Maghi

Maghi commemorates the Chali Mukte, the "Forty Liberated Ones", forty Sikhs who had earlier deserted Guru Gobind Singh but returned to die fighting for him at the battle of Muktsar in 1705, and were, by tradition, granted liberation (mukti) by the Guru, who tore up their letter of desertion; the town took the name Muktsar, "the pool of liberation", from the event. The festival is kept on the first day of the month of Magh (around 14 January), the day after the winter solar festival of Lohri, and it falls on Makar Sankranti, the sun's northward turn, so that a pan-Indian solar festival is given a specifically Sikh meaning.

The principal observance is at Muktsar itself, where a large fair and pilgrimage gather at the tank associated with the battle, with bathing, continuous readings of the Guru Granth Sahib, kirtan and langar; gurdwaras everywhere hold services and free community meals. Maghi honours the forty who redeemed their earlier failure through sacrifice and loyalty, and the day's teaching turns on the possibility of return and redemption, the deserters becoming, in the tradition, the model of those who give everything for the Guru. It is one of the fixed points of the Sikh calendar tied to the solar rather than the lunar reckoning.

Maghi is one of a whole family of festivals kept across the Indian subcontinent on or around the same astronomical event, the sun's entry into the sign of Capricorn at Makar Sankranti, each region and community giving the day its own distinct name, deities and customs: Punjab keeps Lohri the evening before with bonfires and folk songs, Tamil Nadu keeps the multi-day harvest festival of Pongal, Gujarat marks Uttarayan with elaborate kite-flying competitions, and Assam keeps Magh Bihu with feasting and bonfires of its own, so that a single solar turning point generates an unusually wide range of independently named regional observances across the country rather than one uniform pan-Indian festival.

Maghi is distinctive within this family specifically because it layers a particular Sikh historical commemoration, the sacrifice of the Chali Mukte at Muktsar, onto the shared solar occasion, giving the day a specifically Sikh martyrological meaning that the Hindu-associated Makar Sankranti observances in neighbouring regions do not carry, even though all of them share the same astronomical trigger and fall within a day or two of one another on the calendar.

The Chali Mukte are not remembered only once a year at Maghi: they are named daily in the Sikh Ardas, the standing congregational prayer recited at the close of most gurdwara services and many private devotions, which recalls the sacrifice of the Forty Liberated Ones alongside other formative events of Sikh history, so that the battle Maghi commemorates each January is kept continuously present in ordinary Sikh worship throughout the rest of the year as well.