Saka Nankana Sahibਸਾਕਾ ਨਨਕਾਣਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ

Saka Nankana Sahib is the name Sikhs give to the massacre of 20 February 1921, when a peaceful jatha of about 150 unarmed reformers was killed inside Gurdwara Janam Asthan at Nankana Sahib. The reformers had come to free the shrine, the birthplace of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, from a corrupt custodian. Their deaths turned a local dispute into the turning point of the Gurdwara Reform Movement.

What happened at Nankana Sahib on 20 February 1921?

In the early hours of 20 February 1921, a jatha of about 150 Sikhs entered Gurdwara Janam Asthan at Nankana Sahib, singing hymns as they walked in. They had come unarmed, in the Sikh tradition of peaceful protest, to take charge of the shrine. Waiting for them was the gurdwara's custodian, Mahant Narain Das, with hired gunmen stationed on the roofs. As the reformers sat down to pray, the shooting began. Those who were not shot were cut down with swords and spears. The dead and the wounded were dragged to piles of firewood, doused with kerosene, and burned. Their leader, Bhai Lachhman Singh Dharowali, was tied to a jand tree outside and burned alive. By the time the police arrived, the massacre was over. The official count put the dead at 86. Other accounts put the number between 140 and 260.

Why were the reformers marching on the gurdwara?

Nankana Sahib is the town where Guru Nanak Dev Ji was born in 1469, and Gurdwara Janam Asthan marks the place of his birth. By the early twentieth century, the shrine and six others in the town were in the hands of Udasi priests who had held them for generations. The priests treated the shrines' lands and income as their own, and their conduct had become a scandal. In 1918, two cases of molestation of women pilgrims were reported. Petitions to the government went unheeded. The Singh Sabha movement had been preaching reform for decades, and by 1920 the protest had become a movement. On 5 October 1920, Sikhs took over Gurdwara Babe di Ber at Sialkot, the first shrine freed from priestly control. A week later they occupied the Harimandar and the Akal Takht at Amritsar. Mahant Narain Das, the custodian of Janam Asthan, was the wealthiest of the Nankana priests and the most notorious for his conduct. He answered by recruiting a private army and stocking arms. The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, formed in November 1920, had planned to ask him to hand over the shrine on 3 March 1921. Then word came that the Mahant meant to have the Sikh leaders killed when they arrived. At a meeting at Gurdwara Khara Sauda on 16 February, the leaders decided not to wait. Bhai Kartar Singh Jhabbar and Bhai Lachhman Singh Dharowali would lead jathas to Nankana Sahib on 20 February, the day the Mahant was expected to be away in Lahore.

The morning of the saka

The jatha set out on the night of 19 February, after taking a hukamnama, and marched through the night so as to reach the shrine at amrit vela, the hour before dawn. Fifty more Sikhs joined on the way, bringing the number to about 200. Near the town, a messenger from the Shiromani Committee caught up with them and asked them to postpone the action. Lachhman Singh hesitated. It was Jathedar Tehal Singh who held the jatha to its resolve, reminding them that the ardas had been said and the Guru's word taken. They pressed on. At the railway crossing near the town, another messenger tried to turn them back, and again Tehal Singh refused. The jatha entered the Darshani Deori, the gateway of the shrine, and shut the main door behind them. Some sat in the prakash asthan, where the Guru Granth Sahib rests, and others on the platform and the barandari. Lachhman Singh sat in attendance of the scripture. It was their singing, their jaikaras, that told Narain Das they had come. He ordered his men to kill everyone inside. Bullets were fired from the roof of an adjoining building. Several pierced the Guru Granth Sahib itself. Outside the main gate, the Mahant rode up and down on horseback, pistol in hand, shouting that not a single long-haired Sikh should be left alive. Bhai Dalip Singh, a respected Sikh the Mahant knew well, came to plead with him to stop. Narain Das shot him dead on the spot.

What happened after the massacre?

News of the killings spread across Punjab within hours. Sikhs from every district began marching towards Nankana Sahib. Bhai Kartar Singh Jhabbar arrived the next day with 2,200 Sikhs. Fearing a wider rising, the Lahore Commissioner handed the keys of the shrine to the Shiromani Committee and arrested Narain Das and his men. The Punjab Governor, Sir Edward Maclagan, visited the site on 22 February. Mahatma Gandhi came on 3 March, with the Muslim leaders Shaukat Ali and Muhammad Ali, to pay his respects. Princess Bamba Duleep Singh, daughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh, also came to honour the martyrs. The cremation rites were held on 23 February, when charred bodies and scattered remains were gathered from the bloodstained chambers and burned on a great pyre. The criminal case against Narain Das and his men began on 5 April 1921, a day the Sikhs observed as Martyrs' Day. On 12 October 1921, the sessions court sentenced Narain Das and seven others to death and eight more to transportation for life. On appeal, the High Court reduced Narain Das's sentence to life imprisonment on 3 March 1922. The Shiromani Committee set up a fund for the martyrs' families and founded the Shahid Sikh Missionary College at Amritsar as a permanent memorial. The Committee also called on Sikhs to wear black turbans in memory of the martyrs until Guru Nanak's birth anniversary that November, and the black turban became the insignia of the Akalis.

Why does Saka Nankana Sahib still matter?

The word saka means a historic event, and in Sikh usage it marks a day of martyrdom. The massacre is remembered as second in political importance only to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of April 1919, and it stands at the core of the Gurdwara Reform Movement. Before Nankana Sahib, the reform movement was a protest. After it, the movement had martyrs, and the British could no longer treat the mahants as allies. The struggle that followed led to the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925, which took the historic shrines out of the mahants' hands and placed them under the elected Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee. The saka also fixed the character of the Akali movement: unarmed, disciplined, and willing to accept death rather than answer violence with violence. The jatha had marched in knowing what might happen, and its members kept their resolve even when the shooting started. That discipline became the model for the morchas that followed in the 1920s.

Remembering the martyrs today

Every year on 20 February, Sikhs gather at the Shaheedi Asthan at Nankana Sahib to remember the martyrs. The Guru Granth Sahib saroop that carries the bullet marks of that morning is brought out for darshan between 2 and 4 in the afternoon. At the shrine, visitors can see Shahid Ganj, the place of martyrdom, and the Shahidi Jand, the martyrs' tree to which Bhai Lachhman Singh was tied. Nankana Sahib is in Pakistan, about 75 kilometres west of Lahore, and Sikh pilgrims visit it in jathas, most of all for the Guru Nanak Gurpurab and for the saka anniversary itself. The gurdwaras of the town, and the story of what happened there, are part of every pilgrimage to the birthplace of the Guru.