Delhi, Service, and "Baba Bakala"

Summoned to Delhi by the emperor Aurangzeb, who, the tradition holds, wished to examine the disputed succession, the boy Guru was lodged in the mansion of Raja Jai Singh, at the site now marked by the Gurdwara Bangla Sahib. The city was then swept by an epidemic of smallpox and cholera, and the accounts relate that Har Krishan gave himself to the care of the sick and dying without regard to caste or faith, until he contracted smallpox himself and died at the age of eight, in 1664.

Before his death he gave only the cryptic direction "Baba Bakala", indicating that his successor was to be found in the village of Bakala. There, after impostors had set themselves up to claim the office, the community identified Tegh Bahadur, a son of Guru Hargobind, as the true ninth Guru. Har Krishan's brief life, spent in service to the stricken, became for Sikhs a model of selfless compassion.