Bhai Kehar Singh Rajput

Bhai Kehar Singh Rajput is a figure of the Sikligar community's account of its own beginnings. The best published statement we could open is by Dr Dalvinder Singh Grewal on SikhNet (2009). It is a community-based account, not a contemporary record, so everything below is tradition and is labelled that way.

What the tradition says

• The Sikligars first came into contact with Sikhi in the time of Guru Hargobind Sahib, who began the practice of arms after his father's martyrdom and turned to the lohars for weapons. Wikipedia, citing Madra and Singh, Sicques, Tigers or Thieves, says the community was drafted by Guru Hargobind to work as ironsmiths.
• When the Guru sent Bhai Jetha and Bhai Bidhi Chand to look for artisans, Bhai Kehar Singh Rajput was the first to offer his services, and he is said to have brought a party of Marwari ironsmiths.
• The men brought by him are said to have made weapons used by the Sixth and Tenth Gurus in all their battles with the Mughals and the hill rajas.
• After peace came, the account says, these craftsmen went back to Marwar, where their kin treated them badly.
• The same account says that in the time of Guru Gobind Singh weapon making grew at the Lohgarh fort at Anandpur Sahib, that the Guru gave the community the name Sikligar, and that Bhai Ram Singh, a lohar from Bugiana, was the first of them to take Amrit.

What we cannot say: no source we opened gives Kehar Singh's dates, his village or his life apart from this single act. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism entry we checked for Bhai Bidhi Chand does not mention the recruitment.

Remembered for: in the community's memory, being the first of the Marwari artisans to join the Guru's cause, and so the human beginning of the Sikligar arms-making tradition.