Guru Har Rai

01The gentle Guru

Har Rai was born at Kiratpur, the son of Baba Gurditta. Sikh tradition remembers a scene from his boyhood: walking in a garden, his flowing robe caught a flowering bush and broke a few blossoms, and the grief this caused him stayed with him all his life. He became Guru in 1644 at fourteen. He kept the armed horsemen his grandfather had raised but fought no battle. At Kiratpur he kept a garden of medicinal herbs and a dispensary open to anyone who came.

02Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb

When Shah Jahan’s eldest son Dara Shikoh fell seriously ill, the court physicians asked for rare herbs that only the Guru’s store held, and the Guru sent them. In 1658, fleeing Aurangzeb after the battle of Samugarh, Dara passed through Punjab and the Guru met him. Aurangzeb, now emperor, summoned the Guru to Delhi. He sent his elder son Ram Rai instead, who altered a line of Guru Nanak’s bani to please the emperor. For that the Guru disowned him, and before he died in 1661 he chose his younger son, Har Krishan, five years old.