Banda Singh Bahadur is the figure the tradition finds hardest to place. A Rajput ascetic named Madho Das, he was sent from Nanded in 1708 by Guru Gobind Singh with a handful of Sikhs and a commission; within two years he had taken Sirhind, executed the governor who killed the Sahibzade, abolished the zamindari system across the territory he held and given land to those who worked it, and struck coin and a seal in the name of Nanak and Gobind Singh. He was captured in 1715, taken to Delhi in an iron cage, and executed in 1716 after his men were killed at a rate of about a hundred a day and his young son was killed in front of him. Sikhs are divided about him even now — whether he was a governor or a rebel, whether he introduced innovations the Khalsa rejected, whether the Tat Khalsa and Bandai Khalsa split that followed was doctrinal or factional. He is honoured, and he is argued about.