The Muktsar story is uncomfortable on purpose and the tradition has never sanded it down. Forty Sikhs, starving during the siege of Anandpur, signed a bedava — a written disavowal saying the Guru was not their Guru and they were not his Sikhs — and left. In Majha their own women, led by Bhag Kaur, refused to accept them back and rode out themselves, shaming the men into following. They intercepted the pursuing army at Khidrana and all forty died. Guru Gobind Singh came to the field, cradled their dying leader Mahan Singh, and tore up the bedava at his request. The site is now Sri Muktsar Sahib, the pool of the liberated, and the Maghi fair each January marks it. What Sikhs draw from it is not that the forty were heroes throughout, but that the record of their desertion was destroyed by the person entitled to keep it.