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A Letter of Indictment Matched to Its Own Escort

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A Letter of Indictment Matched to Its Own Escort

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The Zafarnama that Bhai Dharam Singh helped carry to the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1705 was not a plea or a request but a letter of moral indictment, composed by Guru Gobind Singh himself in the aftermath of the Battle of Chamkaur and the loss of Anandpur, addressing the emperor directly rather than through diplomatic intermediaries. That the Guru chose armed escort from his own Panj Pyare, Dharam Singh among them, rather than ordinary Mughal couriers, is documented as matching the letter's own uncompromising content.

Dharam Singh's role was to help ensure that content reached the emperor personally and intact, a documented function distinct from carrying an ordinary administrative or diplomatic communication. The letter's substance, holding Aurangzeb himself morally answerable rather than petitioning him for relief, required a courier the Guru trusted as fully as he trusted the men initiated at the Khalsa's founding six years before.

That the same five founding trust placed in Dharam Singh at Vaisakhi in 1699 was called on again in 1705 to deliver a letter of direct moral indictment to the empire's own emperor marks his role in the Zafarnama's delivery as a documented case where founding trust and a document's own uncompromising content were matched to one another rather than left to ordinary channels.

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Source J.S. Grewal, The Sikhs of the Punjab (New Cambridge History of India II.3)J. S. Grewal
Sources
J.S. Grewal, The Sikhs of the Punjab (New Cambridge History of India II.3)
J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press, 1998View the Source
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