Chaar Sahibzaade: Rise Of Banda Singh Bahadur ^new^ May 2026

Banda Singh, broken, starved, his eyes plucked out and his flesh torn, smiled. He was Lachhman Dev the hermit again—but also Banda Singh the warrior.

The Guru placed a hand on his head. For a long moment, there was silence. Then, Guru Gobind Singh spoke again, but his voice had changed. It was no longer the voice of a spiritual guide; it was the voice of a king summoning a storm.

And so, the story of Banda Singh Bahadur is not an end. It is the beginning of the long, bloody, glorious dawn of the Sikh Empire—a dawn paid for by the blood of the four princes and the hermit who became their thunderbolt. chaar sahibzaade: rise of banda singh bahadur

When Banda Singh entered Sirhind, he did not go to the palace. He went to the cold, dark well where Mata Gujri had breathed her last, and to the spot where the wall had been sealed over the Sahibzaade . He stood there for a long time, his head bowed.

He found Guru Gobind Singh in the forest of Machhiwara, the great warrior-poet lying on a cot, his face etched with a sorrow so deep it had carved new lines into his skin. The Guru looked up, and their eyes met. Banda Singh, broken, starved, his eyes plucked out

On June 9, 1716, they brought him out to the Kotwali. They broke his bones with hammers. They pulled him apart with red-hot pincers. Finally, they cut him down.

“Then you shall not be Lachhman Dev the hermit,” the Guru declared. “You shall be Banda Singh Bahadur—the ‘Slave of the Sword,’ the ‘Honored One.’ You will go to Punjab. You will take my sword, Pothi Mai , and you will wash the blood of my sons with the blood of the tyrant.” For a long moment, there was silence

Banda Singh traveled north. He was not a general; he knew nothing of cavalry formations or artillery. But he had something more potent: the Guru’s hukam (order) and the silent rage of a subjugated people. He started with a few hundred outlaws, outcasts, and orphans who had lost everything to the Mughal tax collectors. He trained them in the hills of the Shivalik, teaching them guerilla warfare. He did not wear a king’s robes. He wore a simple blue tunic and a seli (woolen cord), the mark of a mendicant.