Bhai Dayala Jiਭਾਈ ਦਿਆਲਾ ਜੀ

Bhai Dayala Ji was a close companion of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, the Sikh entrusted with the Guru's family at Patna and with the congregations of the east, and one of the three companions executed with the Guru at Delhi in November 1675 for refusing to give up his faith.

Who was Bhai Dayala Ji?

Bhai Dayala Ji, also written Bhai Dayal Das, Bhai Dyal Das and Bhai Dial Das, was one of the closest companions of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, the ninth Sikh Guru. Sikh memory holds the three men who died with the Guru in Delhi in November 1675 together: Bhai Mati Das Ji, the Guru's diwan, Bhai Sati Das Ji, his brother, and Bhai Dayala Ji, whose charge had been the Guru's own household and family. Of the three, Dayala Ji is in some ways the hardest to write about honestly, because the surviving accounts agree on the shape of his life and death while differing on his family, his dates and even the liquid in which he was put to death. This page follows the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism account, reproduced on SikhiWiki, together with the longer SikhiWiki narrative, Wikipedia, and the martyrdom accounts at All About Sikhs, and it says openly where they differ rather than smoothing the differences away.

A family from Alipur, and a boy given to the Guru's service

The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, following the Shahid Bilas of Bhai Mani Singh, records Bhai Dayala Ji as the son of Mai Das and an elder brother of Bhai Mani Ram. The longer narrative on SikhiWiki adds the family's background: his grandfather, Bhai Balu Ram, had died fighting in Guru Hargobind Ji's first battle, his ancestors belonged to Alipur near Multan, and his father came to Kiratpur in 1657 for an audience with Guru Har Rai Ji and, returning home, left his three elder sons in the service of the Guru's household. Bhai Dayala Ji, that account says, was fifteen when he entered the Guru's service. Wikipedia, by contrast, calls him born into a Brahmin family and places him among the twenty five or so Sikhs who accompanied Guru Har Krishan Ji from Kiratpur to Delhi in 1664, and other accounts give still other lineages and villages for him. No opened source gives a birth year, and the family details plainly rest on later tradition rather than on record, so this page reports the traditions side by side and treats none of them as settled fact.

In charge at Patna: the Guru's family in his care

What the accounts do agree on is the trust placed in him. The Encyclopaedia records that he was in the train of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji during the journey across the eastern parts in 1665 to 1670, that he was among the Sikhs detained by the Mughal authorities in 1665 and later released, and that as the Guru proceeded further east from Patna, Bhai Dayala Ji was left behind to look after the Guru's family. Several letters of the Guru to the congregations in the Varanasi and Patna area, the Encyclopaedia adds, told them to abide by Bhai Dayala Ji's directions, which makes him, in effect, the Guru's representative in the east. Wikipedia gives the same charge its formal titles: chief of the sangat, the holy congregation, at Patna Sahib, and in charge of all the masands in the east. It was Bhai Dayala Ji, Wikipedia records, who sent word from Patna to the Guru at Dhaka that his son Gobind Rai had been born, and he helped care for the child, with Bhai Kirpal, and was with the family at Lakhnaur when they travelled from Patna towards Baba Bakala around 1672. The SikhiWiki narrative adds that the birth of Guru Gobind Singh Ji took place under his care and service at Patna, that he looked after the prince until he reached Anandpur Sahib, and that on the recommendation of Diwan Durga Mall, Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji had made him minister for domestic affairs, the officer of the Guru's household, in the council of administration that the narrative accounts list as Mati Das, Sati Das, Dyal Das and Gurditta.

The road to Delhi in 1675

In 1675 the Guru's journey to Delhi was, from the first, a journey towards death, undertaken after the appeal of the Kashmiri Pandits for protection of their freedom of worship. The Encyclopaedia and Wikipedia agree on the departure: Bhai Dayala Ji accompanied Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji when he left Anandpur Sahib on 11 July 1675 to court martyrdom, with Bhai Mati Das Ji and Bhai Sati Das Ji beside him. SikhiWiki and Wikipedia both record that the party was arrested under the orders of Emperor Aurangzeb, at Agra in their accounts, and brought to Delhi. There, SikhiWiki relates, the Guru and his companions were summoned into the council chamber of the Red Fort and questioned on religion, the Guru was pressed to embrace Islam and refused, and the Guru and his companions were ordered to be imprisoned until they agreed. After some days, the same account says, the Guru and three of his companions were produced before the Qazi of the city, a fourth companion, Gurditta, having escaped and hidden in the city. What followed for the companions was done, the accounts agree, in front of the Guru and in public, at the kotwali in Chandni Chowk, to break his resolve by breaking theirs first.

How did Bhai Dayala Ji die?

Bhai Dayala Ji died after Bhai Mati Das Ji, and this page states the manner plainly once, as the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism states it: on his refusal to abjure his faith, he was boiled to death in a heated cauldron at Chandni Chowk in Delhi. On the liquid, the accounts genuinely differ, and a reader deserves to know it. The Encyclopaedia says a heated cauldron of water, Wikipedia and both All About Sikhs accounts also say water, heated under him after he had been placed in it, while the SikhiWiki account of Bhai Mati Das Ji's martyrdom says Bhai Dayala Ji was thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil. This page therefore does not choose between oil and water as certain: most of the opened accounts say water, one says oil, and the fact of the cauldron is what they share. On the day, they differ in the same open way. The Encyclopaedia and Wikipedia give 11 November 1675, the day of Bhai Mati Das Ji's execution in their telling; the narrative retelling at All About Sikhs places the three companions on consecutive days, Mati Das Ji on 8 November, Dayala Ji on 9 November and Sati Das Ji on 10 November; and SikhiWiki's main article gives 24 November and calls Dayala Ji the third of the companions to be executed. November 1675 at Chandni Chowk is certain; the exact day and order beyond Mati Das Ji first are not, and this page leaves them open. The tradition adds that he asked leave of the Guru before his death, that he refused a final offer of life and comfort for conversion, and that he recited the Japji Sahib, and in SikhiWiki's telling the Sukhmani Sahib as well, to his last breath. The speeches the later narratives put in his mouth are retellings, not recorded words, and this page does not quote them as documented fact.

How is Bhai Dayala Ji remembered today?

Bhai Dayala Ji is remembered where he died. Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib, in Chandni Chowk, marks the place of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji's execution, and Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib marks the place where the Guru's body was cremated, so the ground of the companions' martyrdom is still walked daily by visitors to Old Delhi. His memory is kept together with the other two companions, as it has been since 1675: three household servants of a Guru who would not be moved, executed one after another in public before his eyes, each refusing the same bargain of life for faith. Later Sikh tradition also links his family to the next generation of martyrs: the Encyclopaedia names his brother as Bhai Mani Ram, while other accounts connect him directly with Bhai Mani Singh Ji, the scholar martyr who died at Lahore in the following century, and the exact relationship is one more point on which the accounts differ. What does not differ is the pattern his death set alongside Bhai Mati Das Ji: a Sikh offered comfort, office and life itself in exchange for his faith, and refusing, calmly and in public. That refusal, repeated by his Guru days later, is why the three companions are named together whenever the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji is told.