Patna Sahib marks a birth, and it is also the clearest instance of the fact that Sikh institutional authority is not unified.
The birth
Guru Gobind Singh was born at Patna on 22 December 1666, while his father Guru Tegh Bahadur was travelling in Bengal and Assam. He spent his early childhood in the city before the family moved to the Punjab hills.
Relics associated with those years are kept in the gurdwara, a small iron weapon, a cradle, sandals.
Patna already had a Sikh congregation before the birth. Guru Nanak had passed through, and Guru Tegh Bahadur had established a following there; the city was a commercial centre on the Ganges with a mercantile community receptive to the teaching.
The building
The present structure was raised under Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the nineteenth century and has been rebuilt since, after earthquake and fire.
Governed separately
Patna Sahib is one of only two takhts outside Punjab, and it is not administered by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee. It has its own board, the Takht Sri Harimandirji Patna Sahib Prabandhak Committee, constituted under Bihar arrangements.
The consequence has been real rather than formal. The Patna board has on occasion declined to give effect to edicts issued from the Akal Takht, and disputes over its composition and over the authority of Punjab-based bodies to intervene have gone to court.
Why this matters
The five takhts are governed by four separate authorities:
- The SGPC administers the Akal Takht, Keshgarh Sahib and Damdama Sahib, under the Sikh Gurdwaras Act 1925.
- Patna Sahib has its own board.
- Hazur Sahib at Nanded has its own board, under Maharashtra legislation.
There is no single body with jurisdiction over all five, and no agreed mechanism for resolving a disagreement between them.
That structure is a persistent source of dispute about who may speak for Sikhs, which becomes acute whenever a hukamnama is issued that one of the independent takhts declines to accept, and there is no forum with authority to settle the matter.
Patna is the clearest instance because its independence is longest established and most frequently exercised.