Considered a principled and fearless warrior, he was a learned spiritual scholar and a poet whose 115 hymns are included in the Guru Granth Sahib, which is the main text of Sikhism.

[15][16] In the 1640s, nearing his death, Guru Hargobind and his wife Nanaki moved to his ancestral village of Bakala in Amritsar district, together with Tegh Bahadur and Gujri.

[30] Many scholars identify the traditional Sikh narrative as follows: A congregation of Hindu Pandits from Kashmir requested help against Aurangzeb's persecutions and oppressive policies, and Guru Tegh Bahadur decided to protect their rights.

[32] Guru Tegh Bahadur left from his base at Makhowal to confront the persecution of Kashmiri Pandits by Mughal officials but was arrested at Ropar and put to jail in Sirhind.

[41] Persian and non Sikh sources[42] maintain that the Guru was a bandit[36] whose plunder and rapine of Punjab along with his rebellious activities precipitated his execution.

[43] According to Chandra, the earliest Persian source to chronicle his execution is Siyar-ul-Mutakhkherin by Ghulam Husain Khan c. 1782, where Tegh Bahadur's (alleged) oppression of subjects is held to have incurred Aurangzeb's wrath:[41] Tegh Bahadur, the eighth successor of (Guru) Nanak became a man of authority with a large number of followers.

The royal waqia navis (news reporter and intelligence agent) wrote to the Emperor Alamgir [Aurangzeb]... of their manner of activity, adding that if their authority increased they could become even refractory.Chandra cautions against taking Ghulam Husain's argument at face value, as Ghulam Husain was a relative of Alivardi Khan — one of the closest confidantes of Aurangzeb — and might have been providing an "official justification".

[41] The Sikh sakhis (traditional accounts)[45] written during the eighteenth century indirectly support the narrative in the Persian sources, saying that "the Guru was in violent opposition to the Muslim rulers of the country" in response to the dogmatic policies implemented by Aurangzeb.

Muhammad Qasim's Ibratnama, written in 1723,[49] claimed Tegh Bahadur's religious inclinations along with his life of splendor and conferral of sovereignty by his followers had him condemned and executed.

[50] Chronicler Sohan Lal Suri, the court historian of Ranjit Singh, in his magisterial Umdat ut Tawarikh (c. 1805) chose to reiterate Ghulam Husain Khan's argument at large: he states that the Guru gained thousands of followers of soldiers and horsemen during his travels between 1672 and 1673 in southern Punjab, essentially having a nomadic army, and provided shelter to rebels who were resistant to Mughal representatives.

Aurangzeb was warned about such activity as a cause of concern that could possibly lead to insurrection or rebellion and to eliminate the threat of the Guru at the earliest opportunity.

[39][41] Chandra writes that in contrast to this dominating theme in Sikh literature, some pre-modern Sikh accounts had laid the blame on an acrimonious succession dispute: Ram Rai, elder brother of Guru Har Krishan, was held to have instigated Aurangzeb against Tegh Bahadur by suggesting that he prove his spiritual greatness by performing miracles at the Court.

[46][41][51] Louis E. Fenech refuses to pass any judgement, in light of the paucity of primary sources; however, he notes that these Sikh accounts had coded martyrdom into the events, with an aim to elicit pride rather than trauma in readers.

[36][52][53] Barbara Metcalf notes that Tegh Bahadur's familial ties to Dara Shikoh (Aurangzeb summoned both Guru Har Rai and later Guru Har Krishan to his court to account for their rumored support to Shikoh), along with his proselytization and being a military organizer, invoked both political and Islamic justifications for the execution.

[55][56] They cover a wide range of spiritual topics, including human attachments, the body, the mind, sorrow, dignity, service, death, and deliverance.

[57] Guru Tegh Bahadur built the city of Anandpur Sahib and was responsible for saving a faction of Kashmiri Pandits, who were being persecuted by the Mughals.

[1][3] After the execution of Guru Tegh Bahadur by Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, a number of Sikh gurudwaras were built in his and his associates' memory.

[3] Wilfred Smith stated that "the attempt to forcibly convert the ninth Guru to an externalized, impersonal Islam clearly made an indelible impression on the martyr's nine-year-old son, Gobind, who reacted slowly but deliberately by eventually organizing the Sikh group into a distinct, formal, symbol-patterned community".

[61] In one of his poetic works, the classical Punjabi poet Bulleh Shah, referred to Guru Tegh Bahadur as "Ghazi", an honorific title for a warrior.