Delhi

Delhi is the capital of India. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says the first, sixth, eighth, ninth and tenth Gurus visited it, and that Mata Sundri and Mata Sahib Devan, the consorts of Guru Gobind Singh, lived there for long periods.

Key moments

• 30 March 1664: Guru Har Krishan stayed at the bungalow of Mirza Raja Jai Singh during the epidemics of that winter, caught smallpox while serving the sick and died on 30 March 1664. Gurdwara Bangla Sahib marks the stay.
• 11 November 1675: Guru Tegh Bahadur was executed at Chandni Chowk on Aurangzeb's orders. Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib marks the place. His body was taken by Lakkhi Shah Vanjara, who burned his own house to cremate it, and Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib marks that site.
• 9 June 1716: Banda Singh Bahadur was offered Islam or death, refused, and was tortured to death; his four-year-old son was killed before his eyes. Of his companions, 694 were handed to the kotwal and killed at a hundred a day (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism).
• 11 March 1783: the Dal Khalsa's armies entered the Red Fort. Baghel Singh of the Karorasinghia misl stayed with 4,000 men until Sikh sites had been marked with gurdwaras, and between March and December 1783 he identified seven.
• 19 December 1922: Mahant Hari Singh of Sis Ganj handed his gurdwara to an SGPC delegation. In 1974 the Government of India placed the historic gurdwaras under the Delhi Sikh Gurdwaras Management Committee (DSGMC), created under the Delhi Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1971 and independent of the SGPC.
• 31 October to early November 1984: after Indira Gandhi's assassination, mobs killed Sikhs. Official estimates put the dead at about 3,350 across the country, 2,733 of them in Delhi; human rights organisations put the national toll above 5,000 (The Tribune). The reviewer Rahul Bedi, summarising Manjeet Hardev Singh's book Documenting a Pogrom, writes that Delhi Police were at times participants and that Congress MPs H. K. L. Bhagat and Sajjan Kumar were complicit.
• 11 August 2005: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told the Rajya Sabha, "I bow my head in shame" over 1984 (The Tribune).
• 17 December 2018: the Delhi High Court convicted Sajjan Kumar of criminal conspiracy and abetment of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment (Al Jazeera).
• November 2020 to November 2021: farmers camped around the city for more than a year. Parliament passed the bill repealing the farm laws on 29 November 2021 (Al Jazeera).