ਮਾਤਾ ਗੁਜਰੀ ਜੀਮਾਤਾ ਗੁਜਰੀ ਜੀ

Mata Gujri Ji (1624 to 1704) was the wife of ਗੁਰੂ ਤੇਗ ਬਹਾਦਰ ਜੀ, the ninth Guru, and the mother of ਗੁਰੂ ਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ ਨੇ, the tenth Guru. She raised the young Gobind Rai, helped hold the Guru's household and town together after her husband's martyrdom, and in December 1704 died in the cold tower at Sirhind on the same day as her two youngest grandsons, the Chhote Sahibzade, whose courage she had spent her last days sustaining. Sikhs honour her with the title Guru Mahal, one of only four wives of the Gurus to receive it.

Who was Mata Gujri Ji?

Mata Gujri Ji stands at the centre of one of the most testing generations in Sikh history. She was the daughter in law of a Guru, the wife of a martyred Guru, the mother of the founder of the Khalsa, and the grandmother of four sons who all gave their lives for the faith. Through each of those losses and duties she is remembered the same way: steady, prayerful and unshaken. Her story runs from Kartarpur in the 1630s to the founding of Anandpur, and ends at Sirhind, where the shrine of ਫ਼ਤਹਿਗੜ੍ਹ ਸਾਹਿਬ now marks the ground.

Early life and marriage

Gujri was born in 1624 at Kartarpur, in present day Kapurthala district, to Bhai Lal Chand, a Subhikhi Khatri whose family had moved there from Lakhnaur near Ambala, and Mata Bishan Kaur. She was betrothed to Tegh Bahadur, the youngest son of Guru Hargobind Ji, and married him at Kartarpur on 4 February 1633. She joined the Guru's family at Amritsar, moved with them to Kiratpur in 1635, and after Guru Hargobind's passing in 1644 lived with her husband and her mother in law, Mata Nanaki Ji, at Bakala. Those were quiet, inward years: Tegh Bahadur spent long periods in meditation at Bakala before he was recognised and installed as the ninth Guru in 1664.

Mother of Guru Gobind Singh Ji

Soon after 1664, Guru Tegh Bahadur founded the town of Chakk Nanaki, named for his mother and now the city of ਅਨੰਦਪੁਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ. When the Guru travelled east, Mata Gujri stayed at Patna, and there, on 22 December 1666, she gave birth to Gobind Rai, the son who would become Guru Gobind Singh Ji. She brought the child west again in 1670, staying at her family's village of Lakhnaur, and the family rejoined the Guru at Chakk Nanaki in March 1671. The boy's first lessons, in letters, riding and the stories of his grandfather and the earlier Gurus, were learned in a household that Mata Gujri ran.

In November 1675 Guru Tegh Bahadur was martyred at Delhi. Gobind Rai was nine years old. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism records that the responsibility for managing the affairs of Chakk Nanaki fell at first to Mata Gujri, assisted by her brother Kirpal Chand, while the young Guru grew up. The woman who had been a Guru's wife now became, in effect, the guardian of the Guru's court: its people, its stores and its safety, in hill country ringed by watchful rajas.

The last journey from Anandpur

In December 1704, after a long siege, Guru Gobind Singh Ji evacuated Anandpur. Crossing the flooded Sarsa rivulet in the dark, under attack, the Guru's family was scattered. Mata Gujri, now about eighty, was with the two youngest Sahibzade, Zorawar Singh, aged nine, and Fateh Singh, aged seven. A former servant, Gangu, took them to his village of Saheri and then, in the account every Sikh child learns, betrayed them for reward. Officers from Morinda arrested the three on 8 December and carried them to Sirhind, where they were locked in the Thanda Burj, the cold tower, open to the December cold, without warm clothing.

What happened at Sirhind in December 1704?

At Sirhind the governor, Wazir Khan, pressed the two boys to give up their faith, with promises first and threats after. Brought back to the tower each day, they told their grandmother everything, and Mata Gujri strengthened them to stand firm and remember their grandfather's sacrifice. The boys refused every offer. They were executed at Sirhind in the last days of December 1704; the ਚਾਰ ਸਾਹਿਬਜ਼ਾਦੇ are remembered together each year at the Shaheedi Sabha held at Fatehgarh Sahib from 26 to 28 December. When the news of the boys' martyrdom reached the tower, Mata Gujri died there the same day. Some modern listings give her death year as 1705, a difference of calendar reckoning; the Sikh tradition keeps the martyrdoms together in Poh, December 1704.

The next day a wealthy local devotee, Diwan Todar Mal, cremated the three bodies. Tradition holds that he had to buy the small plot needed for the cremation by covering it with gold coins set on edge, because no land could be had any other way. Gurdwara Jyoti Sarup at Fatehgarh Sahib marks that cremation ground, and the Thanda Burj itself survives within the Fatehgarh Sahib complex as the place of her last days.

How is Mata Gujri Ji remembered today?

Every December, lakhs of devotees gather at Fatehgarh Sahib for the Shaheedi Sabha, and Mata Gujri is honoured there not as a bystander to the Sahibzade's martyrdom but as its foundation: the grandmother whose teaching and courage the boys carried into the court at Sirhind. Her father's ancestral village, Lakhnaur Sahib near Ambala, keeps a gurdwara in her family's memory, and in 2017 the Haryana government named the Ambala to Lakhnaur Sahib road after her. In Sikh homes her name is spoken with the Gurus' own family, as mother of the Khalsa's founder and as the first woman martyr of the Sikh tradition in the form the panth remembers her.