Gurdwara Bal Lila Sahib, Nankana Sahibਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ਬਾਲ ਲੀਲਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ, ਨਨਕਾਣਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ

Gurdwara Bal Lila Sahib stands in Nankana Sahib, in the Punjab province of Pakistan, on the field where the young Guru Nanak Dev Ji played with the other children of Talwandi, the town of his birth. Bal lila means the play of a child, and the name sets the tone of this shrine: it does not mark a battle, a court or a miracle of power, but a boy at play among his friends, already, in the telling of the tradition, turning their minds towards the Name of God. Its holy tank is the Nanaksar, first dug, the accounts say, by Rai Bular, the chief of the town who became the Guru's first great local devotee.

What is Gurdwara Bal Lila Sahib?

Gurdwara Bal Lila Sahib is one of the cluster of historic gurdwaras in Nankana Sahib that together map the early life of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, from his birthplace at the Janam Asthan to the school, the fields and the pastures of his boyhood. It stands about 300 metres south east of the Janam Asthan, close to Gurdwara Patti Sahib, and pilgrims usually visit the two together on foot. Where the Janam Asthan answers the question of where the Guru was born, Bal Lila answers a gentler one: where did he spend his days as a child, and what did the people around him already see in him?

History: from playing field to shrine

The site begins as open ground. Tradition holds that the boy Nanak gathered his playmates here, and that play itself became a kind of teaching, as he led his friends into stillness and spoke to them of the divine Name. The first building work at the spot is credited to Rai Bular, the Bhatti chief of Talwandi, who had the Nanaksar tank dug beside the field. Guru Hargobind Ji, the sixth Guru, is said to have marked out and enlarged the site when he visited his great predecessor's town, tying the shrine of the first Guru's childhood to the living line of his successors.

In the eighteenth century Diwan Kaura Mal, a Hindu noble who died in 1752, enlarged the gurdwara after his victory at Multan in 1748, won with Sikh help, and had two sides of Rai Bular's tank lined with brick. In the early 1800s Maharaja Ranjit Singh had the building renovated and the tank enlarged and properly lined, and the land granted for the shrine's upkeep is put at about 3,000 acres. Before 1921 the shrine was in the hands of Nirmala custodians, the mahant Tirath Singh among a group of 37 shareholders. After the tragedy at the Janam Asthan in 1921, Bal Lila's custodians handed it over voluntarily to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, and it stayed in panthic hands until Partition in 1947.

Architecture: the building and the Nanaksar

The present building is not the shrine Ranjit Singh knew. It was rebuilt in the 1930s and 1940s under Sant Gurmukh Singh Sevavale, whose renewal work reshaped several of Nankana Sahib's smaller gurdwaras in the years before Partition. The result is a multistoreyed, domed edifice standing on the bank of the Nanaksar, so that the two halves of the site, the hall of prayer and the water beside the playing field, still read as one place. That setting matters: many gurdwaras keep a sarovar for ritual bathing, but at Bal Lila the tank belongs to the story itself, dug by the town's chief for the child whose play drew him to devotion.

Significance: childhood, play and the Name

Bal Lila holds a distinctive place in the Nankana cluster because it sanctifies ordinary childhood. The Sikh tradition does not present the young Nanak as a child apart, kept away from other boys until his calling came. It presents him in the middle of the game, with friends around him, and finds the sacred already present there. For families who bring children to Nankana Sahib, this is often the shrine that speaks most directly to them: the founder of the faith is remembered here not yet as a teacher of thousands, but as a boy whose company changed the boys beside him. It also anchors Rai Bular's story, the local ruler whose respect for the child Nanak began, in part, on this ground.

Visiting Bal Lila: Gurpurab and the yatras

Nankana Sahib fills with pilgrims at Guru Nanak Gurpurab in November, at Vaisakhi in April, and for the Saka Nankana Sahib commemoration each February, and Bal Lila is walked as part of that circuit. Its present condition needs stating plainly, because it shapes the visit: the accounts of the shrine record that the Nanaksar lies dry, that the building is opened when Sikh pilgrims visit, and that regular prakash of Guru Granth Sahib Ji is not held here, unlike at the Janam Asthan. Care of Pakistan's historic gurdwaras rests with the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee under the Evacuee Trust Property Board, as Jugti's guide to Gurdwaras in Pakistan explains. A visit here is therefore a visit to a preserved monument of the Guru's childhood, kept standing for the yatris who come, rather than to a fully serving town gurdwara.

How do I reach Gurdwara Bal Lila Sahib?

Bal Lila is in the old town of Nankana Sahib, about 65 kilometres from Lahore, and almost every pilgrim reaches it on foot from the Janam Asthan, a walk of a few minutes south east through the town, with Gurdwara Patti Sahib beside it. Organised jathas visiting Pakistan for Gurpurab and Vaisakhi are received and routed by the PSGPC and the Evacuee Trust Property Board. The most comfortable months for the wider yatra are the cooler ones, roughly October to March.