Jaitoਜੈਤੋ

Where is Jaito?

Jaito is a town and municipal council in Faridkot district, Punjab, in the Malwa region. It is the headquarters of Jaito tehsil and a subdivision of the district, standing about 30 kilometres from Bathinda and 28 kilometres from Faridkot city. The town, which also writes its name Jaitu, grew up around a high sandy mound, the tibbi, and the tank beside it, in what was once the territory of the princely state of Nabha.

The name and the Guru's visit

By the town's own tradition, Jaito was founded by a man named Baba Jaitu, from whom it takes its name. Its other name, Gangsar, comes from the visit of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, who passed this way in 1705 on his journey through Malwa. Tradition tells that the Guru shot an arrow into the ground here and water sprang up, and that the place took the name Gangsar from the story of a bowl lost in the Ganges and found in this water. Gurdwara Tibbi Sahib stands on the mound where the Guru rested, and Gurdwara Gangsar Sahib stands at the sarovar below, and the two shrines frame the town to this day.

The Jaito Morcha, 1923 to 1925

Jaito's place in Sikh history was sealed a century ago. Maharaja Ripudman Singh of Nabha, who was sympathetic to the Akali movement, was forced to abdicate in July 1923. A religious divan held at Jaito, then in Nabha state, on 25 August 1923 passed resolutions in his support, and its organisers were arrested two days later. An Akhand Path begun at Gurdwara Gangsar Sahib was interrupted by the police on 14 September 1923, when an official reader was imposed on the congregation. For Sikhs, the sacred reading could not be broken, and the interruption at Jaito became the spark of the morcha.

From 15 September 1923, jathas of 25 volunteers marched daily for Jaito to resume the path. Jawaharlal Nehru, who came to watch the agitation, was arrested on 21 September 1923 with K. Santhanam and A. T. Gidwani and lodged in the small cell at Jaito, an episode he recorded in his autobiography. The SGPC and the Akali Dal were declared unlawful bodies and the 60 members of the interim committee were arrested. The protest reached its crisis on 21 February 1924, when the Shahidi Jatha of 500, which had left Sri Akal Takht Sahib on 9 February and reached Bargari the day before, was fired on near Gurdwara Tibbi Sahib by the force of the Nabha administrator Wilson Johnston. Official figures counted 19 dead and 29 injured; Akali accounts put the martyrs at about 100, with some 200 injured and 700 arrested that day. The morcha ended only with the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925: the Act was approved on 11 July 1925 and the last prisoners were released on 27 July 1925, after one year and ten months, with the right to hold the Akhand Path at Jaito freely secured.

Geography and people

The 2011 census counted 37,377 people in Jaito, up from 33,465 in 2001 and 28,850 in 1991: 19,880 men and 17,497 women. Of the 33,038 residents aged seven and above, 24,917 were literate, about 75.4 per cent. As tehsil headquarters, the town holds the courts, offices and schools that serve the villages of the south-eastern Faridkot countryside, and its grain market draws the surrounding cotton and paddy villages.

Railway, roads and getting there

Jaito's station is named for its shrine: Gangsar Jaito, code GJUT, on the Bathinda to Firozpur line of the Northern Railway, where trains such as the Punjab Mail and the Patalkot Express call. By road, buses link the town with Bathinda, Faridkot and neighbouring Kot Kapura. Its PIN code is 151202 and its vehicle registration series is PB-62.

What is the population of Jaito?

The population of Jaito was 37,377 at the 2011 census, 19,880 men and 17,497 women. It had grown from 28,850 in 1991 and 33,465 in 2001.

What was the Jaito Morcha?

The Jaito Morcha was the Akali protest of 1923 to 1925 against the police interruption of an Akhand Path at Gurdwara Gangsar Sahib in Jaito. It drew daily jathas, the great Shahidi Jatha of February 1924, and the arrest of Jawaharlal Nehru, and it ended with the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925 and the release of all prisoners.