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Please share this with your children!!! Baba Baghel Singh had set up an octroi-post near Sabzi Mandi to collect the tax on the goods imported into the city to finance the search and the construction of the Sikh Temples. He did not want to use the cash received from the Government Treasury for this purpose, […]

Please share this with your children!!!

Baba Baghel Singh had set up an octroi-post near Sabzi Mandi to collect the tax on the goods imported into the city to finance the search and the construction of the Sikh Temples. He did not want to use the cash received from the Government Treasury for this purpose, and most of that was handed out to the needy and poor. He often distributed sweetmeats, bought out of this Government gift, to the congregationalists at the place which, now, is know as the Pul Mithai, New Delhi.

Near the Old Delhi railway station is a congested location with a quirky name. ‘Pul Mithai’ — a bridge with a sweet connection that goes back to the late 18th century. Pul Mithai is the stretch on Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Marg from Pili Kothi to the junction where it meets Qutb Road and Azad Market road with two railway lines passing below it.

It was in 1783 that thousands of Sikhs led by Sardar Baghel Singh laid siege to the Red Fort during Shah Alam II’s reign. The Mughal emperor, through his court official Munshi Ram Dyal and Begum Samroo, sought a “settlement.’ In lieu of ‘returning’ the Red Fort, Baghel Singh would trace all the sites in Delhi connected with Sikh Gurus and build gurdwaras there. He would stay for four years and get a cut from tax collected by Mughals for expenditure of his soldiers.

Dhan Sikhi! Dhan Khalsa!

~ Deeksha Singh
~ New Delhi, 15th Feb ’14