Baba Deep Singh Jiਬਾਬਾ ਦੀਪ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ

Baba Deep Singh Ji (1682 to 1757) was a Sikh scholar and soldier from Pahuwind village near Amritsar, honoured as the first head of the Damdami Taksal school of learning and the founder of the Shahid misl. Aged 75, he died at the Battle of Amritsar in 1757 defending the Harmandir Sahib, and Sikhs remember him as a revered martyr of the Panth.

Who was Baba Deep Singh Ji?

He stands in Sikh memory as the complete sant sipahi, the saint soldier: a man who spent years copying the Guru Granth Sahib Ji by hand and teaching its meaning, and who also led fighting men for half a century. The Damdami Taksal, the Sikh school of learning that traces its founding to Guru Gobind Singh Ji's stay at Damdama Sahib, counts Baba Deep Singh Ji as its first head. His own fighting band, one of the jathas of the Dal Khalsa, became the Shahid misl, the misl of the martyrs, and took its name from the manner of his death.

Early life and the years with Guru Gobind Singh Ji

Baba Deep Singh Ji was born on 26 January 1682 (some records give 20 January) at Pahuwind, a village about 40 kilometres south west of Amritsar in what is now Tarn Taran district. His father Bhagta was a farmer and his mother was Jioni, and he was their only child, named Deepa. At the age of twelve he travelled with his parents to Anandpur Sahib to see Guru Gobind Singh Ji, and the Guru asked the boy to stay on in his city. There he served the sangat and studied: Bhai Mani Singh Ji taught him Gurmukhi and the interpretation of the Gurus' words, and he learned riding, archery and the use of arms.

On Vaisakhi in 1700, at eighteen, he received the Khalsa vows from the Panj Pyare at Anandpur Sahib in the Guru's presence and took the name Deep Singh. After about two more years at Anandpur he returned to Pahuwind in 1702 and married. When the Guru left Anandpur in 1704 and the younger Sahibzade were killed at Sirhind, Baba Deep Singh Ji set out to join him, and caught up with him at Damdama Sahib in Talwandi Sabo.

The scholar of Damdama Sahib

At Damdama Sahib, Baba Deep Singh Ji worked with Bhai Mani Singh Ji on the scripture. Sikh tradition holds that Guru Gobind Singh Ji recited the complete Guru Granth Sahib Ji there while the two scholars wrote. What the record shows plainly is that Baba Deep Singh Ji spent years producing careful hand written copies of the Granth for distribution among the Sikhs, and that in 1726 he had four copies prepared from the recension Bhai Mani Singh Ji had made. Tradition records that those four copies were sent to four of the Takhts: Akal Takht Sahib, Takht Patna Sahib, Takht Hazur Sahib and Takht Keshgarh Sahib.

When Guru Gobind Singh Ji left for the Deccan in 1706, he placed Baba Deep Singh Ji in charge of Damdama Sahib. He stayed there as its head granthi, preaching, teaching the scripture and training Sikhs in martial skills, and he also prepared gutkas, small books of hymns, for the community. The tower where he lived beside Takht Sri Damdama Sahib still stands, and is known as Burj Baba Deep Singh Shahid.

Soldier of the Dal Khalsa

His scholarship never kept him from the field. In 1709 and 1710 he joined Banda Singh Bahadur's campaign and fought at Sadhaura, at Chappar Chiri and at the siege of Sirhind, though he parted from Banda Singh in 1714. In 1732 he rode to the rescue of Sardar Ala Singh, who had been besieged at Barnala. In 1733, when the Lahore governor sought peace and offered the Sikhs a nawabship and a jagir, Baba Deep Singh Ji brought his jatha to Amritsar to join Nawab Kapur Singh in the joint Sikh force, the Dal Khalsa.

At the Sarbat Khalsa gathering on Vaisakhi 1748, the 65 jathas of the Dal Khalsa were reorganised into twelve misls, and Baba Deep Singh Ji was entrusted with the leadership of the one that came to be known as the Shahid misl. Its country lay south of the River Sutlej, and his headquarters remained at Talwandi Sabo, where the scholar's desk and the soldier's camp stood in the same place.

Why did Baba Deep Singh Ji march on Amritsar in 1757?

In April 1757 Ahmad Shah Durrani raided northern India for the fourth time. On his way home his caravan carried captives, young men and women taken from the towns of India. Near Kurukshetra, Baba Deep Singh Ji's squad fell on the caravan, freed a large number of the prisoners and seized part of the looted treasury. Sikh accounts put the rescued women, girls and boys at about four hundred. In revenge, Durrani ordered the Harmandir Sahib blown up and its sacred pool filled with the entrails of slaughtered animals, and he left his son Timur Shah in Lahore with a force under General Jahan Khan.

Baba Deep Singh Ji, now 75 and living in scholarly retirement at Damdama Sahib, declared to the congregation that he intended to rebuild the temple, and prayed: may my head fall at the Darbar Sahib. Five hundred men came forward at once. As the column moved from village to village it grew, and by Tarn Taran, ten miles from Amritsar, some five thousand Sikhs marched with him. There, tradition says, he drew a line on the ground with his khanda and asked only those ready to die to cross it. Every man crossed.

The two armies met on 13 November 1757 in the Battle of Amritsar. Outnumbered, the Sikhs fought their way toward the city, and in the fighting Baba Deep Singh Ji took a terrible wound to the neck. Sikh tradition preserves two accounts of his last moments. In one, his head was severed completely and he fought on, carrying it in his hand. In the other, mortally wounded but not beheaded, he held his head upright with his left hand and cleared his path with his heavy khanda until he reached the parkarma, the walkway around the sacred pool, and died there. The Sikhs won the day, and the Afghan force was driven off.

How is Baba Deep Singh Ji remembered today?

The place where he fell is marked inside the Golden Temple complex, and pilgrims still stop at the marble marker on the parkarma to pay their respects. His khanda, the double edged sword he carried in his last battle, is preserved at Akal Takht Sahib. The Damdami Taksal continues the school of learning he first headed at Damdama Sahib. Sikhs remember him, together with Banda Singh Bahadur Ji, among the most honoured martyrs of the Panth: a life in which the pen and the sword stayed in the same hands, and learning was put at the service of the community until the last day.