Fort, the state prison for political prisoners, for a period that sources put at anywhere from a few months to twelve years. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism's estimate is a few months between 1617 and 1619. Tradition holds that when the emperor ordered his release Guru Ji refused to leave without the fifty-two princes held with him, and that he walked out with each of them holding a tassel of his cloak. Sikhs mark the event at Diwali as Bandi Chhor Divas, the day of the liberator of prisoners.

Relations with Jahangir were cordial after this. Guru Ji accompanied the emperor on a journey to Kashmir and is said to have rebuilt a mosque for Muslims at Hargobindpur. The problems began under Shah Jahan.[EoS][EoS][EoS]

Sri Guru Hargobind Ji's men fought Mughal detachments several times: twice near Ruhela on the Beas in September and October 1621, at Amritsar on 14 April 1634 after a dispute over a hunting hawk, at Lahira in the Malwa, at Kartarpur in the Jalandhar Doab on 26-27 April 1635, and at Phagwara. The forces were small and the engagements local, but a Guru's household fighting the imperial army was new. After the last of them he withdrew with his family to Kiratpur, in the territory of a friendly hill ruler, where he spent his last decade.

During the Kartarpur fighting Guru Ji's elder son Gurditta and Guru Ji's own tutor-in-arms Bidhi Chand distinguished themselves; a Pathan commander who had been Guru Ji's follower, Painda Khan, fought against him and was killed by Guru Ji's own hand.[EoS][Grewal]

Of his five sons, Gurditta and Atal passed away before him, Suraj Mal and Ani Rai were passed over, and Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, the youngest, was not chosen at this stage. He named Gurditta's younger son Sri Guru Har Rai Ji, aged fourteen, as his successor and passed away at Kiratpur in March 1644. He composed no hymns for the scripture.[EoS][EoS]