Leaving Anandpur Sahib, December 1704: the siege and the broken oaths

This day remembers the night in December 1704 when Sri Guru Gobind Singh Ji, his family and the Sikhs left the fort of Anandpur Sahib after a long siege. It begins the Shaheedi week of December, the most sorrowful days of the Sikh year, in which the Guru lost his mother and all four of his sons.

The siege

The hill rajas had long resented the Guru's growing power and his Khalsa, which rejected caste and gave ordinary people dignity and arms. With the forces of the Mughal governors of Sirhind and Lahore, they besieged Anandpur Sahib through 1704. Food ran out; the Sikhs ate leaves and bark. Some Sikhs, worn down, signed a disclaimer saying they were no longer the Guru's Sikhs and left; they would return at Muktsar.

The oaths

The besiegers sent promises of safe passage if the Guru would leave the fort. The rajas swore on the cow and the Mughal commanders on the Quran, and a letter was brought said to carry the emperor Aurangzeb's own oath. The Guru doubted them, and tradition remembers that he tested them by sending out bullocks loaded with rubbish, which the besiegers fell upon. In the end, at the pleading of the sangat and of his mother, Mata Gujri Ji, he agreed to go.

The night of leaving

On the night of 20 December, in the cold and rain, the Guru, the Sahibzade, Mata Gujri Ji, Mata Sundari Ji, Mata Sahib Kaur Ji and the Sikhs left the fort. Within hours the oaths were broken and the army fell on them as they reached the Sirsa river. Read on: the separation at the Sirsa river.

How the day is observed

Sangats gather for kirtan and Ardas, and many Sikhs begin the week of remembrance.