Gurdwara Gangsar Sahibਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ਗੰਗਸਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ

Gurdwara Gangsar Sahib stands on the western side of Jaito town in Faridkot district, Punjab, beside the tank from which it takes its name. It recalls Guru Gobind Singh Ji's halt here during his Malwa journey, and it became nationally known two centuries later as the centre of the Jaito Morcha of 1923 to 1925, the Akali campaign that followed the interruption of an Akhand Path in this gurdwara.

What is Gurdwara Gangsar Sahib, Jaito?

Gurdwara Gangsar Sahib is the historic shrine on the west of Jaito, in Faridkot district, built beside a pond called Gangsar. Tradition holds that Guru Gobind Singh Ji rested by this water and taught a pilgrim bound for the Ganga that sincere devotion was not tied to one river. The shrine is one of three historic gurdwaras in Jaito, and it is administered, along with the other two, by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee through a local committee.

Jaito lies about 30 kilometres from Faridkot city and about 17 kilometres from Kotkapura, on the road that runs on towards Sri Muktsar Sahib. That position, on the Guru's own route across Malwa, is why the town's shrines belong to the wider Guru Gobind Singh Marg story.

Guru Gobind Singh Ji at Jaito

When Guru Gobind Singh Ji reached Jaito on his journey through Malwa, he first camped on a sandy mound, a tibbi, north of the settlement. That spot is now marked by Gurdwara Tibbi Sahib, where the Guru is remembered practising archery with his Sikhs and blessing the place when a local man, Khana, told him it was only a scatter of hamlets. In the evening the Guru came down from the mound to a small pond, because water was scarce on the high ground, and rested there.

The pond gave the shrine its name. In the best known telling, the Guru met a pilgrim on his way to bathe in the Ganga and showed him that the same merit could be found here, so the tank came to be called Gangsar, the Ganga tank. Another telling, kept at the shrine, says the pilgrim had lost a small water vessel, a gadva, in the Ganga at Haridwar, and that it was recovered from this pond. The details vary, as they often do in oral tradition, but the point of the sakhi is the same in both: the Guru turned a traveller away from a distant pilgrimage and towards the water, and the devotion, in front of him.

Why did the Jaito Morcha begin?

The morcha began with a princely state, not with this tank. Maharaja Ripudaman Singh of Nabha was known for his sympathy with the Akali reformers: he had supported the Guru ka Bagh campaign and worn a black turban in protest after the Nankana Sahib killings. On 9 July 1923 the British forced him to abdicate in favour of his minor son. The Akalis condemned the removal, set up a committee for his restoration, and observed 29 July 1923 as a day of prayer for him across Punjab.

Jaito was then in Nabha territory. A diwan held here on 25 August 1923 passed resolutions in the Maharaja's support, and when the state authorities arrested its organisers two days later, the Akalis answered by continuing the gathering and starting a series of Akhand Paths, the unbroken readings of the Guru Granth Sahib, at Gurdwara Gangsar Sahib. On 14 September 1923 police interrupted one of those readings and displaced the granthi who was reciting. For Sikhs, stopping an Akhand Path was not an administrative act: it was interference with worship itself, and it turned a protest about a throne into a campaign about the right to pray without permission.

The government then declared the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee and the Shiromani Akali Dal unlawful associations and arrested their leaders. Jawaharlal Nehru, who came to Jaito to see the situation for himself during the campaign, was among those arrested and held for a time. The jathas, the bands of volunteers courting arrest, kept coming anyway.

The firing of 21 February 1924

The largest early jatha, 500 strong, left the Akal Takht at Amritsar on 9 February 1924, singing hymns as it marched, and reached Bargari, about 10 kilometres from Jaito, on 20 February. The next day it moved towards Gurdwara Tibbi Sahib, where the Nabha administrator, Wilson Johnston, waited with state forces and ordered it to halt. The jatha did not stop. Two volleys, lasting about five minutes, were fired. The official count put the dead at 19, with 29 injured: Akali accounts put the figures much higher, and the gap between the two counts has never been closed.

The firing did not end the campaign. A second 500 strong jatha left Amritsar a week later and was arrested, and thirteen more followed. Volunteers came from as far as Canada, Hong Kong and Shanghai. The martyrs of 1924 were cremated at what is now Gurdwara Angeetha Sahib in Jaito, the town's third historic gurdwara.

How did the Jaito Morcha end?

It ended in law. After long negotiation, the Punjab Legislative Council passed the Sikh Gurdwaras Bill on 7 July 1925, the measure that became the Gurdwara Act and placed historic shrines under elected Sikh management. The Governor announced that pilgrims would be allowed to worship at Gurdwara Gangsar, most Akali prisoners were released, and the Akalis completed what had been denied to them in 1923: a series of 101 Akhand Paths at this gurdwara, running from 21 July to 6 August 1925. A campaign that began over an interrupted reading closed, fittingly, with readings that nobody interrupted.

Visiting Gurdwara Gangsar Sahib

The gurdwara stands on the western side of Jaito, on the Jaito to Kotkapura road, beside its tank. Sources describe an endowment of about 70 acres, administered with Jaito's other historic gurdwaras by the local committee under the SGPC. A special diwan is held on 21 February each year for the martyrs of the firing, and the larger Shaheedi Jor Mela gathers on 10 Phagun in memory of those who died in the morcha. Pilgrims following the Guru's Malwa route usually pair Gangsar with Tibbi Sahib in the same town, then continue to Kotkapura or onwards towards Muktsar.