ਦੇਗ ਤੇਗ਼ ਫ਼ਤਿਹਦੇਗ ਤੇਗ਼ ਫ਼ਤਿਹ

Deg Tegh Fateh means victory to the cauldron and the sword: the cauldron that cooks food for everyone, and the sword that protects the weak. In three words taken from Persian, the saying sets out the dual duty of the Khalsa, to feed and to protect, and Sikhs still invoke it daily in the Ardas.

What does Deg Tegh Fateh mean?

Literally, the saying gives victory (fateh) to two things: the deg, a large wide mouthed cauldron or kettle, and the tegh, a sword. All three words come from Persian, the state language of the period in which Sikhism took shape, as the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism notes. Wikipedia sums the three words up as cauldron, food for all; sword, justice for all; and fateh, communal sovereignty, and gives the saying's English meaning as Victory to Charity and Arms. It is also the title of a Sikh anthem in Punjabi, whose words present the ideal as an order given to the whole Khalsa.

Neither word stops at its literal sense. In Sikh tradition the deg has grown from a cooking pot into the whole ideal of public welfare, generosity and ready help for anyone in need, while the tegh has grown from a weapon into the duty to correct wrong and defend people who cannot defend themselves. Fateh is not boasting: Guru Gobind Singh Ji gave the Khalsa the greeting Waheguru ji ka Khalsa, Waheguru ji ki Fateh, the Khalsa belongs to Waheguru and victory belongs to Waheguru, so victory in this saying is a gift from God, not a human claim.

Deg: the cauldron that feeds everyone

The deg is first of all a real pot. In the Sufi tradition, the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism explains, a deg already signified the charitable distribution of cooked food, and in the Sikh kitchen it became the heart of the langar, where a hot meal is served free to everyone who comes, whatever their religion, caste or means. Guru Nanak Dev Ji himself likened the earth to a deg in one of his hymns, a cooking pot from which every living being receives sustenance once, as the hymn at page 1190 of Guru Granth Sahib Ji puts it. Feeding people was never an add on to Sikh life: it stands beside prayer from the start, in the Guru's own teaching on sharing what you have, vand chhakna.

That is why the Ardas remembers the heroes of the past as people who kept the deg going. Sikhs who provided food for all were called deg chalai, those who ran the cauldron, and the prayer honours Sikhs who dwelt on the Name, ate only after sharing their food with others, maintained the deg and wielded the tegh, and gave their lives for the sake of dharma. In a gurdwara today the big degs still steam in the langar kitchen every day, and anyone who walks in is fed. The cauldron is the welfare half of the ideal, made visible and edible.

Tegh: the sword that protects the weak

The tegh is the protection half. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism records what Guru Hargobind Ji is said to have told the Maharashtrian saint Ram Das when they met at Srinagar in Garhwal: the tegh is for garib ki rakhia, the defence of the weak, and for the destruction of the aggressor. It is, in other words, a sword with a stated purpose and a stated limit, drawn for others and in the last resort, a principle the same source stresses when it explains fateh: Sikhs believed that the use of the tegh in the last resort, as Guru Gobind Singh Ji permitted, with the ideal of deg held fast, must lead to victory.

Guru Gobind Singh Ji gave the sword a still deeper meaning. He addressed the tegh as Bhagauti, as Sri Kharag, Lord Sword, as Jag Karan, Creator of the World, and as Sristi Ubaran, Saviour of Creation, and praised it as protector of the good and destroyer of evil. Read alongside ਮੀਰੀ ਪੀਰੀ, Guru Hargobind Ji's teaching that spiritual and worldly responsibility belong together, the tegh is not a symbol of aggression. It is the Khalsa accepting that feeding people is not enough if no one will stand between them and harm.

How did Deg and Tegh come together?

The two ideals supplement each other, and Guru Gobind Singh Ji joined them in his own words. In a passage of the Krishnavtar he prays, in the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism's rendering: Deg teg jag mai dou chalai, may deg and tegh both prevail in the world. In the Charitropakhyan, the same source notes, deg and tegh, charity and valour, together form a composite virtue, the mark of heroes of old. Wikipedia dates the sharpening of this mission to about 1690, when providing food and justice to all was stressed as the mission of the Sikh religion, a decade before the founding of the Khalsa gave that mission an order to carry it.

The ਖਾਲਸਾ ਪੰਥ founded in 1699 inherited both halves at once. Its members serve in the langar and stand ready to protect, and the wider Sikh vocabulary keeps the pair in balance: alongside deg and tegh stand seva, selfless service, kirat karo, honest work, and sarbat da bhala, the welfare of all, which the Khalsa prays for every day. A community that only feeds can be overrun; a community that only fights forgets why it fights. Deg Tegh Fateh refuses both failures in a single breath.

On seals, coins and banners

When Sikhs established their own power in Punjab after a period of fierce persecution, they put this maxim on the instruments of that power. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism records that Deg Tegh Fateh was adopted as an ideal for the Khalsa state and imprinted on its seals, coins and banners. Banda Singh Bahadur, the first to hold territory, carried a Persian inscription on his seal which, rendered into English, reads that kettle and sword, victory and ready patronage have been obtained through the grace of Guru Nanak Gobind Singh, so that charity and power were both declared gifts of the Gurus and governing principles of the new state.

The same inscription was reproduced on the coin struck by Sardar Jassa Singh Ahluwalia after the Khalsa's decisive victory over the Afghans, dated 1764 in Wikipedia's account and 1765 in the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism's, and the practice continued under Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji and in some of the cis Sutlej Sikh states. Wikipedia adds that the Deg Tegh Fateh anthem was sung in the Sikh states until 1948 and served as the national anthem of the princely state of Patiala. A cook pot and a sword on a coin is a government programme in miniature: feed the people, protect the people.

Deg Tegh Fateh in the Ardas and today

You do not need a coin to hear the saying. The maxim has taken firm root in Sikh tradition and forms part of the ਅਰਦਾਸ, the prayer offered at the end of Sikh services, where blessings are invoked for the triumph of the ideal of deg and tegh. Every congregation that stands for Ardas therefore asks, in effect, that the cauldron never empty and the protection never fail, and remembers by name the Sikhs of the past who kept both going at the cost of their lives.

Today the deg half is the easiest to see: langar served in gurdwaras across the world, and Sikh volunteers cooking for strangers at times of flood, disaster and hardship, an extension of the same cauldron. The tegh half is quieter but present wherever Sikhs speak of the duty to stand up for people being wronged, whoever they are. Deg Tegh Fateh endures because it is short enough to carry on a banner and large enough to organise a life around: feed everyone, protect the weak, and leave the victory to Waheguru.