Beasਬਿਆਸ

Beas is a town in Amritsar district of Punjab, India, sitting on the banks of the river that gave it its name — about 43 km from the district headquarters at Amritsar city. A modest town on the old Grand Trunk Road (now National Highway 3), it carries far more weight than its size: it is the home of Dera Baba Jaimal Singh, the global headquarters of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, which draws millions of followers from more than 90 countries to its satsangs; the birthplace of actress and singer Shehnaaz Gill; and the site of Beas Junction railway station, once rated the cleanest station in India.

A town named for the river

The town takes its name from the Beas River flowing past it. In Sanskrit the river was called Vipasa — “the unfettered” — and the ancient Greeks knew it as Hyphasis; legend holds that the sage Vyasa created it from its source lake, Beas Kund. The river’s most famous moment in history is also the town’s greatest borrowed glory: in 326 BCE, Alexander the Great’s exhausted army mutinied on the banks of the Hyphasis, refusing to march further east. That marked the easternmost limit of Alexander’s conquests — he raised twelve altars on the riverbank before turning back.

No verified founding date survives for Beas town itself, and nothing is recorded of it before the modern era. The town’s modern identity is inseparable from 1891, when Baba Jaimal Singh founded the Dera on the riverbank.

Dera Baba Jaimal Singh: a global spiritual centre

Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), one of the largest branches of the Sant Mat tradition, was founded at Beas in 1891 by Baba Jaimal Singh (1839–1903), a disciple of Shiv Dayal Singh of Agra. After retiring from the British Indian Army, Jaimal Singh settled on the banks of the Beas and lived in a mud hut; by the time of his death in 1903 he had initiated more than 2,000 followers. The physical colony took shape from 1898, when his successor Sawan Singh built the first well, satsang hall and guest rooms. The headquarters, known as Dera Baba Jaimal Singh, stands just north-east of the town.

The lineage of spiritual heads runs from Baba Jaimal Singh to Maharaj Sawan Singh (1903–1948), Maharaj Jagat Singh (1948–1951), Maharaj Charan Singh (1951–1990) and Gurinder Singh Dhillon (1990–present). On 2 September 2024, Gurinder Singh nominated Jasdeep Singh Gill — a former Cipla chief strategy officer with a Cambridge doctorate — as Patron and Sant Satguru Designate, a departure from the tradition of naming a successor only before the Master’s passing; Gurinder Singh continues as spiritual head during the transition.

The Dera’s core practice is Surat Shabd Yoga — meditation on the inner Sound Current — with a lacto-vegetarian diet and abstinence from intoxicants; the organisation is strictly apolitical. Its main satsang venue can hold up to 500,000 people, and millions of followers visit Beas for discourses often held over weeks at a time. Its charitable footprint is wide: free hospitals, disaster relief and community kitchens. The Maharaj Sawan Singh Charitable Hospital stands in the centre of Beas town on the G.T. Road, built in the 1980s and treating patients free of cost. Leaders across party lines make the journey to the Dera — Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited in November 2022.

Railways, roads and the visitor economy

Beas Junction (station code BEAS) sits on the Ambala–Attari line under the Firozpur division of Northern Railway; more than a hundred trains halt there, including Shatabdis and Vande Bharats. In 2019 it was rated the cleanest railway station in India in a survey by the NGO INTACT, reported by The Tribune. The town lies on the old Grand Trunk Road — now National Highway 3 — with Kapurthala 24 km away, Jalandhar 38 km and Amritsar about 41–43 km; the nearest airport is Sri Guru Ram Das Jee International Airport in Amritsar, roughly 57 km distant, while the Dera has its own small airstrip.

No detailed town-level economic data exists, but Beas’s economy is visibly two-layered: the agricultural base of the surrounding Majha belt, and the steady visitor economy of the Dera — millions of satsang visitors, the langar kitchens and the free hospital. A naval honour connects the town to its river: the Indian Navy frigate INS Beas is named after the Beas River.

Around Beas

A few kilometres north of the town lies Baba Bakala, the historic gurdwara town associated with the ninth Sikh Guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, who spent 26 years in meditation there and where Makhan Shah Lubana proclaimed him Guru. Downstream on the Beas river in Tarn Taran district stands Goindwal Sahib, the first Sikh pilgrimage centre, where Guru Amar Das lived and preached for 33 years and dug the 84-step baoli.