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Bibi Sharan Kaur ji was a
Sikh martyr who was slain in 1705 by Mughal soldiers while cremating the bodies
two older sons of Guru Gobind Singh, the 10th Sikh Guru, after the battle of
Chamkaur. She was from the village Raipur which is 2 KM from the famous town of
Chamkaur. Guru Gobind Singh
escaped the fort of Chamkaur on the night of December 22, 1705. He briefly
stopped at Raipur on his way to Machhiwara. Here he asked a lady by the name of
Bibi Sharan Kaur ji to perform the last rites of the martyred Sikhs, which included two of
Guru Gobind Singh's own sons, Sahibzada Ajit Singh and Sahibzada Jujhar Singh .
Bibi Sharan Kaur ji performed the last rites of the two elder Sahibzadas and
other Sikh warriors who had laid down their lives in the battle. According to
one account, Bibi Sharan Kaur Pabla was so grief-stricken that she herself
jumped in the funeral pyre and ended her life. According to another view she
did not self-immolate but was slain by Moghul soldiers and thrown in the
funeral pyre of Sahibzadas, when she and her other accomplices from Raipur,
were caught cremating the bodies of Sahibzadas. A third account says that she indeed jump into
funeral pyre in a Jauhar style self-immolation.,. In total she is said to have
collected bodies of thirty two stormtroopers of the Guru, including two
Sahibzadas. She tried to cremate them in a single funeral pyre. As soon as the
funeral pyre was lit she was discovered by Moghul and Ranghar soldiers who
wanted the bodies of the soldiers - martyrs according to Sikh tradition- to rot
in open air in order to terrorise non-Muslim population who refused to
apostasize or give out the whereabouts of Guru Gobind Singh. It is said that
understanding the intentions of the Moghul soldiers to outrage her modesty, she
jumped into the funeral pyre of Sikh warriors, Sharan Kaur ji was a Saini and Raipur has
considerable Saini population. She is also sometimes linked as a possible
ancestor with Sikh nobleman of Phulkiyan, Sardar Nanu Singh Saini, whose family
later owned sizeable land in the village Raipur. This village also has the
funerary shrines or 'smadhs' of the following Sikh martyrs: Jathedar Naunihal
Singh, Mastan Singh, Santokh Singh and Malkiat Singh. In 1945 a Gurudwara was
built in village Raipur to commemorate Bibi Sharan Kaur Pabla.
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