Mai Bhago

Mai Bhago, also called Mai Bhag Kaur, is remembered as the woman who brought forty Sikhs back to Guru Gobind Singh and fought beside them at Khidrana, now Muktsar, on 29 December 1705. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism calls her the sole survivor of that battle. It also says the Guru found one other man, Mahan Singh, still alive, and that Mahan Singh died as the Guru took him on his lap. She was born in the village of Jhabal in present-day Amritsar district, a descendant of Pero Shah, the younger brother of Bhai Langah, and was married to Nidhan Singh Varaich of Patti. The sources give no dates for her birth or death.

Key moments

• 1705: she heard that some Sikhs of her neighbourhood who had gone to Anandpur to fight for the Guru had deserted him in the hardship of the siege. She rallied them and persuaded them to go to the Guru and apologise, and set off with them and other Sikhs across the Malwa.
• 29 December 1705: near the pool of Khidrana, where an imperial army in pursuit had almost overtaken the Guru, they challenged the pursuers and fought until the army retreated. The Guru, who had covered them with arrows from high ground, found all of them dead except Mahan Singh, who died as the Guru took him on his lap.
• The Guru blessed the forty as the Chali Mukte, the Forty Liberated Ones, and the pool became Muktsar, the Pool of Liberation. The Encyclopaedia records that their earlier disclaimer, disowning the Guru, was torn up.
• She too had been wounded. The Guru took her into his care and she stayed with him as a bodyguard, in male attire.
• After the Guru's death at Nanded in 1708 she retired further south and settled at Jinvara, 11 km from Bidar in Karnataka, where she lived in meditation to a ripe old age. Her hut there is now Gurdwara Tap Asthan Mai Bhago, and a hall in the compound of Takht Sri Hazur Sahib at Nanded, Bunga Mai Bhago, marks the site of her residence.

Remembered for: turning back to the Guru the men who had left him, and for taking up arms herself. Her name still carries weight in Sikh feeling. In March 2020 Sikhs objected to a song that mentioned her, and the singer Sidhu Moose Wala apologised to Jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh at the Akal Takht, having written earlier that he had not known the act would hurt Sikh sentiment (The Tribune).