Obsession With Mughal Grandeur Erases Native History

However, since the Chandni Chowk area hosts several historic sites, it has thrown up a few problems which merit your personal attention and intervention. To begin with, the entire Chandni Chowk Redevelopment Plan is focused on recreating and celebrating, in a modernist idiom, the grandeur of the Mughal heritage, from the Red Fort to Fatehpuri Masjid.

Those handling this project, or even the experts of the Delhi Urban Arts Commission who have held up the project for months on end to ensure that the Mughal heritage is preserved in its “pristine purity”, have not shown equal awareness of two very important sacred sites in the Chandni Chowk area, namely the Sis Ganj Gurudwara and Bhai Mati Das Museum. The area between them was named the Fountain Chowk to honour a waterless fountain standing there as a clumsy relic of British raj.

The importance of these sacred sites has been deliberately diminished in popular memory through partisan state policy. Here is a brief summary for the benefit of those who have forgotten what Sis Ganj Gurudwara and Bhai Mati Das Museum, situated in the middle of Chandni Chowk, represent.

Guru Tegh Bahadur’s Awe-Inspiring Satyagraha Against Conversions

In May 1675, a group of Kashmiri Brahmins came to seek Guru Tegh Bahadur’s help in stopping the onslaught of forced conversions of Hindus ordered by Aurangzeb. Guru Tegh Bahadur decided to stand up for the freedom of his people and sent a message to Aurangzeb that if he could first convince him (ie, Guru Tegh Bahadur) to become a Muslim, then the Brahmins would also convert.

Guru Tegh Bahadur then nominated young Gobind Rai (later known as Guru Gobind Singh) as his successor, and on 11 July 1675, he left Anandpur for Agra to confront Aurangzeb at his durbar. He was accompanied by three companions, Bhai Mati Das, Bhai Sati Das and Bhai Dayala. They all knew they were courting death by joining their Guru.

Bhai Mati Das and Bhai Sati Das were born in a Brahmin family of the Chhibber clan in village Karyala, in the Jhelum District of Punjab, now in Pakistan. Their grandfather, Bhai Praga, had become a follower of Guru Har Gobind and had taken part in battles with Mughal forces.

Bhai Dayala was 15 when he joined the Guru's sangat. His ancestors belonged to Alipur near Multan. His grandfather, Bhai Balu Ram, had attained martyrdom while fighting in Guru Har Gobind's first battle of faith against the Mughals.

All four were arrested en route and taken in chains to Delhi and locked up in prison from July to November 1675. During their incarceration, Guru Tegh Bahadur and his three companions were starved and tortured mercilessly. When these brutalities did not result in their yielding to conversion, Aurangzeb ordered that Guru Tegh Bahadur be beheaded.

To test his resolve further, Aurangzeb told his minions to first slaughter the Guru's companions before his eyes, hoping that the sight of their suffering might shake Guru Tegh Bahadur’s resolve and pressure him to save himself by agreeing to embrace Islam.

Bhai Mati Das, chosen to be the first martyr, was led out in chains under heavy guard. The spot fixed for his execution was the Kotwali. He was tied between two erect flat logs of wood and sawed alive from head through torso till he bled to death. Despite such an agonising death he refused to convert and kept chanting the japji, a prayer composed by Guru Nanakji, till his last breath.