Bhangani was the first battle Guru Gobind Singh Ji fought, at about twenty, against a coalition of hill rajas led by Fateh Shah of Garhwal, near Paonta Sahib on the Yamuna.
The Guru had been at Paonta for about three years, writing and holding a court of poets. The hill states objected to the growth of the establishment and to the Sikhs' refusal of the tribute and ritual deference the hill polity ran on.
The Sikh force included five hundred Pathan mercenaries who changed sides before the battle, and a body of Udasi sadhus under Mahant Kirpal Das who stayed and fought. Pir Buddhu Shah of Sadhaura, a Muslim divine, brought his sons and his followers to fight for the Guru; two of his sons were killed.
The account is in the Bachitra Natak, written by the Guru himself, which makes Bhangani one of the very few battles in Indian history described in verse by its own commander.
The Sikhs held the field. The Guru returned to Anandpur shortly afterward.
It was fought in 1688 near Paonta against a coalition of hill rajas who objected to the Guru's establishment and to the men gathering around it.
The hill states were the Guru's neighbours and each other's rivals at once. The same rajas who fought here allied with him at Nadaun three years later and besieged him at Anandpur after that.
The Bachittar Natak describes it at length and it is the first battle in the Sikh record for which an account by a participant survives.
The quarrel had been long in the making. Raja Bhim Chand of Bilaspur wished the Guru to remain in his territory as a subject and to pay tribute, and could not easily reconcile himself to the sight of people arriving from distant lands with reverence in their hearts and precious offerings in their hands. Among these were a splendid Kabli canopy, the elephant Parsadi and the great war drum, Ranjit Nagara. When Bhim Chand's son was to marry the daughter of Raja Fateh Shah, he seized upon the wedding as an occasion to demand these treasures. The Guru would not part with what his devotees had placed in his care.
Fateh Shah, who had formed a close friendship with the Guru, invited him to the wedding. The Guru did not attend himself but sent Bhai Nand Chand and Bhai Daya Ram with five hundred horsemen and a lavish gift for the bride. Bhim Chand threatened to break the marriage unless the gift was returned and the friendship ended. Fearing for his daughter, Fateh Shah yielded and the party was sent back. On the road to Paonta the returning horsemen were attacked by the hill forces. They defended themselves and reached Paonta Sahib with the news, and the Sikhs were told to ready themselves.
The hill Rajas assembled a force said to number nearly thirty thousand against about four thousand Sikhs, besides a small number of Udasis and Pathans. Before the armies met, the loyalties inside the Guru's ranks were tested. Most of the Udasis deserted. The Pathans, promised plunder by Bhim Chand, went over to the other side. When Pir Buddhu Shah heard of it he came to the Guru with his four sons, his brother and hundreds of his followers, and chose to share the fate of those he had come to defend.
Mahant Kirpal Das wielded his heavy kutka and brought down Hayat Khan. Sangho Shah killed Najabat Khan before falling himself, and his brother Jeet Mal died on the field. Among the dead were the sons of Pir Buddhu Shah and many of his followers. Then Raja Hari Chand turned his arrows on the Guru. One struck his horse, another his waistband. The Guru answered, Hari Chand was killed, and with the fall of their chief the hill forces lost courage. Before dark they had left the field.
What was lived on the banks of the Yamuna was preserved in the Guru's own words in the Bachittar Natak, and carried forward through generations of remembrance and record. The journey from battlefield to verse, from verse to archive, and from archive to the present reveals something about historical events. They may belong to a particular moment, but the ways in which they are remembered allow them to continue speaking to those who come long after.