Takht Sri Kesgarh Sahib, Anandpur

01Vaisakhi 1699

Sikh tradition tells it this way. Sikhs had come to Anandpur from every quarter for Vaisakhi. Guru Gobind Singh came out before them with a drawn sword and asked for a man who would give his head. Daya Ram of Lahore stood up and went with him into a tent; the Guru came out with the sword wet and asked again. Four more rose: Dharam Das, Mohkam Chand, Himmat Rai and Sahib Chand. Then the Guru brought all five out alive in new clothes, stirred water in an iron bowl with a khanda while reciting bani, sugar puffs were added to it, and he gave them amrit. These were the Panj Piare. The Guru then asked them to give him amrit, and from that day he was Gobind Singh.

02Fort of the hair

Kesgarh was one of the five forts the Guru built round Anandpur, with Anandgarh, Lohgarh, Holgarh and Fatehgarh, when the hill rajas of Bilaspur and their Mughal allies turned against an armed Sikh power on their border. They attacked in 1700 and 1701 and laid a long siege in 1704. With food gone and a promise of safe passage sworn on the Quran and on a cow, the Guru left Anandpur in December 1704; the promise was broken at the Sarsa river, and the battles of Chamkaur and the martyrdom of his younger sons at Sirhind followed. The forts were later replaced by marble gurdwaras on their sites.

03The Takht today

The present white building of Kesgarh Sahib was raised between 1936 and 1944 under the care of Sant Hari Singh Kaharpuri, over the place where the amrit was first given. In the sanctum are relics of the Guru’s time: a khanda, a katar, a straight sword, a muzzle-loading musket and the spear called nagani among them. It is one of the five Takhts of the Sikhs, with the Akal Takht, Patna Sahib, Hazur Sahib and Damdama Sahib. At Hola Mohalla, the day after Holi, the Nihangs ride and fence on the ground below. In 1999 Anandpur kept the three hundredth year of the Khalsa, and the Virasat-e-Khalsa museum opened later across the road.

The life of this place