Gurdwara Kiara Sahib, Nankana Sahibਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ਕਿਆਰਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ, ਨਨਕਾਣਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ

Gurdwara Kiara Sahib stands in open fields east of the Janam Asthan in Nankana Sahib, in the Punjab province of Pakistan, on the plot of farmland that gave it its name: kiara means a field, or a small plot of land. Tradition holds that the young Guru Nanak Dev Ji, sent out to graze his father's cattle, sat down under a tree lost in meditation while the herd wandered into a farmer's standing crop. The farmer complained that his field had been ruined. When the field was looked at closely, no harm could be found in it at all, and the plot has been honoured as Kiara Sahib ever since. A large gurdwara with a boundary wall and a sarovar now covers the whole field.

What is Gurdwara Kiara Sahib?

Gurdwara Kiara Sahib is one of the historic gurdwaras of Nankana Sahib, the town that maps the early life of Guru Nanak Dev Ji shrine by shrine. The Janam Asthan marks his birth, Bal Lila Sahib his childhood play, Patti Sahib his schooling and Tambu Sahib the homecoming after the Sacha Sauda. Kiara Sahib belongs to the grazing years in between, when the boy was given work with the family herd and used the long quiet hours in the fields for stillness instead. It stands close to Gurdwara Mal Ji Sahib, the other grazing shrine of the town, and pilgrims usually visit the two together: one remembers the crop that was not harmed, the other the herdsboy who slept unharmed under a tree.

History: the day the cattle strayed

The account comes from the janam sakhi tradition, and the SGPC telling runs like this. The young Nanak was sent out with the cattle, as sons of the village were. He settled under a shady tree and sank into thought, and while he rested the animals drifted away from the grazing ground and into the field of a neighbouring farmer. The farmer, finding cattle among his crop, was furious. His shouting woke the boy from his trance, and seeing who the herdsboy was, the son of the village patwari Mehta Kalu, he took his complaint over the boy's head to Rai Bular, the chief of Talwandi.

What happened next is the heart of the story. The Guru drove the cattle home, and the field was inspected. In the SGPC account, the Guru cast a kind look over the fields on his return and they turned green; in the Sikh Encyclopaedia account, carried by Discover Sikhism, the inspection simply found no damage where damage had been reported with such anger. Both tellings end the same way: Hindus and Muslims of the village alike began to revere the young Guru, and the field itself took the name Kiara Sahib. The episode is also remembered as one of the moments when Rai Bular's regard for the boy deepened into conviction, the same Rai Bular who figures in the Mal Ji Sahib story nearby. Jugti tells the episode as the tradition gives it, a janam sakhi account rather than a village record, and its plain point needs no heightening: a boy blamed for a ruined crop was found to have harmed nothing.

History: mahants, 1921 and a rebuilt shrine

For a long time the shrine was kept by mahants. The SGPC account names the last trio in charge before panthic management: Mahant Fauja Singh, Mahant Ujjagar Singh and Mahantani Inder Kaur, and dates the change to February 1921, the same reform season that convulsed the Janam Asthan itself in the Saka Nankana. A Pakistan government survey of the country's gurdwaras, carried by Green Tourism Pakistan, dates the building to the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and records an endowment of 45 murabbas of land in the village of Daria in the shrine's name. The present fabric, though, is younger: the Sikh Encyclopaedia account says the gurdwara was reconstructed by Sant Gurmukh Singh Sevavale in the decade before Partition, and the survey adds that its water tank was built by Baba Gurmukh Singh of Patiala in 1946, a year before the world around it changed.

After Partition in 1947 the Sikh population of Nankana Sahib left, and the SGPC account records that the shrine passed to the Pakistan Waqf Board, the body whose successor administration cares for it today. The same account is candid about its present state: the holy tank stands dry, and Guru Granth Sahib Ji is not ceremoniously opened here. The Pakistan survey agrees in substance, noting that prakash is no longer held and that the building is opened when Sikh yatris arrive. Kiara Sahib today is therefore a monument visited rather than a congregation served, and a visit has the quiet of a field at the edge of town.

Architecture: a domed sanctum on a raised plinth

The building that Sant Gurmukh Singh Sevavale raised is described as a square, domed sanctum with a circumambulatory verandah around it, the whole set on a raised plinth, so that the shrine stands a little above the field it commemorates. The SGPC account calls the building large, and the boundary wall and sarovar were built around the entire field, not just the sanctum plot, which is unusual: the sacred geography here is the field itself, so the enclosure takes in the scene of the story, crop ground and all. Set beside its neighbour, Kiara Sahib is the plainer of the two grazing shrines. Mal Ji Sahib, a short distance away, carries domelets, corner kiosks and cobra tiles; Kiara Sahib keeps to a single dome over a square hall, a working farm shrine in form as well as in story.

Significance: why does an undamaged field matter?

Kiara Sahib is a shrine to something that did not happen, and that is its distinction among the Nankana Sahib cluster. No one was healed here, no battle was fought, no text was composed. A crop was said to be destroyed, men went to look, and the crop was whole. The tradition reads that wholeness as the sign: where the young Guru's presence passed, nothing was diminished. Read with Mal Ji Sahib, the pair frame the grazing years as a small gospel of harmlessness, the herd harming no field, the sleeper harmed by no snake, the village chief learning devotion from two afternoons in the fields. For pilgrims walking the childhood cluster, Kiara Sahib is often the quietest stop, and the one that best preserves the landscape the stories are set in: open farmland at the edge of a town that has grown around everything else.

How do I reach Gurdwara Kiara Sahib?

The SGPC account places Kiara Sahib about one and a half kilometres from the Janam Asthan, while the Sikh Encyclopaedia account measures about two kilometres east of Gurdwara Bal Lila Sahib; in practice it stands close to Gurdwara Mal Ji Sahib on the eastern side of Nankana Sahib, and the two are visited together on the pilgrim round. Nankana Sahib lies about 65 kilometres from Lahore. Because the shrine is opened for arriving yatris rather than served daily, most visitors come with the organised jathas of Guru Nanak Gurpurab in November or the Saka Nankana commemoration in February, received by the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee and the Evacuee Trust Property Board. Ask at the Janam Asthan about access on the day. Cover your head and remove your shoes before entering, as at any gurdwara.