Name: Sukhjit Kaur
Country: India

Year: 2026
Volume: Volume-11, Issue-1, January-June 2026 (Special Issue)
Page Number: 383-386
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19453040

ABSTRACT:
Guru Tegh Bahadur ascended the Gaddi as the Ninth Sikh Guru in an unbroken line of spiritual succession from Guru Nanak Dev through Guru Angad Dev, Guru Amar Das, Guru Ram Das, Guru Arjan Dev, Guru Hargobind Sahib, Guru Har Rai, and Guru Har Krishan. His life was marked by a fearless pursuit of the highest ideals of human existence, and his martyrdom represented the culmination of this lifelong commitment to truth, justice, and righteousness. Three hundred and fifty years ago, Guru Tegh Bahadur calmly and consciously laid down his life for the freedom of conscience, an act whose moral and spiritual significance has only deepened with the passage of time. Guru Tegh Bahadur’s martyrdom in 1675 represents a seminal intervention in the historical evolution of religious liberty and human rights discourse in early modern
South Asia. Arising in response to the Mughal Empire’s intensifying policies of coerced conversion under Emperor Aurangzeb, his decision to defend the persecuted Kashmiri Pandit community positioned the ninth Sikh Guru as a critical actor in the contestation of imperial authority and ideological hegemony. By refusing conversion and accepting execution, Guru Tegh Bahadur articulated a principled theology of freedom of conscience that transcended sectarian boundaries, foregrounding an ethic of universal human dignity. This episode not only reconfigured the Sikh community’s sociopolitical orientation—culminating in the later institutional development of the Khalsa—but also prefigured normative frameworks that would emerge in modern human rights theory. These principles and values were further strengthened and institutionalized by his son and successor, Guru Gobind Singh, the Tenth Sikh Guru, culminating in the creation of the Khalsa. From this point onward, the struggle for righteousness and justice assumed a collective and organized form. The martyrdom thus constitutes a pivotal case study for examining the interplay between religion, state power, and emergent rights-based paradigms in the 17th-century Indo-Islamic world. The paper further challenges Eurocentric narratives of human rights by foregrounding a South Asian contribution that remains profoundly relevant in contemporary debates on religious freedom and minority rights.

Key Words: Guru Tegh Bahadur, Martyrdom, Human Rights, Freedom of Conscience, Religious Pluralism, Sikhism, Oppressed, Justice, Religious Freedom, Khalsa.