- Lived:
- April 1621, Amritsar → the quiet decades at Bakala, the founding of Anandpur, the great eastern journey to Bengal and Assam — and then Delhi, where he was publicly beheaded in Chandni Chowk on 11 November 1675
- Field:
- ninth Guru of the Sikhs — contemplative poet of the Guru Granth Sahib, builder of Anandpur, martyr
- The Big Idea:
- His grandfather died rather than give up his own faith. Tegh Bahādur went a step further no one had gone: he died, tradition holds, for another community's right to keep a faith that was not his — the Kashmiri Brahmins' right to remain Hindu.
- In their words:
- "He who frightens no one, and who fears no one — says Nānak: listen, my mind, know that man as wise." (Salok Mahallā 9, his own hymns in the Guru Granth Sahib)
- If you remember one thing:
- Freedom of your own conscience is a possession; defending someone else's is a principle. In November 1675, in the most public square of imperial Delhi, an Indian laid his head down for the principle — and his nine-year-old son, made Guru by the news, spent the rest of his life building the institution that would make sure it never had to happen so helplessly again.