Guru Amar Das - The Third Sikh Guru Guru Angad Dev - The Second Sikh Guru English Graphic Novel | Sikh Comics Series

"Those who serve Guru Amar Das — their pains and poverty are taken away, far away." — Sri Guru Granth Sahib

He spent sixty years searching for God. He found Him at the door of Guru Angad — and then spent the next thirty serving everyone else.

Amar Das was not a young man when his life changed. He was already past sixty — a devout Hindu who had spent decades on pilgrimage to Hardwar, bathing in sacred rivers and performing every ritual his faith demanded. He had done everything a religious man was supposed to do. And yet the peace he sought refused to come.

Then one morning, before dawn, he heard the voice of his niece's husband singing a hymn — the bani of Guru Nanak. The words went straight through him like light through water. He asked where they had come from. He was told: from Guru Angad Dev, at Khadur Sahib.

He went to Khadur that same day. He never looked back.

For eleven years, Baba Amar Das served Guru Angad Dev with the kind of total, joyful selflessness that turns an ordinary man into a vessel of grace. Every morning, before the world woke, he rose in the dark and walked three miles to the River Beas — filling a pitcher of water to carry back for the Guru's bath. He did this every single day, through every season, at an age when most men have long since stopped walking anywhere before dawn. One night he stumbled into an abandoned weaver's pit in the darkness and fell. A woman peered down at him and called him a wanderer with no home. He said nothing. He climbed out, refilled the pitcher, and carried it to his Guru.

When Guru Angad Dev passed from this world in 1552, it was this seventy-three-year-old man — passed over by the world, kicked from his seat by Guru Angad's own son Datu, driven out of Khadur — whom the divine light chose. Not Datu. Not any young pretender. Baba Amar Das. And when Datu's foot struck him, Guru Amar Das quietly took hold of that foot and said: forgive me — perhaps my old bones hurt your foot.

The Third Sikh Guru had arrived.

Guru Amar Das moved the Sikh centre to Goindwal, on the banks of the River Beas, and transformed it into the beating heart of a growing faith. And in twenty-two years of Guruship, the changes he made reached into every corner of Sikh life — and into corners of Indian society that no religious leader had dared touch.

He built the Baoli Sahib — a great stepwell at Goindwal, open to every caste, every community, every human being who needed water. High-caste Hindus in the surrounding villages, outraged by this deliberate defiance of the caste order, broke the pots of Sikhs who came to draw water and drove them away with stones. Guru Amar Das ordered the excavation to continue. The Baoli became one of the most sacred sites in early Sikhism.

He established the Manji system — dividing the Sikh community into twenty-two regions, each led by a trained preacher, man or woman. Women as religious teachers was unthinkable in sixteenth-century India. Guru Amar Das appointed them anyway. He condemned the practice of sati — the burning of widows on their husbands' funeral pyres. He forbade the purdah system, the veiling and seclusion of women. He insisted that all who wished an audience with him must first sit on the ground and eat in the Langar — the free community kitchen — regardless of rank or religion. When the Mughal Emperor Akbar came to Goindwal to meet him, Akbar sat on the floor with ordinary people and ate with them before being received.

Guru Amar Das composed 874 hymns — more than any other Sikh Guru — including the beloved Anand Sahib, sung at every Sikh ceremony from birth to death. All are enshrined in Sri Guru Granth Sahib. He also selected the site for the holiest of all Sikh shrines — and entrusted its construction to his devoted son-in-law, Bhai Jetha, who would soon carry the divine light forward as Guru Ram Das.

He passed from this world at Goindwal in 1574, at the age of ninety-five — having spent the last three decades of his long life not searching for God, but becoming a door through which everyone else could find Him.

What's Inside:

• The Search: Sixty years of pilgrimage and ritual that left Baba Amar Das spiritually unfulfilled — and the moment a single hymn of Gurbani changed everything
• The Servant: Eleven years of selfless seva at Khadur Sahib — the daily walk to the Beas River, the pit in the dark, and the qualities that made Guru Angad choose a seventy-three-year-old over his own sons
• The Succession: The passing of the divine light to Guru Amar Das — and the conflict with Datu that tested his humility from the very first day
• Goindwal: The establishment of a new Sikh centre and the transformation of a small town into the heart of a growing faith
• The Baoli: The building of the great stepwell — a direct challenge to caste discrimination — and the community that gathered around it
• The Manji System: How Guru Amar Das organised twenty-two missionary regions and appointed both men and women as preachers, spreading Sikhi across the Punjab and beyond
• The Langar: The rule that no one — not even an emperor — could sit before the Guru without first eating alongside the congregation as an equal
• The Women: Guru Amar Das's sweeping stand against sati, purdah, and the oppression of women — and why it shook the social order of his age
• Akbar at Goindwal: The Mughal Emperor's visit — and what happened when the most powerful man in India sat down on the floor to eat
• The Gurbani: 874 hymns composed by Guru Amar Das, including Anand Sahib — and their place in the eternal Sri Guru Granth Sahib

Perfect For:

• Children aged 7 and up (and the adults reading alongside them)
• Gurdwara Sunday school programs and Sikh Studies classes
• Parents and grandparents wanting to share the lives of the Ten Sikh Gurus with the next generation
• Anyone who needs to be reminded that it is never too late to find God — or to serve others

Book Details:
Pages 40 · Paperback · English · Published 2017 · ISBN 9789382887621 · Publisher: Sikh Comics

Part of the Sikh Comics series on the Ten Sikh Gurus. Explore the full collection.

An illustrated Sikh children's book bringing the life and teachings of the Third Sikh Guru to vivid life — one sakhi at a time.

Also Available in Punjabi