India recently celebrated the 400th birth anniversary of the 9th Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur with much pomp and show.
To mark the occasion, the government organised a grand ceremony in front of the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, the erstwhile power center of the Mughal Empire.
In some circles, it was even claimed that Mughals killed Guru Tegh Bahadur because he fought for the rights of Kashmiri Pandits and that he tried to save India from Mughal tyranny.
Multiple Theories about Guru’s Death
There are several conflicting accounts and theories as to why Mughal authorities publicly executed Guru Tegh Bahadur in Chandani Chowk in November 1675.
While the mainstream Brahmanical narratives claim that Guru Tegh Bahadur was killed by Mughals for standing up against Mughal atrocities on Kashmiri Pandits, contemporary Persian accounts of those times claim that it was actually the Guru who oppressed the peasants of Punjab as he moved around with his large band of followers and was therefore caught, brought to Delhi and beheaded by Mughal authorities.
When it comes to the authenticity of these sources, historians doubt their veracity as most of them were written not at the time of actual execution of the Guru but gradually started emerging only in the late eighteenth century i.e. over a hundred years after the alleged execution.
According to acclaimed Indian historian Satish Chandra, most Sikh accounts of Guru Tegh Bahadur’s execution that claim to be sourced from the “testimony of trustworthy Sikhs”, only emerged in the late eighteenth century.
The same is true of the Persian accounts that claim that the Guru was executed by Mughal authorities for threatening public peace with his oppressive conduct.
Medieval Persian Sources
According to Satish Chandra, the earliest account of the events leading to the Guru’s execution comes from Siyar-ul-Mutakharm by Ghulam Husain in 1780.
The Persian chronicle propounds that the Sikh Guru incurred Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s wrath for his oppressive conduct in the Lahore and Punjab province of the Mughal Empire.
Given below are some relevant excerpts from Siyar-ul-Mutakharm for readers’ convenience.
“Tegh Bahadur, the eighth successor of (Guru) Nanak became a man of authority with a large number of followers. Several thousand persons used to accompany him as he moved from place to place.”
“His contemporary Hafiz Adam, a faqir belonging to the group of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi’s followers, had also come to have a large number of murids and followers. Both these men (Guru Tegh Bahadur and Hafiz Adam) used to move about in Punjab, adopting a habit of coercion and extortion.“
“Tegh Bahadur used to collect money from Hindus and Hafiz Adam from Muslims. The royal Waqia Navis (news reporter-cum- intelligence agent) wrote to the Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir… of (their) manner of activity, added that if their authority increased they could become even refractory“.
Authenticity of Persian Sources
Satish Chandra thinks that Ghulam Husain’s account of Guru’s execution could be biased because he was a relative of the Bengal governor Alivardi Khan who happened to be one of the closest confidantes of the then Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb.
But one can also argue that since Ghulam Husain was the relative of a powerful governor of a mighty and autocratic Mughal Empire and also given the time he lived in, he didn’t need to be politically correct or give false justifications about the Sikh Guru’s execution and that there must be some truth in his account.
Also, when contemporary medieval and Mughal sources could proudly boast about some of their wanton Hindu-Brahmanical temple destructions, rampages, and massacres, why would they give false pretext and justifications for killing a Sikh Guru.
Religious Miracle Theory
Some Sikh and Brahmanical sources also say that Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb asked the Guru to perform a miracle to prove his nearness to God or convert to Islam and when the Guru refused, he was tortured and publicly beheaded in Chandni Chowk along with his companions.
However, Satish Chandra expresses doubt about the authenticity of these meta-narratives, centered on miracles because Emperor Aurangzeb was an orthodox Muslim and never a believer in miracles, intercessions and hallucinations.
For the unversed, miracles and magics are frowned upon in Islam and in some cases even punishable by death.
Also, Mughals had better entertainment avenues at their disposal than asking a Sikh Guru to perform miracles argue some scholars.
From the other side, it can be claimed that demand to perform miracle had little to do with belief, it was meant to ridicule the Guru. Also, Mughals were not deniers of miracles given that they frequently visited graves of leading Sufi saints of those times.
According to Louis Fenech, some Sikh accounts deliberately concocted martyrdom into Guru Tegh Bahadur’s execution by Mughals to evoke some pride and honor and to overcome the trauma that they repeatedly underwent through.
Perhaps they took some inspirations from the unfortunate events of Karbala where some of Prophet Muhammad’s descendants (PBUTA) were brutally martyred by oppressive forces of those times.
Succession Interference Theory
It is said that starting from the fifth Sikh Guru Arjun Dev, Sikh Gurus started interfering in Mughal succession covertly and overtly by supporting different contenders to the Mughal throne, and this irked the Mughals.
Unfortunately, all Mughal princes supported by Sikh Gurus lost their respective wars of succession, and the Sikh Gurus in turn had to face the wrath of the victorious Mughal prince or Emperor.
For instance, Mughal Emperor Jahangir’s ascension was challenged by his eldest son Prince Khusrau with the support and blessings of the fifth Sikh Guru Arjun Dev.
However, Prince Khusrau was defeated, captured, and blinded. While Jahangir spared the life of his own son, he executed Guru Arjun Dev for instigating the Mughal Prince to rebel against his father.
Perhaps Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb also nursed a grudge against the Sikhs for supporting his brother and principal rival to the throne, Dara Shikoh. He must have kept this in mind while ordering the execution of Guru Tegh Bahadur later.
With respect to Jahangir, given that his mother was Rajput, his wives came from leading Rajput families and more than half of his relatives were Rajputs, it seems doubtful that he killed Guru under religious fanaticism.
Religious Reasons
Complaints often reached Mughal courts that Sikh Gurus and Scriptures insulted Muslims.
For instance, Aurangzeb was once told about certain verses in Aadi Granth (containing teachings of Guru Nanak and other Gurus) were demeaning to Muslims.
One of the alleged verse stated “The clay of the Musalman’s grave becomes clay for the potter‟s wheel“.
For this reason and several others, Aurangzeb summoned the 7th Guru Har Rai to Delhi. However, the Guru instead of coming himself, send his eldest son and heir Guru Ram Rai as an emissary to the Emperor.
When Aurangzeb objected to the verse “the clay of the Musalman’s grave becomes clay for the potter‟s wheel“, Baba Ram Rai cleverly substituted the word “Musalman” with “Be-Iman” i.e dishonest and faithless claiming that the text was miscopied.
It is said that the Emperor was deeply impressed by his astuteness and approved of his explanation. He later honored and bestowed him a large estate in Dehradun.
However, when Guru Har Rai came to know about this, he became extremely displeased with his son and his willingness to change a word of Aadi Granth.
He not only barred his son from his presence, but also disqualified him as his heir and instead name his younger son Har Kishan as his successor. This bitterness eventually led to the execution of Guru Tegh Bahadur later as discussed below.
Pre-Modern Sikh Accounts
In contrast to dominant Brahmanical narrative that portrays Mughals as tyrannical and the Guru as the savior of Hindu-Brahmin religion, some pre-modern Sikh accounts have also laid some blame for Guru’s death on an acrimonious family and succession dispute.
According to them that when Guru Har Rai disqualified Guru Ram Rai from the succession, the latter is said to have instigated the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb against Guru Tegh Bahadur by suggesting that he prove his spiritual greatness by performing miracles at the Court.
Historians too believe that one of the major causes behind the Sikh rebellion during Aurangzeb’s reign was the political intrigues of Ram Rai, a claimant for the position of Sikh Guru, against the incumbent Guru Tegh Bahadur.
It may be noted that Guru Ram Rai was a frequent visitor to the Mughal court and enjoyed good interpersonal relations with the Mughal Emperor.
According to historian Satish Chandra, conscious of the growing importance of the Sikhs, Aurangzeb honored Ram Rai, the elder son and heir of Guru Har Rai, at the court. Unfortunately, Ram Rai later fell from Guru Har Rai’s grace and lost the Guru’s gaddi to his younger brother Har Kishan, who was only six years old at the time.
Har Kishan died soon after and was succeeded in 1664 by Guru Tegh Bahadur. Ram Rai put forward his claims to the gaddi both before the accession of Guru Har Kishan and after his death.
But Aurangzeb did not interfere and gave a grant of land at Dehradun to Ram Rai to build his gurudwara there.
However, most of the time Ram Rai remained with the Emperor in Delhi and continued to intrigue against Guru Tegh Bahadur constantly trying and poison the mind of the Emperor against him. All this finally culminated in the brutal execution of the Guru.
According to Sohan Lal Suri, the court historian of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Mughals killed Guru Tegh Bahadur because they felt threatened by his growing political clout in Punjab.
In his magisterial work Umdat ut Tawarikh, he seems to have reiterated Ghulam Hussain Khan’s argument that Guru Tegh Bahadur had provided refuge to all classes of Mughal rebels and commanded a huge nomadic army across Punjab and so he was put down at the earliest, lest he rebels in near future.
Primary Sources
- Satish Chandra, History of Medieval India
- History Volume II, State Council of Educational Research and Training, Tamil Nadu