|
Gurudwara Daya Singh Ji, Aurangabad |
 |
|
Aurangabad, a district town in Maharashtra, is a railway station on the Manmad-Kacheguda section of South Central Railway. Emperor Aurangzeb had his headquarters here when he came down to the Deccan in 1681 to quell the Maratha rebellion. When Bhai Daya Singh and Dharam Singh were sent by Guru Gobind Singh with the Zafarnama to be delivered to Aurangzeb, they first arrived at Aurangabad, but, finding that the emperor had shifted to Ahmadnagar, they went thither. There, too, they found it impossible to meet the emperor because nobody would let them approach him. So they came back to Aurangabad, and while Bhai Dharam Singh returned to Punjab to report to the Guru and seek his advice, Bhai Daya Singh stayed with a Sikh here waiting for his colleague’s return. Meanwhile, he established contact with some influential Mughal officials through whom he succeeded to deliver the Zafarnama to Aurangzeb. The house were he lived in Aurangabad became a meeting place of other Sikhs, too, who formed a sangat, which later developed into a Gurdwara. Situated in Dhami Mohall, it is still called Gurdwara Bhai Daya Singh and is regularly attended and maintained by the small Sikh population of the place. In fact the Gurdwara is running a residential school for young boys in scripture-reading, kirtan and Sikh way of living