Bhai Jaita Ji was a Rangreta, of the Mazhabi Sikh community, from the Delhi area. After the execution of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji at Chandni Chowk in November 1675, he took the head from the site and carried it north to Anandpur, some three hundred kilometres, through country where being found with it meant death.
Guru Gobind Singh Ji, then nine, met him and is recorded as saying Rangretta Guru ka beta, the Rangreta is the Guru's own son. That sentence is quoted constantly in Punjab and it is quoted for a reason, because caste in the Sikh Panth is a live and unresolved matter and this is the sharpest thing anyone in authority ever said against it.
He took amrit in 1699 and became Bhai Jiwan Singh Ji. He commanded in the Anandpur fighting and died at Chamkaur in December 1704.
Gurdwara at Chamkaur commemorates him. His village of origin is given variously and is not settled.
The Mazhabi Sikhs, from whom he came, provided the Sikh Light Infantry with its recruitment base and remain among the most disadvantaged communities in Punjab. The gap between the sentence and the present situation is the subject.
A rehatnama and a verse account of the martyrdom are attributed to him. If the attribution holds, he is one of very few Sikhs of that generation who left a written account of something he had seen.
The tradition also holds that a substitute head was left at Delhi so the removal would not be discovered, and the account of the cremation of the body at Rakab Ganj runs alongside it. The two halves of that night are commemorated at two different shrines.
He took amrit in 1699 as Jiwan Singh and was killed at Chamkaur in 1704. A man from a community the village would not eat with carried the ninth Guru's head a hundred and fifty miles.