Gurdwara Sahib Patshahi Dasvinਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ ਪਾਤਸ਼ਾਹੀ ਦਸਵੀਂ

Gurdwara Sahib Patshahi Dasvin is the shrine in the middle of Kotkapura town in Faridkot district, Punjab, marking where Guru Gobind Singh Ji camped in December 1705 on his way from Dina towards Khidrana, now Muktsar. Its octagonal sanctum and sarovar were built in the twentieth century on the camp site, and the gurdwara is managed to this day by the Nihangs of the Buddha Dal.

What is Gurdwara Sahib Patshahi Dasvin, Kotkapura?

Patshahi Dasvin means of the Tenth King, and the name is the whole story in three words: this is a Tenth Guru shrine. Gurdwara Sahib Patshahi Dasvin stands in the middle of Kotkapura, the largest town in Faridkot district, on the Guru Gobind Singh Marg, the pilgrimage road that follows the Guru's December 1705 march across Malwa after Chamkaur. The Sikh Encyclopedia, in its Kotkapura entry, describes it plainly as the shrine marking the site where Guru Gobind Singh camped on reaching the town in 1705. Pilgrims travelling the Marg stop here between Dina, where the Zafarnama was dispatched, and Dhilwan Kalan and Muktsar, where the road leads next. The shrine is a working town gurdwara as well as a historic one, with daily services in a hall built around its unusual octagonal sanctum.

December 1705: a camp, a request and a difficult answer

Kotkapura was a young town in 1705. It had been founded in 1661 by Chaudhri Kapura, a Brar chief who held the country south of the Sutlej, was chaudhri of eighty four villages by the town histories, and was an ancestor of the Faridkot ruling family. The town's very name says so: kot, a small fort, and Kapura, its founder. When the Guru arrived here in December 1705, after evacuating Anandpur and pursued by the faujdar of Sirhind, Kapura received him. On what happened next, the sources this page relies on tell two sides of one hard moment, and both are given here. The Sikh Encyclopedia records that Kapura met the Guru with presents and provided him with a guide to lead him to the pool of Khidrana, now Muktsar, across a waterless waste. The town histories on Wikipedia, and the World Gurdwaras account, record the other side: the Guru asked Kapura for his fort, from which to fight the pursuing Mughal army, and Kapura, fearing Mughal reprisal if he helped openly, refused the fort. Read together, the accounts describe a chief who welcomed the Guru and helped him on his way, but would not turn his fort into the battlefield: had he done so, the town histories note, the famous last battle of Muktsar might have been fought at Kotkapura instead. The Guru moved on to Dhilwan Kalan nearby, where Sodhi Kaul received and aided him, and where the Godavarisar shrine marks his stay.

Chaudhri Kapura: founder, host and, later, Kapur Singh

Kapura's own story did not end with that refusal. The Sikh Encyclopedia records that he subsequently had himself initiated into the Khalsa, receiving the name Kapur Singh, and the Kapura Singh Brar account adds that he supported the Guru at the battle of Muktsar with men and ground, and was baptised in 1705 and given a khanda and shield. In 1708 he was assassinated by Isa Khan, a Manj Rajput chief, in the feuds of the time, a killing his sons later avenged. His grandson Jodh Singh built a fort near Kotkapura in 1766 and fell the following year in battle with Raja Amar Singh of Patiala. The town later came under Maharaja Ranjit Singh and was restored to the Faridkot family in 1847. Kotkapura's gurdwara therefore carries a double memory: of the Guru's camp, and of a local chief whose welcome, hesitation and eventual initiation into the Khalsa are all part of how the town tells its own past.

The building: an octagonal shrine in the middle of town

The present building is not a 1705 survival, and this page does not pretend otherwise. Its cornerstone was laid by Raja Harindar Singh of Faridkot on 30 January 1937, as the Sikh Encyclopedia records. What rose on the camp site is a distinctive piece of twentieth century gurdwara architecture. At its centre sits an octagonal sanctum, set in the middle of a high ceilinged, marble floored hall. The hall itself is octagonal inside, yet looks square from the outside, because its corners are slightly cut to give it four additional sides. A large semi globular dome covers the sanctum, and a verandah runs all around the hall. Behind the building, completing the pattern, the sarovar is also octagonal in shape. Few Punjab gurdwaras are planned so consistently around one geometry, and it makes Patshahi Dasvin easy to recognise in photographs and easy to find in the town: it is the domed, eight sided shrine at Kotkapura's heart.

Who looks after the gurdwara today?

The gurdwara is managed by the Nihangs of the Buddha Dal, the order that traces itself to the Guru's own camp and still keeps the martial traditions of the Khalsa, a fitting custodianship for a shrine of the 1705 march, as the Sikh Encyclopedia notes in recording the management. That Nihang presence links Kotkapura to the road's next great stop: at Muktsar, the Gurdwara Tuti Gandi Sahib and the other battle shrines remember the forty Sikhs who died at Khidrana days after the Guru passed through Kotkapura, guided across the waterless waste. Pilgrims who want the whole sequence should read it in order: the dispatch of the letter at Gurdwara Lohgarh Sahib, Dina, the camp here at Kotkapura, and then the pool of Khidrana itself.

How do you reach Gurdwara Sahib Patshahi Dasvin?

The gurdwara stands in the middle of Kotkapura town, so any route into the town brings you to it: ask locally for Patshahi Dasvin once you are in the centre. Kotkapura is 15 km from Faridkot city, 50 km from Bathinda, 40 km from Moga and 30 km from Muktsar, by the distances given in the town's standard description. Kotkapura Junction railway station serves the town, with lines towards Bathinda, Ferozepur, Fazilka and Muktsar, and the town bus stand is a hub for buses across this part of Malwa. The town's PIN code is 151204. For the wider pilgrimage, start with the Gurdwaras in India hub, which lists this shrine with every other Marg stop in travelling order.