Bhai Himmat Singh Jiਭਾਈ ਹਿੰਮਤ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ

Bhai Himmat Singh Ji (1661 to 1705) was one of the Panj Pyare, the five beloved ones who were the first to receive Khande di Pahul from Guru Gobind Singh Ji at Anandpur Sahib on Vaisakhi 1699. He came from further away than almost anyone in that assembly: his home was Jagannath Puri on the coast of Odisha, and his family carried water for a living. His given name, Himmat, means courage, and the tradition has always read his life through it.

A water-carrier's son from Puri

Himmat Rai was born on 18 January 1661 at Jagannath Puri, the temple city on the Bay of Bengal in present day Odisha. His father was Bhai Gulzari and his mother Mata Dhanno, and the family belonged to the Jheevar community, the water-carriers whose work was humble and hard. Puri lay at the far eastern edge of India, more than a thousand miles from the hills of Anandpur, yet the name of the Sikh Gurus had travelled even there, and the young Himmat Rai grew up hearing of Guru Nanak and his successors.

At the age of seventeen he left the coast and made the long journey north-west to Anandpur Sahib, where he entered the service of Guru Gobind Singh Ji and stayed. For twenty years he served in the Guru's court, one of the quiet attendants whose names history rarely records, until the day that made his name immortal.

The third to offer his head

On 30 March 1699, at the Vaisakhi assembly in Keshgarh fort, the Guru raised his sword and asked his Sikhs for a head. Bhai Daya Singh Ji rose first, Bhai Dharam Singh Ji second, and then Himmat Rai came forward from the crowd, a water-carrier's son from Puri offering the most precious thing he had. Two more followed, and the five were brought out together, baptised with the new amrit and dressed as the first Khalsa. Himmat Rai became Himmat Singh, the third of the five in the order they are usually named.

His presence in the five was itself the Guru's message in human form. The Panj Pyare were drawn from five different regions and five different callings: a shopkeeper of Lahore, a farmer of Hastinapur, a cloth-printer of Dwarka, a barber of Bidar and a water-carrier of Puri. Birth and caste, which fixed a man's worth in the India of that day, counted for nothing in the order the Guru founded, and Himmat Singh's humble origin stood in the first rank of the Khalsa beside the others.

In the Guru's service

For six years Himmat Singh served as one of the five beloved ones at Anandpur, through the years when the hill chiefs, alarmed at the Guru's growing following and his openly casteless court, joined with imperial troops to besiege the town again and again. He was with the Guru in the final evacuation of Anandpur in December 1705 and in the desperate stand that followed at the fortress of Chamkaur, where some forty Sikhs faced a pursuing army.

Martyrdom at Chamkaur

At Chamkaur on 7 December 1705, the little band went out in small groups to meet the enemy and buy time for the Guru, knowing what the cost would be. Himmat Singh fell fighting there, aged forty-four, in the company of two of his fellow Pyare, Bhai Mohkam Singh Ji and Bhai Sahib Singh Ji, who died the same day. Some accounts date the battle to December 1704; the tradition of the Church of his sacrifice is not in doubt either way. Of the first five Sikhs of the Khalsa, three gave their lives within sight of the Guru on that single day.

The Guru escaped Chamkaur that night by the order of the five Sikhs who remained, the Panj Pyare acting for the last time in the Guru's earthly presence as his council. Himmat Singh's part in the founding story was complete: he had carried water in Puri, carried the Guru's standard of equality at Anandpur, and carried his own life, given freely, to Chamkaur.

Why does the tradition link Bhai Himmat Singh Ji's name with courage?

Himmat is an ordinary word in Punjabi and Hindustani meaning courage, resolve, the nerve to act. The tradition reads his story through the word: the courage to cross India as a teenager to find the Guru, the courage to rise third when a sword was asking for a head, and the courage to fight to the death at Chamkaur beside the men he had stood with in 1699.

Where did Bhai Himmat Singh Ji come from?

He was born at Jagannath Puri in Odisha, the son of Bhai Gulzari and Mata Dhanno, in a family of the Jheevar community, the water-carriers. He came to Anandpur Sahib at seventeen and entered the Guru's service. Of the five Pyare, his home was the furthest east, which is why his presence in the five is always cited as proof that the Khalsa was founded for all India and all people, not for one province or one caste.