Kahnuwanਕਾਹਨੂੰਵਾਂ

Where is Kahnuwan?

Kahnuwan is a large village in Gurdaspur tehsil of Gurdaspur district, Punjab, in the Majha region, also known by the name of its marsh, Kahnuwan Chhamb. It is more than a village in the administration: it gives its name to its own community development block and serves as a sub-tehsil headquarters. The census recorded it under the Kahanuwal gram panchayat. In the census record it carries village code 028377, covers 2,515 hectares and has PIN code 143528. The directory recorded Gurdaspur, about 15 kilometres away, as its nearest town, though the tehsil office in Gurdaspur is about 22 kilometres by road. Villages around it include Tibber, Darapur, Saidowal Khurd and Bhurian Gujjran.

The name and the marsh

Tradition, as the village's histories tell it, names Kahnuwan after Raja Kanva, a Rajput ruler of the Harchand line who is said to have taken this country from the Pathans and held thousands of acres around it; Rajput landholding families remain prominent in the Kahnuwan area. The second half of the village's other name is geography. A chhamb is a marsh, and the Kahnuwan Chhamb is a long, low wetland of the Beas floodplain, all reeds and standing water in the rains. Bird researchers who surveyed the Beas floodplain wetlands over four years counted Kahnuwan among them, a marshy shore where cranes, storks and bar-headed geese feed in season. In 1746 that marsh was jungle, and it decided the village's place in history.

1746: the Chhota Ghallughara

In early 1746 a Sikh jatha moving through the Eminabad country killed Jaspat Rai, the local faujdar, in a skirmish. His brother, Diwan Lakhpat Rai of Lahore, swore revenge on the whole Sikh community, and the governor Yahya Khan let him loose. Lahore's Sikhs were rounded up and executed at the place still called Shahidganj, the martyrs' ground, on 10 March 1746, and the persecution spread. On the advice of their leaders, who included Nawab Kapur Singh, Sardar Jassa Singh Ahluwalia and Baba Deep Singh, thousands of Sikhs withdrew to the one shelter this part of Punjab offered: the dense marsh jungle of Kahnuwan, beside the Beas.

It became a trap. Yahya Khan and Lakhpat Rai marched on the chhamb with a large army, called in the hill rajas to seal the far side, cut paths through the reeds for their guns and surrounded the jungle. The siege ran through the spring. On 30 May 1746 the attackers set the forest on fire to burn the holdouts out. About 7,000 Sikhs were killed in the marsh, and about 3,000 more were taken prisoner to Lahore and executed at Shahidganj: some 10,000 dead between March and May 1746. Sikh memory calls it the Chhota Ghallughara, the smaller massacre, a name that only makes sense beside the still larger Vadda Ghallughara of 1762. The survivors who cut their way out crossed the Ravi toward the hills, and within a generation the community the empire tried to erase at Kahnuwan ruled Punjab.

The gurdwara and the memorial

Kahnuwan keeps the memory in two forms. The Gurdwara Chhota Ghallughara Sahib stands in the village on the ground of the marsh, the shrine where the martyrs are remembered in daily worship; a Ber tree there is pointed out as the place where Nawab Kapur Singh planned the defence of the encampment. Beside the older shrine, the Punjab government built the Chhota Ghallughara Kahnuwan Chhamb Martyrs Memorial on 10 acres at the chhamb, a state memorial to the 1746 dead that the then Chief Minister, Parkash Singh Badal, dedicated on 28 November 2011, at a reported cost of about Rs 12.59 crore. Pilgrims and school groups come to Kahnuwan through the year, and the village that outsiders once knew only as a block headquarters is now visited as one of the sombre landmarks of Sikh history. No Jugti religion entry for the gurdwara exists yet; it is a clear candidate for one.

People and work

The 2011 census counted 8,972 people in Kahnuwan, up from 8,205 in 2001: 4,623 men and 4,349 women in 1,666 households, about 5.4 people to a household, the largest households in this batch. Spread over 2,515 hectares, the density is about 357 people per square kilometre. The sex ratio was 941 women for every 1,000 men, high for Punjab. Children up to six numbered 1,038, about 12 per cent. Scheduled Castes made up only 619 people, about 7 per cent of the population, and no Scheduled Tribe population was recorded. Literacy stood at 81.83 per cent among residents aged seven and above, men at 86.33 per cent and women at 77.06 per cent, the highest in this batch of villages.

The census recorded 2,592 workers, about 29 per cent of the village, the smallest share in the batch. Of the 2,252 main workers, 1,580 were other workers in trade, transport and services, far ahead of 449 cultivators and 173 agricultural labourers; 340 people were marginal workers. Counting everyone, the village held 472 cultivators and 196 agricultural labourers, so as in Rupana the farming is done largely by the families who own the land, while most working people earn outside agriculture altogether.

Land and farming

Of Kahnuwan's 2,515 hectares, 2,108 hectares were net sown area in the 2011 record, and every sown hectare was irrigated, all of it from wells and tube-wells, with no canal irrigation recorded at all. About 200 hectares were under non-agricultural uses and 207 hectares were barren or uncultivable, the marshy fringe of the chhamb showing through in the land record. Farm power supply was recorded at 8 hours a day.

Schools, health and daily services

Kahnuwan is the best-equipped village in this batch: the freshly checked 2011 Village Directory found 27 of its 32 selected facility fields positive. Schools run to two government primary schools, one middle, two secondary and one senior secondary school, with private pre-primary, primary, middle and secondary schools in the listings as well. Health is the strongest of the three villages here: a primary health centre, a primary health sub-centre, a dispensary and a veterinary hospital were all recorded inside the village. Both treated and untreated tap water were recorded, along with total sanitation campaign coverage and a community toilet complex. The village has both a post office and a sub post office, a commercial bank and a cooperative bank, a PDS ration shop, an anganwadi centre and an ASHA worker. It had no ATM in the record, and the internet centre was more than ten kilometres away. Domestic power supply was 12 hours a day.

Faith in Kahnuwan today

Beside the historic gurdwara, the village is thick with places of worship of every community: accounts of Kahnuwan count its gurdwaras in double figures, along with Hindu temples, Muslim dargahs and three churches. Its best attended gathering is not a Sikh one at all: the Vijay Dashami fair, when crowds fill the Dussehra ground to watch the effigies burn, is famous across this part of Gurdaspur district.

Getting there

Kahnuwan is reached by pucca, all-weather roads, and the 2011 directory recorded both public and private bus services in the village itself. It is a road village: the nearest railway station was more than ten kilometres away. Gurdaspur is the hub for administration, colleges and onward travel; the directory's nearest degree, engineering and polytechnic colleges are there, and the nearest government medical college is in Amritsar.

What happened at Kahnuwan in 1746?

The Chhota Ghallughara. Pursued by the Mughal forces of Yahya Khan and Diwan Lakhpat Rai, thousands of Sikhs took refuge in the Kahnuwan marsh in the spring of 1746. Surrounded and burned out, about 7,000 were killed there and some 3,000 prisoners were executed at Lahore, about 10,000 deaths in all.

What is the population of Kahnuwan?

The population of Kahnuwan was 8,972 at the 2011 census, living in 1,666 households in Gurdaspur tehsil of Gurdaspur district. It had grown from 8,205 in 2001.