Mata Sundari Ji was the wife of Guru Gobind Singh Ji and lived for nearly forty years after his death, at Delhi, as the effective head of the Panth during the worst period of its persecution.
She issued hukamnamas to sangats across India. A number survive and they are among the most important documents of the early eighteenth century, showing a woman exercising the authority of the Guru's household over a scattered and hunted community.
She was in correspondence with Banda Singh Bahadur Ji and later with those who opposed him, and the split between the Bandai and Tat Khalsa factions was managed in part through her.
She adopted a son, Ajit Singh, who was later executed by the Mughal authorities at Delhi.
For forty years the person holding the Guru's household together was a woman in Delhi writing letters, and she is much less known than any of the men she was writing to.
Mata Sahib Devan Ji, the other of the household who outlived Guru Gobind Singh Ji, was at Delhi with her and is named in the amrit ceremony as the mother of the Khalsa. The two of them were together for most of those forty years and some of the letters go out in both names.
A hukamnama is a letter under a seal, addressed to a named sangat, telling it what to do and what to send. The surviving ones ask for arms, for horses, for money and for men. They are ordinary administrative documents, which is precisely what makes them evidence.
Gurdwara Mata Sundari at Delhi stands where she lived. The period she covered is the one on which the Sikh record is thinnest, and she is the main institutional thread through it.