Bhai Mati Das Museum, Sisganj Gurdwara, Delhi
by Kanika Singh
The Sisganj Gurdwara in the old city of Delhi is one of the most revered Sikh shrines in India. The gurdwara (Sikh shrine) has a special place in the heart of the Sikh community as it is believed to be the place of martyrdom of the ninth Sikh Guru, Teg Bahadur (1621–1675). It stands prominently on the Chandni Chowk, the main boulevard of old Delhi. Across from the gurdwara is a roundabout with blue and white colonial period fountain, now transformed into a Sikh shrine associated with the gurdwara. Popularly called the Bhai Mati Das Chowk (Bhai Mati Das square), it marks the place of martyrdom of three followers of the Guru. Close to these two sacred spots, on the same roundabout, is the Bhai Mati Das Museum, the subject of this essay.
A brief history of the site
According to Sikh tradition, Gurdwara Sisganj stands on the site where Guru Teg Bahadur and his followers, Bhai Mati Das, Bhai Sati Das, and Bhai Dyala attained martyrdom in the year 1675. The story goes that the then Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb (1618–1707) was forcing a group of Hindus to convert to Islam. The latter approached Guru Teg Bahadur for help. Despite knowing the dangers of involving himself, the Guru agreed to protect the Hindus. He declared that if Aurangzeb could convert him, everyone else too would convert, however, if the emperor was unsuccessful, then he must shun coercion. The Guru, with three of his disciples, were captured and imprisoned at the Mughal prison in Chandni Chowk. The disciples were tortured in the presence of the Guru to scare him into converting to Islam. It is said that Bhai Mati Das was sawn in half, Bhai Sati Das was wrapped in cotton and set on fire and Bhai Dyala was boiled alive. Yet, the Guru remained steadfast in this faith. He was subsequently beheaded. Hence the name, Sisganj: Sis = head; ganj= place, the site where the Guru’s head fell. The martyrdom of the Guru and his three Sikh disciples is a moving story of a great sacrifice in defence of freedom of belief and against oppression, and is deeply valued by the Sikh community. Sikh tradition also informs us that a gurdwara was first built on this spot in the second half of the 18th century. The present building is a modern one.
Sikh history in paintings.
The museum, named after one of the martyred disciples, Bhai Mati Das, is housed in a buff-coloured building close to the gurdwara. Visitors must enter with their head covered and after removing their footwear, as a mark of respect. The entrance to the museum leads into an open hall where the walls are lined with paintings. It is as if one has walked into a storybook filled with pictures (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Display of history paintings at Bhai Mati Das Museum, Sisganj Gurdwara, Delhi. 2012. Photo: Kanika Singh
There are portraits of the Sikh Gurus, events from their lives, the stories of their most dedicated followers, scenes of battles and martyrdom. There is a young Guru Nanak (1469–1526), the founder of Sikhism, sleeping on the grass as a cobra shades him from the sun; in another frame he spends the night in a leper’s hut. Another portrait of Nanak shows him as an elderly saint, deep in meditation, hands raised in blessing. In one painting, Guru Amar Das (1479–1574), the third Guru, is constructing a well, in another he is shown prohibiting the practice of sati (burning the widow at the pyre of the husband). Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708), the last Guru, appears splendidly dressed as a warrior-king, inspiring his soldiers into the battlefield. In another instance, he is humbly accepting baptism by his own followers. Some paintings depict the brutalized bodies of martyrs, headless, or limbs torn by torturers.
These are modern paintings, oil on canvas, made in a western academic or realist style. I call them Sikh ‘history paintings’. Bhai Mati Das Museum has 166 history paintings, and each has an accompanying text panel which describes the story or the individual shown in them. For instance, figure 2 is a painting of Mata Khivi (1516–1582), the wife of the second Sikh Guru, Angad, and a revered figure from Sikh history. She is remembered for her generous community kitchens (langar), a highly valued service in the Sikh tradition. In this painting, she is shown in the foreground, dressed in yellow, preparing food; the background shows other parts of the kitchen and people sitting in rows, eating. The accompanying panel explains the scenes in three languages: Punjabi, Hindi and English. For Mata Khivi’s painting, the English text says: Mata Khivi Ji (1582). Guru Angad Dev ji’s wife, Mata Khivi was a very humble lady. Serving Guru ji, his Sikhs with utmost humility she used to supervise the making of the langar and serve it to everyone with her own hands. The Guru ka Langar [langar of the Guru] in her hands was a source of unlimited bounty and the harbinger of a new social consciousness.
Figure 2. Mata Khivi. History painting on display at Bhai Mati Das Museum. 2012. Photo: Kanika Singh
The same display pattern is followed throughout the museum. Along with the factual information, the descriptions highlight the value or lesson one can learn from these events. Each story reveals a value essential to Sikh belief and practice, such as humility, selfless service, equality, bravery and fighting for justice. Walking through the museum is a deeply moving and inspiring experience.
The display at Bhai Mati Das Museum is arranged chronologically. The narrative begins with the lives of the ten Sikh Gurus, from Nanak to Gobind, followed by the stories of Sikh heroes, military commanders and martyrs who lived in the 18th century. Out of the 166 paintings here, 104 focus on the Gurus and 21 on the 18th century heroes. Next, the rise of Sikh power in the Punjab under Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780–1839) is depicted in 16 paintings. Together, these themes form the bulk of the display at the museum. After this, the narrative thins out and there is little information on subsequent decades, under colonial rule or on contemporary life of the Sikhs in independent India.
From calendars to museum
Figure 3. A page from PSB calendar issued in 1975. Photo: Kanika Singh
Interestingly, a large number of paintings housed in this museum were not created for display here. They were first commissioned by the Punjab & Sind Bank (PSB), a prominent public sector bank in India, for publication in its annual calendars.
Starting in the year 1974, the bank issued illustrated calendars on Sikh history. Each calendar was based on a theme from the Sikh past and carried paintings depicting that theme. For example, the calendar for the year 1975 featured women in the Sikh tradition. Figure 3 is a page from this calendar. It features two paintings: the top image accompanying the month of January, of Bebe Nanki (1464–1518), the sister of Guru Nanak and the one below (for February) is of Mata Khivi. Bebe Nanki’s painting is now displayed in the Bhai Mati Das Museum. It was painted by Bodhraj, a successful Punjabi artist. He is one among many other artists who were commissioned by the PSB to create paintings for their calendars.
PSB was a private enterprise till the year 1980 when it was nationalized by the Indian government. The history paintings for calendars, first commissioned in the 1970s, continued to be created for nearly three decades. The calendars are still published, however photographs have now mostly replaced the paintings. Over the years, the bank found itself the owner of a large collection of history paintings. The paintings were given to the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) for display in the museum, on the initiative of Baba Harbans Singh (Kar Sewa Wale), a venerable Sikh who led a voluntary labour team (kar sewa). The DSGMC committee purchased a building (originally a cinema hall) across from the Sisganj gurdwara and converted it into the Bhai Mati Das Museum. The museum is spread over two floors and the rest of the building houses a travellers’ lodge and a dispensary. It opened to the public in 2001.
The museum is maintained and managed by the DSGMC, which is also responsible for the Sisganj gurdwara and the fountain shrine. The DSGMC is an influential religious body which manages the most important gurdwaras in Delhi, particularly those with historical associations with the Gurus. It publishes literature and organizes events for the propagation of Sikh religion. DSGMC also manages a number of educational institutions.
The museum staff consists of volunteers at the gurdwara who take turns to attend the desk at the entrance. There is no curator associated with the museum. Amolak Singh, an artist, was employed by the DSGMC to make paintings for this museum (his paintings are part of the display). This is not unusual, as other Sikh museums too have a ‘resident artist’ associated with the institution. According to officials at Sisganj, the captions and descriptions were done by the Sikh scholars invited by the DSGMC; no attributions are provided in the museum.
History paintings as Gods’ Collections.
As material objects, the collection at Bhai Mati Das Museum does not have conventional historical, religious or artistic value. These paintings are not unique, rare, or antique, nor are they relic objects associated with the Gurus. Their value comes from the story they tell. At the same time, it would be a mistake to consider these history paintings unimportant; for they are highly influential sources of Sikh history and form part of popular religious practice. They are consumed both within the museum and outside the museum in popular cultural spheres.
Visiting the museum is a journey in history as well as faith. Bhai Mati Das Museum is part of the sacred landscape of Sisganj which includes the main gurdwara, the Mughal prison-turned-community kitchen and the fountain shrine. As the introductory panel in the museum informs us, it is built on the ‘land enriched by the blood of the martyrs’, an element which lends great sanctity to the site. One enters the museum — with head covered and without shoes — as if entering a shrine. The visitors can be seen walking along the display hall or standing before the paintings with folded hands and sometimes bowing their head, as a mark of respect. The visitors look at the paintings and sometimes read the accompanying text, but not always. It is often not necessary, for many of these images and the stories they tell are already known to the viewer and the faithful. Most visitors will not follow a chronological narrative but simply walk up to any painting, at times to the one that looks most familiar, in other cases to the one which is new to them. When in groups, including families, it common for one of the members of the group to narrate the story of the painting they are looking at to the others accompanying them.
Figure 4. Visitors at an exhibition of Sikh history paintings. Gurdwara Bangla Sahib, Delhi. 2018. Photo: Kanika Singh
Outside of the museum history paintings are widely reproduced in advertisements, academic works, religious pamphlets, posters, storybooks for children (Fig. 5), animation and music videos. They are part of the wider field of production, circulation and consumption of religious pictures and calendar art in South Asia which first emerged in the mid–late 19th century with the introduction of print technology. It is common to find portraits of the Gurus on pocket and wall calendars and as souvenirs in local markets. History paintings are often found in small private shrines or a designated sacred spot at homes and offices (Fig. 6). While their worship is discouraged in Sikh practice, like the ‘god pictures’ of other religious traditions in South Asian visual culture, Sikh history paintings too are consumed as sacred items.
Figure 5. Page from Baba Banda Singh Bahadur, an illustrated storybook for children on the life of Sikh martyr, Banda Bahadur. Published in 1993 by SGPC, Amritsar. Photo: Kanika Singh
Figure 6. A wall-shrine at a home, with pictures of the Sikhs Gurus and martyrs. 2021. Photo: Amarjit Kaur
One may ask, what happens to the sacred objects associated with the Gurus? Do they form part of the collection at Sikh museums? The most sacred objects associated with the Gurus (such as pieces of their clothing, their signature on a manuscript, utensils used by them, and their weapons) are usually kept within the main Sikh shrine (the gurdwara). They are maintained as sacred objects and brought out regularly for ritual viewing in a highly regulated manner. They are usually not available for regular display in Sikh museums. An example which may be useful to understand this distinction is the Central Sikh Museum at the Golden Temple, Amritsar, the holiest of Sikh shrines. The display mainly consists of the history paintings and also includes a few maps, coin, weapons and manuscripts. A few weapons are identified as belonging to the Gurus and are kept in glass cases, and are they are not distinguished by any special display techniques. The most important of these weapons remain in the Akal Takht (a highly sacred building within the Golden Temple complex) where they are brought out each evening for ritual viewing (darshan) before a crowd of devotees (see video below & here).
Within the Sisganj Gurdwara, there are a few smaller shrines associated with the Guru: the well where he bathed; the stump of the tree under which he meditated before his death; the most sacred spot being the location of his beheading (see here: the well appears at 2.25–3.00. the tree stump at 18.22 and the martyrdom place at 22.05–23.20). Bhai Mati Das Museum does not include any objects associated with the Guru.
Sikh museums in India.
In this case, we see that the collection of the museum (as narrative of Sikh history and as material objects in form of history paintings) is already available outside the museum and is popularly consumed. Why does it then need a museum? And why a museum distinct from the shrine? The creation and existence of a museum as an institution distinct from the gurdwara is a clear recognition of the museum form as an authoritative teller of truths and of its global acceptance. In the highly contested landscape of identity and heritage politics in India, it also allows for the museum to be actively used to consolidate contemporary claims based on Sikh history. Indeed, one of the common refrains of Sikh politics in India is that the community’s history and its contribution to the nation has remained unacknowledged in a Hindu-dominated India. The museum, then becomes an important platform for official historical acknowledgement of the Sikh narrative. The museum form confirms the legitimacy and the sacredness of the narrative.
Bhai Mati Das Museum is typical of the larger landscape of the emergence of Sikh museums in India, all established after Independence (in the year 1947). The first was the Central Sikh Museum, Amritsar, established as early as 1958, and they continue to be built till the present. A well-known Sikh museum is the Virasat-e Khalsa (Khalsa Heritage Complex) at Anandpur Sahib in the north-Indian state of Punjab, opened in 2011. These museums are commissioned both by religious organisations like DSGMC and SGPC (Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, which manages gurdwaras in Punjab), as well as, by the government. Most important gurdwaras in India have a museum associated with the shrine, but a number of Sikh museums exist independently as well. Some are housed in large independent buildings, others may consist of just a single room. There are several Sikh museums now in India and irrespective of the time they were created and the patronage, the display is nearly identical —being overwhelmingly made of history paintings. The more recent museums may use multimedia techniques rather than paintings along a wall; even then, history paintings serve as a template for the creation of multimedia displays. As God’s Collections, Sikh Museums in general, and Bhai Mati Das Museum in particular, provide an excellent vantage point for examining the relationship between religion, history, politics, popular culture and museums in a South Asian context.
Kanika Singh is a historian working on Sikh museums and heritage politics in contemporary India. She is Director, Centre for Writing & Communication, Ashoka University, Sonepat, India.
Further reading on Sikh museums
Chopra, Radhika. 2010. Commemorating Hurt: Memorialising Operation Bluestar. Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory 6(2): 119–152.
Chopra, Radhika. 2013. A Museum, A Memorial, A Martyr: Politics of Memory in the Sikh Golden Temple. Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory 9 (2): 97–114.
Glover, William J. 2014. ‘The Khalsa Heritage Complex’. In The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies, edited by Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech, 441–8. New York: Oxford University Press.
Launois (Sat Kaur), Anne-Colombe. 2003. ‘The Khalsa Heritage Complex: A Museum for a Community?’. In New Insights into Sikh Art, edited by Kavita Singh, 134–145. Mumbai: Marg.
Mathur, Saloni, and Kavita Singh. (2015) 2017. ‘Reincarnations of the Museum: The Museum in an Age of Religious Revivalism’. In No Touching, No Spitting, No Praying: The Museum in South Asia, edited by Saloni Mathur and Kavita Singh, 203–18. New Delhi: Routledge.
Murphy, Anne. 2015. ‘Sikh Museuming’. In Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces: Exhibiting Asian Religions in Museums, edited by Bruce M. Sullivan, 49–64. London: Bloomsbury.
Singh, Kavita. 2015. ‘Ghosts of Future Nations, or the Uses of the Holocaust Museum Paradigm in India’. In The International Handbook of Museum Studies: Museum Transformations, edited by Annie E. Coombes and Ruth B. Phillips, 29–69. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Singh, Kanika. 2016. Representation of Heritage in Museums of Sikh History: A Case Study of the Museum at Sis Ganj Gurdwara, Delhi. PhD thesis for Ambedkar University Delhi.
