Place · Sikh gurdwara · India
Rakab Ganj Sahib, New Delhi
Also known as Delhi, Guru Tegh Bahadur, Guru Tegh Bahadur (cremation), New Delhi, Rakab Ganj Sahib, Rakab Ganj Sahib — Delhi
The gurudwara at Rakab Ganj in central New Delhi, Chandni Chowk — the site where Lakhi Shah Vanjara, a Sikh merchant, secretly cremated the headless body of Guru Tegh Bahadur in 1675 by burning down his own house around the body to disguise the cremation from Aurangzeb's authorities. The Guru had been executed at Chandni Chowk 500 metres away for refusing to convert to Islam. The current gurdwara structure (1783) was built on the site of Lakhi Shah's house. The 1912 Rakab Ganj gurdwara wall demolition controversy (when the British wanted to build New Delhi's Parliament House wall across the gurdwara's property) led to a 1912-1920 Akali agitation that was one of the opening events of the Sikh political movement. The gurdwara is one of three principal Sikh sites in central Delhi.
- Function
- Burial and funerary
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 28.618, 77.210
Connections (2)
- Same eventSisganj Sahib, Old Delhi
Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded at Chandni Chowk in November 1675 and Lakhi Shah Vanjara, a trader, carried the body away and burned down his own house over it to cremate it without being seen. Sisganj marks the execution and Rakab Ganj the cremation, about four kilometres apart in Delhi. The head went north to Anandpur, where his nine-year-old son received it — and where the Khalsa was founded twenty-four years later.
- Site withinDelhi
Rakab Ganj Sahib, New Delhi sits inside Delhi and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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