Gurbaksh Singh Kanhaiya

Gurbaksh Singh
Born	1759 Leel village, Amritsar, India
Died	1785 (aged 25–26) Batala, India
Spouse	Sada Kaur
Issue	Mehtab Kaur
Father	Jai Singh Kanhaiya
Mother	Desan Kaur
Religion	Sikhism

Gurbaksh Singh Kanhaiya (c. 1759 - 1785) was the eldest son and heir of Jai Singh Kanhaiya, the chief of the Kanhaiya Misl. He was the father of Maharani Mehtab Kaur and thus, the father-in-law of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh Empire.

Gurbaksh Singh, the only son and heir of Jai Singh Kanhaiya, was born in 1759 to his wife Desan Kaur, who was the widow of Jhanda Singh. His father, Jai Singh, was the founder and leader of the Kanhaiya Misl. Gurbaksh Singh was married at the age of nine to Sada Kaur, a daughter of Sardar Daswandha Singh Alkol. The couple had one child together, a daughter named Mehtab Kaur, who was born in 1782.

She was married in 1796 to Ranjit Singh, the successor of Maha Singh, the leader of the Sukerchakia Misl, who were a rival of the Kanhaiya Misl.

The Kanhaiyas, who had replaced the Bhangis as the most powerful misl, disputed Ranjit Singh's father's right to plunder Jammu, and in one of the many skirmishes between the two misls, Gurbaksh Singh was killed in battle against Maha

In the absence of any heir, Gurbaksh Singh's widowed wife, Sada Kaur (an intelligent and ambitious woman) became the chief of the Kanhaiya Misl after her father-in-law's death in 1789. She played an important role in Ranjit Singh's rise to power in Punjab and used to lend support of the Kanhaiya misl to Ranjit Singh till 1821, when she developed differences with him and as a consequence lost her territory to him.

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