Guru Tegh Bahadur Shaheedi Diwasਗੁਰੂ ਤੇਗ਼ ਬਹਾਦਰ ਸ਼ਹੀਦੀ ਦਿਵਸ

Guru Tegh Bahadur Shaheedi Diwas is the annual day of remembrance for the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, the ninth Sikh Guru, who was executed in Delhi in 1675 after standing for the right of Kashmiri Pandits to practise their faith. It is observed every year on 24 November, and the largest gatherings take place at Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib, the site of the martyrdom in Chandni Chowk, and Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib, the site of the cremation.

When is Shaheedi Diwas observed?

Shaheedi Diwas is observed every year on 24 November. The date comes from the Nanakshahi calendar, which was released by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee in 2003. The martyrdom itself is dated 11 November 1675 in the Gregorian calendar, and some accounts give 24 November 1675 as the day of the execution. What is not in doubt is the year, 1675, and the place, Chandni Chowk in Delhi, where the Guru was beheaded on the orders of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.

The day is a solemn one, not a celebration. Gurdwaras hold special kirtan and katha recounting the life and sacrifice of the ninth Guru, and many Sikhs mark it with quiet reflection. In Punjab it is a restricted holiday, and it is recognised as a public holiday in some other Indian states and territories. The year 2025 marked the 350th anniversary of the martyrdom.

The Kashmiri Pandits come to Anandpur Sahib

Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji became the ninth Sikh Guru in 1664. Eleven years later, in 1675, a delegation of Kashmiri Pandits came to him at Anandpur Sahib, led by Pandit Kirpa Ram. They told him that under Aurangzeb's rule they faced forced conversion, the destruction of their temples and the loss of the sacred thread that marked their way of life. They had come to ask what a people should do when the state demands they surrender their faith.

The Guru listened, and the tradition records that his young son, Gobind Rai, not yet ten years old, asked who was more worthy to answer such a demand than his own father. Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji told the Pandits to carry a message back to Delhi: if the emperor could convert him, the Pandits would follow, and if he could not, they should be left alone. He was offering his own life as the test of the matter, so that the Pandits would not have to face it themselves.

Arrest, imprisonment and the three companions

The Guru set out for Delhi in the summer of 1675 with three trusted companions: Bhai Mati Das Ji, Bhai Sati Das Ji and Bhai Dayala Das Ji. He was arrested at Ropar and imprisoned at Sirhind, then taken to Delhi. There he was pressed to convert to Islam or to prove his holiness by performing a miracle. He refused both.

For eight days he was held in chains and tortured, and he bore it without complaint, keeping his mind fixed on God. When his resolve did not break, his companions were executed before his eyes, each in a different and terrible way, so that he would watch and give in. Bhai Dayala Das Ji was placed in a cauldron of boiling liquid. Bhai Mati Das Ji was sawn in two, from head downwards, after asking that his face stay turned toward his Guru until his last breath. Bhai Sati Das Ji was wrapped in cotton, oil was poured over him, and he was set on fire. None of them wavered, and neither did the Guru.

The martyrdom in Chandni Chowk

After the three companions had been killed, Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji was taken to Chandni Chowk, the main market street of Delhi, and beheaded in full public view. A note is said to have been placed around his neck, in his own words: "I gave my head, but not my faith."

What happened next is told as two acts of extraordinary devotion. Bhai Jaita, a devoted Sikh, secretly carried the severed head from Delhi all the way to Anandpur Sahib, where it was cremated. In honour of his courage he was renamed Bhai Jivan Singh, and a second Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib at Anandpur Sahib marks the cremation site. At the same time, Bhai Lakhi Shah Vanjara recovered the Guru's body under the cover of darkness. To cremate it in secret, he set fire to his own house with the body inside. Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib in Delhi stands on that spot today.

His son, Guru Gobind Singh Ji, later wrote of the sacrifice in the Bachittar Natak: "Defying the king of Delhi, he broke the shackles of his body and left to be with God. None could perform such an unmatched great act as that of Guru Tegh Bahadur." The Guru is remembered by the title Hind Di Chadar, the Shield of India, because he laid down his life not for his own community but for the freedom of another community to keep its faith.

How the day is observed today

On 24 November, gurdwaras around the world hold Akhand Paths, the continuous forty-eight hour reading of the Guru Granth Sahib, and Nagar Kirtans, processions of singing through the streets. At Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib and Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib in Delhi the gatherings are especially large, and thousands come to stand at the two places where the martyrdom and the cremation took place. Gurdwaras are decorated with lights, and langar is served through the day.

In homes, the reading of the Guru's own bani is the day's most personal observance, above all the Salok Mahala 9, his fifty-seven verses on detachment and the reality of death. Many families read them together and talk about what the verses ask of a person who knows that life is short. The day is kept with kirtan and katha rather than with festivity, and many Sikhs treat it as a day for reflection on courage and on the duty to stand for others.

Why the sacrifice is still remembered

The martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji is remembered as an unusual sacrifice in the history of religion anywhere: a spiritual master who laid down his life not for his own community's survival but for the freedom of a community not his own. He was not defending a temple of his own faith or a people of his own religion. He was defending the right of the Kashmiri Pandits to practise theirs.

That is why the day still speaks beyond Sikh history. It says that faith is not truly faith if it must be enforced, and that defending another person's freedom to worship is itself a sacred act. Three hundred and fifty years after 1675, the lesson of Chandni Chowk is still the same: a single person who refuses to surrender a principle can protect the freedom of many others. On Shaheedi Diwas, Sikhs remember the ninth Guru not with mourning alone but by asking what they themselves would stand for when standing costs something.