Fatehgarh Sahib Districtਫਤਿਹਗੜ੍ਹ ਸਾਹਿਬ

Fatehgarh Sahib is a small district in the Malwa region of Punjab, India, centred on the historic town of Sirhind and its twin settlement Fatehgarh Sahib. It is known across Punjab for the martyrdom of Guru Gobind Singh's younger sons, for Gurdwara Fatehgarh Sahib, and for the steel town of Mandi Gobindgarh.

Where is Fatehgarh Sahib district?

Fatehgarh Sahib district is in south eastern Punjab, about 50 kilometres west of Chandigarh, the state capital. The district headquarters is the town of Fatehgarh Sahib, with the municipal council at Sirhind nearby. Ludhiana and Rupnagar lie to the north, Patiala to the south, and Ludhiana and Sangrur to the west, according to the district administration.

The district covers 1,180 square kilometres and counted 600,163 people in the Census of 2011, making it one of the least populous districts of Punjab. It is administered through four tehsils, Amloh, Bassi Pathana, Fatehgarh Sahib and Khamanon, and five development blocks, Amloh, Bassi Pathana, Khamanon, Sirhind and Khera, with 457 villages in all. Most residents live in the countryside: the 2011 count recorded 414,681 rural residents against 185,482 in towns. The district in its present form was created on 13 April 1992, on Baisakhi Day.

Sirhind and the making of a historic town

Sirhind is far older than the district that now carries a different name. The district history notes early references to the place, describes it as a settlement of the Sairindhas, and traces its growth as a border town on the routes across the plains. A fort was built here in the time of Balban's family, and after the first battle of Panipat in 1526 the town came under Mughal rule.

Under the Mughals, Sirhind became an important provincial town on the road between Delhi and Lahore. Governors ruled from its fort and royal travellers rested in its gardens. That standing changed in the early eighteenth century. After the events of December 1704, described below, Sikh forces under Banda Singh Bahadur captured Sirhind in 1710 and Wazir Khan was killed. Control changed hands again until the Khalsa defeated the Durrani appointee Zain Khan in 1764.

In the British period the area lay mainly within the princely states of Patiala and Nabha. After independence it formed a district in the Patiala and East Punjab States Union, was merged into Patiala district in 1953, and regained separate district status in 1992. The archaeological village of Sanghol, in Khamanon side of the district, points to a much longer past: the District Census Handbook records finds there from the late Harappan period to the sixth century, now kept in the Sanghol Museum.

The martyrdom of the younger Sahibzadas

The district takes its name from Sahibzada Fateh Singh, the youngest son of Guru Gobind Singh. The Census handbook and district history record that he and his elder brother Sahibzada Zorawar Singh were martyred at Sirhind in December 1704. Fateh Singh was seven years old and Zorawar Singh nine, ages given in accounts of Gurdwara Fatehgarh Sahib.

According to the district account, after the Guru's family crossed the flooded Sirsa river, Mata Gujri and the two younger Sahibzadas were separated from the rest of the party. They were accompanied by the family's cook Gangu, who handed them over to the authorities at Sirhind. Wazir Khan, the Mughal faujdar or governor of Sirhind, held them in the Thanda Burj, the cold tower, and pressed them to embrace Islam. Both boys refused.

On Wazir Khan's orders the two Sahibzadas were bricked alive in a wall. When Mata Gujri heard of their martyrdom, she died in the tower. Diwan Todar Mal, a merchant of Sirhind, is remembered for purchasing the land for their cremation by paying in gold coins. The place of cremation is now marked by Gurdwara Jyoti Sarup. A second explanation of the name, recorded in the Census handbook, links Fatehgarh to the later Sikh victory over the fort of Sirhind. Both accounts are part of how the name is explained locally, and the story is told with care in the district to this day.

Gurdwaras, Rauza Sharif and Aam Khas Bagh

Gurdwara Fatehgarh Sahib stands at the site associated with the martyrdom. Within the complex, Gurdwara Bhora Sahib preserves the historic wall in its basement sanctum, Gurdwara Burj Mata Gujri marks the Thanda Burj where the family was confined, and Gurdwara Shahid Ganj remembers Sikhs killed in the fighting under Banda Singh Bahadur. A large hall behind the main gurdwara is named for Diwan Todar Mal. The main structure was first built in its historic form in 1844, during the reign of Maharaja Karam Singh of Patiala, and has been rebuilt and extended since. Gurdwara Jyoti Sarup, about 1.5 kilometres to the south east on the Sirhind to Chandigarh road, marks the cremation site of Mata Gujri and the two Sahibzadas.

A short distance north of the gurdwara, on the Sirhind to Bassi Pathana road, stands Rauza Sharif, the tomb complex of Sheikh Ahmad Faruqi Sirhindi, known as Mujaddid Alf Sani. A Naqshbandi Sufi scholar who lived in the times of Akbar and Jahangir, from 1563 to 1624 in the district account, he is held in high esteem by Sunni Muslims, and the district site describes the mausoleum as regarded as a second Mecca. Pilgrims come from many countries for the annual Urs celebrations, whose date moves each year. Other tombs of his family stand within the compound.

The Aam Khas Bagh, whose name means the garden of the common and the special, is the most visible survival of Mughal Sirhind. Laid out in the time of Akbar by Hafiz Sultan Muhammad Rakhna, the revenue collector of Sirhind, it was kept up and remodelled by later emperors. Jahangir took a close interest in it in 1617, and Shah Jahan visited repeatedly and once celebrated Nauroz there. Its three enclosures hold domed bastions, an artificial lake, a long water channel with carved fountains and a hammam, or bathhouse. During the Shaheedi Jor Mela, a light and sound programme on the history of Sirhind is shown here at night.

Towns, steel and farm economy

The district administration describes the economy as resting mainly on agriculture, industry and allied work. Its main towns each play a different part. Sirhind and Fatehgarh Sahib form the administrative and pilgrim centre, where the district offices stand close to the main gurdwara. Bassi Pathana, Amloh and Khamanon are quieter market and tehsil towns serving the villages around them, handling farm produce, shops and local services.

Mandi Gobindgarh is the exception, and the district's industrial name. The district site calls it the Steel Town of India for its many steel rolling mills. Accounts of the town trace steel working to the early twentieth century, to a free trade zone for steel in 1928 and to land given to local blacksmiths at low rates in the early 1940s along the Grand Trunk Road. The town is reported to have nearly 200 steel rolling mills, with induction furnaces, forging and foundry units around them, and its traders sell steel across India. The district also lists units making sewing machine parts, pumps, bus and truck bodies and mining machinery. That mix of furnaces and farm fields is the district's everyday character.

Shaheedi Jor Mela and getting there

Every December the district holds the Shaheedi Jor Mela at Gurdwara Fatehgarh Sahib, in memory of Zorawar Singh and Fateh Singh. The three day gathering begins with an Akhand Path, the continuous reading of the Guru Granth Sahib, at Gurdwara Jyoti Sarup, and closes with a nagar kirtan, a religious procession, from Gurdwara Fatehgarh Sahib to Gurdwara Jyoti Sarup. Large numbers of devotees attend each year, and villages along the approach roads set up langars, community kitchens serving free food and tea to travellers, in cold winter weather.

Getting there is straightforward. By road, Fatehgarh Sahib is about 250 kilometres from Delhi and about 50 kilometres from Chandigarh, and the National Highway listed by the district as NH 1, the Sher Shah Suri Marg, passes through Sirhind and Mandi Gobindgarh, with buses on the Delhi to Amritsar route halting at both. Regular buses also run from Chandigarh, Patiala and Ropar. By rail, Sirhind Junction stands on the Delhi to Amritsar section and links towards Ropar and Nangal Dam, while Fatehgarh Sahib station lies on the Sirhind to Nangal line. The nearest airport is the international airport at Mohali and Chandigarh, about 50 kilometres away.

Today Fatehgarh Sahib remains a small, largely rural district with a literacy rate of 79.35 percent and a sex ratio of 871 females for every 1,000 males in 2011. Its Sikh majority, about 71 percent in 2011, lives alongside Hindu and Muslim neighbours, and its two best known places of memory, a Sikh gurdwara and a Sufi rauza, stand within walking distance of each other. For residents it is home: farm villages, market towns, a steel economy, and a December gathering that still defines the year.