Gurdwara Rakabganj Sahib

Gurdwara Rakabganj Sahib stands on Pandit Pant Marg, near Parliament House in New Delhi. It marks where the body of Guru Tegh Bahadur was cremated after his execution at Chandni Chowk on 11 November 1675. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says Bhai Lakhi Shah Vanjara and his son carried the body to their house in Raisina village and set the house on fire. Baghel Singh raised a shrine on the site in 1783. The Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) has run the historic Delhi gurdwaras since 1974.

Key moments

• May 1913: officials building New Delhi pulled down part of the shrine’s boundary wall to lay a straight road to the new Viceregal Lodge. Protest spread across Punjab and among Sikhs abroad, the First World War paused it, and it revived afterwards. In the end the government rebuilt the wall at public expense. The Encyclopaedia’s dates are not consistent (1913 in one entry, 1914 in another; a March 1920 agreement to rebuild, though a march was planned for December 1920), so the year of the rebuilding is uncertain.
• 1 November 1984: a mob besieged the gurdwara for hours and two Sikhs were burned alive. Kamal Nath, then a Congress MP, was there for about two hours. The Nanavati Commission found that he spent quite a long time there and called his reply vague, but said that without better evidence it could not say he had instigated the mob. Sanjay Suri, then an Indian Express reporter, said he did not see Nath lead the mob but saw a gesture of his hold it back, which he took as control over it. Nath acknowledges being there and denies leading the crowd.
• 15 January 2017: the DSGMC opened the Wall of Truth in the complex, with about 3,000 names of those killed in 1984. Widows of five victims inaugurated it (The Tribune).
• 9 September 2019: a Home Ministry special investigation team decided to reopen seven 1984 cases, one of them the Rakab Ganj case (FIR 601/84) (PTI).

What it means today. Rakabganj joins two Panthic memories at one site: the Guru’s martyrdom and the Tesra Ghallughara of November 1984. The Nanavati finding on Kamal Nath is read two ways: Nath says it cleared him, while Manoj Mitta and H. S. Phoolka argue there was enough evidence to recommend a CBI inquiry.