#LachitBarphukan

Lachit Barphukan · 1622–1672

In the books · 1 chapter

Who this is

War and state-building — the Khālsā's first commander after the line of Gurus ended; conqueror of Sirhind; and, for five astonishing years, a land reformer.

“He was an ascetic who called himself the Guru's bandā — slave — and governed like it: sovereignty vested in a Book and a community, the fields handed to the men who worked them, and at the end, offered his life for his faith, he chose the pincers over the recantation — as did the seven-hundred-odd prisoners marched to Delhi with him, of whom the record itself says not one apostatized.”

— The Great Indians, Ch. 153

The big idea, in the book's words:

“Sent north with five arrows and a mandate, he broke the Mughal province that had murdered the Guru's children, struck coins in the Gurus' name instead of his own — and then did what no Indian ruler on record had done: abolished the landlords outright and made the peasants owners of the fields they ploughed.”

— The Great Indians, Ch. 153