Banda Singh Bahadur

Commission

An ascetic named Madho Das, living at Nanded on the Godavari, was met there by Guru Gobind Singh in 1708 shortly before the Guru's death. He accepted initiation, took the name Banda Singh, and was sent north with a small party, letters to the Sikhs of the Punjab, and instructions to punish those responsible for the killing of the Guru's sons at Sirhind.

Campaigns

Sikhs joined him in numbers as he moved north. He took Samana, then Sadhaura, and in 1710 defeated the Mughal governor at Chappar Chiri and captured Sirhind. He established a capital at Lohgarh, struck coin in the names of the Gurus, issued orders under his own seal, and abolished the zamindari system in the territory he held, granting land rights to those who cultivated it — a measure of some social consequence in the Punjab.

The recruitment drew heavily on cultivators and on castes previously excluded from military service, which contemporary hostile accounts remark on with alarm.

Defeat and execution

Mughal forces under Bahadur Shah and then Farrukhsiyar concentrated against him. After several years of campaigning and retreat into the hills, he was besieged at Gurdas Nangal and surrendered in 1715 after months of famine. He was taken to Delhi with several hundred companions, paraded through the city, and executed in 1716 after his followers were killed before him and after refusing conversion.

Assessment

Banda's state lasted only a few years, but it demonstrated that Sikh forces could take and hold territory, and it established the pattern of Sikh political power in the Punjab that the misls resumed later in the century. His land measures and his recruitment across caste lines have made him a contested figure in modern Punjabi politics, claimed by several constituencies at once.