Place · Sikh martyrdom gurdwara · India
Sisganj Sahib, Old Delhi
Also known as Delhi, Guru Tegh Bahadur, Guru Tegh Bahadur (execution), Old Delhi, Sisganj Sahib, Sisganj Sahib — Delhi
The gurudwara at Sisganj in Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi — the exact site where Guru Tegh Bahadur (1621-1675), the ninth Guru, was publicly executed by beheading on 11 November 1675 by Aurangzeb's orders for refusing to convert to Islam and for defending the Kashmiri Pandits whom Aurangzeb was persecuting. The execution site is marked by the Shahid Chabutra (martyrdom platform) within the gurdwara. The current gurdwara structure is 1783 built on the execution site; the 1930 Khadur Sahib-style arcade and the 2010 renovations expanded the complex. The annual Shaheedi Divas each 11 November and the 24 November Shaheedi Diwas each year draw over 500,000 Sikh pilgrims. The adjacent Fatehpuri Masjid and the Red Fort complete the central Chandni Chowk heritage. The 1984 Operation Blue Star-related anti-Sikh riots targeted Sisganj.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 28.656, 77.231
Connections (5)
- Same eventRakab Ganj Sahib, New 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.
- Same eventAnandpur Sāhib
Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded at Chandni Chowk in 1675 for refusing to convert and for defending the Kashmiri Pandits' right not to, and his severed head was carried north by a disciple to his nine-year-old son at Anandpur, while his body was cremated in a house set alight to conceal it. Both sites are now gurdwaras. The execution is the direct cause of the Khalsa's founding at Anandpur twenty-four years later.
- Delhi gurdwarasBangla Sahib, New Delhi
Bangla Sahib marks the house where Guru Har Krishan, the eighth Guru, tended smallpox and cholera patients during a Delhi epidemic and died of smallpox himself at eight years old; Sisganj marks where the ninth Guru was beheaded eleven years later. Two of Delhi's principal gurdwaras, three kilometres apart, commemorating a child who died nursing and a man executed for defending somebody else's right to worship.
- CampaignGuru Tegh Bahadur
Tegh Bahadur was executed at Chandni Chowk in 1675 after interceding for Kashmiri Pandits facing forced conversion — killed for the religious freedom of people who were not Sikhs, which is why the tradition calls him Hind dī Chādar. Sīsganj Sāhib stands on the spot. A disciple burned his own house down to cremate the body without being caught, which is what Rakāb Ganj Sāhib a few kilometres away now marks.
- Site withinDelhi
Sisganj Sahib, Old 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, “Delhi”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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