ਬਾਬਾ ਫ਼ਤਹਿ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀਬਾਬਾ ਫ਼ਤਹਿ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ

Baba Fateh Singh Ji (25 February 1699 to 26 December 1704) was the youngest son of ਗੁਰੂ ਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ and Mata Jito Ji, and the youngest of the four Sahibzade. At five years old he was executed at Sirhind on the orders of Wazir Khan, the Mughal governor, after refusing with his elder brother Zorawar Singh Ji to give up his faith. Sikhs remember him as the youngest martyr in their history.

Who was Baba Fateh Singh Ji?

Baba Fateh Singh Ji was born at ਅਨੰਦਪੁਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ on 25 February 1699, on the site where Gurdwara Bhora Sahib stands today. He was the fourth and youngest son of Guru Gobind Singh Ji. His mother was Mata Jito Ji, also known as Mata Ajit Kaur Ji after she took Amrit at Vaisakhi 1699. His name, Fateh, means victory, and his short life gave the word its weight. His elder brothers were Ajit Singh Ji, Jujhar Singh Ji and Zorawar Singh Ji. Ajit Singh Ji was the son of Mata Sundari Ji, while Jujhar, Zorawar and Fateh were the sons of Mata Jito Ji.

Some accounts give his birthday as 12 December 1699 instead, and that date is still marked by many Sikhs. This entry follows 25 February 1699, the date given by the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism. The year, 1699, is agreed on: he was born in the same year his father created the Khalsa at Anandpur.

How did the youngest Sahibzada grow up?

He was not yet two when his mother died at Anandpur on 5 December 1700. From then on he was raised by his grandmother, ਮਾਤਾ ਗੁਜਰੀ ਜੀ, the mother of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, and he stayed with her until his last day. He grew up at Anandpur Sahib in the years when his father's town was under constant threat, and he was still a small child when the siege that would end his life began.

One story from his childhood is told to explain the blue dress of the Akali Nihangs. It says that the little Fateh Singh Ji once came before his father dressed all in blue, wearing a high dumalla with a loose cloth, a farla, at the top, and decked with weapons, and that the Guru laughed and blessed him, saying that after him a Panth of fierce warriors would follow his example. Some trace the Nihang uniform to that moment. It is a tradition rather than a settled fact.

What happened on the night the family left Anandpur?

By the winter of 1704 Anandpur had been under siege for months. The Mughal armies of Sirhind and Lahore, joined by the hill chiefs, had cut off all supplies, and the Sikhs were surviving on leaves and tree bark. The besiegers swore oaths on the Quran and promised safe passage if the Guru would leave. The Guru knew the oaths were false, but he was prevailed upon, chiefly by his mother Mata Gujri Ji, to go. On the night of 20 and 21 December 1704 the Guru's family and a band of Sikhs slipped out of Anandpur.

The promise was broken at once. As the column crossed the rain-swollen river Sarsa, the pursuing army fell on it, and in the confusion of that cold night Mata Gujri Ji and the two younger Sahibzade were separated from the rest. They managed to cross the river, and they were taken in by Gangu, a former cook of the Guru's household, who promised them shelter at his village, Saheri, and to lead them to the Guru. Instead he betrayed them. He sent word to the officials at Morinda, and Mata Gujri Ji and the two boys were arrested and carried to Sirhind, where Wazir Khan, the governor, had his headquarters.

They were locked in a cold tower called the Thanda Burj, a tower built to catch cool breezes in summer, which in the dead of winter gave no shelter at all. No proper food or clothing was given to them. The old grandmother and the two small boys spent a miserable cold night there, and the next morning the boys were taken to Wazir Khan's court.

What happened in Wazir Khan's court at Sirhind?

The boys were told to bow to the governor. Instead they raised the Sikh greeting, Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh. Wazir Khan was furious, and then he tried persuasion. He told them their father had been killed at Chamkaur and they were now fatherless, and he offered them princely rewards, riches, honour and power, and marriages into royal families, if they would only recite the Kalma and become Muslims. Both boys refused. The younger one answered that their grandfather, Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, had given his head rather than his faith, and they would follow his example.

Wazir Khan consulted the Qazi, and the sentence was passed: the two children were to be bricked alive in a wall. The Nawab of Malerkotla objected to so cruel a punishment, but nobody heeded him. The boys were given a night with their grandmother, who told them to remember their grandfather's instruction, to accept death and fall dead to the earth but never to renounce their religion. They promised her they would not bring discredit on the names of their father and grandfather. The next morning they were brought to court in chains, and asked once more. Their answer was the same.

They were taken to a place where a wall was being built, and made to stand on it while the masons laid bricks around their small bodies, asking them again and again to accept Islam. In the popular tradition the wall rose to their shoulders and then crumbled, as if it refused the order, and the executioners finished the work with the sword. Early Sikh accounts say more simply that they were beheaded. Both versions agree on what matters: two small children were killed at Sirhind for refusing to leave their faith, and their grandmother died of shock when she heard the news.

The date of their martyrdom is given differently in different accounts. Most accounts give 26 December 1704, the date observed every year as Veer Bal Diwas. The Sikh Missionary Society's history gives 27 December 1704. Dating by the Nanakshahi calendar gives 26 December 1705. On the 1704 dating Fateh Singh Ji was five years old; on the 1705 dating he was six. This entry follows the 26 December 1704 date, and gives the others so the reader can see the disagreement.

Where are the younger Sahibzade remembered?

Gurdwara Fatehgarh Sahib stands at Sirhind on the site where the two younger Sahibzade were martyred, and the wall in which they were bricked is preserved inside the complex. Nearby stands Gurdwara Burj Mata Gujri, the tower where the grandmother and the two boys were kept in the cold, and a short distance away, Gurdwara Jyoti Sarup, about a kilometre from Fatehgarh Sahib, marks the place where their bodies were cremated. A wealthy follower of the Guru, Diwan Todar Mal, bought the land for the cremation by laying gold coins on the ground as payment, because Wazir Khan would not allow the bodies to be cremated otherwise.

Every year the Shaheedi Jor Mela, also called the Shaheedi Sabha, is held at Fatehgarh Sahib from 25 to 28 December, with a nagar kirtan procession from the main gurdwara to Jyoti Sarup, following the path of the cremation procession. On 26 December, Veer Bal Diwas honours the four Sahibzade across India and the diaspora. Six years after the martyrdom, Banda Singh Bahadur and the Sikh army destroyed Sirhind and killed Wazir Khan in battle on 14 May 1710, avenging the two small boys.

Why does the name Fateh still inspire?

Fateh means victory, and the youngest Sahibzada's victory was of a strange kind. He won nothing in the world: no battle, no kingdom, no long life. He won by refusing. A child of five, offered wealth and royal marriages and a life of comfort, chose instead to stand with his brother and his grandmother and die as a Sikh. That is why parents still tell his story to their children, and why his birthday on 12 December and his martyrdom day on 26 December are marked in Sikh homes around the world.

He is remembered together with his brothers as one of the ਚਾਰ ਸਾਹਿਬਜ਼ਾਦੇ, the four princes who gave their lives in a single December week in 1704: the two elder brothers fighting at Chamkaur, the two younger ones bricked at Sirhind. When Guru Gobind Singh Ji heard the news of his youngest sons, he thanked God and said his sons had only returned to their eternal home with honour. Then he knocked a small bush down with an arrow and said the enemy would be uprooted like that plant. The story of Baba Fateh Singh Ji is the smallest chapter of that week, and the one that has never stopped being told.