In the autumn of 1670, a child named Lachman Dev was born in Rajauri, in the hills of present-day Jammu and Kashmir. He would spend his early years as a wandering ascetic, far from the politics of empire, before a single meeting transformed him into a commander whose campaigns lit the first flame of Sikh sovereignty across Punjab. Within the span of a few years, Banda Singh Bahadur rose from a quiet hermitage on a riverbank to become the man who struck coins in the name of the Gurus and challenged the might of the Mughal state.
A Hunter Turned Hermit
Lachman Dev grew up in a modest Rajput family and developed a love of hunting in his youth. A story long told in the tradition holds that the death of a doe he had shot, along with her unborn young, filled him with such remorse that he turned away from worldly life. Around the age of fifteen he left home and became a Bairagi ascetic, taking the name Madho Das. After years of travel and study under various teachers, he settled at Nanded, on the banks of the Godavari river in the Deccan, where he established a monastery, or dera, and gathered his own following.
The Meeting at Nanded
In 1708, Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru, came to Nanded. The Guru visited the dera of Madho Das, and the encounter changed the course of the ascetic's life. Madho Das accepted the Guru as his master and was initiated into the Khalsa, the community of committed Sikhs first established in 1699 and known by its distinctive articles of faith, the Five Ks. He took the name Banda Singh. The Guru gave him a charge to return to Punjab and uphold justice against oppression, and according to tradition blessed him with five arrows for the battles ahead.
Tradition records that the Guru entrusted Banda not with conquest for its own sake, but with the duty of standing against injustice.
The March into Punjab
Banda Singh Bahadur reached Punjab in 1709 and quickly drew Sikhs and other discontented people to his banner. His forces took Sonipat and Samana, then pressed on through Kaithal, Kapuri, and Sadhaura. These early victories gave the rising movement both confidence and resources, and they signalled that the long pattern of submission to local Mughal governors was breaking. For many peasants weighed down by heavy taxes and harsh rule, his campaign offered a rare hope of relief.
The Fall of Sirhind
The defining battle came in May 1710 at Chappar Chiri, near Sirhind. There Banda's army defeated and killed Wazir Khan, the Mughal governor of Sirhind. The victory carried a deep meaning for Sikhs, for it was Wazir Khan who had ordered the execution of Guru Gobind Singh's two younger sons, Zorawar Singh and Fateh Singh, who were bricked alive at Sirhind in 1705. The capture of the city in 1710 was felt across the community as the righting of a grievous wrong, and it secured Banda's position as the leader of an emerging Sikh power. The sacrifices of the Guru's family remain closely tied to the wider story of the Ten Gurus.
A State and Its Coins
With Sirhind taken, Banda Singh Bahadur set about building the framework of a state. He made the hill fortress of Mukhlisgarh his capital, renaming it Lohgarh, the fortress of steel. From there he issued coins, but in a striking departure from custom he placed not his own name upon them but the names of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh. He also introduced an official seal in the name of the Gurus, asserting that his authority flowed from them rather than from any throne of his own.
His rule reached beyond symbols into the structure of the land itself. Banda struck at the zamindari system, the order of large landholders who collected revenue and held power over the cultivators. He moved to abolish their dominance and to grant land rights to the peasants who actually tilled the soil, an early measure of agrarian reform that left a lasting memory among the rural population of Punjab.
Siege, Capture, and Sacrifice
Banda's success drew the full force of the Mughal empire against him. After years of campaigning and shifting fortunes, his diminished forces were besieged in the fortified enclosure at Gurdas Nangal. The defenders held out through a long and brutal blockade lasting many months, enduring famine before the position finally fell in December 1715. Banda Singh Bahadur was captured along with hundreds of his companions and taken to Delhi. In June 1716, after refusing to renounce his faith, he was put to death by torture. His brief state did not survive him, yet the precedent he set, that Sikhs could hold political power and govern in the name of their Gurus, endured. It would echo through the eighteenth century and find fuller form in the kingdom of Maharaja Ranjit Singh generations later.