Bhai Darbara Singh

Bhai Darbara Singh (died 1734) was a veteran of the Khalsa from the days of Banda Singh Bahadur and one of the senior Singhs who held the Panth together in the years of Mughal persecution after 1716. He is best remembered for a decision in 1733: when the Lahore governor Zakariya Khan offered the Sikhs a nawabship, the Sikh assembly first chose him for the title, and he refused it. He is not the Congress Chief Minister of Punjab of the same name, who has his own entry.

The sources describe him in different terms. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, in an entry by Piara Singh Padam, says he came from the mercantile community of Sirhind, received the initiatory rites on 30 March 1699, "the day the Khalsa was created", and fought in the battles of Anandpur. After Banda Singh he was respected as a veteran fighter and as a diwan, defined there as the commissar in charge of rations and forage. The entry does not call him a jathedar. Wikipedia, citing the Budha Dal's own history and other works, counts him as the second jathedar of the Budha Dal and as a leader of the Akal Takht in this period, and calls him Baba Darbara Singh. The two accounts are set side by side here; the Encyclopaedia names the work he did, Wikipedia names an office he is said to have held.

Key moments

• 30 March 1699: received the initiatory rites at Anandpur Sahib.
• 1733: Zakariya Khan sent Subeg Singh to make peace and offer the title of nawab with a jagir. The Darbara Singh entry says the assembly first chose him and that he declined, arguing that a title from the Mughal rulers would compromise the Sikh claim to sovereignty; the sangat overruled him and gave the title to Kapur Singh. The Kapur Singh entry tells it from the other side: Kapur Singh was unanimously chosen and accepted the honour reluctantly.
• 1734: he died at Amritsar, still in charge of provisions. Wikipedia gives July 1734 and an age of about 90; his birth year is not fixed in the older reference works.

What he is remembered for. For the refusal itself. Wikipedia, relying on Rattan Singh Bhangu's Panth Prakash, says he held that the Sikhs did not need a Mughal title to legitimise their sovereignty; the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism gives the same reason and lists Bhangu among its sources. The title passed to Nawab Kapur Singh, who organised the Sikh bands into the Dal Khalsa at the Vaisakhi assembly of 1748.