Guru Hargobind

Guru Hargobind (1595-1644), the only son of the martyred Guru Arjan and Guru from 1606, answered his father's execution with a doctrine that reshaped the Panth. At his investiture, tradition holds, he set aside the seli woollen cord of a purely spiritual office and asked instead for two swords, which he wore together: one for miri, temporal authority, and one for piri, spiritual authority. The formula declared that the Guru's writ ran over both the inner life and the standing of the community in the world.

To embody it he built, in 1606, the Akal Takht, the "throne of the timeless one", directly facing the Harmandir Sahib across the sacred pool. Where the temple was the seat of worship, the Akal Takht was the seat of temporal decision, and the two together expressed the balance of miri and piri in stone. It remains the highest temporal institution of the Sikhs.

His early guruship was itself shaped by confrontation with the Mughal state: Jahangir had him imprisoned for a period at Gwalior Fort, and tradition holds that on his release he refused to leave unless fifty-two imprisoned Hindu princes were freed alongside him, securing their liberty by having each hold a hem of his cloak long enough to pass through the gate together. The event is kept by Sikhs as Bandi Chhor Divas, "the day of release of prisoners," observed on Diwali and marked with illumination of the Golden Temple alongside the Hindu festival, a coincidence of calendar that has become one of Sikhism's most visible annual observances.

Hargobind gave the doctrine practical force. He raised a body of horsemen, fortified Amritsar with the stronghold of Lohgarh, and accepted gifts of arms and mounts from his followers, transforming the Panth into a community able to defend itself. He was for a time imprisoned by Jahangir at the fortress of Gwalior; his release, and, in the tradition, his insistence that a number of imprisoned Hindu princes be freed with him, is commemorated as Bandi Chhor Divas, the "day of liberation," which Sikhs observe around the time of Diwali.

Under the succeeding emperor Shah Jahan relations broke into open conflict, and Hargobind fought several defensive engagements against Mughal forces, at Amritsar, Kartarpur and elsewhere. Late in life he withdrew to Kiratpur in the Shivalik hills, beyond the immediate reach of the imperial power, and there arranged that the Guruship pass to his grandson. Under him the community first bore arms, not as conquest but, in its own understanding, as the defence of a faith the state had shown it would strike.