Bhai Ram Singh Sikligar

Bhai Ram Singh is remembered in Sikligar community history as the first Sikligar to be initiated into the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh Ji. The details below come from two published accounts by Dr Dalvinder Singh Grewal, one written with Dr J. Jayan and printed by the Institute of Sikh Studies, Chandigarh, and one on SikhNet. Neither is a scholarly edition, and the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism's entry on the Sikligar Sikhs does not name him, so treat the account as community tradition.

Who he was. The accounts say a lohar, or ironsmith, named Ram Chand was initiated by Guru Gobind Singh Ji and became Ram Singh. SikhNet's version places the Marwari weapon-makers of Lohgarh under his charge, says he was responsible for manufacture, and says he belonged to Bugiana. He was not one of the Panj Piare, but he was with them and the Guru at the battle of Chamkaur.

Key moments

• At Chamkaur he showed his fighting skills against the besiegers. Both accounts say he accompanied the Guru out of the fortress in the night. SikhNet adds that he left under cover of darkness and rejoined the Guru at a garden outside Machhiwara.
• SikhNet, citing Giani Gian Singh's Twarikh Guru Khalsa, tells that when some Sikhs chided him for cleaning a sacred weapon with it under his feet, the Guru said that a sculptor presses his work under his feet so that people may worship it, and excused him.
• The accounts give a second name to keep apart: Ram Singh Parmar, a grandson of Bhai Mani Singh, who also fought at Chamkaur and, according to SikhNet, was arrested with Banda Singh Bahadur and martyred in Delhi. He is not the Sikligar Ram Singh.

What he is remembered for. He stands in Sikligar memory as the first of the community's armourers to be taken into the Khalsa by the Guru himself. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism describes the Sikligars as the ironsmiths who once specialised in making and polishing weapons, who first came into contact with Sikhism in Guru Hargobind's time, and who are now a poor, backward people, one of the scheduled castes.