Mai Bhago has held my thoughts for many years, though I cannot say when she first entered them. I have often wondered about her. Maybe it began as I listened to accounts of her life, or while looking at photographs of the weapons she once carried. I only know that, without my realizing it, she had entered my heart.
Most accounts of Mai Bhago take us to the same place. We hear of the forty Sikhs who left Guru Gobind Singh Sahib during the siege of Anandpur Sahib. We hear how she called them back and led them toward the Guru. Then comes Khidrana, the battle, and the martyrdom of the Chali Mukte. This is how she is usually remembered. Yet each time I hear the account, I want to stay with her a little longer. I want to know the heart from which such courage arose.
I want to know her.
What kind of love for the Guru makes a person stand when others have faltered? What kind of love asks not for rest after battle, but for the grace of remaining in service? What happens within a Sikh who has seen the Guru, heard the Guru’s voice, traveled in the Guru’s presence, and stood guard there?
I try to imagine what it was like for her. I see her on horseback, armed, traveling with Guru Gobind Singh Sahib and the Sikhs from place to place, standing watch outside the Guru’s tent. What did others think when they saw her? Did it matter to her? I do not know. She was human, after all. Yet she was with the Guru. When one is held in that Presence, the gaze of the world may matter less.
Love is often spoken of as tender and comforting. Mai Bhago’s life shows us something else. Love can be fierce. It can take us where fear might otherwise stop us. Her love did not draw her away from the world. It gave her the courage to stand within it.
I sometimes ask whether someone in Mai Bhago’s life loved the Guru and quietly shaped her long before she understood it herself. I ask because I know one life can leave such an imprint. In my own life, it was my paternal grandfather. Long before I understood devotion, I had already witnessed something of it in him.
When I began reading about Mai Bhago’s family, I found a history in which the Guru had already been present for generations. Her ancestor, Bhai Langah Shah, was originally a follower of Sakhi Sarwar, a 12th-century Sufi saint. He was also an important revenue official under the Governor of Lahore, responsible for eighty-four villages. Then he became seriously ill. Neither medicine nor prayers to his patron saint helped him. A Sikh advised him to pray to Guru Nanak Sahib. He did, and recovered.
I think about that unnamed Sikh. Did he know what those few words would mean for Bhai Langah Shah and for the generations that followed? We rarely know how far a simple act of faith will travel.
Bhai Langah Shah embraced Sikhi. He contributed money and labor toward the construction of Sri Harimandar Sahib. Guru Arjan Sahib appointed him a masand, a local Sikh representative who served the Guru’s sangat in that area. He was among the few Sikhs who witnessed the martyrdom of Guru Arjan Sahib, and later remained close enough to the Guru’s house to be included in the wedding procession of Guru Harigobind Sahib.
This tells us something about the family Mai Bhago was born into. The Guru was not distant from them.
Mai Bhago was born Bhag Bhari, “one filled with fortune.” Her father, Bhai Mallo Shah, raised her in Sikhi. Alongside her brothers, she learned to ride and use weapons. He trained his daughter as he trained his sons. In the Guru’s house, a Sikh is a Sikh.
Long before Khidrana, something had already been taking shape within her. She had grown up hearing the stories of those who came before her and watching Sikhi being lived at home. When the moment came, she did not suddenly become Mai Bhago. Maybe her love for the Guru had been flowing quietly within her, without her even realizing it.
Tradition places Bhag Bhari at Anandpur Sahib in 1699, alongside her father, when Guru Gobind Singh Sahib revealed the Khalsa. She is remembered as having received Khande-di-Pahul there, taking on the discipline of the Khalsa and the name Bhag Kaur.
I often return to that moment. We wonder whether women were present that Vaisakhi, whether they too stood before the Guru and received Khande-di-Pahul. Her presence there stays with me as I think about that question. I cannot know what she felt that day. But when I look at the life that followed, Anandpur Sahib seems less like a beginning than a place where that love found its anchor.
In time, Bhag Kaur married Bhai Nidan Singh of Patti. The historical record tells us little about those years, and I do not know what her married life looked like. Then came the long siege of Anandpur Sahib. Bhai Nidan Singh was among the Sikhs there with the Guru.
Mughal forces and the hill chiefs surrounded Anandpur Sahib for months and cut off supplies. Food became scarce. In those desperate circumstances, forty Sikhs, including Bhai Nidan Singh, told Guru Gobind Singh Sahib that they could no longer remain. The Guru did not compel them to stay. Instead, the Guru asked them to put their separation in writing. They signed the document that later became known as the bedava, a written renunciation of allegiance to the Guru.
I do not want to judge those forty. I cannot imagine what they had already endured. They were hungry, exhausted, and under constant attack. We speak easily of courage when we are not the ones being tested.
When Bhai Nidan Singh came home, this may have been how Bhag Kaur first learned what had happened. He had survived the siege of Anandpur Sahib and had come back alive. There must have been relief in seeing him alive. But then she would have learned that he and the others had signed the bedava. They had put separation from the Guru into writing.
I do not know what passed between them, and I do not want to invent a scene. But the bedava could not have been a small matter to Bhag Kaur. This was not simply a husband returning home from hardship. This was a Sikh returning with a written separation from the Guru.
I understand what had brought the forty to that point. But Bhag Kaur had not been raised to understand Sikhi as convenience. She had not received Khande-di-Pahul to live by allegiance only when the path was bearable. The relationship between Sikh and Guru could not be set aside so easily. So she armed herself and went from village to village, seeking out the men who had left Anandpur Sahib and urging them to return with her to the Guru.
Together, Bhag Kaur and the forty set out across the Malva region in search of Guru Gobind Singh Sahib, who had already left Anandpur Sahib and was being pursued by Mughal forces. They found the Guru near Khidrana, a small pool of water in a dry stretch of land that would later become known as Muktsar. I think about that journey. They had left the Guru, and now Bhag Kaur was leading them back.
At Khidrana, the forty took their stand between the Mughal forces and the Guru. Bhag Kaur fought alongside them. By the time the battle ended, the forty had fallen. Bhag Kaur survived, wounded.
When the field grew quiet, Guru Gobind Singh Sahib came among the fallen. Bhai Mahan Singh, who had led the forty in signing the bedava, was still breathing. Tradition tells us that Guru Gobind Singh Sahib placed Bhai Mahan Singh’s head in His lap and asked for a final wish. Bhai Mahan Singh asked that the bedava be torn.
The Guru had kept that document.
Guru Gobind Singh Sahib tore it.
The forty who had once written that they were no longer Sikhs of the Guru are remembered in the Ardas as the Chali Mukte, the Forty Liberated Ones. Each time I hear of them, I also think of Bhag Kaur, the Sikh who went after them and brought them back.
After Khidrana, Bhag Kaur could have gone home. She had been wounded. Bhai Nidan Singh had fallen in battle. Much had been lost. Guru Gobind Singh Sahib asked her to return to her village. Instead, she asked to remain in the Guru’s service. This is the part that has held me for years. After all that had happened, she did not go back to the life that had once been hers. She stayed near the Guru and served.
Tradition remembers that she became one of Guru Gobind Singh Sahib’s bodyguards. To stand guard in the Guru’s presence was no small responsibility.
I have seen photographs of the weapons associated with her, preserved at Hazur Sahib. One day, I hope to stand before them. Not because weapons fascinate me, but because they make her real to me. Their size and weight give us some sense of what it took to carry them. She was not simply a figure from history. She carried steel. She remained with the Guru.
And still, it is not the weapons that hold me most. It is her love that made her stay.
When Guru Gobind Singh Sahib left the earthly form at Nanded in 1708, I cannot imagine what that meant for those who had lived in the Guru’s presence. They had heard the Guru’s voice, traveled in the Guru’s company, and served the Guru. Then they had to continue when that visible presence was no longer before them.
Bhag Kaur moved further south and eventually settled in Jinvara, near Bidar. Accounts remember her there, rooted in Gurmat and serving the sangat.
What might it have been like to hear her speak?
I return most often to Jinvara. Guru Gobind Singh Sahib was no longer physically before her. Yet the Guru remained at the center of her life. Her simran and seva continued.
The sangat preserved her dwelling, and over time it became Gurdwara Tap Asthan Mai Bhago. That they preserved the place where she lived as a gurdwara tells us something of what her life among them had meant.
On her 360th birth anniversary, I do not want to remember Mai Bhago only at Khidrana. I want to remember her as the Sikh of the Guru who asked to remain near the Guru and whose service continued long after the Guru’s earthly presence was gone.
What could be greater than this?
