Gurdwara Bangla Sahib

Gurdwara Bangla Sahib stands near Gole Post Office, about a kilometre from Connaught Place in New Delhi. It marks the bungalow of Mirza Raja Jai Singh of Amber, where the eighth Guru, Guru Har Krishan, stayed in February and March 1664 after Emperor Aurangzeb summoned him to Delhi. It is run by the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC).

Key moments

• February to March 1664: the child Guru, about eight years old, stayed in Jai Singh's bungalow. Smallpox was raging in Delhi, and the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says he came out to tend the sick and then caught the disease himself.
• 30 March 1664: Guru Har Krishan died. The Encyclopaedia says he had been moved to a camp on the bank of the Yamuna, though some chroniclers say he died in the house and was taken to the river only for cremation. His last words, "Baba Bakale", pointed to the next Guru in the town of Bakala.
• The DSGMC's account of the sarovar: during the epidemic the Guru dipped his feet in water and poured the charan amrit into a small tank, and those who took the water were cured. Devotees still bathe in the water.
• 1753 to 1775: the Mughals demolished the shrine that Raja Jai Singh had dedicated to the Guru's memory and built a mosque.
• 1 October 1778: Sardar Jassa Singh Ramgarhia razed the mosque during his attack on Delhi.
• 1783: Sardar Baghel Singh, with the emperor's leave to build gurdwaras on the Gurus' sites, raised Gurdwara Bangla Sahib on the spot.
• After 1947: Delhi's Sikhs built the present domed hall. The complex now has a Guru ka Langar, the sarovar, a charitable hospital, a library and a museum named after Baghel Singh.

The langar. During the 2020 lockdown, AP reported that the kitchen began by cooking 40,000 meals a day for the city's hungry and rose to 80,000 and then 100,000, with about four dozen men working 18-hour shifts. The Delhi government sent trucks to carry the meals to shelters but paid nothing for the food, so the DSGMC relied on donations. Its president, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, raised funds. AP gave 300,000 as the number the kitchen expected to reach.

What it means to the Panth. The shrine remembers a child Guru who went out to serve the sick in an epidemic and died of it. Its yearly main observance is the Guru's birth anniversary, in July.