Khatkar Kalanਖਟਕੜ ਕਲਾਂ

History

Khatkar Kalan's place in history comes from the family that lived here. Bhagat Singh was born in 1907 in Banga — the Banga across the new border, in present-day Pakistan — but Khatkar Kalan was the family's ancestral village, where he grew up and where his roots lay. The ancestral house, built by his great-grandfather Sardar Fateh Singh in 1858, still stands in the village, its rooms preserved much as the family left them. In 1982 it was declared a protected monument under Punjab's ancient monuments act.

The village's memorial chapter began on 23 March 1981, the fiftieth anniversary of the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, when the Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh Museum opened at Khatkar Kalan. In 2008 the surrounding district — Nawanshahr — was renamed Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar in his honour, and a Heritage Street project now connects the museum to the ancestral house, developing the village as a heritage destination.

Geography & people

Khatkar Kalan lies just outside Banga town on the Nawanshahr–Banga road, at about 240 metres above sea level in the central Doaba plain. It is a typical Punjabi farming village — wheat and paddy, brick lanes, a gurdwara — but one that receives a steady stream of visitors, especially around 23 March (martyrdom day) and 28 September (Bhagat Singh's birth anniversary), when the village fills with school groups, youth organisations and pilgrims of the freedom struggle.

The name follows the Punjabi convention: Kalan (greater) distinguishes it from a smaller Khatkar Khurd nearby.

Places of interest

The museum is the heart of the village: its exhibits include Bhagat Singh's half-burnt ashes, the blood-stained newspaper in which they were wrapped, a page of the Lahore Conspiracy Case judgement on which he made notes, his signed copy of the Bhagavad Gita from Lahore Jail, and his personal belongings. Less than a kilometre away stands the ancestral house, free to enter. The new Heritage Street between the two adds immersive exhibits on the freedom struggle.

Notable people

Khatkar Kalan's notable person is Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh (28 September 1907 – 23 March 1931), the revolutionary whose ancestral home this is. The village also remembers his family — his father Kishan Singh, his uncle Ajit Singh the exiled revolutionary, and his great-grandfather Fateh Singh who built the house in 1858 — the household that raised India's most beloved martyr.