Mata Gujri and the four Sahibzade.
Ajit Singh and Jujhar Singh died fighting at Chamkaur; Zorawar Singh and Fateh Singh, nine and six, were bricked into a wall at Sirhind for refusing to convert. Their grandmother Mata Gujri, held through December in an open tower, died the same week — and Punjab keeps that week every year in the coldest part of winter.
The chaar sahibzade are the most-told story in Punjabi households and the one most likely to be taught to a Sikh child first. Ajit Singh, seventeen, and Jujhar Singh, fourteen, died in the fighting at Chamkaur in December 1704 with their father watching. Zorawar Singh, nine, and Fateh Singh, six, were captured with their grandmother Mata Gujri, held in an open tower in the cold, brought before the governor of Sirhind for several days and offered their lives in exchange for conversion. They refused; the sentence was to brick them into a wall alive, and they were killed. Mata Gujri died the same week. The anniversary in late December is now observed across Punjab as a week of mourning, with schools shut and langars in the streets, and the Indian government designated 26 December as Veer Baal Diwas in 2022 — a move some Sikh bodies welcomed and others read as the appropriation of a Sikh memory by a national one.
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