Takht Kesgarh Sahib

Takht Śrī Keśgarh — Anandpur and the founding of the Khalsa

The fort on the Sutlej, and the day in April

The gurdwara at Anandpur Sahib, known as Takht Śrī Keśgarh, in Rupnagar district, marks the site where Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru, established the Khalsa on the Baisakhi day of 1699. The act itself — amrit samskār, the initiation with the double-edged sword — is the founding event of a community, and the site is treated by Sikhs as a beginning rather than as a shrine in the ordinary sense. It is one of the four takhts of the Khalsa order.

The Anandgarh fort above the gurdwara was built by Guru Gobind Singh and strengthened by his successors; the hill fort, its walls and its gates are among the few surviving pieces of the Sikh military architecture of that period, and the site's history is inseparable from the campaigns fought from it. The confluence of the Sutlej is the geography of the place: the river crossing below the fort is where Guru Hargobind is said to have caused the waters to parten for his crossing, which the memory celebrates.

The relics and the practice

Two objects are kept at Anandpur Sahib as the takht's own: the karah, the curved sword said to have been given by Guru Hargobind, and Guru Gobind Singh's katār, or dagger. The gurdwara holds daily kīrtan, serves a langar, and receives pilgrims on Baisakhi, when the amrit samskār is administered again to those admitted to the Khalsa — an annual recurrence of the founding act, which is unusual and should be described as such rather than as a commemoration in the ordinary sense. The martyrs who died in the campaigns are remembered here; Chamkaur Sahib, where two of Guru Gobind Singh's sons were martyred, is a distinct site in the same complex of memory.

Sources and what is still unverified

Khushwant Singh's history, McLeod's study of Guru Gobind Singh, the Sikh Encyclopedia, and the Rupnagar gazetteer.

For a named guardian: the date given in the corpus for the founding (30 March 1699) against the Baisakhi reckoning in different chronologies; the provenance and dating of the karah and katār as understood by the gurdwara; and the current form and administration of the fort above the shrine.