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Festivals
A crowd of thousands watched their Guru vanish into a tent with a drawn sword, again and again. Nobody knew, until the very end, whether they were witnessing an execution or a birth.
By 1699, the Sikh community had endured decades of hardship. Guru Gobind Singh's own father, Guru Tegh Bahadur, had been put to death by the Mughal state some years before. The Sikhs faced constant pressure. In many places, they faced outright cruelty too. Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru, had watched this pressure build year after year. He judged that the time had come for a real change, in how the Sikh community saw and defended itself.
In early 1699, months ahead of the festival of Baisakhi, Guru Gobind Singh sent word to Sikh communities across the region. He asked everyone to gather at Anandpur Sahib that year for what he described as an unusual occasion. He asked people to come with their hair uncut, and men to come with full beards. This was a clear signal that something unusual was about to unfold.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.