Can you imagine the ruler of a country – a Mughal emperor – throwing out his finance minister and then asking the people to thrash him with their slippers. This is what happened to Chandu Lal thanks to his grudge against the Sikh Guru Arjan.

One must confess that Arjan is my favourite ‘guru’ because he loved Hazrat Mian Mir and got him to inaugurate Amritsar’s Golden Temple. As you walk past ‘Lal Khoo Bazaar’ inside Mochi Gate, most inhabitants are unaware of the historic events that took place there. Imagine Maharajah Ranjit Singh conquering Lahore in 1799 – 193 years after the death of Guru Arjan - and among his first orders were to knock down the house of Chandu Shah, or Chandu Lal in the Lal Khoo Bazaar.

Last week I wrote about the massacres and cruelty of almost every ruler starting from Ashoka to the ‘almost’ present time. Faith has nothing to do with financial or political control irrespective of the country one lives in. This piece is about a person in Lahore who though well-off financially sought to further reinforce his political strength, in those days with the rising strength of the Sikh gurus.

Chandu Shah ended up being beaten with slippers by his neighbours and Sikhs in the bazaar and taken away to be tortured and killed by a ’royal employee’ at the Lahore Fort who had worked under him. Such is bureaucracy.

The story of Chandu Shah is an important story of Lahore. Chandu was a ‘khatri’ of the ‘Sahi’ clan and worked for the Governor – Subedar – of Lahore. He managed the Mughal emperor’s accounts under initially Akbar (1542-1605) and then later Jahangir (1569-1627). Financial managers have access to rulers’ like few others have.

The reason Chandu Shah was beaten was because as his daughter was growing up, he sought to marry her to the son of Guru Arjan (1563-1606) the fifth Sikh guru. One source claims that when this was initially proposed, Chandu Lal dismissed the proposition with the comment: “how can I marry my daughter to a man who lives off charity”. This comment reached Guru Arjan.

But then, and here a source claims, he sought the advice of his dear friend Hazrat Mian Mir, who did a ‘chillah’ (a Sufi seclusive meditation) and came up against the proposal. Another source claims that at the Amritsar meeting of Sikh priests everyone opposed the marriage to the daughter of a ‘corrupt’ Hindu Mughal official.

There are two theories about what actually happened. Firstly, that as Arjan was a friend of Jahangir’s son Khusrau, who had rebelled against his father, he was told by Chandu Lal that Arjan had blessed Khusrau. This allegedly upset Jahangir, who took the decision to execute Arjan (Christopher Shackle, Arvind Mandair, 2013, pp 15-16).

There is also the theory by the Spanish Jesuit Jerome Xavier (1549-1617) who was in Lahore in those days and wrote back to Lisbon (M. Barnes, CUP pp245-246) that Arjan had immense courage and refused to pay a Rs200,000 fine for his support for Khusrau. Jahangir then asked him to become a Muslim which he refused.

At this stage it is allegedly claimed that Chandu Lal paid a hefty sum to the emperor to take over the Guru, and he then tortured him till he died. His burnt and tortured body was then thrown into the river outside the fort.

The second theory is that Chandu Lal paid the emperor a large amount (Pashura Singh in JPS pp32-33) to take possession of the Guru and took him to his house in Mochi Gate’s Lal Khoo house. That house was and is still called Chandu de Haveli. In this house Guru Arjan was imprisoned and the doors and windows were bricked up. The belief was that the Guru would starve to death.

In the time Arjan was imprisoned the belief was that Hazrat Mian Mir would come once a week, some even claim daily, and throw through the top window ‘ber’ (Indian jujube) from the tree next to a well, as also ‘barfi’ wrapped in cloth. After four months Arjan was seen as healthy and fine.

This angered Jahangir who allowed Chandu to torture the guru, which he did, eventually leading to his death. There is also the version that Hazrat Mian Mir persuaded Jahangir to allow Arjan to have a bath as his body was severely burnt by lying on an iron plate with fire under it.

Soon Sikh historians came up with the theory that Arjan will return on the Day of Judgement from the place he dived in or was thrown in as the case may be.

That exact place is where the Samadhi of Ranjit Singh and his family exists. There is a small well next to the emperor’s samadhi which is where Guru Arjan dived in, and the place where he will allegedly emerge. It is without doubt a powerful narrative.

Sikh tradition states that Chandu Shah was eventually handed over to the Sikhs by Jahangir after the latter having been told about his scheming and misleading conspiracies by Guru Hargobind and was executed. He died after being led by a procession through the streets of Lahore, suffering from shoe beatings from angry observers, and suffered a fatal strike from an iron rod.

Ironically, the torturer who had beaten up Guru Arjan was also the one who tortured Chandu Shah. It seems that Jahangir shifted blame for the execution of the Guru solely on Chandu Shah as a means to escape responsibility himself.

Amazingly, Chandu Shah’s son Karam Chand, who in 1621 had been responsible for instigating the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan against Guru Hargobind, leading to the early Mughal-Sikh Wars, much as his father before him had instigated Emperor Jahangir against Guru Arjan.

The Sikh reference to the execution is found within the Mahima Prakash Vartak in 1741. Other sources claim that the Guru was executed for his support for Prince Khusrau. Chandu Shah had allegedly purchased the Guru’s freedom and tortured him to death. Positive portrayals of Jehangir in Sikh chronicles in the 18th and 19th century, are a testament to the effectiveness of the Mughal concocted narrative. Sound very much like present-day narratives.

As narrated above, Chandu Shah’s ‘haveli’ in Lahore, known locally still as ‘Chandu de Haveli’, located inside Mochi Gate, was demolished by Sikhs in 1799, the year Maharaja Ranjit Singh conquered the city.

In 1825 Maharajah Ranjit Singh ordered that it be rebuilt in a new design. Sikhs visit the place and tied red ribbons on the ‘ber’ tree. A few years ago, an Afghan mullah started collecting funds for a mosque, refusing Sikhs to tie red ribbons. Call it communal hatred or not, that is up to the reader.

Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2025