ਮਾਤਾ ਸੁੰਦਰੀ ਜੀਮਾਤਾ ਸੁੰਦਰੀ ਜੀ

Mata Sundari Ji was the wife of Guru Gobind Singh Ji who, after his passing in 1708, became the person the Sikh Panth looked to for guidance for nearly forty years. From Delhi she issued hukamnamas under her own seal, appointed the custodian of the Amritsar shrines, and had the tenth Guru's writings collected and preserved. She had buried her own son and lived through the loss of the whole Guru household, yet the record she left is not one of grief. It is the record of a leader who held a scattered community together until it could stand on its own institutions.

Who was Mata Sundari Ji?

She was the daughter of Bhai Ram Saran, a Kumarav Khatri of Bijwara, also written Bajwara, in the present day Hoshiarpur district of Punjab. She was married to ਗੁਰੂ ਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ ਨੇ at Anandpur on 4 April 1684. On 26 January 1687, at Paonta Sahib, she gave birth to Sahibzada Ajit Singh, the eldest of the Guru's four sons. In Sikh homes she is honoured as Mata Sundri, and the name is also written Sunder Kaur in some accounts.

The evacuation of Anandpur and the road to Delhi

When Anandpur was evacuated on the night of 5 and 6 December 1705, after a long siege, Mata Sundari and ਮਾਤਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ ਕੌਰ ਜੀ were separated from the Guru's column in the confusion at the flooded Sarsa river. They were escorted to Delhi by ਭਾਈ ਮਨੀ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ, and found safety there while the battles of Chamkaur and Muktsar were fought and the younger Sahibzade were martyred at Sirhind. In 1706 she rejoined Guru Gobind Singh Ji at Talwandi Sabo, and it was there that she heard the full account of the martyrdom of her son Ajit Singh and his brothers, and of the death of her mother in law, ਮਾਤਾ ਗੁਜਰੀ ਜੀ. She then returned to Delhi, while the Guru travelled south to the Deccan, where he passed away at Nanded in October 1708.

How did Mata Sundari Ji lead the Sikhs after 1708?

With no living Guru in human form, the Panth needed a centre of authority it could trust, and it found one in the Guru's widow at Delhi. Mata Sundari Ji appointed Bhai Mani Singh Ji to manage the sacred shrines at Amritsar, and commissioned him to collect the writings of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, work that preserved compositions which might otherwise have been lost in those years of war. She issued hukamnamas, formal edicts, to sangats near and far under her own seal and authority. The hukamnamas of hers that have been found and published carry dates between 12 October 1717 and 10 August 1730, and they show sangats being guided on conduct, collections and the affairs of the Panth in her name.

At Delhi she also adopted a young boy who resembled her late son, and named him Ajit Singh. Emperor Bahadur Shah received him at court in September 1710 and treated him as the Guru's successor, but the adopted son's later conduct disappointed her, and she disowned him. The episode underlines the position she held: emperors dealt with her household because the Sikhs themselves looked to it.

Mata Sundari Ji and Baba Banda Singh Bahadur

Later Sikh tradition holds that when ਬਾਬਾ ਬੰਦਾ ਸਿੰਘ ਬਹਾਦਰ, the commander the Guru had sent to Punjab, began to depart from Khalsa practice, adopting a new salutation and his own court customs, Mata Sundari Ji's hukamnama against those departures drew many of his followers back to the older discipline. Those who stood by her reading of the Guru's teaching called themselves the Tat Khalsa, the true Khalsa, while Banda's remaining followers were called Bandai. The split shaped Sikh politics for a generation. Historians add a caution: scholars such as Ganda Singh have pointed out that no contemporary source records a formal excommunication of Banda Singh, so the hukamnama story is best read as tradition about her authority rather than a documented court act. What is not disputed is that in the years of persecution after Banda's execution in 1716, it was her name and her appointees that held the Panth's centre.

How is Mata Sundari Ji remembered?

She died at Delhi in 1747, having guided the Sikhs for close to forty years after 1708, longer than any single Guru held the guruship. ਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ਮਾਤਾ ਸੁੰਦਰੀ in Delhi stands in her memory, and a memorial to her also stands in the compound of Gurdwara Bala Sahib in the city. Mata Sundri College for Women, a college of the University of Delhi, carries her name. In the ardas and in Sikh memory she holds a place no other figure of her century holds: the mother of a martyr, the widow of the tenth Guru, and in her own right the steady hand that carried the Panth through its most leaderless years.