Sahibzada Ajit Singh Jiਸਾਹਿਬਜ਼ਾਦਾ ਅਜੀਤ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ

Sahibzada Ajit Singh Ji was the eldest of the four sons of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, the tenth Guru. Of the Char Sahibzade, he had the longest life and the fullest record: a boy who was given a hundred horsemen at twelve, held a fort at thirteen, and at seventeen led one of the last sallies at Chamkaur, the battle his father would describe to the emperor Aurangzeb in the Zafarnama.

Early life at Paonta and Anandpur

Ajit Singh was born on 11 February 1687 at Paonta Sahib, the town his father had founded on the Yamuna, to Mata Sundari Ji; one Encyclopaedia of Sikhism note gives the date as 26 January 1687. The family returned to Anandpur Sahib the following year, and there the boy was educated in the approved Sikh style: the religious texts, history and philosophy, and the martial arts, riding, swordsmanship, gatka and archery. His teacher in warfare was Bhai Jiwan Singh, the Ranghreta Sikh remembered as Bhai Jaita, who had brought the head of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji from Delhi to Anandpur a generation before.

A commander at twelve

His first test came within weeks of the founding of the Khalsa. In May 1699 a congregation travelling from the Pothohar was attacked and looted by the Ranghars of Nuh, across the Sutlej from Anandpur. The Guru sent Ajit Singh, barely twelve, at the head of a hundred Sikhs; he reached the village on 23 May 1699, punished the offenders and recovered the property. The next year the hill chiefs, helped by imperial troops, attacked Anandpur, and Ajit Singh was given the defence of Taragarh, the first fort they struck, on 29 August 1700. With Bhai Udai Singh, a seasoned soldier, he beat the attack off, and he fought again at Nirmohgarh that autumn. In March 1701 he led the force that rescued a looted congregation from the Darap side, and in March 1703, with Udai Singh and a hundred horsemen, he recovered a Brahmin's wife who had been carried off by the chief of Dera Bassi and brought the offenders back to Anandpur in custody. In between, in 1702, he campaigned with the Sikh army at Nirmohgarh again and at Basoli, across the Ravi, where the Guru's arms prevailed against the hill states and their imperial backers. By the time of the final siege he was, at seventeen, one of the experienced officers of his father's court, which is why the rearguard of the evacuation, the most dangerous post of the retreat, was given to him.

The last march, from Anandpur to Chamkaur

In the long siege of 1704 Ajit Singh again stood out for steadfastness. When Anandpur was evacuated on the night of 5 to 6 December by the traditional reckoning (20 to 21 December in the modern dating), he commanded the rearguard, holding the attackers on the ridge of Shahi Tibbi until Bhai Udai Singh relieved him. He crossed the flooded Sarsa with his father, his brother Jujhar Singh and some fifty Sikhs, and after losses to a pursuing troop from Ropar the party reached Chamkaur on the evening of 6 December and took position in a garhi, a high walled haveli.

What happened at Chamkaur?

The battle that followed is one of the most unequal in Sikh memory: about forty Sikhs against an army of Mughals and hill troops that had swollen with reinforcements from Malerkotla and Sirhind. A contemporary Mughal court letter, preserved in the Ahkam-i-Alamgiri, records the despatch of 700 men with artillery and reports the killing of the Guru's two sons, which makes Chamkaur one of the best documented episodes of the Guru's life. When the ammunition and arrows ran out, the Sikhs went out in batches of five to fight hand to hand. Ajit Singh led one of the sallies and was killed in the thick of the fighting; Sahibzada Jujhar Singh Ji led the next. Gurdwara Katalgarh Sahib at Chamkaur Sahib now marks the ground where the elder Sahibzade fell. In the Zafarnama the Guru told Aurangzeb that he had been forced to fight when forty hungry men were set upon by oath breakers beyond counting.

The record and the tradition

Unusually for a figure of his age, Ajit Singh's career is anchored in documents written close to his lifetime. The Bhatt Vahis, the genealogical records kept by the Guru's court bards, date his defence of Taragarh to 29 August 1700. The Guru's own Zafarnama describes the battle in which he fell. And the Mughal emperor's own secretariat recorded the outcome: the letter preserved in the Ahkam-i-Alamgiri reports the siege of the haveli at Chamkaur and the killing of the Guru's two sons, an enemy's paperwork confirming the tradition's central fact. Where the sources disagree is the calendar: many Sikh accounts place the December march and battle in 1705, while most modern histories give 1704, and the day of the battle is variously given within the month. The fair at Katalgarh is kept on 8 Poh, the date the tradition has always used.

How is Sahibzada Ajit Singh Ji remembered?

His martyrdom is kept with his brother's at Chamkaur every year in the month of Poh, and an annual fair gathers at Katalgarh Sahib. His name is carried daily by Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar, the planned city next to Chandigarh renamed from Mohali, and by the district of the same name. With his three brothers he is also honoured on Veer Bal Diwas, 26 December. He was seventeen when he died: old enough to have been a commander for five years, which is how the Sikh tradition remembers him, as the first of the four to grow into a soldier and the first to fall.