Banda Veer Bairagi was born in a Mohyal family in 1670 in village Mendhar, Distt. Poonch. He met Guru Gobind Singh at Nanded in Maharashtra in 1708 and was deeply impressed by his militancy against the Muslim despotism. After the death of the Guru, Banda vowed to continue his mission of avenging the atrocities inflicted on the Hindus by the fanatic Muslim rulers. He raided and ransacked the Muslim strongholds of Ambala, Saharanpur and Deoband. He stormed into Lahore and captured it.On the way he fought a pitched battle with Wazir Khan, thr governor of Sirhind, who had ordered the live burial of the two minor sons of Guru Govind singh, and killed him in May 1710. He razed to the ground the towns of Panipat and Karnal.
In less than a decade, he changed the map of centuries and completed the work of Shivaji and other warrior patriots. However, he was defeated in the war with his sworn enemy, Farrukhseiyar, at Amirabad in 1716. About 300 Sikh soldiers were killed in this battle. Banda was captured and brought to Delhi, chained and caged, and paraded in the streets along with cartloads of his beheaded soldiers, their bleeding heads poised on spears.
First his 750 followers were killed at the rate of 20 heads per day near the Harding library in the vicinity of the Delhi railway station and lastly, Banda himself was executed at Qutab Minar on 9th June 1716. Before his execution, he was asked to kill his infant son with his own hands and on his refusal to do so the child was hacked to pieces and morsels of his flesh were forced into the mouth of Banda. His dead body was cremated at Bara Pula. The great poet Rabindra Nath Tagore has described his martyrdom in stirring words in a poem captioned ‘Captive Hero’.
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